“Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterward to explain that it was not possible.”
– Cesar Ritz
“‘When we had six or seven Hot Shoppes, I'd drive to every one of them every day, sometimes twice a day. Every time I visited, I'd find something was wrong: the root beer was flat or wasn't cold; the lights hadn't been turned on at night; or the barbeque machine wasn't clean. There were just a lot of things our management didn't do or didn't see. So I decided then that if we were going to have a lot of places, we had to hire supervisors to do what I was doing - going from one store to the next, training managers.”
- J. Willard Marriott (father of Bill)
Feel free to keep your nose tilted slightly upwards if you want. While "hotelier to the kings" Cesar Ritz, the "king of luxury hoteliers," created late 19th-century palaces, each grand in a different way, monuments to the cities they were located, the new king of luxury hotels took a very different path. J.W. “Bill” Marriott turned a business his father started as root beer stands, moving to motels and then perfecting a factory for hotels of all types, churning out thousands of hotels, full service, limited service, all-suite. They may not serve caviar on silver platters but are a comfortable place to lay down for the night, dependable and functional. One might say, it's the antithesis of uber luxury which was Ritz's forte, where waste is acceptable as the artisan works to create something unique and special.
The Ritz-Carlton in Langkawi, Malaysia is one of 180 luxury hotels Marriott International has in its... [+]
Yet today, every way you slice and dice it, Marriott means luxury, all types of luxury, from grande dames to the endless party and the more mundane type. Yes, the same Marriott that you find along highways with Residence Inn, Fairfield and Courtyard, and that same reliable namesake Marriott with the picture of its current Executive Chairman and his father, the founder, in the hallway, a copy of his book alongside the bible in the nightstand draw. Whether you are in Texas or China, you can get a good burger or Buffalo wings from room service. You’ll leave for the next city with additional Marriott Rewards points in your account, taking you one step closer to that next vacation. It’s a formula that like the most efficient assembly line works and has arguably worked better than any of its many competitors over the years. It’s all about execution. Nothing fancy. Straight up the middle again, again and again running the same play, till you’re in the end zone.
With that in mind, it makes one aspect of the recently completed merger between Marriott International and Starwood Hotels and Resorts particularly interesting. The coupling created not only a giant hotel company but a large footprint of luxury brands, eight or nine depending on how you count them. Most of all, there is a foundation for significant growth. For a company whose history in the segment spans only two decades, it’s an impressive feat.
By the numbers, it’s big. The Marriott International portfolio today includes 363 luxury hotels in 61 countries with 180 luxury hotels in the pipeline, including 20 new countries. Openings will be coming at a fast and furious pace. In 2017 St. Regis will debut a polo resort in Dubai, plus hotels in Shanghai and Cairo. Luxury Collection will come to Napa Valley, Panama City, Panama, Los Cabos and Havana. W Hotels has on tap Amman, Tel Aviv, Shanghai and Panama City. The Ritz-Carlton will go into Geneva, Langkawi, Jeddah, Astana and open a Reserve in Los Cabos. Bulgari will double its footprint with Beijing, Shanghai and Dubai while EDITION opens in Bangkok and Barcelona. JW Marriott will fly the flag in Vancouver, Singapore, and Vietnam.
W Hotels is one of nine luxury brands now under the Marriott International umbrella. Pictured is a... [+]
And while today and tomorrow look bright, it’s the longer term future of its luxury flags that has Marriott International Chief Brand Officer Tina Edmundson particularly charged up. She points to St. Regis, with 38 open and operating hotels alongside Ritz-Carlton with 92, to her an indication of the opportunity to grow many of the brands that are now under one roof. EDITION, Reserve, and Bulgari may have 10 hotels combined but are ripe to expand as well. Being the leading player in luxury should open more doors and help close even more deals for new hotels.
While naysayers see clutter, Edmundson, and her colleagues see opportunity. In fact, she can survey the future with the insight of having overseen Starwood’s luxury brands, St. Regis, Luxury Collection and W Hotels, before making the move south to Bethesda, Maryland in 2008.
“It’s a really exciting time for us as we bring these two companies together,” Edmundson told Forbes.com in advance of Marriott's first big move. It plans to create a global sales team that will sell just its luxury flags. She adds, “We think about the merger as a perfect marriage. The strengths of the two companies are perfectly complimentary. Marriott International has fantastic operational expertise…Starwood has been focused on innovation and a fresh take on brand marketing. It’s a super exciting combination.”
Marriott International is bringing its JW Marriott brand into the luxury fold alongside St. Regis,... [+]
Edmundson sees having nine brands in the luxury space as a big plus. “The merger has attracted strong luxury talent. People want to work for the best. We have unrivaled career opportunities,” she says.
But what can you as a luxury customer expect?
The executive says despite all the work of integrating the two global companies, the largest emphasis is making sure the focus remains on the customer experience, particularly for its luxury brands. One part of the new structure that should help is all luxury brands will have a regional head enabling them to more easily cooperate and share best practices, and perhaps keep them outside the factory-like approach it takes to manage thousands of the moderately priced hotels.
Ever since the merger was announced, skeptics have said there are too many brands and have predicted Marriott might chop some of the weaker ones, something executives top to bottom has denied. Edmundson doesn’t forecast a dramatic new direction either. “I don’t know we are changing brands’ positioning materially just yet. We’ll take some time to dive deeper. What we are focused on is pushing the brands apart. We believe (currently) they are positioned appropriately,” she says.
So while Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis may “sit in the same swim lane,” Ritz-Carlton is about creating lifetime memories. “The customer is looking for the hotel to play a role as facilitator – what’s new and fabulous in a destination so they can walk away with indelible memories, and at the core is ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” On the other hand, she says, “The guest for St. Regis is what we call a luminary and has a stronger bent towards connoisseurship and status. They are looking for extraordinary moments in the hotel.” She points to how the brand has taken the signature mural in the King Cole Bar and Bloody Mary from its flagship New York location and translated it around the world.
Instead of too many luxury flags, she counters, “We want to tease apart the nuances. There is plenty of space in luxury for these brands.” While detractors believe that Marriott has watered down Ritz-Carlton’s do anything the guest asks approach that founder Horst Schulze pursued when he licensed the Ritz name, Edmundson thinks Marriott’s analytical Left Brain approach to the market will be helpful. She says, “We have robust data insights and back of the house (analytics) that enables us to deliver targeted experiences at each of our brands. We have courtside seats to the global luxury industry that is very cutting edge.”
How will Marriott deal with soft brands such as Autograph Collection and Luxury Collection, the former that includes four-and-five star hotels, the latter a pure five-star market play? “I don’t think we will combine them,” she says, adding, “We think brands help people make decisions. Customers automatically know Luxury Collection hotels have 24/7 room service, full-service spas, and all amenities automatically associated with a five-star hotel.” Autograph Collection combines hotels that range from upper four stars, but with unique attributes, to fully five-star properties, and she says if a hotel owner wants to switch from Autograph to Luxury Collection, Marriott will be listening. That said, owners often don’t want to spend the money to update collateral and signage that switching affiliations require unless they can be assured of getting a return-on-investment. One former hotel executive told me as long as owners see Marriott continuing to drive bookings and bring big corporate contracts, groups, and meetings, “most of what you guys write about some of their brands going away is nonsense.”
Still, there are many questions that will impact customers yet to be answered. While Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest will combine, there isn’t word on what will happen with Ritz-Carlton’s separate rewards program and its own affinity credit card. Could that be expanded to a Marriott Luxury Card, or at least be extended to St. Regis and Luxury Collection hotels, which probably are the closest match to Ritz-Carlton? “It’s definitely something we will consider,” Edmundson says, citing Ritz-Carlton’s success in that area.
Asked if she has any words of advice for former Starwood colleagues who will now be moving to Marriott, Edmundson says, “I would tell them they are going to be extremely happy. The operational expertise and structure Marriott brings is second to none.” For consumers, she says the answer is “more luxury in more destinations.”
It wasn’t until Marriott bought a 49 percent stake in Ritz-Carlton in the mid-'90s that the company could claim any real connection to the category. It gained majority ownership in 1998, and now, less than two decades later it is the biggest player in luxury hotels and in a position to grow even larger. With luxury travel expected to grow at a faster pace than hard luxury goods and overall travel, once again it looks like Bill Marriott finds himself and his company well positioned even if day-to-day operations are now run by CEO Arne Sorenson.
Speaking of Mssrs. Marriott and Ritz, perhaps the two men have more in common than one might assume. While Ritz is best known for serving royalty and the upper classes, he too was an empire builder, operating hotels that spanned from South Africa to Egypt and a dozen cities across Europe, no easy feat in the late 19th century. Or as his wife once said, “César's suitcases were never completely unpacked; he was always either just arriving from or departing upon a new journey.” For Marriott's post-merger trip, perhaps some stylish luggage is on tap.
