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Even after nearly four decades with one corporate name, it's never too late to go different and new.
That's the strategy prominent hotel industry veteran Tony Lapi has taken with the firm he co-founded in 1976 that now operates four resorts on Sanibel and Captiva islands. The holding company had been named Rochester Resorts, a nod to the Central New York hometown of Lapi and a co-founder, since day one. Back then it owned one property and had three employees. But with the recent acquisition of West Wind Inn on Sanibel Island, the company now has 255 employees and continues to grow.
So Lapi says he and his partners decided it was time to change names and rebrand. The new name is Sanibel Captiva Beach Resorts. “For years and years no one knew what Rochester Resorts was,” Lapi tells Coffee Talk. “We wanted something where people could identify who we are.”
In addition to West Wind, the company operates 'Tween Waters Inn Island Resort & Spa of Captiva, Beachview Cottages of Sanibel and Castaways Cottages of Blind Pass. Lapi and his partners bought out the owners of West Wind, which gave the company more scale on the two islands and pushed the total room count for all the properties to 300. The company has already begun an update project at West Wind, from new mattresses to an outside paint job.
“It was on the block for two or three years,” says Lapi, past chairman of the board of Visit Florida, the state's tourism arm. “But we feel like we can move the needle and improve the property.”
The new corporate name, he says, will be more behind the scenes than new mattresses, but it's important in the constant battle for new business. He plans to do more Internet marketing and search engine optimization, for one. Says Lapi: “We're still in the process of evaluating what we have.”
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