Westmont Hospitality Group is a company nominally based in

Mississauga Mississauga is a Canadian city in the province of Ontario. Situated on the north-western shore of Lake Ontario in the Regional Municipality of Peel, it borders Toronto (Etobicoke) to the east, Brampton to the north, Milton to the northwest, ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada, which owns and manages hotels. It was founded by the Mangalji family. It is one of the biggest

hospitality management Hospitality management may refer to: * Hotel management occupation, the practice of running hotels * Hospitality industry The hospitality industry is a broad category of fields within the service industry that includes lodging, food and beve ...

companies. It currently is managed by Majid Mangalji. The total revenue for this company is $700 million. The company has strategic alliances with

Intercontinental Hotels InterContinental Hotels & Resorts by IHG is a British-American luxury hotel brand created in 1946 by Pan Am founder Juan Trippe. It has been part of UK-based InterContinental Hotels Group since 1998. As of January 2023, there were 208 InterCo ...

(as

Holiday Inn Holiday Inn by IHG is a chain of hotels based in Atlanta, Georgia and a brand of IHG Hotels & Resorts. The chain was founded in 1952 by Kemmons Wilson (1913–2003), who opened the first location in Memphis, Tennessee. The chain was a division ...

Choice Hotels Choice Hotels International, Inc. is an American multinational hospitality company based in North Bethesda, Maryland. The company, which is one of the largest hotel chains in the world, owns various hotel brands ranging from upscale to economy. ...

(as Comfort Inn and

Quality Inn Quality Inn is an American multinational chain of hotels based in Rockville, Maryland. It is a subsidiary of Choice Hotels which has operations in more than 40 countries. Quality Inn is the founding brand of Choice Hotels International with mor ...

Hilton Hotels Hilton Hotels & Resorts (formerly known as Hilton Hotels) is a global brand of full-service hotels and resorts and the flagship brand of American multinational hospitality company Hilton Worldwide. The original company was founded by Conrad Hi ...

Radisson Hotels Radisson Hotels is a multi-brand hotel chain with a worldwide presence. Its brands include several using the Radisson name, as well as other brands like Park Plaza Hotels & Resorts and Country Inn & Suites. In June 2022, Radisson Hotel Grou ...

, and

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., is an American hospitality company based in Parsippany, New Jersey, United States. It describes itself as the largest hotel franchising, franchisor in the world, with 9,100 locations. The company was formed on J ...

. It is the successor (through a 1999 corporate takeover) of the Journey's End Corporation, a Canadian hotel management and franchising company.

History

In August 2022, together with

Angelo Gordon TPG Angelo Gordon (formerly Angelo Gordon) is a global alternative investment manager founded in 1988 by John Angelo and Michael Gordon who together ran the arbitrage department of L.F. Rothschild in the 1980s. The firm focuses on four main inves ...

, Westmont Hospitality Group acquired leading Spanish hotel group Room Mate.

Journey's End Corporation

In 1978, Maurice H. Rollins (of Rollins Construction, a builder and developer) and Joseph D. Basch of

Belleville, Ontario Belleville is a city in Ontario, Canada, situated on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, located at the mouth of the Moira River and on the Bay of Quinte. Its population as of the 2021 Canadian census was 55,071 (Census Metropolitan Area population 1 ...

, founded Journey's End Corporation to build new two-story

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

s as standardised buildings with no on-site amenities. As newly constructed properties in locations reasonably near freeways and airports but often on crossroads without an existing hotel, these were initially priced to compete directly and aggressively against existing Canadian motels. At the time,

motel A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the Parking lot, parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central Lobby (room), lo ...

s typically were small independent properties built long before the

400-series highways The 400-series highways are a network of controlled-access highways in the Canadian province of Ontario, forming a special subset of the provincial highway system. They are analogous to the Interstate Highway System in the United States or th ...

and

Quebec autoroutes Quebec is Canada's largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border ...

and located on relatively inexpensive land along the old two-lane highways. The first motel opened in Belleville, Ontario and was followed by additional locations in Kingston, Peterborough, Cornwall, and Ottawa in succession, eventually expanding across Canada and the northeastern United States. These properties were marketed as an alternative carefully positioned between more expensive (but full service) chain hotels of that era and the small, low-cost independent motels. The logo for the "Journey's End" brand was a sunset depicted on a black background. Rooms were comparable in quality to those of a good hotel, but there would be no pool, restaurant, bar, health club, meeting facilities or other on-site amenities. There would be no room service. Architectural designs were often generic and varied little from one city to another. In addition to motels, Journey's End also developed sub-brands; Journey's End Hotels, which were hi-rise versions of the motels often located in urban locations, and Journey's End Suites, their all-suite concept. While the intended target market was "budget-minded business travellers looking for something between the full-service luxury hotels and the clean-but-plain roadside inns," subsequent market research indicated many clients were individuals travelling from small towns across Canada - a group which had traditionally supported small roadside motels. By the early 1990s, there were nearly 140 of these bare-bones hotels with a total of 12,000 rooms built with capital from more than 2,400 limited partners.

Unihost

Journey's End Corporation become a

publicly held company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

in 1986, expanding its operations beyond the initial low-end "budget hotel" model by operating franchised Canadian hotel locations in higher-priced market segments on behalf of existing US chains such as

and

Ramada Ramada is a large American multinational hotel chain owned by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. As of December 31, 2022, it operates 851 hotels with 120,344 rooms across 63 countries under the Ramada brand. Name The ''Ramada'' name derives from th ...

. On June 30, 1997, Journey's End Corporation ( TSX: JEM) changed its corporate name to UniHost, retaining the original name solely for a "Journey's End Management" subsidiary dedicated to operating what were originally the Journey's End own-brand budget hotels (by then mostly re-branded " Comfort Inn by Journey's End"). UniHost Corporation was engaged in the ownership and leasing of hotels in Canada and was one of multiple companies to enter into a strategic alliance with

in 1997 as Journey's End hotels gradually became Comfort Inn (or, in some locations, Quality Inn).

W-Westmont Corporation

On May 21, 1999, the W-Westmont Corporation, a partnership that included

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

and Company, purchased the Unihost Corporation of Canada for $7/share (or almost $265 million Canadian) in cash and took on about $300 million of Unihost debt. Unihost's board had rejected an earlier $6-a-share bid as too low.

References

External links

*{{official website, http://www.whg.com/ Hotel and leisure companies of Canada Companies based in Mississauga