As upscale and upper upscale chains boost amenities, hotel companies in the deluxe tier increasingly are improving service offerings within their properties. Hotels in the tier are eyeing ways to enhance concierge services or find untapped niches to make their brands stand out.
Some of these enhancements came by combining technology with existing services. Starwood's St. Regis Hotels and Resorts this summer began providing its butlers with wireless handheld devices, a first for the industry, according to Starwood. Guests now instantly can send requests through e-mail to their personal butlers, so a guest delayed in a business meeting, for example, can immediately request the butler make or change dinner reservations.
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts also infused technology with its concierge services. The hotels now are equipped with portable global positioning system devices, so when guests ask the service for directions, they receive a device preprogrammed with the best path to the destination that can be taken along in the car, said Rosewood COO Bob Boulogne.
"There's a confusion to what is being called mass luxury," Boulogne said. "I question if luxury is the right word anymore for what luxury is doing. What we define as what we do is try to stay honest to our sense of place while trying to provide great service."
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts will take a new look at its service angle by adjusting its corporate structure, said Bruce Richardson, Fairmont's vice president of brand marketing and communications. The chain appointed an executive to exclusively monitor the needs of guest services, and that role will begin next month, he said.
"In part, it's observation, and in part, it's a research role with all the intent of becoming more aggressive and progressive in terms of product change," Richardson said. "It's about timely response."
The need for Fairmont to focus on service was apparent by observing the hotel's existing concierge service, he said. The top two tiers of Fairmont's President's Club have a special telephone concierge service, and to meet demand Fairmont had to add concierges, he said.
As deluxe tier hotels explore new service offerings, some almost have become mandatory. The 2006 American Hotel & Lodging Association Lodging Survey showed that luxury hotels still are lagging in providing wireless in-room Internet capability—only 67 percent of deluxe tier rooms had it, compared with 82 percent overall—and hotels in the tier also were most likely to charge for it
(BTN, Aug. 14). However, if deluxe hotels want to hold on to the business traveler, they will have to adapt.
"You've got to have every room equipped," Richardson said. "Those are things that are critically important to our customer base."
Sometimes deluxe hotels go for less obvious services to make their brands stand out. Rosewood, for example, has introduced a program, called Hot Type, in which it has forged agreements with publishing companies to get advance copies of books for guests and alert to guest appearances by the authors, Boulogne said.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. has seen a significant increase of interest in its luggage-less travel option as carry-on restrictions have made it more difficult to transport hygiene products, according to John Harper, vice president of Ritz-Carlton's international sales office. The service allows frequent travelers to leave their luggage at the property for storage, and the staff will even launder their clothes between visits, he said.