Westin Bed Innovator Sue Brush Reflects On A Heavenly Career
Sue Brush, a long-time leader of the Westin brand, most recently as senior vice president and Westin's global brand leader for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, is retiring at year-end. Brush spoke recently to Business Travel News editors David Meyer and Michael B. Baker about the changes she's seen in the industry and Westin's plans to persevere through the downturn.
Business Travel News: During your 30 years in the industry, what are the biggest changes you've seen related to business travel?
Sue Brush: Certainly, the influence of technology would be number one. When I started, we were still sending telexes to confirm reservations. We had fax machines in guest rooms. We weren't even using the Internet then. Also, there is the global nature of our industry. When I was with Western International, which was the name before it became Westin, we were an American company based in Seattle and had a few hotels outside of North America. Today, Westin and all the Starwood brands are global in scope, and we happen to have our headquarters near the largest city in the United States.
BTN: How has the corporate travel buyer changed over those years?
Brush: There's more flexibility in negotiations now. We try to learn more about them to see what their real needs are and try to appeal to those through a more creative selling situation.
BTN: How have business travelers changed?
Brush: There's more of them, and there's a lot more women. Women are very discerning travelers, and if you can appeal to them and satisfy all their needs, guest satisfaction scores will go up.
BTN: Westin was part of an attempted vertical travel consolidation, Allegis. Why didn't that work?
Brush: Frankly, it was a bit ahead of its time, deploying hotel, rental car and airline service. That was in the mid-1980s. United Airlines bought us in 1970 and sold us in 1988. You'll see in the U.S., the Westin hotel distribution matches the United route map. The 18 years we were owned by United did work very well. The economics didn't work out, but we all thought it was a great idea and everybody was excited about it.
BTN: Do you think anyone will ever try that again?
Brush: You never know, if the economics work and it makes sense. It's fun to still talk to people at United. We were partners in travel.
BTN: We hear a lot about cycles in the industry. How is the one we're in now different from other down periods you've seen?
Brush: The global scope of this certainly has made it very different. It's not as finite and defined. The Gulf War started and ended. Sept. 11 was one catastrophic event on the East Coast in three different locations. This one just seems to be more pervasive, with more uncertainty around it. No one knows whether we've really bottomed out and when the upswing will be here.
BTN: We've seen a proliferation of brands over the past few years. Will they all survive this downturn?
Brush: It depends on what the brand stands for and how it's positioned in the marketplace. Our two new brands, Element and Aloft, were created to fill a niche that wasn't met in the marketplace. We feel very comfortable about the survival and success of those two brands.
BTN: Has the credit crunch had much effect on development?
Brush: Just from development for Westin, the hotels we're planning to open this year are all still opening, which is good news for us, though some may be delayed a month or two. As far as future development, I couldn't say.
BTN: In what regions do you particularly want to see growth?
Brush: India, China. India, China. Of the 14 hotels we're opening this year, six are in India or China, three hotels in each place. We have two hotels in Beijing already, one in the financial area, and the other is the Westin Beijing Chaoyang, where President Bush and Father Bush stayed during the Olympics. We have Shanghai, which was one of our first, and Guangzhou, a city of 9 million people that most Americans have never heard of.
BTN: How about Europe?
Brush: In Europe, there just isn't as much place to expand. There isn't a lot of free property to go constructing new hotels on. It's finding an existing hotel or existing building that's convertible to a hotel, which therefore makes the opportunities more precious. There are some opportunities, like resorts in Spain.
BTN: What sort of strategy are you employing?
Brush: It's a great opportunity. When business is off a bit, you have fewer guests, so you have more time to spend with them. We see it as a great opportunity to build loyalty with our customers, to get closer to them and really find out what matters to them so we can appeal to their personal needs and build those relationships. When we come out of it, we then have a guest for life. It's also a good opportunity to do some testing of some other products or things. One analogy used is that we're in a car race. There's been some kind of an accident, so the yellow flag has come down. During that time period, you can make a pit stop, tweak your engine and fix your tires, but you can't go back out on the course and pass anyone. It's a great opportunity to try some new things and make sure we're prepared to own the upswing.
BTN: Can you tell us about any of those?
Brush: I can tell you one. We're testing a new shower head. We have our wonderful dual-head shower head that everyone knows and loves, and yet, because it is a dual head, the water consumption is slightly higher than others. The environment is very important to us, so we thought it was a good time to test a new shower head at several of our hotels around the world.
BTN: The most critical amenity to travel buyers seems to be Internet access. Are we coming to the time where that gets included in rate?
Brush: That keeps coming up. We continue to evaluate that. Our customers tell us they see a lot of value in our brand, so we've been fortunate in that regard. I'm not sure what's going to happen there.
BTN: When did you first join Westin?
Brush: Thirty years ago. I started as a PR manager. I had 10 years at the hotel level and 10 years at the corporate office in Seattle, and that's when Starwood came along. We were getting ready to launch the Heavenly Bed, and that intrigued me. It was Aug. 31, 1999, when we launched the bed. Now we're getting ready for its 10th anniversary.
BTN: Nearly every hotel brand has a name for its bed now, but wasn't that unique at the time?
Brush: Yes, and I got to help with the marketing and rollout of that. It revolutionized the industry and truly became iconic. Now most hotels have all-white beds. Besides being a superior product and having a great name, heavily marketing it really made a big difference.