Cheryl Rowley quoted the movie Back to the Future, got emotional while reminiscing about Bill Kimpton and declared good design has prevailed during her keynote address at the inaugural Lifestyle/Boutique Hotel Development Conference.

 Rowley gave more than 250 attendees an inside look at the boutique hotel movement from her perspective. She had a bird’s-eye view, beginning in the 1980s while working on legendary hotels with James Northcutt , then branching out on her own in 1986 and then working for Kimpton, who was widely heralded as one of the creators of the concept. Rowley talked about the ’90s, when she designed the first Hotel Monaco and Palomar for Kimpton, when she felt like Marty McFly after the mad doctor tells him “Where we are going, we don’t need roads.”

 She was given a blank canvass and used it to advance the concept of emotional design in hotels, which she said was at the heart of the boutique movement that has grown through all facets of today’s society, including the hotel industry where similar approaches are now being applied to lifestyle brands like Aloft, Element, Cambria Suites and NYLO. 

“Boutique hotels are doing better than the rest,” Rowley told the crowd at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. “The design revolution has had a huge effect on hospitality. Good design has won; it’s not a question of if it will come to your neighborhood, but when.”

For her, it started with work at the legendary Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles and the iconic Hotel Hana-Maui, a luxury vacation retreat that lets “place speak for itself,” she said of the ranch set in the lush tropical paradise of Maui. “It’s a connection of people and place.”

“How do we define that feeling,” she asked. “Well, you know the Kimpton slogan: ‘Every hotel tells a story.’ That slogan came from us.”

That philosophy continues to steer Rowley today, with her recent work—EPIC in Miami and theWit Hotel in Chicago—telling as detailed and as beautiful stories as any of her previous projects. She said design doesn’t have to cost a lot, but it has to be smart and all about innovation. She concluded her presentation by urging the crowd to go boutique, as both an investor and as a guest.