Jan. 30–Richard Branson, the British billionaire behind Virgin Group, emerged shoeless from a guest room at Chicago’s new Virgin Hotel on Thursday morning, light-heartedly teasing the American public relations staff that surrounded him for their failed attempts to make a proper cup of tea.

With his shoes in one hand and the mug of not-quite-right tea in the other, Branson, wearing navy blue socks capped with a red toe, sat down with the Tribune in the hotel’s second floor Commons Club, the central social area meant to have an air of exclusivity although it’s open to anyone.

“It’s called the Commons Club because you don’t have to be a member to come, you don’t have to pay to come, for all your Chicago-ians or whatever you call yourselves,” Branson said.

Branson, 64, arrived in Chicago on Wednesday night to mark the opening of the brand’s first hotel, a renovation of the Old Dearborn Bank Building at 203 N. Wabash Ave.

The 250-room hotel, which opened Jan. 15, is a laboratory of sorts as the brand initiates a broader rollout of its hotel concept. Virgin will open a hotel in Nashville in summer 2016 and New York in 2017, and hotels in other cities are in the works.

“We’re experimenting on you Chicagoians,” Branson said. “What is it?”

Chicagoans.

“We are experimenting on you Chicagoans.”

Like at its airlines, Virgin’s hotel bucks industry trends by charging no extras fees for things like late checkout, room service delivery or unlimited Wi-Fi. A Snickers from the bright red minibar costs a reasonable $1.

The hotel aims to cater to female travelers. Greeters in long red coats and black fur hats welcome guests at the entrance. The Commons Club includes a “funny library” with comic books and toys from Chicago antique stores.

Chicago landed Virgin’s first hotel thanks to the right building coming available in the right place at the right time.

“The hotel business is about being opportunistic,” said Virgin Hotels CEO Raul Leal.

Branson’s Virgin Group maintains a varied portfolio of investments ranging from music to biofuels. What follows is an edited conversation with the entrepreneur.

Is there a detail about the hotel that you can’t stop bragging about?

I think when you arrive just the ladies in red standing out in freezing Chicago in those lovely coats. Their immediate welcome is great and very Virgin. We’ve tried to make everything very female friendly. You know, 50 percent of all business people now are women and they’re not particularly catered for by hotels. My wife wants to put her makeup on but in most hotels the light is not strong enough. They have lots of little touches in the rooms that are great for women. If a woman doesn’t want to open the door when her food is delivered, there are separate chambers where (the food is delivered so) they can stay in their own area. There’s a lovely bench in the shower where they can sit and shave and whatever.

What kind of hotel footprint do you want to have eventually?

We fly to a lot of cities, whether it’s Virgin Atlantic or Virgin America or Virgin Australia. And in the years to come, if people like the experience of Virgin Hotels — which I think they will — if we can get the right buildings, I think we’ll open in quite a few of the cities we fly to. We’re immediately talking about 10 over the next three or four years, I would say.

The hotel scene in Chicago is starting to get crowded, with 4,500 rooms new rooms expected to open in the next three years, some of them also boutique concepts. How will Virgin differentiate itself?

We’re quite a large hotel but it’s run like a boutique hotel. The room prices are reasonable (starting at $209). Most of the businesses we started from scratch. When we started the airline 30 years ago, we started with one plane. We did it better, I think, than our competitors. And most of our competitors disappeared — PanAm, TWA, Air Florida. We survived because we had great people and great quality and we got the little details right, which is really important. My instinct is that it will do well. Virgin America is now flying into Chicago. A lot of people who try one Virgin product, because they have a good experience there, will move on and try another one.

Is there a thread or common ethos that runs through your varied businesses?

We want to surprise people. So we want people to get more than they expect for the price they pay. And that applies to health clubs, train services, plane services, all the various things we do. If we create a new cruise company, as we are at the moment, we’ll make absolutely certain it’s the funnest cruise company. It’s tremendous value for money but tremendous quality, and we’ll get a lot of people using cruises who would never have dreamt of using cruises. So as a result we’ll expand the market. Fun is important. We only live once, we might as well enjoy it.

You’ve crossed so many industries — music, airlines, space travel, tourism, books, etc. What’s next? Is there any other industry you have your eyes on?

Obviously, the space project (Virgin Galactic) we’ve got to deliver. We had a horrible setback last year (a rocket broke apart during a test flight in October and one of the pilots died). There are quite a few people from Chicago booked to go. Matthew Pritzker, I think about three or four of the Pritzker family have booked seats. We have to get the spaceship finished which we will later on this year and have our brave test pilots test it time and time again. And next year we should be up and ready to go to space and take people to space. A lot of my personal life is spent on nonprofits. We just set up an organization called The B Team, which is trying to get businesses to treat their people better … and get out there and change the world for the better. Not just leave it to social workers and politicians, but to have business people taking on problems and trying to overcome them.

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