Tommy Bahama is ready to take the wraps off its next big idea.
On Nov. 1, the 30-year-old Seattle-based brand will officially unveil the Tommy Bahama Miramont Resort & Spa in Indian Wells, Calif. The brand finalized a deal around a year ago to invest in the existing property and rebrand it as part of a partnership with Lowe, a national real estate investment, development and management firm, and its CoralTree Hospitality subsidiary, which will continue to manage the property.
Since the deal was signed, the resort has undergone an extensive renovation and redesign to create “Tommy Bahama in the desert,” according to Rob Goldberg, executive vice president of resorts, restaurants and bars for Tommy Bahama.
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“It’s sitting on 11 acres of beautifully landscaped property in Indian Wells — smack dab between LaQuinta and Palm Desert, where we’ve had a successful restaurant for 20 years and where a legion of loyalists come both seasonally and year-round. We also have a Marlin bar in Palm Springs and a home store on El Paseo directly across the street from our restaurant and store. So we’ve got quite a presence there. The location draws loyal fans from Orange County, L.A. County and San Diego County.”
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The resort boasts 215 guest rooms, villas and junior suites that average some 420 square feet and now feature a custom tropical design that speaks to both Tommy Bahama’s signature aesthetic as well as the resort’s Mission-inspired history.
The resort is set among olive trees, citrus groves and flower gardens, there’s a 12,000-square-foot spa with treatment rooms and outdoor cabanas, 35,000 square feet of flexible meeting and event space and three saltwater swimming pools, also with cabanas. There are also bocce courts, fire pits and a 24-hour fitness center.
The resort features a new restaurant concept, Grapefruit Basil, named after one of the most popular drinks served at the fleet of Tommy Bahama restaurants. “The other thing about this restaurant that makes it unique is that it’s going to be brunch and dinner,” Goldberg said. “We’re serving brunch seven days a week, which we think is akin to being on vacation and having a leisurely breakfast or lunch with mimosas or Bloody Marys or live music.”
From Santa Barbara smoked salmon and beef from a Santa Carota ranch in Bakersfield to Rancho Gordo beans harvested in Napa Valley, dishes are complemented by citrus and herbs grown at the resort.
Inside the restaurant are two live Meyer lemon trees that are built into “cozy booths” that have been created. The restaurant will be open to the local community as well as resort guests. “We want to generate some energy and activate the space to make it feel like you’ve walked into somebody’s house party with a lot of the design elements that feel more residential and not like a big corporate hotel,” he said.
There’s also a Chiki Palms pool bar, which will now be serving “fun kinds of tiki drinks and frozen drinks served in bags that look like adult Capri Suns,” Goldberg explained. Light bites will be served in melamine bento boxes and will include an All-American Burger, Poblano Chicken Quesadilla, Ahi Poke Bowl and a variety of flatbreads.
In the lobby, the spa and the retail area are murals that have been hand-painted by the artists who create the brand’s apparel prints to give a “Tommy Bahama touch that feels very authentic,” Goldberg said.
Although the brand has built its reputation over the past three decades around the island lifestyle and making life one long weekend, Indian Wells is nowhere near the water, so why did the team choose a desert location for its first resort?
Doug Wood, chief executive officer of Tommy Bahama, explained: “Rob and I have been scouting all potential locations — from Key West to San Diego — and what we found is that they’re not easy to come by.” While the offers they received might work for a fifth or sixth location, the first Tommy Bahama resort had to be spot on.
“It’s got to really take the guests somewhere special,” he said. “And then when the guest shows up, we want to make sure they didn’t say: ‘Wow. Miss.’ This is even harder than our restaurants because, unlike a restaurant experience, where you’re trying to delight a guest for a couple hours, now we’re going to delight a guest for three to five to seven days. So we were almost too patient, but it really came together.”
Goldberg said when conceiving the rebranding, the company looked to the Tommy Bahama store and restaurant on Fifth Avenue in New York City, which is housed in an Art Deco-inspired building, as an example.
“In New York, we went into this historic Deco building and leaned into some of its design cues. We’re doing the same thing here. We’re not at the beach, we’re not on an island, so we felt like this was a similar sort of project and we had to come up with a design that felt like it belongs there. And it can serve as a stake in the ground for what a Tommy Bahama hotel might be.”
The resort sports a new retail concept. Called the Rosa Boutique, it features a new design, fixtures and furniture to provide an upscale feel. It will sell resort-specific items such as a Grapefruit Basil candle and signature scent, select apparel pieces, accessories and gifts. The apparel is an assortment of prints and logoed merchandise in linen as well as activewear and swimwear. There will be a signature print — Calypso Palms — available in a woman’s dress or top, a men’s camp shirt and a swim trunk/cabana set. There will also be Tobago Bay knitwear with the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa logo, along with caps, bags, golf tees, a branded yoga mat and signature print bags.
“We have close to 5,000 square feet of retail space about three and a half miles away,” Wood said. “So what we want is a high-end boutique with curated product you can only get here to make sure that our collectors have something they can take home that reminds them of their vacation.”
If the resort is as successful as the team hopes it will be, it can be the first of several.
“There’s no rollout plan per se, but there’s definitely going to be a second and hopefully a third,” Wood said. “And that’s because we really believe it all starts with this. People are going to want us to do more.”
Goldberg said the team is “in discussions now” with potential investors and partners for future resorts who have been waiting for the first one to open. “This is so much about creating a frame of reference for the brand at large.”
Wood believes there’s substantial opportunity going forward for this type of concept. He said that as far back as 2016, the company commissioned focus groups and asked what Tommy Bahama should be doing next. Nearly every respondent said they should open a resort. So he reached out to Tom Chubb, the CEO of the company’s parent company, Oxford Industries, with a “crazy idea” about opening a Tommy Bahama-themed vacation spot, and got the green light.
Other potential locations include “super hot spots” where the Tommy Bahama customer travels such as Palm Desert, Calif.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Fort Lauderdale or Boca Raton, Fla., and Wailea, Hawaii. But expanding the idea will only be feasible if the Miramonte is a success.
“If the first one doesn’t work, there won’t be a second one,” Wood said.