Godfrey Chicago – Building The Godfrey

The Godfrey Hotel featured in Travel + Leisure Magazine

Travel+Leisure placed The Godfrey at the top of the new hotel list in “Chicago Decoder”. They featured our modern structure and how it “cuts a commanding figure against the Chicago Skyline.”

Although as the new kid on the block, we certainly take advantage of the more modern things we can offer guests, just like T+L mentioned our RFID card scanners. With this, guests don’t even have to juggle everything to simply open their door. Convenience at its finest. To some it may seem like a modern luxury, but to us, it just makes sense.

Chicago is a great city, with plenty to do and see. You never know where you may find the next adventure or even find time to relax. At The Godfrey Hotel, we strive to give you a modern, luxurious experience, so you can find your element.

The Exterior. Up She Goes.

Well it is Friday and we wanted to show you the exterior. Cold, wind, snow, rain, it doesn’t stop LendLease our construction company from moving forward. When we had some beautiful sun the past couple days before this last snow storm, the new exterior skin was being applied to the building. This is a very difficult project as the entire outside is placed on the building like a puzzle. We are excited to see it go up over the next several weeks and give the building that distinct architectural look it was meant to have.

The entire process of building a hotel and brand is sectioned out into phases. Each phase has its scope of work and what is to be completed and when. It may seem like you are jumping around but in the big picture these phases are all related to each other and have to be completed in order.

Marketing Branding Meeting

Today we had a campaign marketing meeting with our great advertising and marketing team. The timeline for developing a brand, tag lines and design come months and months in advance of the hotel opening. An important aspect of the marketing and branding is that it matches the feel of the guest experience and the hotel design internally. Creating a brand that is layered across all aspects and flows well together is key to keeping your brand on the guests minds.

We discussed many topics today from our marketing ad campaign coming up to simple key packet designs for the front desk. The designs and ads we have in development are awesome and I cannot wait to show you, but not yet. Stay tuned to see them released later this year.

Soap Soap Soap

It was a fun day in the office when not one but several packages arrived and we were blessed with soap. Not just any soap but great high end product that we now have to test. We need to determine what bath products the Godfrey will utilize in our guest rooms. This will take a lot of hand washing and smelling.

So what do you look for in a bath product for a hotel? To the guest the smell is very important, not to masculine and not to feminine and definitely not perfumey. It has to have a nice balance fragrance to it and sometimes preferably naturally. Other aspects from a hotel operations stand point that can be overlooked are a cap seal and a bottle that is clear.

What Is #SiteVisitFriday

The Godfrey Hotel team walks the construction site every week to keep an eye on the progress and to see what has been going on. Every week when we walk the floor we discuss the layout and the vision of what the hotel will look like.

In the photo George Jordan our Area General Manager and Jermaine Anderson our Hotel Manager stand the 4th floor Rooftop talking about the layout and scenery of the skyline. We cannot wait for you to see what we have in store for this space.