Craig Reid remembers his first trip to Dallas in 1981. He flew in to see the new Mansion on Turtle Creek. “It was fascinating that they would build a luxury hotel that had the flavor of a house, led by its restaurant, not in the commercial district,” Reid recalls. Now, the president and CEO of Auberge Resorts Collection is making his own mark in North Texas hospitality, expanding his luxury brand with two new properties here.
Reid says his career has had three chapters. During the first, he came to understand the craft of hospitality while working with London-based hotelier Savoy Group. “I learned how to cook, and I learned how to be a bartender,” he explains in a polished British accent. Though his family is of Scottish descent, Reid was born and raised in Lima, Peru, where he attended the nation’s British School before moving to the U.K. for boarding school and graduating from Westminster College. After earning a scholarship while working at Savoy, his employer since he was 16, he moved to the United States to attend Cornell before making his way to Texas in 1994.
He worked as a management trainee with Savoy for four years, manning front desks, shaking martinis, and learning the ropes. He then became the assistant lounge manager with Four Seasons Resorts in Washington D.C. There, he entered the second chapter of his career, focusing on the science of the sector. “I learned the strategy, methodology, how to manage people, how to organize the front drive to accommodate the traffic,” he says. Reid rose to regional VP in 2000 and by 2011 was promoted to president of hotel operations for the Americas. The role placed him at the head of more than 40 Four Seasons.
Three years later, Reid got a call from a friend in Houston, Dan Friedkin, the chairman of Auberge. Friedkin had purchased the company in 2013 and hoped Reid would guide the luxury brand through an expansion in the U.S., the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. Reid jumped at the chance. “This last chapter has focused on how to create something that brings people to the property,” he explains.
Friedkin offered to move the brand’s Mill Valley headquarters to Texas, but Reid decided against it. “I think Auberge’s identity is better with a bit of that Napa flavor,” he explains.
Reid initially commuted between Dallas and Mill Valley, but now, with office locations in Washington D.C., New York, London, and Miami, he is based full-time out of Dallas. It also allows him to be close to the Commodore Perry Estate planned expansion projects in North Texas, building on the success of the company’s hotel in Austin. “It’s now the Rev-PAR leader in the state of Texas,” Reid says.
Auberge’s new hotel in Fort Worth, Bowie House, will open in December 2023. After that, the brand will focus on a new Knox Street hotel and residential development called The Knox and The Knox Residences in Dallas. The project is led by Trammell Crow Co., Highland Park Village Associates, The Retail Connection, and MSD Partners (the real estate interests of Austin tech giant Michael Dell), and is slated for completion in 2026. Chad Dorsey is heading up interior design for the 53 residences, and Martin Brudnizki Design Studio of London and New York is leading hotel interiors. “Project leaders really want to bring that Knox Street corridor into its next chapter,” Reid says.
Forty years after his first visit to Dallas, the hospitality executive is managing his own transformative project—just a few miles up the road from where it first began. “My heart is in this city,” Reid says.
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