24 October 2012
By Jeff Higley
Editorial Director
jeff@hotelnewsnow.com
Story Highlights
- Individualistic, unique and experiential are three essential components for any lifestyle or boutique hotel.
- A focus on luxury makes a big difference.
- Plenty of secondary urban markets are ready for this type of property.
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| Jason Pomeranc (center) of Commune Hotels & Resorts makes a point as Patrick Goddard (left) of Trust Hospitality and Jay Coldren of Marriott International listen during last week’s Lifestyle/Boutique Hotel Development Conference. |
Panelists participating in the opening general session agreed such hotels need to be individualistic, unique and experiential.
“Label it what you’d like, for us it’s about having a local experience as a traveler,” said David Duncan, president of Denihan Hospitality Group, a New York-based privately held, full-service hotel management and development company that owns and operates 14 boutique hotels in major U.S. urban markets.
Patrick Goddard, president and CEO of Trust Hospitality, a management company with 27 hotels in its portfolio, said guests see the definition “as a reflection of themselves.” His company spends time developing a brand identity with a voice that caters to that.
He said things such as high-end finishes, personalized experiences from pre-arrival to post-departure, sensory elements and community engagement also are critical components.
“A boutique hotel or lifestyle hotel is a big hotel trying to be small, and that’s OK,” said Jason Pomeranc, co-chairman of Commune Hotels & Resorts, a management company formed by a partnership between Thompson Hotels and Joie de Vivre Hotels & Resorts that has more than 30 assets in its portfolio. “This sector is less about branding the hotels than letting the guest brand themselves. … Hotel brands and hotels individually are a similar reflection of one’s individuality.”
Large hotel branding companies, such as Marriott International, see the segment as a lucrative opportunity to augment their portfolios.
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| Jay Coldren Marriott International |
According to STR, parent company of HotelNewsNow.com, the segment includes 797 U.S. hotels. However, defining it can prove elusive, which means numbers tend to be exaggerated, Pomeranc said.
“We just see everything else being called ‘lifestyle,’” he said “There are lifestyle tires, lifestyle this, lifestyle that. It’s becoming a meaningless term. It’s being watered down in the world. We sort of struggle with, ‘OK, what does it mean? Where do we break the category, so we’re firmly in this sensory, experiential boat? Where do we really focus on consistency and quality and comfort?’”
“We’re all struggling with the title,” Duncan said. “How do you put it into a box? Call it what you may, but what we are trying to do is achieve outsized room rates on a design that is not overly expensive but is exceedingly appealing.”
The size equation
Duncan said size is an important factor when determining a boutique hotel. Denihan’s hotels range in size from 100 rooms to more than 600 rooms.
“Our sweet spot is really 200 to 400 rooms. It’s all about guest experience,” he said.
“It gets more complicated to personalize when you get above 300 or 400 rooms,” said Goddard, who added that Trust prefers hotels with between 60 and 250 rooms. “It’s not impossible, but it’s a little more challenging to personalize because then you get into automation. And when you get into automating personalization, it feels less like personalization.”
Coldren said Marriott’s lifestyle hotel portfolio ranges from the 3,000-room The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas that’s part of the Autograph Collection to a 15-room retreat.
“It’s a different psychology and a different attention and personalization in the boutique segment,” he said. “We see lifestyle spanning a wide gamut of hospitality options.”
Driving rate
With the repeated use of the word “luxury” throughout the 75-minute discussion, it was clear the panelists had a high expectation on their return on investments in the boutique segment. Data provided by STR indicates the segment’s year-to-date metrics are on the rise: room demand (+5.4%), occupancy (+3%), average daily rate (+4.5%), revenue per available room (+7.7%) and room revenue (+10.1%).
“The trick is not only building beautiful hotels that are not only consistently appealing from a design perspective, but achieving room rates everyday for 365 days a year,” Duncan said. “You see a tremendous amount of compression from the big hotel companies. Every one of them is launching something like this because they recognize that the local developer who built these beautiful hotels may or may not have the underlying platform of revenue management and business intelligence and underlying digital platforms to drive revenue.
“So if there’s something to been learned here,” he added, “it’s just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. And just because they come, doesn’t mean they’ll continue to.”
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| David Duncan Denihan Hospitality |
“I’m in a lot of markets where weekends are stronger than weekday,” Pomeranc said. “If you can yield those shoulder days properly, there’s a lot of money to be farmed out of that.”
“Some of our smaller hotels in non-primary cities don’t have function facilities and don’t have meeting space, and that does hurt you on weekends,” he said. “Realistically, you have to accept that reality that you might have to kind of shift that, and you could be doing $500 a night Monday through Thursday and $249 on weekends.
Some secondary major markets also present better opportunities for expansion possibilities, the panelists said.
“The gateway cities are highly competitive,” Goddard said. “So if you don’t have the capital to execute properly, look for a secondary market. We’ve had incredible success in places like Milwaukee and St. Louis, where we had RevPAR penetration levels well north of 150% compared to our branded competitors.”
Because the level of sophistication changes in secondary markets, the amount of capital on a per-key basis changes, and it’s a different investment in many ways, he said. “It’s hard to find financing in those secondary and tertiary markets.”
Goddard and Coldren said there are dozens of cities in the U.S. that could absorb the boutique type of product. Goddard pointed to Portland, Oregon, and Tampa, Florida, as prime examples. Duncan said that while his company is partial to coastal cities, markets such as Chicago and Austin, Texas, are quite appealing as well.
“Chicago has a big upstart in lifestyle, boutique product in a lot of areas,” said Pomeranc, whose company has two projects in Chicago in development. “What’s interesting is that it is a repositioning of Chicago; it has been a traditional hotel market or conventional hotel market, but they’re opening up to a different type of product.”
Pomeranc said Seattle, Washington, will “see a surge” and Sacramento, California, has been a strong market for Commune’s Citizen Hotel. He said secondary markets such as college towns, research centers and medical centers are prime candidates to add lifestyle hotel inventory.
Coldren said Marriott’s ambitions, particularly with the Autograph Collection, stretch beyond U.S. boundaries.
“We look at the opportunity for the entire continent of Europe is about boutique hotels and what that means for us …” he said. “Asia is a gigantic open field, and there are a lot of things you have to overcome to operate in those markets, but we see amazing potential there as well.”
MIAMI BEACH, Florida—Hotels that fit the definition of being a lifestyle hotel or boutique hotel are attracting consumers from all generations and countries, although some are more lucrative than others, according to panelists at the fourth annual Lifestyle/Boutique Hotel Development Conference.
Jay Coldren, VP of lifestyle brands for Marriott International, said Generation Y during the next five years will be double the size of the baby boomer generation and become the most influential generation in terms of buying power.
“We know this generation … they look for these lifestyle segmentations and these lifestyle experiences, more sensory travel experiences, discovery travel experiences, so we see a seismic shift in the industry to a more lifestyle preference,” he said.
Jason Pomeranc, co-chairman of Commune Hotels & Resorts, said he agreed with Coldren but there’s a big caveat: Don’t count out the baby boomers just yet.
“You have people in their 50s and 60s who are discovering that they don’t want to be in what they perceive as their parents’ hotels at this stage of their lives,” he said. “Internally, we call them the Grateful Dead (population). … The best part is they’re established financially so they’re going for the luxury end of the sector.”
David Duncan, president of Denihan Hospitality, said the “Grateful Dead traveler” doesn’t bat an eye at a $1,200 nightly rate, but they expect perfect service. That’s where the personalization aspect should be maximized.
“If I were a developer, I wouldn’t do it by myself,” Duncan said. “If you want to do it by yourself, I will introduce you to a handful of folks who have, and most of them have converted in their thinking to moving with partners like us.
“I would just leave you with the following: I hope (the business plan) is not only on revenue and (revenue-per-available-room) index, but net margin,” Duncan said. “If you had to pay 10% more to get 10% more, you’re not better off.”
The segment is appealing to travelers worldwide, the panelists said.
Duncan said inbound international travelers to the U.S. are prime targets for boutique hotels because they are 15% less likely to pick a branded hotel when planning their trips.
“This concept of self-expression and expressing yourself through your lodging is becoming increasingly commonplace,” said Patrick Goddard, president and COO of Trust Hospitality.
He said it’s prevalent in the Caribbean and Latin America.
“It’s the type of product we as developers need to put out there,” he said. “The outlook is extremely bright for the segment.”
—by Jeff Higley
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