La Quinta Inns & Suites

Not to be confused with La Quinta Resort and Club.
La Quinta Inns and Suites
Public
Traded as NYSE: LQ
Industry Hotels
Founded 1968
Headquarters Irving, Texas
Number of locations
800+
Area served
North America
Key people
Keith Cline, President and CEO
Owner La Quinta Holdings Inc.
Number of employees
9,000
Slogan Wake up on the bright side(R)
Website La Quinta Inns & Suites

La Quinta Inns & Suites (Spanish: La Quinta, "the Villa") is a chain of limited service hotels in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Honduras. La Quinta Holdings Inc first sold shares to the public in April, 2014, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LQ.[1] La Quinta has headquarters in Irving, Texas.

Before the 2014 stock offering, all La Quinta properties were owned or franchised by the company's subsidiary La Quinta Properties, Inc., a real estate investment trust (REIT), which leased the properties back to the parent company. The company owns and operates over 800 properties and franchises approximately 295 under various brand names.

Most La Quinta Inns are built with Spanish or Southern architecture. La Quinta is Spanish for "The Villa," but it can also mean "the country place."[2]

History

Many of La Quinta's locations have been renovated to include flatscreen TVs and contemporary decor

Real estate entrepreneur Sam Barshop (1929–2013) and his brother Phil (1935–1998) opened the first La Quinta in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968, across the street from the site of HemisFair '68 World's Fair.[2] The company's headquarters remained in San Antonio until 1999, when they relocated to Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.

LQ Corporation, parent company to subsidiary LQ Properties, Inc, announced on 9 November 2005 that it had agreed to be acquired by the private-equity firm Blackstone Group for $3.4 billion in cash and debt. The merger closed on 25 January 2006.

Each room has a television, iron, hair dryer, coffee maker, and complimentary breakfast, and the hotel has an on-site gym or complimentary passes to a local gym. Most La Quinta Inns are near restaurants and shopping malls.

Room types and setting vary by hotel. Company-owned hotels are standardized. Franchised hotels vary more.

The hotel chain advertises heavily on television with a campaign that targets business travelers. The advertisements feature La Quinta customers getting a restful night's sleep and going on to literally perform various figures of speech (in one a man sells ice to an Eskimo; another, a woman deals with an 800-pound gorilla in the room) the next day.

Headquarters

LQ Management LLC, the owner, has its headquarters in the Las Colinas area of Irving, Texas, near Dallas.[3][4] Originally La Quinta had its headquarters in San Antonio. In 1999 the company announced it was going to move, transferring over 100 jobs from city to city. The company cited the lack of nonstop flights from San Antonio International Airport as a reason for moving.[4] The company wished to have its headquarters near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a large airport. The company kept around 300 employees who worked in accounting, information systems, and reservations in San Antonio.[5]

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 31, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.