Hotel & Motel Management - September 18, 2007 - (Page 4)

4 News H&MM September 18, 2007 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition Vista Inns redeﬁnes business model By Stacey Mieyal Higgins SENIOR EDITOR Loews Hotels will open its ﬁrst property in Atlanta. The Loews Atlanta Hotel will feature 414 guestrooms and is scheduled to open in April 2010. The hotel will be the center of a $500million contemporary urban mixed-use development. Pricewaterhouse Coopers found that customer satisfaction levels in the lodging industry are at positive record levels with a recent high index value of 75 in 2006, according to its research and data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the U.S. Department of Labor and Smith Travel Research. This high comes even as the industry has reduced the number of employees per available and per occupied room. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide announced Frits van Paasschen, former president and c.e.o. of Coors Brewing Co, will join the company as c.e.o. effective Sept. 24. Bruce Duncan, interim c.e.o., will continue as non-executive chairman of the board. Madrone Capital Partners, a private investment ﬁrm afﬁliated with the Rob Walton family, and entities afﬁliated with Goldman Sachs Capital Partners agreed to invest $1 billion to acquire equity securities in Global Hyatt Corp. InterContinental Hotels Group Americas reported 13 percent room growth in the region’s pipeline for the ﬁrst half of the year. As of June 30, the pipeline had 1,129 hotels with 119,370 guestrooms. For updated breaking news, visit www.HotelMotel.com. MURFREESBORO, TENN.–Advantis Hospitality Alliance LLC has renewed its commitment to fair franchising and outlined a strategic plan for its Vista Inns brand. To help identify a strategy, the company hired Ramesh Gokal as president and c.o.o. The semiretired Gokal most recently was an industry consultant. He was president of the Knights Inn brand in the late 1990s. “The last couple of years I’ve felt like I had the energy and ability to contribute more to the industry that’s been so good to me,” he said. “Vista shared my passion for changing the franchising model.” And with Gokal on board, Advantis has established a mission statement, Gokal values, a fran- ADVANTIS chising program and a long-term business plan. With a goal of having more than 400 properties by 2013, the company aims to change the way the industry does business, according to Gokal. Advantis eliminated the tiers of the Vista brand to focus on the midscale segment after realizing that launching a brand was difficult enough without offering the name to all types of Harvel properties. ADVANTIS “We are now refocused and clear on who we want to be,” Gokal said. The most important aspect of the company’s new business model is the mutual commitment, according to Kelly J. Harvel, executive director of Advantis. “We, as franchisors, all day long can say we can do this or this, but what are the owner/operator’s responsibilities in all of that?” he asked. Gokal said the company’s goal is to convince franchisees that Advantis is truly focused on their success. The Vista Advantage 5 Point Program, which is focused on “customerized franchising,” addresses: ﬂexible agreements, mutual commitment, operations support, guest approval and triumphant franchisees. The mutual commitment is a written agreement of accountability, and includes the company’s promises of midtier market positioning, the Vista Fairness DocSee Vista Inns | page 98 NEWSMAKER Questex buys Oxford Publishing By H&MM Staff NEWTON, MASS.–Questex Media Group, a global, diversiﬁed business-to-business media company and publisher of HOTEL & MOTEL MANAGEMENT, HOTEL DESIGN and LUXURY HOTELIER magazines and producer of the HotelWorld Expo and Conference, purchased Oxford Publishing, producer of “The Show,” the largest beverage show in the Western Hemisphere serving the hospitality industry, and the International Restaurant Show–Las Vegas, the nation’s fastest-growing restaurant and food event. “The Show,” the International Restaurant Show–Las Vegas and Questex’s HotelWorld event are to be co-located, beginning in February 2008, and are at the center of a unique grouping of co-located hospitality events to create the newly formed International Hospitality Week to be held annually in Las Vegas and is set for Feb. 2427, 2008 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. “We chose to move forward with Questex as they clearly view the hospitality industry as a top priority,” said Ed Meek, Oxford’s president and c.e.o. “They have an impressive track record of investing in their core hotel- and hospiSee Questex Media | page 100 JOIE DE VIVRE HOTELS Conley applies satisfaction theory to boutique hotels day sweating through the process of how they make the bottom line work,” said Conley, who among other things is releasing a new book called “Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow” and is the keynote speaker at the inaugural HotelWorld Expo and Conference to be held Feb. 25-27 in Las Vegas. “If they spend that much time worrying about that rather than being at the 5 o’clock happy hour introducing themselves, we’ve lost the spirit of hospitality. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be only focused on proﬁts, because we should, as it’s the lifeblood of the industry,” he said. “But what we’ve done is gut the soul.” Conley (www.chipconley.com) said the hospitality business is making the “business” part of the equation more important than the “hospitality” part. “There’s a lot of people who own hotels now because it’s the best form of real-estate to own,” he said. “That’s disappointing to a certain level.” His own company has been in aggressive growth mode after suffering through the dot-com crunch, post-9/11 downturn and the SARS scare. “The San Francisco Bay area at that time had its most serious downturn since World War II,” he said. “And we were the largest operator of hotels in the Bay area.” Forced to redeﬁne its company’s basic strategy, Conley recalled his Stanford University days and See Joie de Vivre | page 100 Chip Conley, founder and c.e.o. of Joie de Vivre Hotels, believes focusing on intangibles helps companies succeed. By Jeff Higley EDITORIAL DIRECTOR SAN FRANCISCO–Chip Conley is out to slow the lodging industry’s ever-faster march toward corporate cookie-cutterdom. Conley, the founder and c.e.o. of San Francisco-based Joie de Vivre Hospitality (www.jdvhotels.com), knows that the continued ﬂow of private equity into the hotel sector is a good thing, but he bemoans the fact that hotels are becoming more of a bottomline focused entity than a house of hospitality. “One of the big challenges we have as an industry is that we have a collection of [general managers] who got into it for pure purposes who now spend 80 percent of their http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition http://HotelMotel.com http://www.jdvhotels.com http://www.jdvhotels.com http://www.HotelMotel.com http://www.chipconley.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - September 18, 2007

Hotel & Motel Management - September 18, 2007 Contents Vista Inns Redefines Business Model Conley Applies Satisfaction Theory to Boutique Hotels Questex Acquires Oxford Publishing Perspective At Your Risk Consultant’s Corner Sales Clinic Travel Trends On Finance Franchise Law Cornell Insights HotelWorld Update Training Trends Satisfaction Trends Management Trends Speakers Named, Registration Open for IH/M&RS Going Green Saves Green Trends & Stats Vacuums Go the Extra Mile Transactions Offsetting Emissions is Newest Sustainability Initiative Minibar Advancements Supplier News People on The Move ADA Compliance Can Be Easier With Programs Business Travelers Interested in Remote Check-In/Out Awards Markets Dictate Renovations vs. New Builds More Development Opportunities Available Top Hotel Companies Survey The Lodging Conference Previews Ad/Editorial Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - September 18, 2007

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