Dog biscuits at the front door. A goldfish in your room. Animal-print robes in the bath. If you’ve ever stayed at a Kimpton hotel, it’s all very familiar. The complimentary wine hour at five. The extra-long bed (if you’re 6-foot-8). The level of personal attention that Steve Pinetti, Kimpton’s senior vice-president of inspiration and creativity, says transcends mere “customer service” and provides “genuine, heartfelt care.”

“Our people are empowered,” he says. “We don’t give them a script; we ask them to react from their hearts and do whatever they think is right.” Even if it means driving a guest through a blizzard so he can be home in time for Thanksgiving (as one Kimpton employee did).

If you think you’ve never stayed at a Kimpton hotel — or the name doesn’t quite ring a bell — it’s probably because there is no hotel called Kimpton: For the most part, each of Kimpton’s 54 boutiques has its own name. Maybe you’re familiar with Hotel Allegro in Chicago, the Muse Hotel in New York City, or Nine Zero in Boston. All of them are Kimptons.

The late Bill Kimpton opened the first of these hotels in 1981. His vision was no more complicated than the kind of hotel he, himself, enjoyed most. It was such a hit that he opened another … and another and another.

Much has changed in the world over the past 30 years, but Steve Pinetti has been there from the start, and says Kimpton’s “culture of caring” hasn’t changed a bit.

“What’s awesome,” says Steve, “is that we are still today who we were 30 years ago.”

What made the time right for the boutique hotel concept in 1981?

Before 1981, no one had done anything like what Bill Kimpton had in mind. He was a very smart business guy. There had always been the random, great little hotel or the great restaurant in the great little hotel, but nobody envisioned creating a collection of boutique hotels and restaurants.

At the time, the trend was toward brass and glass atrium lobbies, but Bill’s idea was to do the opposite, along with a nice restaurant. Part of Bill’s genius was that he saw the world through a completely different lens.

Essentially, it is the combination of a great little hotel that’s very focused on a personalized experience, and right next door to the hotel — maybe even in the same building — is one of the best restaurants in town.

Why do the hotels have different names?

The first hotel Bill Kimpton bought was the Clarion Bedford Hotel, and he just kept the name. It was a great boutique hotel that had a British theme to it, including a bar and restaurant called the Wedgwood. Every year, Lord Wedgwood would launch the new Wedgwood China line there.

The Bedford came with its own story, and when we went to open a second hotel, the idea came up to name every room after one of the Napa Valley wineries and call the hotel the Vintage Court. All the wineries would host a wine hour for hotel guests and they could have their posters and materials in the guest rooms. It was an ideal place for their visitors to stay. We realized we were onto something with this.

People who knew us liked that each hotel had its own personality, and we eventually extrapolated from that the idea that every hotel tells a story. Having all the different names has never been a problem at all.

Are there any advantages?

Yes, because it gives each hotel a very direct way to connect with the local community. We might have a music-themed hotel. The Palomar represents art in motion. The Marlowe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is our discovery hotel.

Each hotel really is its own brand of one, integrated into its respective community. Whether it is a historic building that has been transformed into a Kimpton hotel, or the community involvement and local activities that are threaded throughout the hotels, each is its own brand that is committed to its locale and representative of its area.

Doesn’t having so many names make it harder to build loyalty?

It does. I have a great story about that. Tom Latour and I were at the wine hour at the Monaco Hotel in San Francisco. This was 2004. I still attend as many of our complimentary wine hours as I can because it puts me in touch with our guests and their needs. These conversations are a great source of ideas and inspiration for us.

So, Tom and I are talking to a guest and he said, “I was just in Chicago and I stayed at this great, little hotel. They took great care of me. It was just like a Kimpton hotel. How come you guys aren’t in Chicago?”

Turns out it was the Hotel Burnham in Chicago, which is a Kimpton hotel! We had this epiphany: We needed to get over the idea that we didn’t want to be viewed as one of the big hotel brands. We needed to make sure that every single person every day in one of our hotels knows that they are in a Kimpton hotel. We were missing the boat.

So, we created a new Kimpton brand identity and that showed up on the exterior signs, the welcome mat, the sign on the front desk, the pens, the plaque over the front desk, the elevator sign. We saw a huge lift in business in the number of first-time guests who were now starting to stay in our hotels because we finally went public, if you will, with our brand.

You also do almost no advertising.

We always believed in PR. We always believed in the power of somebody else telling the world how great we are instead of using an ad to tell the world how great we are. In the first 10 or 15 years, what Bill was doing was unique. Nobody had ever really seen it, nobody had ever really heard of it. It was easy for us to take the hospitality industry by storm.

That was then balanced by the fact that we were able to team up with chefs who really put our restaurants on the map. Then folks would make the connection: look at what these guys are doing with the hotels, look at how they are bringing these rising chefs to the public eye — and you can get this whole experience in one place.

The reality was we didn’t have money to advertise, so we had to get creative. But word-of-mouth is so powerful for us and we rely on it strongly. It’s now come full circle with social media, which is right up our alley and plays out really well for us. Now that we’re up to 54 hotels in 23 cities, we still operate in the same way, only now social media is a major platform.

Has the recession changed your thinking on loyalty?

Not necessarily. The media have trained the public not to pay retail — that if you’re paying retail for a hotel room you’re crazy. If you are looking for the cheapest room, you’re going to be able to find it because there are a whole bunch of distribution channels that give you that opportunity.

If the experience you want to have at the hotel is as meaningful to you as what you pay, then that’s where Kimpton shows up on your radar. You are going to feel well cared for here.

Even with the recession, there is still a huge wave of people who value what we offer and are willing to pay a fair price for it. Don’t get me wrong: the economy is troublesome. It affects us all. But we’ve been through many other recessions and we know how to hunker down and get through it with our integrity intact. Whether it’s good times or bad, a Kimpton experience is a Kimpton experience.

Who are your most loyal guests?

Our demographics are fairly evenly divided. We’ve got 25-35, 35-45, 45-55. It’s about a third, a third, and a third. For younger people, our product is aspirational. For our middle group, it’s reliable and comfortable. Those are our warriors. We know their preferences.

The oldest group, which is mostly the boomers, is looking for something new and adventurous. At our wine hour, they might learn all about California’s Sauvignon Blanc, how it’s made and what the barrels are all about. We’re really big on offering nuggets of discovery to our guests. People don’t want to go and take a class. But if we can give them something new and interesting at a wine hour on a Friday night, they really, really like that.

Our most loyal guests are adventurous and spirited. They want to learn, they want to discover and they’ve got good energy. They’re all very attractive and good-looking! You need to put that in there. ;-)

We attract the kind of people who want the kind of care and attention we provide, and when you connect with somebody on that emotional level it’s very powerful. They then go out of their way to tell people about our hotels. You’re never going to have that if all you’re offering in exchange for their loyalty is miles and points.

But if you’re at the wine hour at one of our hotels and you’ve learned about the history of the building or how to fold an origami, you’re coming away with a smile on your face. And you’re looking forward to telling somebody about the great experience that you had.

Where does your loyalty program fit in?

When you join Kimpton InTouch, you fill out a form that gives us information on your preferences. Now, everybody knows that if you start filling out a questionnaire, you’re building up an expectation that something’s going to happen. If we’re asking questions about what you read, the music you listen to, or what kind of pillow you want, we’re raising the expectations that some of these things are going to come into play. That’s exactly what the game is all about.

We don’t ask so many questions that we can’t deliver on everything, but we ask enough questions so that we get maybe three or four of those elements right every time they stay with us. This gives us a much better opportunity to build a relationship than it would if all they were getting was a great rate and the usual rewards.

We talk about the emotional connection with our guests all the time. That’s what we’re after and that’s what delivering on that personal profile ultimately affords us.

How do you hire people who are right for Kimpton?

That’s a good one. I can train you how to use the computer at the front desk, but I can’t train you how to be passionate about what you do. You’re either showing up with that or not. When we look at a résumé, we don’t get too hung up on where someone has worked in the past. What they have learned about themselves through the things that they’ve done is what matters to us.

Do you know who you are? Do you know how you like to work? Do you have any level of self-insight or self-awareness? That’s more important to us than whether you’ve had experience at a hotel or a restaurant.

How do you keep your people motivated?

The empowered environment that we have turns people on. A lot of companies say that their employees are empowered and it’s like, yes, they are empowered to make a decision but they have to check with the manager first. We don’t do that.

After 30 years, employee empowerment is so ingrained in our culture that it’s a key part of what makes Kimpton work. Our commitment to our employees is twofold. First, we will make you a better professional through our training and mentoring programs, through all the things we do to develop our people. We give you really good tools.

Second, we will help make you a better person through diversity and inclusion and through valuing the uniqueness and the individuality of each employee. Our people see the difference between our kind of environment and the other places where they might work. One of the worst terms I’ve ever heard in my life is “human capital.” It so rubs against the grain of what an employee should represent to a company. Employees are the heart and the soul and the spirit of the company. It’s where it all happens, the front line.

What’s the most remarkable thing a Kimpton employee has done to earn a guest’s loyalty?

This is a great story. An assistant housekeeper sees a woman running into the lobby of our Portland hotel. This woman has no luggage and is a little bit disheveled. She stands at the front desk of the hotel, doesn’t say anything, and just starts crying.

The housekeeper gives her a hug, and this woman just breaks down in her arms. It turns out that the woman’s son had been in an accident, so she had a friend drive her to our hotel, which is near the hospital. She had left her house with no keys, no wallet — no nothing — and needed a hotel room to be near her son.

We gave the housekeeper flexibility so she could be this woman’s best friend during this whole experience. Get her in a room, make sure she eats, find out what’s going on at the hospital, take her to the hospital, sit with her and be with her. Fortunately, there was a happy ending and the woman’s son survived.

How do you recognize that kind of service?

We have what we call the Ultimate Kimpton Moment. We pick five winners every month and give them a $100 Amex gift card. Then we bundle up all the winners at the end of the year, put them in a binder and send them out to our most frequent loyal members to pick the Ultimate Kimpton Moment.

The winner gets an award valued up to $10,000. One of the winners used it to send his mom and dad off to Italy for a week, in first class. Another winner gave a huge chunk to a local charity. They didn’t even use the money for themselves. That says a lot about the people that we hire.

How do you help employees balance work/life issues?

That traces all the way back to Bill Kimpton. Before we had a normal logo we had a yin/yang symbol as our identity. Bill was a pretty spiritual guy. He came to work every day and he worked on the weekend, but he also played a lot of golf, enjoyed his food, red wine and travel.

Hospitality is a stressful business. You need to be “on” every day. At most hotels, many guests are showing up for the first time every single day. That means it’s like opening day, every day. At restaurants, it’s even worse: Most of the people who come in to any given restaurant every day are there for the very first time.

At some point, you have to take care of yourself. We have teams for bike riding, running and other activities. We have a program that gives $500 a year to every employee for education, whether it’s job-related or not. We try to put some programs and practices in place that support that sense of health and balance.

Whenever we have an executive-level meeting, we start the day with some kind of activity. It could be a run. It could be a walk. It could be a stretch. It could be Yoga. We believe that balance is healthy for the mind, body and soul.

Do you have a favorite Kimpton hotel?

You can’t ask that! It’s like asking, which kid do you love the most? I can’t pick a favorite. If our hotels were a family, the Palomar would be like the smart older sister. The Monaco would be the oldest son — and second in line to the older sister — the athlete, always on-the-go. The Triton would be the wild child. The Triton is like the family intrigue, the one that’s a little crazy, a little bit out there, a little eccentric.

But then we have these wonderful buildings, like the Monaco in Washington DC, the tenth-oldest building in the country, which is so exciting. And then the Baltimore Monaco is the B&O Railroad headquarters from back in the day. In San Francisco, the conversion of the old Del Monte warehouse into the Argonaut turned out just awesome.

So, it’s hard. Who do you love? You love them all. And just like kids, some of them do just great and some make you crazy. So, you have to keep up with them in that way, as well. We’ve assembled an awesome collection of hotels and restaurants. And we are so proud of who we are and what we’ve developed.

What is the main thing you want your guests to take away from their stay?

Saturday night I had a glass of wine with a gentleman who had stayed at all 54 of our hotels over a twelve-month period. He never once mentioned the wine hour. He never once mentioned the animal-print robes. He never once mentioned the goldfish. He never mentioned the restaurant. All he talked about was the employees and how they made him feel.

So, I’m hoping that Kimpton guests leave with a feeling that we took great care of them, made them feel welcome and appreciated. I want them to feel like they can’t wait to come back. If that happens, our hotels and restaurants will be full forever.

What will the boutique hotel of the future look like?

We keep watching other hotels trick out their rooms, but when we talk to people at the wine hour, it’s all about the basics. The bed has got to be comfortable. The shower has to be firm and the water hot. The high-speed has got to be fast. The boutique hotel of the future will still be about personalized care.

When you layer on to that the fun décor and design, or something like a wine hour or a goldfish in a room, you can begin to separate yourself without being intrusive.

How do you think Bill Kimpton would feel about the business today?

I think that it’s cool that we can still keep the spirit of Bill Kimpton alive. He was here for the first 20 years of the company. He was so generous, giving and caring. That’s the spirit with which he founded the company.

He pointed out the importance of work/life balance. His philosophies were so clear, so right-on. We’re still using the same culture statement today that we had 30 years ago. It still holds true and, because of it, we still know who we are and where we’re going.