Fresh off its 50th anniversary, Woodside Hospitality Group has gathered together its portfolio of seven Northern California Bay Area properties into the Woodside Collection.
The company was founded by Ellis and Katherine Alden, who moved from New York to Northern California in the mid-’60s and soon purchased a small motor lodge which today—after many renovations and iterations—is The Lodge at Bodega Bay. That property overlooking the Pacific Ocean is now part of the Woodside Collection.
The other six properties within the collection are The Sanford Park Hotel in Menlo Park; Hotel Drisco in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood; Harvest Inn in St. Helena; Lafayette Park Hotel & Spa in Lafayette; Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa in Monterey; and Napa Valley Lodge in Yountville.
Greg Alden Woodside Hospitality Group
“As we have grown, we felt that there was an opportunity to create better awareness for what these properties are and what they offer,” said Greg Alden, the company’s president/CEO and son of the founders. “We were also trying to figure out how they stay true to being independent properties, but yet also feel like they’re being affiliated with a larger entity. That’s why we felt the Woodside Collection was the right vehicle to help broaden the awareness and tell our story without compromising the independent nature of each individual hotel.”
The company owns five properties within the collection and manages the Hotel Drisco and the Harvest Inn as a third-party operator.
The seven Woodside Collection properties are tied by several common threads, the most obvious being their locations in the Bay Area.
Among the other similarities, Alden noted, “they all tend to be four-and-a-half star assets, so our customers know that they’re getting high-quality service and an unscripted but very earnest approach to hospitality—what we call West Coast hospitality. As a hands-on, local company, I think we have the ability to hire and build a team that truly is sincere and means it.”
He added, “They all also have a unique style that’s based on their location, but the sense of a clean, classic nature that’s fairly timeless. We haven’t really fallen for a lot of the trends over the decades. We’ve been around 50 years, so if we had fallen for every aesthetic and design trend every 10 years or so, we would probably be pretty aimless in how we come across to our customers.”
All of the seven properties have completed or are near to completing renovations, and some continue to be upgraded. The Lodge at Bodega Bay, for example, renovated one building containing its premium-class guestrooms to include family-type suites, each with its own firepit and deck.
“Right now, we’re building a freestanding infrared sauna with a chamber where it’s not outdoors in the strict sense, but it’s a freestanding structure,” said Alden. “It will have a giant window with views of four distinct bodies of water—the Pacific Ocean, Bodega Bay, Bodega Harbor and the marsh wetlands in front of it.”
The Lafayette Hotel & Spa is currently undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation of its 138 guestrooms and restaurant that is expected to wrap up in the fourth quarter of next year. For the 285-room Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa, located on historic Cannery Row, “we redid all the guestrooms and suites in late 2021,” said Alden. “And we created a new dining concept with beautiful views over Monterey Bay called Coastal Kitchen.”
Each of the hotels come with tailored experiences for the guests based on the location, such as wine tastings in Napa Valley and electric-bicycle renting for cruising around Monterey.
“Our whole essence of being is we want to make a positive impact on someone’s day, and that’s obviously more than just a good night’s sleep,” noted Alden. “We’ve really tried at each property to have a suite of offerings for our guests to give them a real taste of that region.”
The CEO expects to add more hotels to the Woodside Collection portfolio.
“We haven’t had a mandate to grow, but I think within the next 12 months or so, we’ll be able to announce at least another hotel, if not more, under management for us,” noted Alden. “For us, it’s really about if the property fits our vision of hospitality and if the ownership is aligned with what it takes to deliver the level of experience that we want to provide to our guests.”
