By Lauren Hunsberger
Photography by Jabberpics

Savannah-born Richard Kessler—visionary of the riverfront Bohemian Hotel, the Mansion on Forsyth Park and eight other luxury boutique hotels that span from Beaver Creek, Colorado, to Orlando, Florida—is the first to admit that the hotel industry has been through the worst three years since 1946. So how has he not only survived but thrived? He says it’s his penchant for passion and eye for luxury that sets him apart, and guests like Jennifer Lopez, Mandy Moore and Andrea Bocelli couldn’t agree more. It seems success for Kessler also comes from listening to his inner instincts; after all, the Georgia Tech grad-turned-millionaire  never took a single course in hotel management.

• Statistically, we’re running almost double what our competitive set is booking, all through ‘08,’09 and ‘10. Our competitive set includes Ritz Carltons, Hyatt hotels and Westins—top quality hotels.

• We like to build hotels where people want to be, not where they have to be, because where they want to be, they’re usually having fun and want something special. Where people have to be, they’re usually looking for a commodity price, two or three stars, the cheapest rate, a heads-in-beds kind of thing, where we’re anti heads-in-beds. What we offer is this bohemian experience, which is about art and music; it’s a feeling. It’s about the best food, color, luxury and all those things that people just love and have a passion for. When people come to our hotels they sense there’s something different, and what it is is the passion we put in them.

• It’s an inherited thing. I’ve always loved art and music, even when I was at Georgia Tech at engineering school, which is the antithesis of this because you never take an art course and you never take a music course there. Sometimes I wonder if I had to do it all over again would I go to an engineering school, and I don’t know. It really brings a lot of discipline, though.

• For our next wave of development, I’ll be looking at the East coast. It’s much harder to get people to move west than it is for them to flow up and down. What we’ve learned over time is we really like to be in the flow because if people are coming from Orlando, they drive and stay in Savannah or in St. Augustine; they go up toward Asheville, North Carolina. Many people are now planning their trips around our hotels. We’re looking at Charleston; we should be in Charleston for sure. We also need a beach location, and that might be in Miami. We should also be in New Orleans and Austin, Texas.

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