Four Seasons Brings High-End Business Hotel To Vegas
<B> Four Seasons Brings High-End Business Hotel To Vegas</B>
By Fred Gebhart
The Four Seasons Las Vegas barely registered as a background blip against the whirling glitter of megahotels opening along the Strip this year. While thousands of sightseers and first nighters thronged the halls, casinos and restaurants of Mandalay Bay on March 2, Four Seasons limited its festivities to an employees-only ribbon cutting and pep talk by company founder Isadore Sharpe. First-night guests arrived with no crowds, no searchlights, no paparazzi and no fanfare, which was just the impact general manager Randy Morton was looking for.
"Four Seasons always opens very softly," explained Morton, who ran the Four Seasons Resort Maui before coming to Las Vegas. "It's the opposite of a traditional Las Vegas opening, which opens everything with a big splash. Just because we're in Las Vegas, we're not changing the way we do business."
The way Four Seasons does business is to position itself as the market and price leader for upscale business, small meetings and leisure travel. In Las Vegas, that pits Four Seasons against Bellagio, the city's reigning megaresort, but Morton is hardly worried. He already has trumped Las Vegas veteran Circus Circus, which is the owner of the Four Seasons property.
The Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas is part of Circus' 61-acre flagship resort, Mandalay Bay, but the connection is anything but obvious. Both companies describe Four Seasons as being "adjacent" to Mandalay Bay. In reality, Four Seasons occupies nearly all of Mandalay Bay's precious Strip frontage, with nary a mention of Mandalay or its 3,300 rooms, mega casino, 2,000-seat House of Blues (opened by Bob Dylan), 12,000-seat entertainment center (opened by Luciano Pavarotti) and massive meeting complex. Four Seasons guests get the prime panoramas from floors 35 to 39 of the Mandalay tower, with restricted access via private elevators from the Four Seasons lobby.
In fact, much of the Four Seasons is off limits to the general public. Four Seasons guests have unlimited access to Mandalay Bay facilities, but Mandalay guests will never see Four Seasons' pools, gardens, spa and other facilities.
"We want to do what we do best, to give personalized service to our guests in a quiet, residential atmosphere," Morton said. "What we're providing to the business traveler, the convention and meeting traveler, and the leisure traveler is an oasis, a calm, quiet nongaming environment with easy access to all the excitement of traditional Las Vegas."
Oasis, yes, but not an oasis of the water hole and date palm variety. Four Seasons is claiming a string of service firsts for Las Vegas, from twice-daily maid service and nightly turn-down to one-hour pressing, four-hour dry cleaning, free shoe shine, prompt room service, hand-delivered messages and more. All are standard at other Four Seasons properties around the world, Morton noted, but impractical in the 2,000- to 5,000-room resorts that have made Las Vegas the number one hotel market in the country. The city had 112,000 rooms at the end of 1998, according to Smith Travel Research, with another 12,000 rooms coming online by the end of 1999.
"The features and services that a business traveler needs are at your fingertips in a smaller hotel," said Four Seasons marketing director Kathy Van Vechten. "If you're used to real service, having faxes delivered promptly, getting your room service order right now, you look for that same kind of attention wherever you go, including Las Vegas. Just try to imagine a 4,000-room hotel trying to do an overnight shoe shine. It's part of our service standard."
There's a price for all that service, even in Las Vegas. Superior, deluxe and deluxe with a view of the Strip rooms go for $200 to $500 per night, the Four Seasons Rooms/Suites cost between $350 and $800, and suites from $900 to $3,900. That may seem steep for a city where the average rate is less than $100, but occupancy has been 100 percent since opening day.
High occupancy is no surprise, according to Bear, Stearns & Co. analyst Jason Ader. "There's no good business hotel in this market that caters to a high-end customer," he said.
And until Four Seasons, there was no high-end hotel of any kind in Las Vegas that could guarantee a suite for the CEO. Most Vegas properties reserve their suites for high-spending casino customers or let casinos bump hotel bookings to accommodate high rollers. Four Seasons never cancels room reservations for casino guests because it doesn't have any. "We can confirm suites absolutely," Van Vechten said. "We don't have a casino, so you don't have the problem. We care about guests, not gaming profiles."
Van Vechten is targeting business travelers and corporate meetings for weekday traffic. There is no casino on property, but 26,000 square feet of meeting space can be divided for groups from 10 to 700 attendees. The meeting center occupies the top floor of a two-story section off the main lobby, overlooking Four Seasons' private pool and gardens. Staffing and back of the house services are designed to handle three concurrent groups.
Leisure travelers are the weekend priority, especially families. One of the property's unique services is automatic and free child-proofing if the staff knows a child will be checking in.
Four Seasons guests also have unlimited access to Mandalay Bay's tropical themed recreation facilities, including 11 acres of swimming pools, rivers and a sand beach with surfing waves that typically rise up to six feet.