Chip Conley is the founder, President, and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California’s largest independent hotel company – and America’s second largest boutique hotelier. Starting out in 1987 at the age of 26 with his creation of San Francisco’s legendary rock ‘n roll hotel, The Phoenix, Chip has always been on the cutting edge of what’s new in hospitality. Inspired by the French expression for “joy of life,” Chip created Joie de Vivre with the intention of developing what USA Today has called “the most delightfully schizophrenic collection of hotels in America.”
Each of the company’s 40 award-winning hotels has an original theme, personality and unique collection of services and amenities. The company gleans inspiration for the original personality of each hotel from popular magazines so that the Hotel Rex in San Francisco resembles The New Yorker, the Hotel Avante in Mountain View resembles Wired, and the The Shorebreak Hotel in Huntington Beach feels like Outside magazine meets Elle Decor. In a feature article on the growing proliferation of boutique hotels in the U.S., Time magazine suggested that “few boutique hotels are as genuine as those run by Joie de Vivre.”
Chip has written a series of business books including The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business (foreword by Richard Branson) and Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices to Profit Your Business and Change the World. In his recent bestselling new book, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow, Chip shares his unique prescription for success based on legendary psychologist Abraham Maslow’s iconic Hierarchy of Needs. Chip’s new theory illustrates how Employees, Customers and Investors are ultimately motivated by peak experiences that address their higher needs—and he demonstrates how to create these experiences for each using real-world examples from his own company and others. Chip credits this theory for helping Joie de Vivre triple its annual revenues between 2001 and 2008 (2008 projected revenues of $250 million).
Chip has received numerous awards including Guerrilla Marketer of the Year for the U.S., National Humanitarian Hospitality Company of the Year, and Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2007, Chip was honored by the San Francisco Business Times as the Most Admired CEO in all of the Bay Area (including Silicon Valley) in the category of Innovation. He is a committed philanthropist who founded San Francisco’s Annual Celebrity Pool Toss, which has raised over $3 million for inner city youth programs that now thrive in the troubled neighborhood where he launched his first hotel. Chip received his BA and MBA from Stanford University.
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