How it started
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 the HemisFair '68 World's Fair.
La Quinta's first headquarters were in San Antonio. In 1999, the company announced its relocation, transferring over 100 jobs to its new site. The company cited a lack of nonstop flights from San Antonio International Airport as a reason for the move, wishing to be closer to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. La Quinta retained around 300 employees in San Antonio to handle accounting, information systems, and reservations.
2005 Blackstone acquisition
LQ Corporation, the parent company of the 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, La Quinta ranked as the 13th-largest hotel group worldwide, owning 360 hotels and franchising 250 under the names La Quinta Inn, La Quinta Inn & Suites, Baymont Inn & Suites, Woodfield Suites, and Budgetel (totaling about 65,000 rooms). A few months prior, Blackstone had purchased Wyndham Hotels, the group that would later acquire La Quinta in 2018.
In 2011, La Quinta phased out pay-per-view in-room entertainment to focus on allowing customers to use their own devices. In 2012, La Quinta launched an "Instant Hold" option, which allowed customers to make last-minute reservations using just their phone numbers.
From Wikipedia’s article on La Quinta Inns & Suites, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2