Four Seasons this year returned to the top of the 2013 Hotel
Chain Survey's luxury tier, while boutique chain Kimpton Hotels &
Restaurants bested numerous brands with much wider distribution to become
travel buyer respondents' highest-rated upper upscale brand.
[Please click here to
view the digital edition of the 2013 Hotel Chain Survey, featuring all rankings
and downloadable as a pdf.]
As buyers face increased demand and very little U.S. hotel
development in the upper tiers, Four Seasons also was one of the few to buck
the trend of decreasing scores in the luxury tier. It held its score steady from 2012, which propelled it to the top of the rankings. Last year's top
luxury brands, Starwood Hotels & Resorts' St. Regis and Luxury Collection,
slipped to seventh in the tier.
Besides Four Seasons, only two other luxury brands did not
experience a drop in overall score compared with last year: JW Marriott, which
also held its score steady, and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, which slightly
improved. Several other brands also were new to the list and thus did not have
year-over-year comparisons: Loews and Sofitel, returning to the survey for the
first time since 2010; Shangri-La, Conrad and Peninsula, each of which has not
been on the survey for about a decade; and Grand Hyatt and the Trump Hotel
Collection, both making their chain survey debuts. Brands appear in the survey only
if they are used by a sufficient percentage of respondents.
In addition to giving Four Seasons the top overall score, a
position it has held for all but two years in the chain survey since 2006,
buyers also rated it highest in all but three of the survey's criteria.
Business travelers are Four Seasons' "most frequent and most demanding
guests," according to Four Seasons vice president of corporate and travel
industry sales in the Americas Don Jones, and the brand's performance, even in
the age of budget belt-tightening, stems from its experience tailoring service
to them. Though memories of the stigma of luxury travel from the 2008 economic
downturn are fresh, those brands seek to counter the idea that luxury service
and amenities are frivolous expenses.
"Luxury became synonymous with the unnecessary, but the
value of Four Seasons is that we provide essentials," Jones said. "What's
essential to business travelers today is what allows them maximum productivity."
Having listened to Four Seasons' corporate customers, mostly
executives, speak at a recent forum, Jones said he was struck at how busy most
were, to the point that even standing in a line was an intolerable waste of
time. As such, recent service innovations include such time-savers as check-in
from cars via an app and offering room service orders to go for flights, he
said.
Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean for New York University's
Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management, noted that such
services also are examples of how luxury properties are adapting to appeal to
the Millennial traveler.
"A challenge to the luxury industry has been how to
seem welcoming for travelers with a different view of luxury and convenience,"
he said. "If a traveler is wearing shorts, a T-shirt and athletic shoes,
the experience of entering among the mahogany wall paneling won't have the same
satisfaction."
Four Seasons earned a healthy premium over its competitors
in its score for consistency, which Jones said was one of its core strengths.
That also applies to group travel arrangement and facilities, areas in which
Four Seasons also was top-rated in the survey.
"Companies today, especially in the meetings and
incentive space, are very risk-averse," Jones said. "Think about all
that can go wrong that can jeopardize the outcome: problems with the A/V when
the CEO is presenting, lunch isn't served correctly, poor food quality or
lighting or an environment that's not right. That's where we can deliver the
strongest product, consistently, to eliminate that risk."
Among the other top brands in the tier, Shangri-La, a Hong
Kong-based luxury brand with a large presence in Asia but no U.S. properties,
received top marks for its in-room business amenities and was ranked second
overall. Buyers named Marriott's Ritz-Carlton brand, ranked third, for best
service and overall value.
Kimpton's Ascent
In the upper upscale tier, the 60-property Kimpton chain
also earned top scores across all but two criteria in the survey in only its
second appearance, having last appeared in 2010. As with last year's top upper
upscale brand—Starwood's W Hotels, which slipped to eighth this year—the
results showed that budding boutique brands continue to win favor with buyers.
"What's interesting is the hotels with the largest
networks aren't necessarily the strongest," said Henry Harteveldt, a
travel industry consultant and partner at Hudson Crossing. "Kimpton is
very localized and takes a high degree of pride in the personalization of the
service it can deliver to a guest."
While Kimpton might not be as immediately associated with
business travel as such legacy upper upscale brands as Hilton or Marriott, the
brand's senior vice president of sales and catering, Christine Lawson, said
corporate travel is Kimpton's "bread-and-butter business" and that
the brand continually is making new inroads with corporate travel buyers.
"As we've added more hotels and more cities to our
portfolio, we've become a trusted brand with them and their travelers,"
Lawson said. "It's enabled us to show what we're made of: not just the
design and uniqueness of our hotels, but our Wi-Fi capabilities, being
sensitive to what's going on from a health and fitness perspective and our
lobbies and our social space."
As many upper-tier hotels now are doing, Kimpton has evolved
its business center and lobbies to reflect more of a "coffeehouse
mentality," with communal spaces rather than set-apart areas with
computers and printers, Lawson explained. On the fitness side, the brand has
added such touches as public bicycle programs and yoga mats in all guest rooms,
she added.
InterContinental Hotels & Resorts and Hyatt Hotels and
Resorts tied for the second-highest overall rating in the upper upscale tier,
improving upon respective third- and fourth-place finishes in 2012. Hyatt also
had the top score for meetings facilities and tied with Marriott Hotels &
Resorts for the top data quality.
All three of those brands, however, were among those with
year-over-year drops in overall scores in the survey. A few brands in the tier
improved their scores from last year, including Wyndham, Omni and Sheraton,
which recently had billions of dollars of investment in renovation for its
portfolio. Besides Kimpton, brands returning to the survey this year included
Starwood's Le Meridien and Millennium, each of which have had appearances in
past years but not in 2012, and Carlson Rezidor's Radisson Blu brand, which
this year for the first time was scored as a separate brand.
Negotiations for corporate programs in both the upper
upscale and luxury tiers should prove more difficult for buyers this year,
particularly in the United States. Demand in each of those tiers increased by
1.6 percent year over year during the first seven months of the year, according
to Smith Travel Research, while upper upscale supply was up by only 0.3 percent
and luxury supply decreased by 0.1 percent. Upper upscale demand, in fact, hit
its highest monthly level ever in July, STR reported, and upper upscale hotels
during the first seven months of 2013 were more than 80 percent occupied for
more than one-third of the time. The firm projects average daily rates in the
luxury tier will increase year over year by 5.4 percent this year and again in
2014, and in the upper upscale tier, STR expects an increase of 4.2 percent
this year and 4.6 percent next year.
Hotel brands in the luxury tier increasingly are looking at
expansion opportunities in the Asia/Pacific region and other areas as opposed
to the United States. Recent and upcoming openings for Four Seasons, for
example, include St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia, Shenzhen in China and a
renovation and takeover of the Hotel Westcliff in Johannesburg, though it also
has a new Orlando property opening next year, Jones said.
Kimpton, on the other hand, has several U.S. openings
planned during the next few years, including properties in Austin, Milwaukee,
San Antonio, Palm Springs and Pittsburgh, Lawson said.
"Not only are we growing in key markets but also in
secondary and tertiary markets that have a lot of opportunities to meet the
needs of corporate and meeting clients," she said. "International is
definitely on the radar, but we still have a lot to do at home."
This report
originally appeared in the Oct. 14, 2013, edition of Business Travel News.