Meeting News - July 27, 2009 - (Page 4)

Newsmaker Rosewood COO Sees Fear Of Luxury Meetings Easing Robert Boulogne, COO of Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, spoke recently to MeetingNews associate editor Michael B. Baker about the outlook for luxury meetings, hotel development plans and the negotiating strategies that meeting planners are employing during the downturn. MeetingNews: Have you seen signs of recovery in your group business? part of that and not rest on our laurels. For the right set of dates and the right piece of business, we’re going to be in the game. MN: Are companies trying to leverage meetings and transient travel to a single sales contact? Boulogne: We call that total account management. For the most part, however, we have people who call on group and people who call on transient. We’ve maintained that position. was running something like 14 percent occupancy. New York has been a pretty good story. We’re down year over year, but we’re up on our competitive set. Dallas and Atlanta, the corporate markets we play in, have been pretty challenged. We just opened the Mansion on Peachtree last year in Atlanta, and because we’re only 18 hotels, any opening for us is a positive thing. We did open into a market that has really suffered quite a bit, but we are holding our own. MN: What properties will you open soon? Boulogne: We just opened about two months ago the Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, Calif., a corporate hotel and meetings hotel. We’re calling it an urban resort setting. It’s a beautiful hotel, and that market seems to be doing reasonably well. We’re adding 100 additional keys at the Al Faisaliah Hotel in Riyadh, and those will be opening ﬁrst quarter of 2010. Jumby Bay in Antigua will have been closed for 18 months when we reopen on Dec. 1. We did $28 million in renovations, basically redoing the entire resort. Also under construction, we have the Rosewood San Miguel in Mexico that will be opening the latter half of next year. San Miguel is up in the mountains, about a three-anda-half-hour drive from Mexico City. The Rosewood Abu Dhabi is under construction as well, and that is due to open in 2011. We also have a property under construction in Dubai. MN: Has the economy delayed your projects? Boulogne: We did have a number of projects that have gone dormant for financing reasons. The model of building a resort where you’re using real estate to pay for the hotel is deﬁnitely on hold. There are not a lot of people buying real estate, and there’s no money to ﬁnance these projects. Getting new-build projects will be challenging for the next year or so. The opportunity for Rosewood will be conversions. MN: What markets are your next targets? Boulogne: We’d like to be in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, domestically. We also need to get into London and Paris. r www.meetingnews.com Robert Boulogne: In the past month or month and a half, the pace has picked up for our Rosewood’s Robert Boulogne phones relative to the meetings MN: How has the economy business. We’ve turned a coraffected your business? ner, and there are people willing to commit now to the meetings. There are still organizations say- Boulogne: Where it’s going is still unclear. We had ing that they shouldn’t be seen this year having a a very strong 2008. The fourth quarter of 2008 was meeting in a luxury hotel. We are still wrestling when we began to see a bit of a downturn. The ﬁrst with this on occasion, in that our rates might be and second quarters of this year were off from last the same as a lesser brand, but companies have to year quite signiﬁcantly. We really look at the revbe concerned about perception. It’s calmed down, enue per available room component, and we take but that element still exists. our competition set in each city and determine how we’re doing. That’s the only measurement MN: What’s your strategy been in attracting that is relevant to us. meetings to your properties? MN: Any predictions on a turnaround? Boulogne: We’ve gone with the value-added approach. We have Rosewood Connections, our Boulogne: I’m very optimistic about the future. design to offer meeting and event planners the There’s a lot of pent-up demand out there. best offers available. The package right now Maybe toward the last quarter of this year or the includes a 3 percent credit to your master bill for first quarter of next year, we’ll start seeing the guest room revenue, 10 percent off for food and beneﬁts of that. We are trying to be very thoughtbeverage, a 20 percent credit on in-house A/V ful in how to manage this downturn without use, a 20 percent credit on all spa services, com- interfering with our service levels. We’ve been plimentary guest-room Internet service, compli- able to cut back in areas that do not impact the mentary general session Internet service and one guest experience. VIP suite upgrade. MN: What markets are strongest for Rosewood? MN: What are meeting planners looking for in negotiations? Boulogne: Some of the markets that have performed well are in the Middle East, and the Boulogne: They are a bit more insistent on getting Caribbean has done reasonably well. Some of better value or a discount or a deal just because that has been at the expense, unfortunately, of they believe that’s the lay of the land. Rosewood’s what has happened to us in Mexico. The swine position on that is that we very much want to be a ﬂu breakout killed all travel to Mexico. Cancun 4 MeetingNews July 27, 2009 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - July 27, 2009

Meeting News - July 27, 2009
Contents
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Meeting Post
Viewpoint
Association Watch
Event Profile
Meeting People
MeetingNews Research
Travel Dashboard
Mid-America Regional
Golf Meetings
Hawaii

Meeting News - July 27, 2009