The Outlaw: New life for old favorite

Although the Outlaw Hotel & Convention Center was Kalispell’s most illustrious, high-end establishment for many years after it was built in 1973, its newest owners have no illusions that they can bring the site back to its former grandeur.

Rocky Mountain Hospitality’s Steve and Cinthia Rice are working to reposition the hotel, to be officially renamed the GuestHouse Inn, Suites and Outlaw Convention Center, as a moderately priced hotel for guests wanting clean, comfortable, up-to-date accommodations.

“No one can bring this back to its glory days without going bankrupt,” Cinthia Rice said. “We will be upper economy to mid-market. We won’t be competing against the Hilton, it will be a different clientele.”

Rice said customers expected to embrace the new Outlaw will be people such as budget-minded tourists, companies that have to watch their expense accounts, truck drivers and blue-collar sales people. The Outlaw still has everything most people are looking for in a modern hotel stay, though, with a swimming pool, hot tub, fitness room, guest laundry and breakfast.

By summer, every room in the place will be as good as new.

The Rices are currently gutting 50 rooms in one wing to create a total transformation of each room — replacing the carpet, wallcoverings, light fixtures, bedding and drapes in the bedrooms, with new tile, tubs, showers and granite countertops going into the bathrooms.

The remainder of the hotel’s 150 rooms will be getting the same treatment in two more phases, with each phase hopefully taking about two months each, Cinthia Rice said. She said guests will not be inconvenienced by noise or construction chaos during the renovations.

There was no choice but to completely remake the rooms if they wanted to give the Outlaw a promising future, as the condition of the rooms has been the biggest deterrent for guests, Rice said.

“The rooms were just aging,” she said. “The tubs, walls and linoleum were becoming dingy and frayed. They were clean, but once things become older and worn, there’s nothing you can do but throw them away and replace them.”

They’re putting around half a million dollars into the changes, Rice estimated. This includes work already finished, such as a new roof and repaving and relighting the parking lot, and the upcoming new signs, which should be in place soon.

Though it’s not the kind of cosmetic change that guests noticed, redoing the roof was absolutely necessary, Rice said.

“We had 15 garbage cans collecting drips in here,” she said of the property’s giant conference room.

The conference rooms themselves are otherwise in good shape. New banquet chairs are on the wish list, but with hundreds that need replacing, Rice said that is something that will have to wait.  

Offering the rooms for community conferences, luncheons and meetings is helpful to the hotel’s bottom line, Rice said, but it’s the guest rooms that really make the money. The Outlaw used to have its own kitchen, but Rice said rather than starting up the kitchen again themselves, they are searching for catering partnerships so that groups can schedule functions with meals.

One of the biggest challenges facing the Rices is overcoming the Outlaw’s poor Internet reputation.

Although everything in the hotel has always been as clean as possible, Rice said, the run-down quality of the rooms has led many people to rate the hotel poorly on one of the Internet’s most influential sites for travelers, Trip Advisor. The Outlaw is currently at the bottom of local hotel rankings.

Rice said that, though it might not be fair, the reviews are often based on expectations people might hold based on better times for the Outlaw, or on its dominating presence on the south end of Kalispell.

 “One thing we found in the summer that might have deterred people is the hotel’s grandeur,” she said. “Being so big from outside, they would come in and expect something like a Hilton or a Holiday Inn Express. And they were disappointed from that.

“People who are expecting more of a Super 8 or Travelodge experience were thrilled with us.”

 Even despite the poor Trip Advisor ranking, the Outlaw was often at capacity in July and August. Though rooms are in the $59 to $69 range right now, that price was pushed to close to $200 a night last summer, still much less than the higher-end competitors were charging, Rice noted.

“July and August are when you make your money around here,” Rice said. “If you don’t make it then, you’re stuck in the winter. You have to stock up the savings account to get through the winter.”

The Rices purchased the Outlaw in June, so they had to jump into summer’s hectic travel season with very little chance to train employees on their philosophy.  

“We couldn’t train in the summer, we just had to stay alive and keep our heads above water. The managers were working 12- to 16-hour days, and the housekeeping staff was run through the mill,” she said. “I felt sorry for them.”

Seventeen employees work at the Outlaw now, though that number is about doubled in the high season, Rice said.

Rice said the size of the hotel was overwhelming to her at first and she is still in awe of the sheer size of the property some times. The hotel has 161,000 square feet on 11 acres — including 12,000 square feet of meeting space.

The site is also full of unusual features for a modern hotel, such as an indoor racquet sports court, an underground basement bar (now serving as storage area) and a second pool (now out of commission), all a reflection of the Outlaw’s days as a community hub.

“This place is just massive,” Rice said. “Every time we come back here, I can’t get over the size of it.”

Rocky Mountain Hospitality, based in Coeur d’Alene, has been operating hotels for 17 years and currently owns nine hotels in Idaho and Montana, of which six are GuestHouse Inn and Suites. The Outlaw is the Rices’ biggest property.

Taking on the GuestHouse franchise name is the best route for revamping the hotel, Cinthia Rice said, since it is one of the most affordable but still well-regarded franchises. The Outlaw website eventually will be at guesthousekalispell.com and it can currently be booked through guesthouseintl.com. The outlawhotel.com site will be up for two more years to reroute people to the right site.

“The GuestHouse name is crucial to reposition us on the Internet,” Rice said. “I feel like we don’t need bigger franchise support than that. We know what we’re doing.”

Rice said it’s important for the hotel’s bottom line to gain as many bookings as possible through the direct website rather than through sites such as Expedia or Travelocity, which take about a 30 percent commission on all bookings. On top of that, there are about three other entities that have to be paid to get that reservation secured.

“You get phenomenal exposure on the Internet, but it is so costly,” she said. “You pay the price.”