Kenan Simmons of Small Luxury Hotels of the World on Independent Spirit, the Hilton Partnership, and the Resurgence of Boutique Luxury
SLH SVP Kenan Simmons discusses how the 700-property collective helps independent hoteliers reach global audiences, the economics of the Hilton partnership, and why boutique luxury is resurging rather than evolving.
Running a 25-key hotel carries many of the same departmental costs as running a 400-room one, yet the small hotel has to find its guests on a fraction of the budget. That arithmetic is the reason Small Luxury Hotels of the World exists. Today the collective counts more than 700 independently owned hotels in over 100 countries, and its business in the Americas is led by Kenan Simmons, Senior Vice President Americas, who has spent more than a decade at SLH after a career that began when he quit accounting after two months. He sat down with Adam Mogelonsky to explain how SLH gives owner-operators global reach without taking away their individuality, why its partnership with Hilton has changed the economics of discovery for hotels that once depended on OTAs, and why he believes boutique luxury is not so much evolving as returning.
Kenan Simmons of Small Luxury Hotels of the World on Independent Spirit, the Hilton Partnership, and the Resurgence of Boutique Luxury
Brand InsidersKenan Simmons of Small Luxury Hotels of the World on Independent Spirit, the Hilton Partnership, and the Resurgence of Boutique Luxury
Brand InsidersThe conversation covers the three SLH collections and the logic behind them, the in-house voice reservation agents who match guests to hotels one call at a time, a favorite beach in Baja where he can sit with a coffee and not see another person, the Hilton partnership and what it means for distribution, the move from SEO to GEO and the role of storytelling in AI search, the enduring importance of travel advisors, the pipeline from Healdsburg to Portland, Maine, and a pointed warning about what the industry is allowed to call boutique.
SLH is a global community of more than 700 independently owned boutique hotels in over 100 countries, and its defining feature, according to Simmons, is that no two members resemble each other. "There's no two SLH hotels that are the same," he says. "Most of our properties reflect the character of the destination. They have a strong sense of place, their genuinely personal approach to hospitality."
Ownership is the source of that individuality. The owners range from first-generation hoteliers to fifth-generation families, and many arrive from other industries, such as technology or finance, where they made their mark before turning to hospitality as a second career. They build around a passion for culinary, design, or a destination they grew up in or simply fell in love with. Simmons says the owner is often visible on property, sometimes without guests realizing who he is. "They really bring their passion for not only the project, but also for their genuine passion for hospitality."
Why independent hotels need a platform
For an independent hotel, the hardest problem is not the product but the audience. Simmons is direct about where the money goes. "In the hospitality sector, probably one of the costliest parts of the business is customer acquisition," he says. Sales and marketing can account for seven to eleven percent of annual revenue, a burden that is difficult to carry for a 25-room property that is not generating large revenue numbers but still needs to reach a diverse global customer.
That is where a brand like SLH steps in. The sales and marketing team meets customers on the ground every day, and the organization invests in social media, PR, and content on behalf of its members. "We help you scale to reach kind of the world rather than you trying to reach the world on your own." Simmons is quick to add that the challenge is universal. "I don't think it's any different from whether you're a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton, Hilton, Hyatt, whoever. Every hotel has its challenges finding new customers."
Innovation by curation
Asked how SLH innovates, Simmons resists the word. Hospitality, he argues, has to keep pace with customer demands by definition. SLH's contribution is curation: finding and collecting the kind of hotels that today's luxury traveler is seeking. His reading of that traveler is clear. Younger affluent consumers are moving away from accumulating things such as purses, watches, and cars and toward experiences. "They have the money, and they're looking for these unique experiences."
That has taken the SLH team to places few collections would think to look, such as a four-villa hotel on a private island that the team found and then introduced to the consumer. "It's finding hotels that maybe are off the beaten path."
From accounting to SVP
Simmons did not set out to work in hotels. He took an accounting degree, started work as an accountant in New York City, and realized after two months that he completely hated it. A classified ad for a job at the Westbury, a boutique luxury hotel on the Upper East Side, offered something different: flexible hours and a business that sounded unique. He applied, got hired, and found a general manager who became a mentor.
He started in the front office, moved through food and beverage, and eventually landed in sales and marketing, drawn by the fact that the work offered "no two days that were ever alike." After a couple of years at the Westbury he moved to the hotel group's corporate office, then through a few other companies. He knew SLH from his days at Leading Hotels, since a few SLH hotels were also members there, and when he saw what SLH wanted to become under its new ownership group, he approached them. "It's been a great ride for the past ten years."
Great rates, great expectations
Guest expectations in luxury have always been high, Simmons says, but they have become more demanding, and the reason is price. Rates have climbed steadily since 2019, and in peak months in parts of Italy a room can now cost two thousand euros a night. "When people are spending this kind of money, they're really expecting top-notch service, great product, and an overall great experience," he says. "The demands of the luxury consumer have increased when you look at the price point that they're paying."
The response from the hotels doing it best is not a longer list of amenities. Everyone is trying to be new and innovative and to anticipate what guests need before they ask, but Simmons believes the winners are returning to fundamentals: being warm and genuine and offering a tailored experience that "really tugs at their emotions." The failure mode he describes is service with no personality. The goal is "an emotional connection with the guest rather than just a kind of robotic yes sir, no sir type of service."
The collections: steering guests to an experience
With more than 700 hotels to choose from, SLH organizes part of its portfolio into collections, though Simmons is careful to say that these are not brands or boxes. They are a way of steering the customer toward the experience they want.
The Considerate Collection is about more than sustainability in the narrow sense. "Is the hotel a cultural custodian for that destination?" Simmons asks. "Are they giving them a skill set where they can have a better quality of life?" Environmental practices, locally sourced products, and care for community and culture all count, because "people do have a social conscience."
The Finest Collection is smaller and different in kind: hotels that have excelled in service and met demanding benchmarks, representing only about five percent of the portfolio. The Wellbeing Collection responds to what Simmons calls the top concern in every traveler's mind. "It's that whole mind, body, and soul enrichment that these hotels can deliver to the customer," he says, and it is explicitly not the "typical all-inclusive wellness where you're going in with a strict regimented program."
Hotels can sit in more than one category, and beyond the collections the SLH website lets guests browse by attribute, such as ski, culinary, or both. More collections are under exploration, though Simmons cannot yet discuss them. He is firm on the standard. SLH is not pigeonholing hotels into collections for the sake of marketing. Each one goes through rigorous vetting "to make sure that each collection and each hotel that's part of the collection is true to that collection."
Matching guest to hotel: the human reservation desk
For all the digital tooling, one of SLH's most distinctive assets is a call center. "We're probably one of the few companies left that still employ our own voice reservation agents," Simmons says. "We don't outsource it. These are our SLH-trained employees."
The agents are trained to learn about the guest, or the travel advisor booking for the guest. Does the guest like a particular color of room? Are they adventurous? Who are they traveling with, and why? The aim is "really diving deep into the customer's attributes," so that the hotel they are offered is the one that fits their trip.
The impossible question: favorites
Asked to name a favorite hotel, Simmons says it is like being asked to name a favorite child. "When you look at each child or each hotel, they all have different attributes, they all have different personalities, they all have a different soul."
What stays with him are the hotels that leave an emotional imprint, where something or someone at the property is so unusual that he cannot stop talking about it. One example is Villa Santa Cruz in Todos Santos on the Baja California peninsula, which sits on what he calls one of the most amazing beaches in Mexico. "You can sit out there in the morning on your porch at Villa Santa Cruz and have a cup of coffee and not see a soul on the beach. You don't see beaches like that anymore."
The Hilton partnership: a built-in audience
The partnership between SLH and Hilton, announced in February 2024, is now a little over two years old. Simmons says the first hotels went live in July 2024, and that it has been a success for SLH, for its member hotels, and for Hilton customers.
The core benefit is distribution. When a hotel joins the network, "you're automatically plugged into kind of a built-in audience." Simmons says Hilton Honors membership now surpasses 200 million, and he describes the effect on a small property in plain terms: a 25-to-30-room hotel off the beaten path, which most people have never heard of, is suddenly connected to a vast network of travelers with an affinity for travel. "From day one you're getting this exposure that you really can't get anywhere else as an independent hotel."
He contrasts that with the traditional alternative. Many independents rely on OTAs because they offer the easiest route to a large audience, but the margins are high and the guest "is primarily shopping on price." An avid traveler is more likely to be a loyal one. A Hilton Honors member, he notes, has to travel quite extensively to earn even a single night's stay, which makes for a more savvy guest looking for different experiences. Loyalty matters beyond commission, he adds: someone buying on price does not care about the brand, whereas someone in a loyalty program tends to return when the experience is good.
The independence of the hotels is untouched by any of this. "They fully keep their independence, they fully keep their identity, and they're not told what to do, what to think, or how to present their product."
The partnership continues to deepen. SLH hotels now have access to Hilton Supply Management, which aggregates purchasing across Hilton and other participating hotels. Simmons likens it to a cooperative buying arrangement. "I equate it to going to Costco, because Costco buys in bulk." The result can be better pricing on everything from produce to insurance, a significant advantage for independent owners who lack that purchasing power on their own, and he says more programs are in the pipeline.
AI search, GEO, and the case for storytelling
On AI search, Simmons describes a shift in vocabulary and in practice. "We moved away from SEO to GEO in terms of giving the hotels visibility," he says. Earned media is a key route, and the strategy is to put more high-quality content into the world on behalf of members.
SLH has been doing this for some time. It launched Swoon by SLH, a magazine telling the stories of hotels, destinations, and the personalities behind them. It is developing Studio by SLH, which showcases the portfolio through photography and video. And Simmons says SLH was probably the first in its competitive set to hire its own photographers and videographers as employees, who travel on behalf of member hotels. The goal is to give AI systems clear, structured, relevant content about each hotel, and affiliation with the Hilton website adds trusted, high-traffic signals on top.
Simmons argues that this was always the right instinct, whatever the technology. "The customer today is looking for that backstory. They're looking for something unique, something their friends don't know about yet, because everybody wants that. I'm going to be the first to post this on my Instagram feed." The stories SLH tells about the person who built a hotel and the place around it serve the human reader and the machine at the same time.
Why travel advisors are not going away
Many in the industry assumed that AI would make travel advisors redundant. Simmons says the opposite is happening. Advisors have always been central to SLH, and he says that "travel advisors make up the bulk of our business, believe it or not." What has changed is the noise. "The people with means, they're time starved," he says. "They're looking for a trusted partner to help them navigate all the noise that's out there."
SLH works with large advisor networks such as Fora and SmartFlyer, but the emphasis is on one-to-one relationships: meetings with individual advisors, webinars, familiarization trips, and a presence at shows. Advisors are also a source of new properties, regularly recommending hotels they have just visited. The pace is relentless. At shows such as ILTM, LE Miami, and Virtuoso Travel Week, days start at eight in the morning and run through dinner, often past ten thirty, for three to five days straight. Simmons says the SLH sales team does not mind. "A lot of times it doesn't seem like work because you're doing something you love on a daily basis."
Where SLH is growing
With more than 700 hotels, SLH's aim is now to fill gaps in the map rather than add for the sake of adding. The Americas account for only about 22 percent of the portfolio, so the region is a focus heading into 2027, with strong growth in both the United States and Latin America.
The progress is visible in the numbers Simmons cites. Five years ago SLH had a handful of properties in California; today it has roughly 12 to 14. In the Caribbean, he says, the collection is now present on every island. New members include Appellation Healdsburg, which joined this year and whose second property, The MOHI by Appellation, is planned for Morgan Hill in Silicon Valley's wine region, and a project in New Orleans expected to open later this year as one of the city's newest boutique hotels.
Simmons is particularly excited about up-and-coming destinations that have been underserved. Portland, Maine is his example. After the pandemic, interest in that part of the world grew as people gravitated toward nature, but the city had no major luxury hotel market. SLH found an owner building the Longfellow Hotel there, a 48-key property from Uncommon Hospitality, and Simmons describes it as "adding kind of a niche in a market that's been underserved for a period of time."
What counts as boutique?
Asked where boutique luxury goes next, Simmons offers a correction to the premise. "It's not so much evolving. I think what we're seeing now is a resurgence of boutique luxury hospitality." It has always existed, but as consumer tastes shift back toward it, demand is rising, and that creates a problem. "Everybody's calling themselves boutique hotels. And I'm sorry, if you're a corporate-owned hotel that has 250 rooms, not so much boutique anymore." His warning to the industry is to be careful about the distinction between "what is really truly a boutique hotel versus the marketing ploy behind it."
On the term lifestyle, he is less sure, noting that it means many things and is not necessarily the same as luxury. Where he does see boutique evolving is beyond the traditional hotel. This year SLH added a few boutique ships of about twelve suites each, and Simmons expects bespoke, small-scale experiences to spread to tented camps and other formats. "You're seeing an evolution of boutique, but not necessarily just in hotels."
Hidden gems and the best job in the business
Asked what excites him, Simmons does not hesitate. He oversees sales in the Americas, but part of his job is going out to find hidden gems, and the discovery never gets old. "I'm always blown away that all of a sudden I'll find a hotel and I find out they've been open for two years and I'm like, how did I not hear about you?" Finding those properties, he says, is even more inspiring.
His closing message is for people to keep an eye on SLH. Looking back ten years to when he joined and forward to where the organization is heading, he believes it will continue to evolve and become "one of the strongest players out there in this market."