1968 launch The first La Quinta Inn location was opened in 1968 by real estate entrepreneur Sam Barshop (1929–2013) and his brother Phil (1935–1998) in
San Antonio, Texas, across the street from the site of
HemisFair '68 World's Fair.
2005 Blackstone acquisition LQ Corporation, the parent company to subsidiary LQ Properties, Inc, announced on November 9, 2005, that it had agreed to be acquired by the private-equity firm
Blackstone Group for $3.4 billion in cash and debt. The merger closed on January 25, 2006. At that point, the La Quinta group ranked 13th hotel group worldwide, owned 360 hotels, and franchised 250 under the names La Quinta Inn, La Quinta Inn & Suites,
Baymont Inn & Suites, Woodfield Suites and Budgetel (about 65,000 rooms). Blackstone had just bought Wyndham Hotels a few months before, the hotel group that would acquire La Quinta in 2018. In 2011, La Quinta gave up on pay-per-view in-room entertainment to focus on letting customers use their own devices. In 2012, La Quinta launched the Instant hold option, allowing customers to make last-minute reservations with their phone numbers. In 2013, Blackstone started to pave the way for the sale of La Quinta. Up until the 2014 stock offering, all La Quinta properties were owned or franchised by the company's subsidiary La Quinta Properties, Inc., a
real estate investment trust (REIT), which leased the properties back to the parent company. In September 2015, the President and CEO Wayne Goldberg stepped down. CFO Keith Cline became the interim CEO.
2018 Wyndham acquisition On January 18, 2018, Wyndham Worldwide Corporation and La Quinta Holdings Inc. announced they had entered into a definitive agreement under which Wyndham Worldwide will acquire La Quinta's hotel franchise and hotel management businesses for $1.95 billion in cash. The loyalty programs of La Quinta and Wyndham were planned to be combined into a single one. The deal also included that La Quinta's real estate be spun off into a separate company, CorePoint Lodging, a publicly traded real estate investment trust. Buying La Quinta enabled Wyndham to become the third-largest hotel rooms operator in the world, pipping
InterContinental. The acquisition was completed on May 31, 2018 adding over 900 franchised hotel properties to the Wyndham portfolio. In June 2019, La Quinta signed a deal with the Caribbean developer Profusion Group to engage in the rapid development of the brand in the
Dominican Republic (8 locations in 5 years). == Description ==