THE HOTEL INSIDER

Last week, while attending the 35th annual New York University International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference held at Manhattan's Marriott Marquis, hoteliers and industry watchers were buzzing about the rise of the select-service segment, which in leaner years proved extremely attractive to downscaled meeting budgets. Not surprisingly, with complimentary offerings like a hot breakfast, Wi-Fi, business center and gym use being standard fare, luxury and full-service hotels are finding it hard to woo back groups that traded down to this segment.

Cambria Suites, whose portfolio as of March 2013 stood at 19, has 26 properties in the development pipeline, including three in the New York City area. Two of those, in Manhattan, are scheduled to open in 2014: the 196-suite Cambria Suites Times Square and the 135-suite Cambria Suites Chelsea. With projects in Dallas, Phoenix and Rockville, Md., under way, the brand's push into urban markets is part of a targeted growth plan, says Mike Murphy, senior vice president of upscale brands, Choice Hotels International, who chatted with me at the NYU conference. A main focus of this $250 million effort, he says, is capturing more small group business. "We want to be in the 30 peak-night area. We think there is a big opportunity there for us, and we are going after it with great new products," says Murphy.

Among those products are Refill, 24/7 convenience stores with organic snacks; a barista bar featuring Wolfgang Puck coffee; Refresh, a 24-hour fitness center; and new, higher-quality food and beverage offerings, which will be rolled out across all properties by year's end. "The missing link was the group F&B offering, and we have completely revamped that, so it becomes a foundation for catering to events," says Murphy. 

Another new feature, which will debut later this year with the opening of the 130-suite Cambria Suites in White Plains, N.Y., a major commercial hub just outside of New York City, is the creation of working pods in common spaces, where guests can work or mingle in comfortable lounge enclaves, each featuring a TV. I will be getting a sneak peek of the pods later this month, so stay tuned for an update.

Leading the charge is the chain's new president and CEO, Kenneth Greene, a longtime executive with Wyndham Hotel Group, most recently as president and managing director, Asia Pacific region. Since taking the reins last September,  Greene has announced a slew of multimillion-dollar renovations at properties to bring them up to new brand standards, as well as a robust development pipeline that will see the addition of two properties later this year in Waterloo and Kingston, Ontario. They will be followed by the opening in fall 2014 of the brand's flagship hotel, the 556-room Delta Toronto. The 45-story new-build, which will be the chain's poster child for future properties and its strategy to become "the next generation four-star premium hotel chain," will anchor the new Southcore Financial Centre mixed-use complex. Featuring 15,000 square feet of meeting space and a green roof, it will be connected to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Union Station and the PATH network by an enclosed pedestrian walkway.

A few hotels were ousted from Delta's portfolio as part of the chain's brand repositioning, including the 1,590-room Delta Chelsea Hotel, Toronto's largest, which the company has managed for 37 years. Delta's management contract with the property ends at the end of June, at which time it will be renamed the Chelsea Toronto Hotel and become the first in Canada to be managed by Hong Kong-based Langham Hospitality Group. "It was a tough decision to part ways," Greene told the Toronto Star.

Central to Delta's brand repositioning is a brandwide rollout of its new ModeRoom guest rooms, which feature a clean, modern design and are laden with technology features for the road warrior. I got a firsthand look at the 456-room Delta Montreal, which has just completed a two-and-a-half year, US$20 million renovation. The results are stunning. Its sister property, the 711-room Delta-Centreville, which features 35,000 square feet of meeting space, is in the midst of a US$12 million upgrade, which will wrap up in spring 2015.

Don't expect to see any Delta-flagged hotels popping up on this side of the border any time soon. According to company executives, Canada has an abundance of opportunities for chain growth that will keep them on home soil for the unforeseeable future.

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On April 22, hundreds of thousands of people across the globe celebrated the 33rd annual Earth Day, pitching in to clean up local roads and waterways, abandoned parking lots and city parks in what has become an annual rite of spring. Likewise, many hotels showed their commitment to the environment and their local communities with programs that ranged from a naturalist-led beach clean to shutting the lights in all unoccupied rooms, and employees turned out to volunteer at dozens of local green efforts.

Members of Englewood, Colo.-based Destination Hotels & Resorts, a collection of 40 luxury properties, demonstrated their ongoing commitment to DHR's companywide Destination Earth initiative, which was launched in 2008, with a slew of interesting campaigns and promotions, including the following:

• At the 120-room L'Auberge del Mar near San Diego, which reopened five years ago after a multimillion-dollar renovation, employees and guests took part in a "Paddle Out" with the San Diego Lagoon Preservation Committee, in which they paddled out from and surfed back into a nearby lagoon at a designated time to publicize the need to preserve the earth's waterways.

• In Chicago, at the 213-room MileNorth Hotel, guests received gifts of seed packets and a note from management saying the property would donate one tree to be planted at a local tree farm for each guest who checked in on Earth Day.

• Employees at the 219-room Hamilton Park in Florham, N.J., were rewarded with raffle tickets and the chance to a win a $150 prize for taking public transportation to work, bringing in their old cell phones and cameras to recycle, forgoing bottled water and helping the hotel chef tend the property's private garden.

Myriad other properties joined in the effort as well, including these:
 
• In a symbolic move, MGM Resorts International celebrated the day by launching a corporate social responsibility website, "Inspiring Our World," which details the  company's advances in diversity, community and environmental responsibility. "Customers today are interested not only in the exceptional service a business provides, but also whether it serves the community and planet with the same enthusiasm. We want them to know we are passionate about both," said Jim Murren, chairman and CEO, in a statement. Over the past five years, MGM Resorts have achieved six LEED Gold certifications, saved more than 300 million kilowatt ours of electricity and 1.9 billion gallons of water, and has increased its recycling rate by more than 420 percent (www.mgmresorts.com/csr).

• Caesars Entertainment's eight Las Vegas properties -- Bally's Las Vegas, Caesars Palace, Harrah's Las Vegas, Flamingo Las Vegas, The Quad, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino and Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino -- demonstrated the company's commitment to CodeGreen, its environmental-responsibility strategy, by hosting local farmers' markets on property, as well as giving away 16 EnergyFit audits (two per property) to promote energy efficiency at home. "Earth Day is commemorated only once a year, but our commitment to the environment is demonstrated through sustainable practices at our resorts every day," said Gwen Migita, right, vice president of sustainability and community affairs at Caesars Entertainment (www.caesars.com/codegreen).

• Boutique properties also stepped up to the cause. The 62-room Hotel Griffon in San Francisco and the 102-room Bristol Hotel in San Diego, both members of the San Francisco-based Greystone Hotels Collections, announced that they will donate a portion of all meeting and guest-room revenue generated on Earth Day to a leading environmental group.

Revenue managers are the great and powerful Oz of the hotel world. Largely nameless and faceless, they wield incredible power in setting room rates, which ultimately play a huge role in determining which piece of group business gets priority booking over another. Last week, I got to go behind the curtain for a no-holes barred sit down with Dennis Benford, director of revenue management for the 757-room Hilton Baltimore, which is on track to book 130,000 group room night this year.

Q. The revenue manager has gotten a bad rap with meeting planners. Why is that?
A. A lot of sales people use the revenue manager as an out when they have to turn down a client's RFP. In reality, the sales manager has a voice in pitching the value of the business. Sometimes they just don't want to work for it, and they use the approved rate as the reason the group was declined.

Q. Do you ever speak directly to the meeting client?
A. Not usually, but I have on several occasions. Sometimes, it's actually easier to speak with them directly, than keep going back and forth through the sales manager handling the account.

Q. How do you calculate room rates?
A. There are a lot of factors that come in to play. I look at the calendar, in terms of busy business months, like October, and slow times like Christmas week, but I also look at a group's booking pattern, their pick up vs. their booking, and what else we have committed on the books. Also, I look at how much meeting space they are asking for vs. their room needs, as well as the F&B budget.

Q. Once you set rates, are they in stone?
A. No. Actually, we deliberately quote $20 to $30 above the market price, because group clients expect you to negotiate and trade. On the leisure side, however, the set rate is  based purely on historical transient demand.

Q. How far out do you set rates?
A. Right now, the system can set rates out to 2022, but we actually have business on the books for 2034, and so we are improvising a bit. That said, we are still renegotiating future business that was contracted in 2008, when the market value was at least 5 percent higher than what it would command today.

Q. How difficult is it for a piece of new business to get a foot in the  door?
A. Very high, but if they are willing to be flexible with  dates, we will take a chance and book them over soft calendar dates. That way, if they fall off on their room pick up, we don't go crazy because we know it won't cost us other group business or leisure travelers.

Q. Have you ever given the OK to oversell the hotel?
A. There are times when we do oversell the hotel based on historical knowledge of what we already have booked and what we are currently booking. We might have business that was booked, let’s say, five years ago that now has current history of performing under their commitment with us. In that kind of situation we will need to mitigate the loss. Overselling is a delicate situation and done with caution and the most up-to-date information. I have to admit, I did not sleep well during some oversell situations that I recall. In fact, I don't think I slept at all.
 

This week, I visited the Stamford, Conn.-based headquarters of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide for a firsthand look at the company's new creative design lab. Upon entering, the soft lines, warm wood and long brown leather sofas in the main lobby-style meeting/entertainment space clearly indicate this is the epicenter of innovation, leading to several brand-dedicated mock-up rooms where fresh creativity and design are hammered out. After this, I will never look at bedroom lighting the same way again.

Developed as an idea incubator and launched less than five months ago, The Starwood Experience is where the company brings its investors, customers, marketing partners, and associates to educate and immerse them in the exactly what makes each of the chain's brands a unique experience. "When we moved to this space, we asked ourselves, what would Starwood look like if it was its own brand?," said Mike Tiedy, senior vice president, global brand design, who gave a tour of a facility where corporate identity is made palpable. "Here you can touch the carpet, walk around the room, move the furniture around and test out the lighting," noted Tiedy, who hails from Nike and Nordstrom, two well-established retail brands. "We are constantly inventing and tossing ideas around, and sometimes out" -- like the tilt angle of a bed, where to place electrical outlets, and whether to have one beside chair or two. What's more, no mock-up room stays the same for long. Both the Westin and Sheraton brands are on a three-year branding cycle, during which re-design needs are assessed.

For example, Sheraton wrapped up a three-year, multibillion-dollar overhaul in 2011, but it's not resting on that achievement. Designers are already hard at work ensuring the brand stays fresh on the global scene with important elements like the must-have built-in TVs in the bathroom mirror, a staple in high-end Asian hotels. Meanwhile in the suave Le Méridien room, color schemes, carpet piling and patterns, lighting and fixtures are all under scrutiny in advance of a major global rebranding initiative. And the Westin room? Well, let's just say I was ready to move in, set up house and call down to the Starwood in-house cafeteria for room service.

Branding done well, says Brian Povinelli, global brand leader for Westin and Le Méridien, is a dedicated science married to art that goes way beyond fancy logos, clever marketing quips or gimmicky giveaways. "From a design standpoint, thea brand has to be seamless," says Povinelli, a transplant from Reebok (another fierce retail brand). "A lot of styling goes into the Le Méridien brand, because it is centered around art, which in turn should inspire dialogue and discovery at every touch point." Translation? Le Méridien is one serious stylish brand and a major force to be reckoned with as it flexes its muscle over the next few years.

And Povinelli's advice to meeting planners looking to brand their meeting: "Ask what is the purpose of your meeting, and then lead with that one, single-minded thought, so people don't have to wonder why they are in the meeting."

To mark the occasion, LHW has launched a marketing campaign that focuses on the correlation between cinema and travel in a very unique way. The new "LHW in the Movies" section of the group's website features 85 films and their corresponding hotels, including behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes from filming. The DVDs in my little suitcase included the light-hearted Notting Hill (the 137-room The Ritz London); the psychological British thriller The Unknown (featuring the 304-room Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin), and, the ultimate Vegas' heist flick, Ocean's 11 (at the 3,421-room, Bellagio Towers, Las Vegas).

The movies are a powerful marketing tool. According to a recent global benchmarking survey by the Belgium-based independent tourism research firm TCI Research, some 40 million international tourists in 2012 chose their destination because of a film they saw shot in that country. In terms of destination marketing that's a pretty compelling statistic, and one that certainly resonated with LHW when looking for a unique pitch to promote and celebrate the strength and longevity of its luxury portfolio. "We take pride in our 85-year legacy of helping people gain insight into other cultures, and offering them the opportunity to experience the authenticity of the destinations they have chosen," said Ted Teng, LHW's president and CEO.

Of the original founding group of 38 independently owned hotels that banded together in 1928 to market themselves under one umbrella, six iconic properties, including the Ritz Madrid in Spain and the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France, are still part of LHW, whose portfolio today numbers 430 hotels and resorts in 80 countries. In addition, its salesforce has grown from one Europe-based office to 24 sales offices across the world, including a dedicated  meetings and group team.

Don't expect LHW's cinematic romance to end Sunday night. Tucked into that marvelous little suitcase was an announcement that LHW has partnered with Italian filmmakers, and seven of its remarkable properties are featured in a film premiering March 2013 in Rome -- Viaggio Sola (I Travel Alone) -- about the adventures of a behind-the-scenes hotel inspector. Popcorn anyone?

For more fun LHW movie facts, behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes from filming, visit www.lhw.com/inthemovies.