Memphis – Hilton upscale extended-stay brand Homewood Suites
has begun a systemwide overhaul of its properties' public areas and guest amenities.
Homewood Suites vice president of brand performance support
Dawn Koenig said talk of a "holistic refresh" for the brand, first
launched in 1989, began about two years ago. The company hoped both to
accelerate Homewood Suites' growth while enticing owners, some of whom are
nearing the end of their initial 20-year licensing agreements, to stay with the
brand, she said.
"Over the course of the next five years, about 25
percent of our hotels are coming up for relicensing," Koenig said. "We
want to keep hotels in our system and want to make sure they're competitive
with what is built today."
Homewood tapped Chicago-based hospitality design firm Gettys
to lead the project. Gettys spent several weeks visiting Homewood properties and
those of its competitors, then determined the lounge and dining area in particular
needed a new design.
"[They said] the furniture in every room isn't
conducive to being comfortable to lounge," Koenig said. "That was the
big a-ha."
Homewood's Memphis property is among the first to undergo
the redesign, having invested about $430,000 in work last year from September
through December. Changes include more contemporary and varied seating and
tables in the dining and lounge area, new hardwood floors and a new outdoor
kitchen area.
The Memphis hotel is one of Homewood's older properties,
built on four acres of land, while newer prototypes are designed for much
smaller footprints. The idea was to make Memphis the "Cadillac" of
the redesigned properties, Koenig said, with elements that smaller and even
brand-new hotels could incorporate to "build a consistent platform across
the brand."
Systemwide renovations will take place in phases during the
coming years, though owners have some hard deadlines to meet. Hotels, for
example, are required to introduce new bedding in all rooms by the end of 2014
and new recycling receptacles by the end of this year.
Near-term growth for Homewood largely will be in the United
States, where more than 95 percent of its 300-plus hotels now reside. While the
brand is exploring opportunities outside North America, Koenig said, such
expansion likely would require new prototypes, considering the varied
definitions of "extended stay" in those markets. The extended-stay
hotel in the model of Homewood, Residence Inn, Staybridge Suites and similar
brands remains relatively foreign in many markets outside of North America. In
the United Kingdom, for example, extended-stay guests often opt for traditional
hotels, and in India, extended stay often is considered a stay of 30 days or
more in residence-like properties, Koenig said.
"Other [Hilton] brands have had to shrink the size of
the room or add a restaurant, so there are different things we have to do,"
she said. "We also want to make sure we have some good critical mass. If
we go international, we don't want to have just one hotel in Turkey or one in
China."