Maybe you've passed the Moxy Hotel on King Street, and maybe you've thought to yourself, "Wow, this place looks too hip for Chattanooga."
Well, think again. Part of a 52-property boutique hotel chain operated by Marriott Hotels, Moxy Chattanooga, has quickly become a corporate success story. It's No. 1 in key measures of customer satisfaction and No. 1 in bar revenue - which is significant because the bar is the beating heart of Moxy. It even serves double-duty as the front desk.
One of the faces behind this rocket ride to the top of the brand is Kacey Swindell, a 34-year-old native of Athens, Alabama, a suburb of Huntsville. A rising star in Marriott, Swindell has the title of director of sales at the Chattanooga Moxy.
"I think Chattanooga has been known as a family destination, a place to take kids to see Rock City or the (Tennessee) Aquarium," she says. "I think there's a growing sense in my age group of the food, culture and arts movement here. If you are single, or newly married and don't have kids, there are still a ton of things to do here."
There's no denying the place is lit - part hotel, part bar, part event venue. The Moxy is an explosion of industrial chic design. You can stand in one spot, spin around, and take selfies in all directions. If it didn't have valet parking out front, you might think this place was a cruise ship. They have pop-up roller rinks and talk-with-a-British-accent day - all designed to create excitement and spontaneity.
Name: Kacey Swindell
Age: 34 Title: Director of sales at the Moxy Chattanooga Downtown Education: Birmingham Southern University and Cornell University Family: Schnauzer/poodle mix named Rudy
Swindell says the Moxy's core customers are young creative types, and the hotel has ongoing relationships with companies in town to serve their interns and new hires. Interestingly though, she says the property's highest customer satisfaction scores come from Gen X and baby boomer guests ages 45 to 65, proving no age group owns a monopoly on fun.
Her friends in bigger cities like Atlanta and Nashville are always incredulous of her social media posts about the good time she is having here, Swindell says. Their image of Chattanooga hasn't caught up with reality, she says.
"They are always asking when I post things of social media, 'Is this fake? What's going on?'"
Swindell graduated from Birmingham Southern in 2008, and got a marketing job in Nashville, just as the Great Recession was about to make landfall. She has done internships in government for the mayor's office in Birmingham and for Congressman Bart Gordon from Middle Tennessee.
She says she originally wanted to work for the U.S. State Department, but they told her to get some international work experience first. So Swindell took a job at a U.S. government-owned Adelweiss Lodge and Resort in Germany, serving such dignitaries as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former U.S. Army general and CIA director David Petraeus.
Staff photo by Tim Barber/ Kacey Swindell is director of sales for the Moxy Hotel on King Street in downtown Chattanooga.Swindell's first job at the ski resort was "basically scraping plates" at the buffet, she says, but by the time she left more than two years later, she had worked in nearly every department at the resort. When she returned to the U.S. she felt confident of pursuing a career in the hospitality industry. It felt like the perfect job for a young professional who loved meeting new people and exercising her growing sense of wanderlust.
"There is literally no place on the planet where you are not going to find a hotel," she says. "I can move anywhere and find work. I can also, with my work benefits, travel anywhere. Travel is a huge part of my personal life. I have an ongoing goal to visit as many countries as I am years old."
Back home, she took a job at the Westin hotel in Huntsville and began taking online classes from Cornell University in New York, one of the leaders in hospitality education. In 2016, she was tapped to help open an Elements hotel in Huntsville, a Marriott brand designed around sustainability and extended-stay guests.
When a company executive suggested to Swindell that she would be a good fit to help open the Moxy in Chattanooga, she was eager to make the leap. She had just visited the city as part of a bachelorette party and had been stunned to see the city's emerging millennial and Gen Z social culture.
In 2018, she arrived in Chattanooga to essentially be the face of the new property.
"It's been fantastic career-wise and socially," she says. "I feel like I'm thriving."
The Moxy brand began in 2014 with the opening of Moxy in Milan. In addition to the 52 existing properties, about 100 more are in the pipeline worldwide.