Proper Hotels is a compact American luxury-lifestyle brand whose influence is larger than its four-hotel footprint. Created by Brad Korzen, Brian De Lowe and Alex Samek and visually authored by Kelly Wearstler, Proper combines layered design, destination restaurants, wellness, local culture and an increasingly important private-club and residential layer.
Why Proper Matters
Proper emerged after the first lifestyle-hotel revolution had made design and social public spaces mainstream. Its response was to move lifestyle hospitality upward: richer materials, serious culinary partnerships, deeper wellness and unusually coherent interior-design authorship.
The Founders
Proper Hospitality was created by Brad Korzen, Brian De Lowe and Alex Samek, hospitality entrepreneurs with earlier experience around The Kor Group and Viceroy Hotel Group.
Brad Korzen
Korzen brought the legacy of Kor Hotel Group and Viceroy into Proper. The brand was therefore a second-generation attempt to redefine contemporary lifestyle luxury.
Brian De Lowe
De Lowe, President and Co-Founder, is the most visible current interpreter of the Proper philosophy. The official brand frames its hotels as properties the founders themselves would want to experience with friends and family.
Alex Samek
Samek was part of the founding partnership and belongs in the origin story even as current communications foreground Korzen and De Lowe more strongly.
2015 - Brand Launch
Proper Hotels was publicly launched in January 2015 as a high-end lifestyle brand intended for culturally vibrant American cities.
2017 - San Francisco
San Francisco Proper opened in fall 2017 and became the first operating Proper Hotel, establishing the combination of landmark architecture, Kelly Wearstler interiors, rooftop social life and strong local food and beverage.
The Creative Nomad
Proper's original target was the modern creative nomad: a well-travelled guest who expected design, cultural relevance and local experience without surrendering serious service.
Uncommon Luxury
The current brand describes its proposition as uncommon luxury filtered through a West Coast lens - less about formality and more about feeling.
West Coast Lens
This means informality, wellness, indoor-outdoor living, food culture, design experimentation and social ease rather than a literal California decorative template.
Kelly Wearstler
Kelly Wearstler is the defining creative author of Proper. Few contemporary multi-property brands have such a direct relationship with one interior designer.
One Designer, Different Cities
Wearstler does not repeat one room package. San Francisco, Santa Monica, Austin and Downtown LA use different references and local makers while retaining a recognisable maximalist intelligence.
Layering
Proper interiors rely on juxtaposition: vintage and new, local and global, raw and refined, geometric and organic, historic and contemporary.
Collected Rather Than Decorated
The strongest Proper rooms feel assembled over time rather than installed from one procurement catalogue.
Local Artists and Makers
Wearstler's projects incorporate local artists, craftspeople and materials, giving each hotel a specific relationship with its city.
San Francisco Proper
The first Proper occupies a restored 1904 landmark by architect Albert Pissis at Market and McAllister.
131 Rooms
The official San Francisco fact sheet records 131 guestrooms and suites, each individually composed rather than treated as a uniform box.
San Francisco as Salon
The design mixes Victorian, Cubist, French classical and contemporary references to evoke the creative salons of the city.
Charmaine's
The rooftop Charmaine's became one of the hotel's defining social assets, giving locals a reason to use the building without staying overnight.
Villon and La Bande
Ground-floor dining and cafe/bar layers help turn the hotel into neighbourhood infrastructure rather than a room-only business.
Santa Monica Proper
Santa Monica Proper is the brand's fullest expression of contemporary coastal luxury and increasingly its wellness laboratory.
262 Rooms and Suites
The current official Santa Monica platform lists 262 rooms and suites across a restored 1920s landmark and contemporary building.
Palma and Calabra
Palma functions as an art-filled lobby lounge; rooftop Calabra combines Mediterranean-influenced dining, pool culture and Pacific views.
Surya Spa
The 3,000-square-foot Surya Spa, developed with Ayurvedic practitioner Martha Soffer, gives Santa Monica a wellness identity deeper than a conventional hotel treatment menu.
Ayurveda
Surya includes massage, steam and oil treatments, yoga, meditation, consultations and multi-day Panchakarma programmes.
Recovery and Longevity
Santa Monica now adds cold plunge, sauna, red-light therapy, the Ammortal Chamber, VO2 testing and Restorative Wellness Rooms, moving Proper toward performance, recovery and longevity.
Wellness Rooms
Current inventory includes wellness rooms with Eight Sleep technology, air and water purification and curated sleep rituals.
Wellness Without Becoming a Clinic
Proper's strongest wellness model remains integrated with food, social life and design. It does not ask guests to abandon pleasure in order to pursue health.
Austin Proper
Austin Proper combines a 238-room hotel with 99 residences in a 32-story downtown building.
Hotel + Residences
Austin demonstrates that Proper's lifestyle proposition can extend into permanent living, with residents receiving dedicated amenities and hotel access.
Kelly Wearstler in Austin
Wearstler drew on Austin homes, local artists, ceramics, locally quarried travertine and vintage rugs rather than importing a generic California design.
Austin Dining
The Peacock, La Piscina and Goldie's create distinct social moods and reflect Proper's preference for serious local culinary partnerships.
Downtown Los Angeles Proper
Downtown LA Proper occupies a historic Broadway Corridor landmark and contains 147 rooms and suites.
The Basketball Court Suite
One signature suite is built within the building's former basketball court, preserving the scale and memory of its previous use.
The Pool Suite
Another one-of-a-kind suite occupies the former indoor swimming pool, turning adaptive reuse into an accommodation product.
Cara Cara
The rooftop restaurant and pool create the hotel's principal open-air social layer and city-view identity.
Four Hotels, Four Personalities
San Francisco is urban-historic and salon-like; Santa Monica is coastal and wellness-led; Austin is residential and socially energetic; Downtown LA is adaptive-reuse theatre.
The Small Portfolio Advantage
With only four Proper-branded hotels, each property can retain strong individual identity without being forced into a rigid prototype.
Proper Hospitality Beyond Proper
The operating company is broader than the Proper flag. It currently manages The Shelborne by Proper in Miami and The Collective, a portfolio of independent design-led hotels.
The Collective
The current platform includes Hotel June in West Los Angeles and Malibu, Avalon Hotels, Ingleside Estate, The Culver Hotel and Montauk Yacht Club.
Why the Distinction Matters
Proper Hospitality, Proper Hotels and The Collective are not interchangeable. LHL-110 covers the Proper-branded luxury line while recording the wider platform for corporate context.
Residences as Brand Extension
< covers the Proper-branded luxury line while recording the wider platform for corporate context.Residences as Brand Extension
Proper's residential business translates Kelly Wearstler design, hotel service and lifestyle amenities into owned homes.
Proper Club
Proper Club is the newest structural extension: a members-only lifestyle club combining fitness, recovery, cultural programming and hotel privileges.
Santa Monica Proper Club
Santa Monica's club is rooted in performance, longevity, recovery and the existing Surya / fitness ecosystem.
Austin Proper Club
Austin's club balances wellness with dining, pool culture, live programming and the city's social energy.
Future Clubs
The current Proper Club platform lists Lake Tahoe and Dallas as coming soon. They are pipeline, not operating clubs.
Membership Without Replacing the Hotel
Proper Club is separate from hotel loyalty. It is a local paid membership product layered onto selected hotels.
Proper Insider
Proper Insider is the direct relationship layer for hotel guests, offering early access to programming, preferred offers and direct-booking extras.
Direct-Booking Benefits
Published Insider benefits include early check-in or late checkout subject to availability, waived pet fees, coffee and property-specific culinary or wellness extras.
Marriott Bonvoy
Proper Hotels participate in Marriott Bonvoy through Design Hotels. Current Proper FAQs explicitly state that the brand does not operate a standalone hotel loyalty programme.
Third-Party Loyalty
For LHL classification, loyalty is Third-party - Marriott Bonvoy / Design Hotels - while Proper Insider remains a direct-booking benefits layer and Proper Club a separate paid membership product.
Design Hotels Fit
Design Hotels is strategically compatible with Proper because it allows independent visual identity while adding global distribution and loyalty infrastructure.
Food as Destination Strategy
Proper repeatedly selects serious culinary partners and treats restaurants as destinations in their own right.
Wellness as a Brand Pillar
Wellness has evolved from spa and fitness into recovery, sleep, longevity and membership, particularly in Santa Monica.
The Lobby as Living Room
Proper wants locals and guests to share public space. Compared with Ace, the lobby is more luxurious, decorative and residential.
Culture
Proper Presents and property programming use music, dinners, artist collaborations, wellness talks and events to create repeat local engagement.
Service Philosophy
Proper describes its service as thoughtful and top-notch without old-world stiffness. The objective is polished competence that still feels personal and socially relaxed.
Anything Less Wouldn't Be Proper
The recurring brand line is playful but revealing: the name itself becomes a promise that details should feel considered.
Luxury Through Design
Proper's most visible luxury signal is the density and authorship of its interiors rather than ceremony.
Luxury Through Food
A guest can understand Proper through the restaurant and bar ecosystem even without sleeping in the hotel.
Luxury Through Wellness
The wellness proposition increasingly combines traditional practices with contemporary recovery and longevity tools.
Luxury Through Local Soul
Each hotel is expected to absorb local architecture, makers, food and social habits rather than attach city names to one template.
Comparison with Ace Hotel
Ace pioneered the public creative lobby and adaptive-reuse lifestyle hotel at a more democratic price point. Proper moves that idea into richer materials, higher rates, stronger wellness and more consistently authored design.
Comparison with 1 Hotels
1 Hotels uses nature and environmental mission as the organising system. Proper uses design, local culture, food and wellness, with sustainability as a supporting rather than defining identity.
Comparison with Edition
Edition combines restrained Ian Schrager lifestyle design with Marriott scale. Proper is smaller, more maximalist, more residential in aesthetic and more dependent on Kelly Wearstler's authorship.
Comparison with The Standard
The Standard is more nightlife-, fashion- and provocation-led. Proper is more polished, wellness-oriented and explicitly luxury.
Comparison with Virgin Hotels
Virgin Hotels is engineered around proprietary room design, technology and a cross-industry consumer brand. Proper is more design-authored, culinary and place-specific.
Comparison with Soho House
Soho House monetises membership and creative community across a global network. Proper remains hotel-led, with Proper Club creating a selective local membership layer.
Comparison with Pendry
Both combine design, dining, nightlife and residences. Proper is smaller and more singularly associated with one designer; Pendry benefits from Montage's broader operating system.
The Advantage of Kelly Wearstler
A single globally recognised designer gives Proper visual coherence and earned-media value that most small hotel brands cannot replicate.
The Risk of Kelly Wearstler Dependence
The same advantage creates concentration. If the brand expands significantly, it must decide whether every Proper remains a Wearstler hotel or whether the principles can survive beyond one author.
The Advantage of Bonvoy
Design Hotels / Bonvoy solves one of the main weaknesses of a four-hotel collection: global loyalty utility and distribution.
The Risk of Bonvoy
The more the hotels are consumed through Marriott channels, the more Proper must protect its independent identity from becoming merely another Bonvoy option.
The Risk of Lifestyle Convergence
Rooftops, DJs, wellness, local restaurants and design collaborations are now common. Proper must keep execution and authorship strong enough that the combination remains distinctive.
The Risk of Wellness Creep
Recovery technology and longevity can strengthen the brand, but endless accumulation of wellness devices can turn a coherent hotel into a catalogue of trends.
The Risk of Gentrification
Proper often operates in culturally significant urban districts. Celebrating local soul while participating in destination transformation creates an unavoidable tension.
What the Model Does Not Solve
Beautiful interiors do not automatically create local culture, a private club does not automatically create community, and wellness technology does not automatically make a stay restorative. Proper's small portfolio remains geographically concentrated; its identity is unusually dependent on Kelly Wearstler; and its restaurants, rooftops and clubs must remain useful to locals rather than becoming lifestyle theatre for travellers.
What Distinguishes Proper Hotels
FOUNDED BY BRAD KORZEN, BRIAN DE LOWE AND ALEX SAMEK. FIRST PROPER HOTEL OPENED IN SAN FRANCISCO IN 2017. FOUR CURRENT PROPER-BRANDED HOTELS: SAN FRANCISCO, SANTA MONICA, AUSTIN AND DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. KELLY WEARSTLER AS THE DEFINING CREATIVE AUTHOR. UNCOMMON LUXURY THROUGH LAYERED DESIGN, LOCAL CULTURE, DESTINATION FOOD AND BEVERAGE, WELLNESS AND SOCIAL PUBLIC SPACES. PROPER CLUB ADDS PRIVATE MEMBERSHIP IN SANTA MONICA AND AUSTIN. THIRD- PARTY LOYALTY THROUGH DESIGN HOTELS / MARRIOTT BONVOY, WITH PROPER INSIDER AS THE DIRECT- BOOKING LAYER.
The Strategic Achievement
Proper's achievement is to make a very small portfolio feel like a complete lifestyle world. Hotels, restaurants, rooftops, spas, residences and clubs are increasingly connected by one idea of contemporary American luxury: highly designed, culturally literate, wellness-aware and socially relaxed.
The Hospitality Lesson
The Proper lesson is that modern luxury can be intensely authored without being formal. A guest may remember a chair, a ceramic wall, a rooftop dinner or a recovery ritual, but those details become hospitality only when they support comfort, service and a genuine relationship with place.
Editorial Note
LHL records four current Proper-branded hotels as of 21 August 2026: San Francisco, Santa Monica, Austin and Downtown Los Angeles. The Shelborne by Proper and The Collective belong to the wider Proper Hospitality platform but are not counted as Proper Hotels. Proper Club is currently active in Santa Monica and Austin; Lake Tahoe and Dallas remain announced club pipeline.