Doubletree Enters Hawaii With First Business Property

Doubletree Hotels has entered the Hawaiian market with its first property in Honolulu, a 313-room business hotel.

Earlier this year, the company signed a franchise agreement with the Alana Waikiki, now known as the Doubletree Alana Waikiki, and is in the process of repositioning it as a corporate hotel.

"We are now gearing the property towards the corporate market, and we've established corporate rates and rates based on volume," said Tom Hall, the hotel's sales manager. "We're the only four-diamond off-beach property in Waikiki, and our off-beach location is an advantage for corporate travelers, since they are only a block and a half from the beach and don't pay beach prices. It's also a boutique hotel and smaller than some of the other major players on the beach."

Although the hotel's marketing thrust aims at individual business travelers, small meetings and incentives also will be a part of the clientele mix. "We will do some incentives, but the hotel is off the beach so it won't be a major incentive property," Hall said. The Doubletree property has meeting space for groups of up to 200 people.

For Doubletree, the Alana Waikiki is part of the company's strategy to diversify its product. "We felt for a while that there was a lot of expansion potential for us domestically on the mainland U.S, but we're at the point where we need some destination resorts," said Tom Storey, executive vice president sales and marketing for Doubletree Hotels Corp. "The natural destinations to satisfy this are Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean. We're putting a rim of destination resorts around the U.S. mainland base, and Hawaii fits right into that."

Beginning its Hawaii venture with a business hotel seems to be a logical way to enter the destination resort market.

"Doubletree has always had a strong reputation on the West Coast for its business hotels, and we think that a lot of the business travelers who come to Hawaii come from the West Coast," Storey said. "Even though this hotel is in Hawaii, it has a strong business travel base."

Doubletree also is heavily promoting the Hawaiian hotel at its mainland properties. "Since this is our first foray into Hawaii, it will get a disproportionate amount of attention," Storey said. "We have put posters in the lobbies of our hotels on the West Coast."

With one hotel already in place, the company is looking at future projects. "I would expect we'll have a presence in Hawaii in the next year or two," Storey said. "Those companies that have been successful in Hawaii have at least three or four properties, including one in Honolulu.