Two brothers and a world’s fair.

La Quinta began in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968, the year the city staged HemisFair ’68, its world’s fair. The University of Houston’s Hospitality Industry Hall of Honor, which inducted Sam Barshop in 2013, tells the story this way: Sam and his brother Philip Barshop had been building and running Ramada Inns on land their family owned, tried to buy the Rodeway Inn brand, and, when that bid failed, opened hotels of their own under the La Quinta name in time for the fair — one downtown near the HemisFair grounds and one at San Antonio’s airport. A University of Houston release republished by Hotel Online on 5 September 2013 adds that Sam Barshop’s lodging career had begun in San Antonio in 1963.

The San Antonio Report, writing about Philip Barshop in January 2020, describes the same start: the brothers, sons of a produce distributor and real-estate investor, built the La Quinta Motor Inn in anticipation of the demand for rooms that HemisFair would bring.

The name is Spanish. English Wikipedia translates la quinta as “the country villa” and notes that in some Spanish-speaking countries the phrase means a country place or a mansion, and the brand has kept it through every change of owner since.

The family stayed involved for decades. According to the University of Houston, a sister, Doris Spector, was a silent partner, and the brothers took La Quinta public in 1974. The university says Philip left three years later to concentrate on real estate; the San Antonio Report says he resigned from La Quinta in 1978 and founded his own development firm. Sam Barshop remained chairman, president and chief executive until he retired in 1994, the university says.

From San Antonio to Irving.

The company’s home moved in the late 1990s. English Wikipedia records that in 1999 La Quinta announced it would move its headquarters from San Antonio to the Dallas area, citing the flight connections at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, while keeping accounting, information systems and reservations work in San Antonio. Its operating base today is in the Las Colinas area of Irving, Texas, near Dallas.

Ownership changed several times after that. English Wikipedia records that LQ Corporation agreed on 9 November 2005 to be acquired by the private-equity firm Blackstone Group, and that the deal closed on 25 January 2006; at that point the company franchised hotels under names including La Quinta Inn, La Quinta Inn & Suites and Baymont Inn & Suites. A few months earlier Blackstone had also bought Wyndham Hotels — the group that would later take over La Quinta. La Quinta Holdings returned to the stock market with a share sale in April 2014, the encyclopedia says.

The present owner arrived in 2018. On 18 January that year, LODGING magazine reported, Wyndham Worldwide and La Quinta Holdings agreed that Wyndham would acquire La Quinta’s hotel franchise and hotel management businesses. Under the same plan, La Quinta’s owned real estate was to be spun off first into a separate publicly traded real-estate investment trust, CorePoint Lodging, and the La Quinta Returns loyalty programme was to be combined with Wyndham Rewards. English Wikipedia dates the completion of the acquisition to 31 May 2018. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts has owned the La Quinta brand since 2018, and English Wikipedia now gives its name as La Quinta by Wyndham.

That suffix belongs to a wider Wyndham programme. In April 2018, HOTELS magazine reported, Wyndham told its franchisees that its brands would carry a “by Wyndham” extension, with new sign faceplates and digital listings, and a worldwide update expected to be complete by December 2022.

Signs, lobbies and rooms.

The brands in this group are motel and economy hotel names: chains of roadside and city lodgings, many of them run by franchisees under a name owned by another company. A brand of this kind lives in a sequence of physical places rather than in a single package, and each place carries the name in a different way.

The pylon sign is one of them: a tall post or panel set beside a highway or an exit ramp, designed to be read from a moving car and often lit after dark, so a wordmark and its colours have to work at a distance. Closer in, a canopy over the entrance, a sign on the building itself and the lobby door repeat the mark at a smaller scale. Inside, the front desk, the key card, the room directory and the linen take the same name into the room. Some chains add a mascot, which can appear on signs and in advertising alike.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding, its owners and franchisors, and changes to its name, sign and identity — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Spanish name on a Texas roadside.

La Quinta’s design story is mostly a story about buildings. English Wikipedia records that in 2015 the chain launched a prototype called “Del Sol” — Spanish again, “of the sun” — with LED lighting, indoor and outdoor pools and modernised décor. It also notes a practical difference within the system: company-owned hotels kept standardised room settings, while franchised hotels showed more variety. When Wyndham bought the brand in 2018 it took the franchise and management businesses, while the hotels La Quinta owned went to CorePoint Lodging, according to LODGING.

The founders’ own account of the brand, as the University of Houston records it, is a business model rather than a look: La Quinta, the university says, kept its prices down by leaving out bellhops, restaurants, room service and bars, and concentrated on rooms for travellers on business. The 2013 University of Houston release republished by Hotel Online describes the same limited-service approach as one that appealed to frequent business travellers.

The name has outlived several corporate owners. It was a family company in San Antonio, a listed company, a Blackstone holding, a listed company again and, since 2018, part of Wyndham, which runs it alongside motel and economy names such as Days Inn and Super 8. Through those changes the Spanish name stayed the same.

The family name lives on in San Antonio too. The University of Houston notes that in 1995 Sam Barshop merged his real-estate interests with an Austin firm to form Barshop & Oles Company, and the San Antonio Report describes Philip Barshop founding the city’s real-estate council, which gives an annual award in his name.

For a design guide, La Quinta shows how a brand can carry a place in its name long after it has left that place. Compare Days Inn and Super 8, two other names now owned by Wyndham. For this guide we use a courtyard green, an adobe cream and a sun yellow with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep La Quinta’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.