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Sparkling Personality
Entrepreneur, hotelier, and mother,
Yvonne Lembi-Detert loves it all

Yvonne Lembi-Detert is many things, which is true of most entrepreneurs who are expected to be not only jacks of all trades, but master of all as well. At some point, most entrepreneurs have done it all: sales, marketing, human resources, fiance, and operations. To this mix, Lembi-Detert would add the role of being a good mother."Its the ideal industry for a woman to be running a hotel company," Lembi-Detert says. "But it's tough, it really is. Talk about juggling -- you have to juggle being a wife, mother, owner, top executive, personnel situation, being involved in the community -- everything."

Then, again, San Francisco-based Personality Hotels is a family enterprise through and through. Her father, a commercial real estate investor, owner, and manager, acquired the former Golden State Hotel in 1982 and tapped his 21-year old daughter, fresh out of college with a degree in design, to help him transform the hotel. They both took night classes in hospitality at City College in San Francisco. They hired their instructor to ru the hotel company and teach Lembi-Detert the ropes as they went along. Before he went on to head
up the marketing program at Kimpton Hotels, Steve Panetti provided her with a solid foundation in lodging. Hotel Union Square was a hit, as were the four others that followed.

Originally names the Hotel Group of America, they still had difficulty defining their niche. Bigger than a bed and breakfast yet smaller than a big-box hotel, they began referring to the product as "boutique" after the San Francisco Chronicle refereed to their hotels as B+. "That
was before Ian Schrager, Kimpton, and Joie de Vivre," Lembi-Detert says. "Steve said it best, 'We are not a cookie cutter hotel company.'"

It was the large number of guest who praised the hotels' "personalities" that prompted them to rename the company Personality Hotels. Today, the company consists of the Hotel Union Square, Kensington Park Hotel, Hotel Diva, Hotel Metropolis, and the Steinhart Hotel. Getting there was easier than staying there, Lembi-Detert explains. The events of 9/11, the Bay-area tech bust, and union problems combined to make the 2001 to 2003 very trying. It was then that she added to her repertoire of management skills. Though necessary, she learned operations was not her forte. As soon as she could, she hired her COO of the company. That allowed her ti focus more on her first love in hospitality -- marketing.

"When I first opened the Diva, I did an ad campaign that said, 'This Hotel is Absolutely Not for Everybody.' And everyone was poo-pooing it, saying, 'You can't say something like that.' It was the No. 1 pulling ad we had -- because everyone wanted to be part of something they weren't supposed to be part of."

"Because we are in a gay-friendly city, at the Metropolis we have a Brokeback Mountain package, and everyone was saying I couldn't do that, too," she continues. "Well, I've done that, and we've been getting tons of publicity."

It give her great pleasure to involve her daughters when she can. Her daughters designed the company's popular guest comment cards -- stick figures with questions coming off their bodies. Guest respond so well -- to the point of decorating them -- that she now has the
basis of her soon-to-be launched loyalty program. "It really is the perfect industry for a woman to be in." Lembi-Detert says.

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