Several multibrand hotel companies are growing their upscale
and luxury boutique collections with an increasingly global eye, a strategy
they say is funneling more of those hotels into corporate programs.
In the first year of its Autograph Collection, announced in
2009, Marriott International added more than a dozen boutique, independent
hotels and aims to have 40 signed contracts by year-end, said Kip Vreeland,
Marriott's vice president in charge of the collection. Marriott's initial focus
was on hotels in the United States and Canada, but in May it added to the
collection its first four hotels in Europe. It intended to expand the portfolio
to other regions.
"We've gone into South America and Central America and
met with a number of owners around there," Vreeland said. "Asia will
be coming at the end of this year."
Choice Hotels International, which in October 2008 launched
its Ascend Collection of upscale boutique hotels, also has global aspirations,
according to brand vice president Stacy Ragland. The Ascend Collection now comprises
61 properties in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. Ragland said Choice
is exploring Latin America and further global growth is not out of the
question.
Other collections already have a global footprint. Accor
launched MGallery a few months prior to Ascend Collection's debut, and it now includes
35 hotels across five continents, including its first property in London, added
this year. Accor plans for the collection to reach 100 properties by 2015. Starwood's
Luxury Collection, launched back in 1995, counts more than 80 hotels across six
continents.
Brand leaders noted increasing use of these collections' properties
within corporate programs. Once properties become part of the Autograph
Collection, for example, their business traveler ratios generally increase from
about one in 10 guests to about one in three, Vreeland said. "If one
independent hotel wants to go in and meet with the company, that company is
going to be really careful about their time," he added. "When they're
a part of Marriott, we can load rates into our system and right off the bat
expose them to these companies through our sales engines."
For buyers, the collections present an alternative to
somewhat cookie-cutter rooms in line with rigid brand standards. While Marriott
monitors Autograph Collection properties through guest satisfaction surveys and
occasional site checks, the properties do not have to conform to specific brand
standards and are identified as Marriott properties only by an exterior plaque
and, for 90 days after they join, a welcome letter inside guest rooms, Vreeland
said.
"These hotels have to stand on their own," he
said.
Ascend Collection has created a whole new market for Choice's
corporate buyers, Ragland said. Although Choice during the past few years has
expanded its upscale Cambria Suites brand, the vast majority of its properties are
in the midprice and economy segment.
"Corporate buyers are extremely thrilled, as we have
something else to offer them," Ragland said. "Obviously, this helps
the properties, too, letting them reach customers they've never reached."
Naturally, boutique collections are much easier for hotel
companies to build than their own boutique brands. Starwood often is credited
with pioneering the boutique brand in the late 1990s by launching W, which now
has more than 40 properties, but others have had difficulties. Marriott in 2007
launched its own lifestyle brand, Edition, in partnership with famed boutique hotelier Ian Schrager. The company now is facing a lawsuit from the first Edition-branded
hotel, a property in Honolulu that accused Marriott of failing to rapidly
develop the brand in line with earlier projections.