We’re watching a waiter mix fresh pasta in a giant parmesan wheel tableside at The Hari in London and the chief executive of Preferred Hotels & Resorts is keen to get a picture for Instagram, even though she can’t sample the dish on account of a current diet.
The hotel is, of course, a member and she offers examples of cute customer service flourishes from The Hari, including creating a personalised Scrabble board for her with edible “tiles” spelling out key Preferred themes.
Her parents John and Gail are travel industry legends who bought the business in 2004. When it first started in 1968, it had just 12 members; when the Ueberroths bought it, it had 209 hotels; 14 years later, it’s more than tripled in global membership, with 650 hotels in 85 countries. She joined the business not long after her family acquired it, and her father remains executive chairman, her mother vice-chair and chief creative officer, and brother Casey is also on the board.
Preferred Hotels & Resorts has five collections – Legend, LVX, Lifestyle, Connect and Residences and in 2017 the company generated $1.35 billion in reservations revenue, a 22% increase on 2016.
It’s said that when they took on the company, the Ueberroths visited all 209 hotels – and Lindsey often used to travel with them. She still spends many days on the road, but recently decided it was time to change her dual role, relinquishing presidency to Michelle Woodley. “You just have to be realistic about what you can do,” she says. “I can now look at being more strategic for the long term.”
