It’s déjà vu all over again for Mark Harmon, who for 30 years flourished as the founder and CEO of Auberge Resorts Collection, which played no small role as an originator in the luxury boutique space, with a portfolio of properties whose services and amenities may have only been outdone by their natural surroundings.
Consider Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley, which was opened in the late 1980s by Harmon’s father, Bob. This was only a few years after the 1976 “Judgment of Paris” tasting, where Napa Valley wines beat out French wines, putting Napa on the world stage and beckoning oenophiles the world over, and well before the film “Sideways” made Merlot anathema.
Here’s the point: There is something in the Harmon DNA that acts like an antenna for knowing where the next big thing is going to be—it just so happens to be associated with wine. In this case, it’s—Texas? Yes, and Harmon is set to do it again, this time with a bold new project in Waldorf Astoria Texas Hill Country.
Deep in the Heart
The state of Texas is known for many things: cowboys, cattle and chili are three. It’s a state where Lone Star beer is sacrosanct, not Tempranillos. That’s all changing, slowly, but changing nonetheless and Harmon and his partners’ new project, Waldorf Astoria Texas Hill Country, is riding with every pour.
Texas Hill Country is a region central in the state with bucolic typography of rolling hills and limestone outcrops and a climate that allows for wine producing. Within Texas Hill Country is Texas Wine Country and within Texas Wine Country is the city of Fredericksburg, settled by German immigrants, just over an hour from both San Antonio and Austin and considered a starting point for those visiting wineries in the region. It’s an area Harmon visited three decades ago, around the time when he was cutting his teeth with Auberge. “I was scouting around and someone said, ‘Hey, you got to go up and see this town. That Fredericksburg is super cool.’ He made the drive up and agreed—it was pretty cool, it had charm. But, as Harmon put it, “It was still a sleepy town. Its time hadn’t come yet.”
For Fredericksburg, and surrounding areas, the time is now. Harmon frames it as almost the second coming of Napa Valley, something he says after revisiting the area years later with his business partner. “I have the benefit of seeing many years of development in California, in the Napa Valley. There was a time there, in the the early 1980s, when it was just beginning to be recognized as a wine destination,” he said, alluding to such wineries as Chateau Montelena, winner of that ’76 “Judgment of Paris,” and an attractiveness found in the old stone buildings that dot the landscape. “I’m now seeing the parallels of what I think is going to be the growth of Texas Wine Country. It’s starting to really come into its own. (Wine Spectator, the holy bible of wine, recently rated some of the area wines in the 90s and above.)
Going Big in Texas
This prognostication led Harmon to put his money where his mind in. This week, Harmon, with his parters Robert Radovan and Tim Sparapani, announced the signing of Waldorf Astoria Texas Hill Country and Waldorf Astoria Residences Texas Hill Country, through a brand and management agreement with Hilton. The hotel, to be built on 106 acres of what Harmon calls land with “great orientation,” is Waldorf Astoria’s debut property in Texas and will consist of 60 guestrooms and suites, 37 branded multi-bedroom resort villas that are eligible to participate in a hotel rental program, and 50 branded private residences. The resort will also include five food-and-beverage concepts (stay tuned for a celebrity chef announcement), an 11,000-square-foot spa and fitness center, two resort-style pools and more. Groundbreaking is slated for later this summer with a 2027 scheduled opening.
Harmon and his partners could have elected to build the hotel and manage it under his own Private Label Collection, a portfolio of hotels and restaurants he established with his partner, Jonathan McManus, in 2022, and includes the highly rated Hotel Wailea, Relais & Châteaux in Maui. In Waldorf Astoria, Harmon was attracted to the brand right off the bat, particularly drawn to it on the heels of the much-anticipated reopening of Waldorf Astoria New York. “I thought, let’s find a brand that can really help us out and has great management,” Harmon said, acknowledging that other luxury brands and operators were considered. He said that within two days of bringing the project to Hilton and Waldorf Astoria, they committed.
Beyond the urban terroir, Waldorf Astoria has deepened its reach into resort locations. It will open Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique later this spring and, in another example, in 2019 took over The Resort at Pedregal in Los Cabos, Mexico, rebranding it as Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal. There are currently 34 Waldorf Astoria properties globally with another 30 in the pipeline.
“They saw our vision and how to shape a really great resort experience in Texas,” Harmon said. “They stood out head and shoulders among everyone for their commitment, their knowledge and willingness to move quickly and to say, ‘We believe in this project.’”
Furthermore, as Harmon noted, there are just a handful of high-end properties in the area. Texas Hill Country has an assemblage of independent, boutiquey hotels that run the gamut, but there is just a smattering of true luxury resorts. There is a J.W. Marriott, two Hyatt Regency properties, Omni Barton Creek, La Cantera and a Miraval, Hyatt’s wellness-centric bran; the space is still white. Other luxury brands, from Aman to Rosewood, are sniffing around.
And it’s not just because people want to sample the wine. People are moving to the area in droves: Texas Hill Country is one of the fastest growing regions in a state that continues to draw population and companies who see it as a place where it’s easier to do business and has further inducements like no personal income tax. “You look at the number of companies that have moved there, the number of wealthy people that have moved there—it’s a dynamic market,” Harmon said, adding that developing a project like this comes in at a significantly lower cost and with less aggravation than doing it in, for example, a state like California, with its onerous restrictions and regulations.
But California does have Napa and Sonoma, which are unique locales. Texas Wine Country is angling for its own sliver of stature. “What I see is the ability to do something of real quality that becomes a destination, but what we love about this area is the spirit of welcome. We’ve gotten a really warm welcome, a big Texas warm welcome,” Harmon said.
Waldorf Astoria Texas Hill Country adds cachet and draw to an area that, like a ripened grape, is ready to burst.
