Deluxe Hotels Upgrade Club Floor Service

Deluxe hotels worldwide in the past year have added new services and amenities to their executive floors to make these private enclaves even more select and exclusive. Part of the rationale behind this development has been financial. Since club floor rooms book at a premium to standard room rates, they are a source of added revenue for hotels grappling with a downturn in room rates due to the weak economy.

The fine-tuning—especially of the club lounges, which are the focal point of the executive floors—also has been a response by deluxe hotels to the rising popularity of upscale boutique hotels. The boutiques, which are typically small in size, pride themselves on offering business travelers a high level of personalized service in an intimate setting. As hotels in Copenhagen, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and São Paulo demonstrate, executive floors give non-boutique deluxe hotels, which are often larger in size, a tool with which to compete. They become a more intimate "hotel within a hotel," with the club lounge the center of activity.

Both the increased revenue and competitive response to the boutique phenomenon were behind the strategy by these hotels to justify upgrading their executive floors. However, Sept. 11 gave deluxe hotels yet another rationale that they couldn't have anticipated: Senior-level frequent travelers, in particular, have expressed more security concerns in the year since the terrorist attacks. One of the ways these hotels subsequently responded was to provide more security on their executive floors in the form of restricted access, discreet checkin and checkout, and more visible staff presence generally.

Many buyers negotiate a rate for executive floor rooms at their preferred hotels in addition to a standard room rate. Only travelers at a certain level within the company may be eligible to book these rooms or they may be available strictly as a back-up for when standard rooms are booked. The new level of services and amenities, as well as the heightened sense of security is making these rooms more attractive to travelers than ever.

"Club lounges traditionally offered snacks and beverages through the day starting with continental breakfast, so guests could stop by for some refreshment," said Guia Llamas, club manager at the Ritz-Carlton New York Battery Park, which opened in February. "Our intention was to try to breathe new life into that tradition, to see if we couldn't re-think the food service to take it to a new level."

The five distinct daily presentations that resulted range from breakfast and midday snacks to afternoon tea and then accompany cocktails and cordials. "For the chef, it's actually an opportunity to perfect his ideas in the lounge before hotel guests get to try them in the restaurant or on banquet menus," she said. "In fact, the lounge service has become a kind of chef's table, which guests find very exciting."

Llamas noted that at such a property as the Ritz-Carlton, executive floor guests' tastes in food and wine tend to be quite sophisticated. "The challenge with the club presentations becomes devising new ways to please them."

When the Inter-Continental Hong Kong underwent a major refurbishment this year, one of the changes was the addition of a club lounge in space that previously had been a night club. "For frequent business travelers especially, we saw the need to create a kind of exclusive retreat," said Jennifer Fox, managing director. "Given the time difference to the States, U.S. travelers have adopted the lounge as a place to send and check e-mails. Accordingly, the lounge has been configured with wireless high-speed Internet access, which we provide at no extra charge."



Hotel Within a Hotel

In large hotels especially, business travelers appreciate the more modest human scale experience that executive floors provide. "With 1,000 rooms, the Hotel Concorde La Fayette is unusually large for Paris," said Jean-Marc de Margerie, vice president and general manager. "Creating the executive floors, therefore, was our solution to providing just that sense of a hotel within a hotel." Called Club La Fayette, the project opened last year.

Yet, given the size of the overall tower, the Club itself is relatively large. With 205 rooms and 34 suites on the top nine floors of the 34-story building, which is notable for its sweeping views of the city, the Club is larger than many complete hotels. "We tried to make everything on these floors self-contained, so guests would feel as if the Club was the actual hotel where they were staying," de Margerie said. "Staff members in the club lounge come to recognize guests in a way that wouldn't be possible in the whole hotel. This, in turn, personalizes the guest experience and makes guests feel more at home."

On a smaller scale, the layout of the Ritz-Carlton also was designed to unify the executive floors. "A private staircase connects the floor with the lounge to the guest room floor below, making it easier for guests to go up and down, should they choose not to wait for the elevator," Llamas said. "The staircase actually heightens the sense of privacy."

The space is designed as well with alcoves that allow for small private meetings, which can be a priority in these times when confidentiality is an issue. The placement of the furniture accentuates this. "Club floor guests have invited guests of their own, say clients or other associates, to join them for a drink before dinner and they won't be disturbed," she said. "Similarly, an executive conceivably could conduct a recruiting interview in the alcove seating area. No one else in the lounge, no less in the hotel, would even know the meeting had taken place."

Club La Fayette also includes its own meeting rooms. "There's also a business center, which allows business travelers to prepare documents or presentations in a more discreet fashion than they would in a larger, more crowded setting," de Margerie said.

International travelers, unfamiliar with a city or a language, often are most likely to be the ones drawn to executive floors and their club lounges. "These guests were one of the reasons we expanded the evening hours of our Servicio Real lounge last year and added butler service at the same time," said Karina Kamogawa, account executive at the Gran Melia WTC Hotel in São Paulo. "We realized many of our U.S. and Asian guests, in particular, wanted to spend time with fellow executives from their companies, but didn't necessarily want to leave the hotel. What they needed was a quiet place to gather that was private, but friendly and attractive."

Kamogawa said that increasingly business travelers from these countries were in São Paulo working on projects for a week or two or longer, "so they appreciate the extra time at the end of the day to relax with their colleagues."

Executive floors at these hotels tend to have their own dedicated concierge, which further helps foster a sense of security. "Guests can turn to this concierge instead of having to rely on the hotel concierge," Ritz-Carlton's Llamas said. "We're in New York, so post-Sept. 11 they've had questions about getting acclimated to the neighborhood, about transportation, for example, or they'll need other kinds of information. The hotel concierge in the lobby is knowledgeable and could help them, but the quieter atmosphere on the executive floor is more to their liking."

Hotel Concorde's De Margerie agreed that the atmosphere changed in the past year. "Security is so much more on people's minds today, guests on the club floors feel like they're staying in much more intimate surroundings," he said.

For enhanced security, some executive floors have moved checkin to the club level. "In our lobby, guests are given elevator access cards, but actually check in—and are greeted personally by the concierge—on the Servicio Real level," Gran Melia's Kamogawa said. The Club La Fayette offers private elevator service from the lobby.

Even hotels that don't have formal club lounges have come to appreciate their value this year. "Even though we don't have a lounge in this sense, we understand the value of providing certain guests, business travelers in particular, a more select experience," said Anne Thyssen-Neumann, coordinator at the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. The Royal Hotel's solution was to institute special breakfast service for guests staying in business class rooms, dubbed Royal Club service.

"The breakfast is served in the space at the top of the hotel that is our gourmet restaurant in the evening," she said. "Business travelers have been especially positive because the service is quieter and less hurried than the breakfast served for regular guests. It gives them a chance to gather their thoughts and prepare for their appointments later in the day."