Tourism King Is on a Mission to Promote California History

Ed Hogan is a man with a mission--or at least he’d like to be.

The ubiquitous tourism king, who owns four hotels and nearly a dozen travel companies, is best known for the flashy Hawaiian shirts he wears and the thousands of travelers he has sent to Hawaii’s beaches in the past four decades.

Now he wants to leave a legacy to the state of California--a chain of nonprofit hotels where families could stay while visiting and learning about California’s 21 historic missions. Hogan, co-founder, owner and chief executive of travel giant Pleasant Holidays in Westlake Village, hopes to build the first of these theme hotels in Ventura on land adjacent to the San Buenaventura Mission.

The idea has been supported--at least in concept--by Ventura city officials, tourism advocates and local clergy. They see the theme hotel as a potential boon for downtown Ventura.

Hogan envisions hordes of families settling into the inns to soak up California history, but he says that profit isn’t the main motivation. Hogan’s California Mission Inns would be owned by the Hogan Family Foundation, which he and his wife, Lynn, began with with a $100-million endowment in 1998.

Revenues from the Spanish-style hotels in excess of paying for operations would go to support the centuries-old missions that are in constant need of repair.

Msgr. Patrick J. O’Brien, who runs the 218-year-old Ventura mission, said the funds would help fix the mission’s roof, gutters, gardens and whatever else bursts, breaks or leaks.

He met with Hogan, city officials, an architect and others about the proposal three weeks ago and loved the idea.

“It’s a new concept and it’s certainly very creative,” O’Brien said.

Building an inn near the Ventura mission would mean tearing down an old hotel now used for office space and other nearby structures dating to the early 1900s.

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But with no deal on the table, O’Brien doesn’t want anybody to think any existing structures are coming down soon.

With the mission school and parish halfway through a $7-million expansion, only half a block is available to build a hotel, O’Brien said.

Hogan envisions two-story inns of 100 rooms with red tile roofs standing next to California’s historic missions. The modern hotels would be furnished with distressed maple furniture and wrought-iron lanterns “so the children will feel that they’re living this history with their parents,” he said.

Junipero Serra, who established the Ventura mission, probably would have loved the courtyard swimming pools Hogan plans, which will be surrounded by adobe walls and tile roofs to blend in with their venerable mission neighbors.

Hogan hopes to sell package trips to the themed hotels, allowing families to travel from one California Mission Inn to the next like people traveled between the missions centuries ago.

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At the hotels, an actor dressed in a padre robe and sandals might teach families about the local mission’s history and things to do in the city, Hogan said. Families will also be able to explore the real mission nearby.

The hotels would be affordable, Hogan promises, though prices have not been set.

He also doesn’t know how many of the hotels his foundation would build or exactly where they would be located. Hogan has considered locations near Mission Santa Ines in Solvang, Mission San Luis Obispo and several others. He’s also considering building a theme hotel near Mission San Fernando in Mission Hills.

The mission theme idea comes from Hogan’s fascination with the old Christian buildings and his respect for Serra.

“Father Serra was the first hotelier in California,” he said.

At 72, Hogan has been building his travel empire for more than four decades. The private company’s total annual revenues exceed $370 million.

Ed and Lynn Hogan founded and own a web of travel interests, including Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays, Pleasant Mexico Holidays and Pleasant Island Holidays.

Many of the divisions specialize in affordable, package vacations with air fare, rental car and hotel stays available for one fee. The company owns hotels on the islands of Maui, Kauai and Hawaii. His four adult children all work for the company’s divisions.

Hogan changed the face of Hawaii--and the travel industry--by sending thousands of vacationers to the islands, said Larry Flinders, who worked for Hogan 20 years ago. Flinders is now executive vice president of one of Pleasant Holidays’ biggest competitors, Classic Custom Vacations San Jose.

“He’s a hard-driving individual,” Flinders said. “He has ideas and he charges forward on them.”

Hogan dresses for vacation and corporate life simultaneously. He wears a colorful Hawaiian print shirt covered by a brown suit coat.

In the lush boardroom of his foundation office, he seemingly does 10 things at once: has a gift of vitamins sent to his cardiologist, discusses the sale of his personal Palm Springs vacation home, slurps orange-pineapple juice while munching a Rice Krispies treat and shows off pictures of the 17,500-square-foot mansion he’s building at Lake Sherwood.

“It’s just my wife and I and four poodles,” he says eyeing pictures of the monstrosity, “but we’ll have charity events up there, too.”

Hogan speaks as much as a philosopher as an entrepreneur. Travel leads to peace, he says, because people who visit foreign lands develop respect for the local residents and help other economies thrive. Hogan and his wife formed their philanthropic foundation toward that goal.

The foundation has established a travel industry school at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles and an entrepreneurial school at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. The foundation will also soon open a Gardens of the World Community Park in Thousand Oaks, an ornate pavilion of fountains and plants from around the globe, across from the Civic Arts Plaza.

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Ventura Councilman Jim Friedman, an ardent advocate of bringing new business to downtown, is open to the California Mission Inn idea.

“The facility would have to be compatible to the downtown” and not “stick out like a sore thumb as a garish commercial venture,” he said.

The question, of course, is will families want to spend their vacations touring California’s missions?

Ed Robings, former executive director of the Ventura County Museum of History and Art and now head of the Ventura County Cultural Tourism Federation, is optimistic.

“Mr. Hogan has been a genius at figuring out what people like to do,” Robings said. “What he’s really looking for is wholesome, educational, cultural activities. That is really a strong niche in tourism.”

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