Having spent last year adjusting its business model, cleaning up its balance sheet, and ramping up technologically, Red Lion Hotels Corp., of Spokane, is now looking to go national, says company President and CEO Gregory T. Mount. 

The company has shifted from an asset-heavy hotel chain that owned most of the properties featuring its brand to what Mount calls an “asset-light” model focused on brand growth through franchising. Now, he says, the 55-hotel chain has set the goal to have 25 to 30 additional hotels under its brand by year’s end. 

“Our stated goal is 100 hotels in 100 weeks,” says Mount, meaning that the company wants to have a total of 100 hotels in its network within the next two years. 

So far this year, the company has signed new franchise agreement that add five new hotels to its chain. That follows 14 new franchise agreements in the second half of 2o14.

“We’ve rebuilt the franchise sales team, and it’s gaining velocity. The industry as a whole is looking favorably on this direction,” says Mount, who has been at the helm for just over a year.

While the company is focused on the franchise model, it has in hand $60 million from selling a 45 percent minority stake in many of the hotels it continues to own, and Mount says the company has that “dry gunpowder” set aside for investments or other opportunities. 

Much of the envisioned growth is expected to occur east of the Mississippi River, a stark departure for a hotel chain that has focused on the West Coast in the past. 

The company has signed franchise agreements with hoteliers in Detroit and Cincinnati already. 

Also, last December, Red Lion bought for $15.7 million a hotel in Baltimore. The company has started a $3.5 million project to convert the 130-guest-room hotel into what’s expected to be the first property to open under its new Hotel RL brand. To be called Hotel RL Baltimore Inner Harbor, the hotel is expected to open this summer.

The Hotel RL brand is designed to be an upscale alternative to its current brands: Red Lion Hotels, which are full-service hotels that include restaurants, and Red Lion Inns & Suites, which don’t have full-service restaurants. 

Along the north bank of the Spokane River and a stone’s throw from its corporate headquarters, Red Lion plans to start work soon on a renovation of its Red Lion Inn at the Park. That hotel will be converted to the Hotel RL brand, as will the company’s properties in Salt Lake City and in Olympia, Wash.

Mount declines for now to disclose the cost of those renovations, but he says the company plans to invest a total of $26 million in its 12 core properties in the next year to 18 months. 

Trying to attract new franchisees in markets where Red Lion doesn’t have a presence has advantages and drawbacks, Mount says. On one hand, he says, the company doesn’t have brand recognition in those markets with either a hotelier or many of its prospective guests. On the plus side, however, an East Coast hotelier who converts to the Red Lion brand isn’t competing with other Red Lions hotels in that marketplace for guests. 

To distinguish itself, Mount says the company has invested heavily in its website, reservation system, and other technology, and it’s trying to show potential franchisees the value of those investments. 

For example, he says, the company put in place a new online reservation system and also outsourced its voice-activated telephone reservation system. Mount says both moves enable guests to make reservations more quickly. The volume of reservation inquiries hasn’t changed, but the successful reservation closure rate increased to 70 percent, from 50 percent prior to the improvements. 

The company also has revamped its loyalty-rewards program that enables guest to receive more, smaller rewards—room upgrades, among others—more frequently, as well as one free night’s stay after seven paid nights. 

The company also plans to put in place at some hotels a kiosk system that will enable guests to check themselves into a hotel and to download an app so that their smartphone can serve as a room key. Mount says all of the company’s new technology platforms are in place, and it has deployed about 50 percent of its new technology. He says the company expects to have 90 percent of its new features in place systemwide by year-end. 

In addition to deploying technology, the company is looking to depart from conventional hotel design when revamping its properties, especially with the Hotel RL brand. 

Mount says the new designs will be inspired by a “millennial mindset.” He says they’ll have high-quality beds, televisions, and showers, and they won’t have desks and in-room coffee machines. Rather than closets, they’ll have space for a “gear drop” and changing clothes, he says. 

“We’re doing away with the things that hotels have encumbered themselves with for years and that people don’t want,” Mount says. 

As the company positions itself for growth nationally, Mount says he’s optimistic that it will be able to achieve consistent profitability and employment. He says the company hasn’t stated a timeline in which it expects that to occur, however. 

Last month, Red Lion reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $4.4 million, or 22 cents a share, compared with a loss of $13.8 million, or 66 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

For all of 2014, however, the company posted net income of $2.3 million, or 12 cents a share, up from a net loss of $17.2 million, or 87 cents a share, in 2013.

Largely due to the fact that it had sold some of its properties, the company employed just over 1,620 people at the end of 2014, down from nearly 1,850 a year earlier.

While Red Lion lost money during the most recent quarter, Mount points out that the company’s revenue per available room, an industry-accepted benchmark of performance, increased 8.1 percent systemwide in the fourth quarter and by 6 percent for all of 2014. 

Also, he says, through selling many of its assets, including the $35.4 million sale of its hotel in Bellevue, Wash., the company has been able to pay off its secured debt. 

“We’re very close and we feel we’re doing the right things,” Mount says. “A lot of the strategies are going to have a big impact as we go forward.”