2010年美国酒店管理公司概况（English）

　　Smooth openings hinge on owner, operator strategies

　　By Stephanie Ricca, Editor in Chief

　　【迈点网】National Report–In an environment where every day and every dollar are scrutinized more than ever, hoteliers are challenged to get properties open just as seamlessly and often with fewer resources.

　　But not many hoteliers have to do it in a spotlight as bright as the one surrounding Aria Resort and Casino, the centerpiece of Las Vegas’ CityCenter development, which opened in December. The project is enormous—12,000 employees spread across 67 acres—but what Aria president and COO Bill McBeath learned during the last leg of Aria’s opening process was more about the value of careful planning than anything else.

　　The project had been in development for about six years when funding hit a snag in March 2009. MGM Mirage’s joint venture partner Dubai World filed a lawsuit, putting the necessary cashflow in jeopardy.

　　“When your partner says they’re not going to pay you more money, and you’re at the key point for ordering supplies and FF&E, and you don’t have money for down payments, everything gets put on hold,” McBeath said. “By the time we reached a formal resolution between the two parties we had lost 60 days. Then it was a mad dash to the finish line.”

　　Have a plan

　　It was an organized mad dash though because McBeath and his team were working from a detailed pre-opening plan devised at the project’s start.

　　“The organizational planning and assignments, from the toothpicks to the tomatoes, was scheduled out,” he said. “Our pre-opening critical paths were established with milestones by day one. If you don’t have a critical path tied to a milestone, you’re going to miss something. You’re always going to miss things, but this way you can mitigate that. If you don’t know when you missed something, you can’t mitigate it.”

　　McBeath said at CityCenter, pre-opening efficiency meant not wasting a single second.

　　“We spent so much time planning because we knew that as soon as we loaded the building, if the logistics weren’t razor-sharp and we didn’t execute flawlessly, we would lose training time that we needed to satisfy the tremendous expectation of the consumer,” he said. “Every second was precious. Every minute was a perishable commodity.”

　　Hersha Hospitality Management’s openings are on a smaller scale but no less planned. Naveen Kakarla, EVP of the third-party management company, said the pre-opening plan is more critical than ever because owners are more involved in the daily decisions.

　　“Owners want a set number against which they can manage their opening,” Kakarla said. “They want to know what figures into that number so there’s no fluff.

　　“Owners are more involved,” he continued. “They’re still allowing us to manage; they just want more information than they ever have before because there’s more risk for them. I can’t say they’re behaving any differently than I would.”

　　Hersha third-party manages more than 70 properties, concentrated primarily in the Northeast U.S. As manager, Hersha’s corporate and regional teams are responsible for coordinating construction, implementing brand standards, hiring all personnel and keeping communication lines open between owner, management company and brand.

　　Not only is Kakarla on the owner’s timeline, but his company’s pre-opening operations also must jibe with brand expectations.[page]

　　For example, Mark Nogal, VP of brand performance and sales support for Hilton Garden Inn, said every new or converted HGI has a task list by due date. For a new-built property, the list backs out 52 weeks in advance of opening.

　　“It’s a guideline,” Nogal said of the task list. “But at our most successful hotels, the leaders tend to use it as their bible of getting tasks done.”

　　Overall, it’s a compromise that brands, managers and owners say definitely is reachable in the current economy.

　　“The brands have been very aware and respectful of the challenges in this market,” Kakarla said. “Some of the conversations have more friction than others, but we’re all trying to do the same thing.”

　　Find the right people

　　Hoteliers walk a fine line these days when it comes to staffing a new hotel. On one hand, key personnel—namely the GM and director of sales—are critical for managing the opening process and ensuring the hotel will have guests when the doors open. But management companies can’t hire line-level employees too far in advance of opening or they risk spending too much on payroll before the hotel is in operation. As a result, training can suffer.

　　McBeath had to ensure that once Aria started paying staff, those people would have uniforms, employee cafeterias and training rooms and shifts to accommodate a workforce of more than 11,000 people.

　　“I would have liked to have had more money for training,” he said. “We were training on the fly, but thankfully 35 percent of our employees came from existing MGM Mirage properties.”

　　On Nov. 1, CityCenter employed 600 people, McBeath said. By opening day in mid December, it was 11,000.

　　The notion of borrowing payrolled employees from an open hotel to staff a new one isn’t new, and it has helped Kakarla and his team open properties as efficiently as possible with the right employees.

　　“We have to put associates through brand training and Hersha training,” he said. “We have to make sure the personnel can meet the hotel’s needs. But there’s always a clever solution. We may end up task-forcing a few positions because times are tough, but it works out fine for the hotel and the owners.”

　　Sales and revenue management

　　Where new hotels can benefit the most from the recession is in revenue management and the availability of sales help, both from the management company and the brand.

　　Americas Best Value Inn, Vantage Hospitality’s select-service brand, made many corporate hires in 2009 to beef up the support services offered to its owner members.

　　“Nowadays, it’s really about understanding from our owners what their expectations are for reservations contribution,” said Jordan Langlois, VP of brand management at Vantage Hospitality. “More often than not, owners expect a flood of reservations and that’s not always the case. The brands and owners need a clear, realistic path of what’s going to happen in terms of revenue. This is not just opening the floodgates, flipping the light on and watching the phones light up.”

　　Vantage has added more to its revenue management staff in particular to help members set expectations.

　　Craig Leitch, VP of sales support and assurance at Vantage, said members want more, so the brand can offer more.

　　“We ask our owners for their numbers, then we run them by our revenue management team,” he said. “As we get closer, 90 days out, we’ll tell them, ‘We think you’re going to run 40 percent occupancy for the first three months, so with housekeepers cleaning 15 rooms per day you’re going to need 10 housekeepers and five front-desk clerks,’—things like that.”[page]

　　Some top markets still have oversupply concerns

　　By Chris Crowell, Associate Editor

　　Following a record-setting year for hotel openings in 2008, the industry has had an issue with over supply, which only makes bad economic conditions worse. Starting in 2010, many markets will start to get a breather as the number of openings has dropped considerably.

　　According to Bruce Ford, SVP, director of business development for Lodging Econometrics, the number of openings will continue to stay down until lending conditions improve.

　　“We’re reaching the point where there isn’t a lot more to take out of the pipeline,” Ford said. This hurts pipelines development and projects near completion, as project cancellations are at historical highs with 264,000 guestrooms—nearly 1,888 projects—cancelled or postponed in 2009.

　　But despite the big dropoff and historic numbers, some cities still will see significant supply come into the market this year and next.

　　“The crushing blow comes from a couple years of high supply growth and then getting more,” Ford said. For example, San Antonio saw a 4.5-percent increase in supply in 2007, then an 8.4-percent increase in 2008 and an 8-percent increase in 2009. And in 2010, San Antonio will see another 8.1-percent increase.

　　“You can add those numbers up and you start to say ‘Gee.’ … You could use some four-letter words if you want, but that’s more than a 29-percent increase in supply from 2007.”

　　There are several reasons for the high supply numbers for certain cities, according to Ford. First, there have been a lot of new brands introduced during the last eight years, which means they need to be introduced into the top 25 markets. Second, new demand generators for the city come online in a new area and create a lodging need where one didn’t exist previously.

　　Third, some cities that have new demand generators leave behind former demand generators and hotels with fewer people to serve. These cities become “under-demolished.”

　　“When new demand generators come in, old ones are less desirable,” Ford said. “The last big example was the airport in Denver. The old one closed—still 20 hotels around there to serve the airport that’s now gone. That happens on a smaller scale in many places.”

　　Brands build international opening teams

　　By Jason Q. Freed, Senior Editor

　　Because the hospitality industry is so tightly correlated with economic development, it’s no surprise that a significant portion of the major U.S. brand pipelines are made up of international projects.

　　Especially given the current domestic recession, many brands are looking to add franchisees or build new hotels overseas.

　　In 2009, there were 10,781 hotels opened throughout the world and 1,301 were in the U.S., according to Lodging Econometrics. The Asia/Pacific Region opened 604 hotels and 239 new hotels opened in Europe.[page]

　　Those numbers will be further skewed in 2010. The Asia/Pacific hotel development pipeline includes 948 hotels and the Middle East/Africa hotel development pipeline includes 456 hotels, according to January’s Global Construction Pipeline Report released by Smith Travel Research. Comparatively, there were 868 projects in the construction phase in the U.S. in December.

　　“Last year the [gross domestic product] growth in India was 6.07 percent and 8 percent in China. It was also very robust in Brazil,” said Hubert Joly, president and CEO of Carlson Hotels Worldwide, which has 70 percent of its current development pipeline focused overseas. “You focus on following the GDP growth.”

　　With international pipelines a major focus, many brands are cementing international partnerships to help get those properties open and running. Depending on whether brands manage their hotels or simply franchise, international structures differ.

　　Carlson, which has major developments in India, Europe and Middle East/Africa and the Asia Pacific, sets up its own operating teams in each of the hotspots.

　　“In Asia we have our own operations. We operate through our own teams in India and China,” Joly said. “Over time, our strategy is to control our own destiny in the key markets. There are probably 15 or 20 countries that really matter and it’s logical to have control of our own destiny in these parts of the world.”

　　Carlson builds “full-fledged” teams in these areas, including development, operations, marketing and sales departments. Joly said he is increasingly focused on global teams working cohesively because there are issues—such as branding ad distribution—that need to be dealt with at the global level.

　　Forty percent of Wyndham"s growth is international, so international strategies are very important for Wyndham brand leaders as well. All Wyndham brands are experiencing large growth in China, and the first Wyndham in Amsterdam recently opened.

　　Flo Lugli, EVP of Marketing for Wyndham, discussed how the brands market differently to international guests.

　　“We may market differently to our Wyndham Rewards members in the United Kingdom than our Wyndham Rewards members in the U.S. because they’re different types of customers,” she said. “They buy travel differently; they are looking for different types of things when they travel.”

　　Lugli said global brand positioning initiatives are installed at corporate headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., but that regional brand directors will adapt those initiatives for the local market.

　　“You really need to speak to the traveler in the language they understand, not only from a pure language perspective but in what really incents them to make travel decisions,” she said.

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