Hotel & Motel Management - October 6, 2008 - (Page 58)

58 News H&MM October 6, 2008 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition La Quinta’s strategy Continued from page 4 U.S. and Canada, and is still emerging in Mexico. “Every country has its own niche. The model of franchising is new to certain places,” he said. Franchisors have to be willing to make some modiﬁcations to local culture and desires. “The biggest difference is the pace of doing business. Decision making in the U.S. is very CIRCLE NO. 153 fast,” Trivedi said. “My father always would say, ‘Do business with someone you can trust.’ And the trust factor comes as you develop relationships.” Trivedi pointed to a hotel void in some countries, notably Mexico. “There are hotels that are ﬁve star, six stars, that are highly successful resorts … and then there are mom-and-pop hotels. Even the branded hotels that have gone into these countries in earlier stages, they become a part of the void because the natural tendencies or the entrepreneur’s mindset was such in the past that, if I have 85percent occupancy … I don’t need to renovate or ﬁx what’s not broken,” he said. The emergence of a Mexican middle class with discretionary income means there is more demand for midrange hotels, Trivedi said. Trivedi He said starting with the LA QUINTA right product and maintaining the product in the right fashion, including the services, cannot be overlooked. But he is excited about the market. “With a name like La Quinta, Mexico is like going back home. And that sort of applies to Central America and South America, too,” Trivedi said. Canada also will remain a focus, and the company also may consider some opportunities in Asia. However, the company wants to partner with the right people. “We want to make sure that [partners] understand La Quinta culture. We want to make sure that they understand our philosophy of taking care of our guests. We want to make sure that they’re ﬁnancially strong to meet their obligations in development and, most importantly, exceed our guest expectations,” Trivedi said. Because of that, he said, people may have been afraid to talk about these efﬁciencies, whether it was using compact ﬂuorescent bulbs or replacing older PTAC units with newer, more efﬁcient models. But his company continues to go green in places where it makes sense. “We asked, ‘What are our guests complaining about? When you sell as many rooms as we do, you want to get ahead of the guest satisfaction curve. And one of the biggest issues was PTACs. They’re noisy, and if they fail, it’s a problem,” Lombardi said. Lombardi explained that one of his teams did research and realized PTAC units generally were failing after about 10 years, so they decided to get ahead of the problem and start replacing units before they failed, on a regular 10year cycle. He describes this as putting their money where guests want it. “So we get an energy bonus, we get a sizeable guest satisfaction bonus, and what used to be the No. 1 guest satisfaction problem doesn’t even show up on the radar anymore. So it really helped us satisfy our customers proactively,” he said. Design changes “A couple years ago, we decided it was time to start looking at new designs,” Goldberg said. The company hired ﬁve design ﬁrms and asked each to design a room with no limitations. Using their Dallas Fort Worth-South location, La Quinta gave each ﬁrm a blank box of a room to design and decorate. It was “the room of the future for us, so to speak,” Goldberg said. Once the rooms were complete, they had customers come in and stay in the ﬁve rooms, and then held focus groups to see what worked and what guests preferred. La Quinta now has three new basic design schemes—codenamed Unique, Fresh and Vibrant—in their corporately owned hotels, along with a few additional styles for franchises. “They all share the same element—you will not walk into one of those rooms and not realize that the hotel has been renovated. They’re distinct,” Lombardi said. pheney@questex.com A green that’s logical Goldberg said that as an industry, lodging has done a poor job of taking credit for green initiatives that historically already are in place. “The original reason a lot of those things started being done was because there were opportunities to save money and at the same time you were doing the right thing for the environment but originally, they were designed because they were cost-effective,” Goldberg said. CIRCLE NO. 130 http://www.HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition http://www.miami-airport.com http://www.miami-airport.com http://www.miami-airport.com http://www.kenyonappliances.com http://www.kenyonappliances.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - October 6, 2008

Hotel & Motel Management - October 6, 2008 Contents NYLO Brands Mix Up Lifestyle Segment La Quinta Eyes Mexico, Canada for Growth Perspective Legally Speaking Marketing Matters Satisfaction Trends Maintenance Doctor HotelWorld Update Trends & Stats Independent Hotels Top Hotel Multiunit Owners and Developers Survey Cleaning & Maintenance Music Wallcoverings Supplier News Transactions Softgoods: Bedding & Linens People Events Ad/Editorial Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - October 6, 2008

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