It’s once again time for Lodging Hospitality’s annual Design Awards contest. Actually it probably was about a month ago, but once again time has flown and I’m remiss in starting this process so late. The Design Awards will run in the April 15 print issue and we need your help in identifying the year’s best hotel and resort design. The deadline for nominations is Monday, March 22. Design firms, property owners and operators or their public relations representatives may submit nominations.
The contest is open to any hotel or resort in the U.S. (and Canada) that completed construction or renovations during the 2009 calendar year. We’ll consider all projects, big and small, as long they are an example of innovative, impressive and/or efficient design.
Nominations must include basic design and property details: name and location of the property and ownership group; date of completion, cost and scope of project; architect and design firms involved; description of the property (amount of rooms, other major features and highlights); a summary of the design style and some examples of what makes it stand above the rest. Nominations also must include four to eight images of the property. Low resolution images are acceptable, but award winners will ultimately need to provide high resolution versions for print publication. If press releases include all the above information, they are acceptable as a nomination.
Please email nominations to LH Managing Editor Eric Stoessel at eric.stoessel@penton.com or mail them to my attention at The Penton Media Bldg, 1300 E. 9th St., Cleveland, OH 44114 by Monday, March 22.
And to clarify, there is no entry fee, or form. Just send me the basic info on the property and project and some images. I’ll follow up if I need anything more.

The news this past weekend that former Secretary of State Alexander Haig died reminded me of one of the funniest—in retrospect, anyway—incidents I’ve experienced at a hotel chain convention. Sometime in the mid-1980s, Best Western had its annual convention in Washington, DC and invited Haig to be its keynote speaker. (I’m sure the late Skip Boyer, Best Western’s in-house historian, would have remembered the year and location specifics better than I have.)
In front of a packed house of Best Western members, journalists, vendors and others, Haig delivered a lengthy speech in which throughout he referred to Best Western as “Great Western,” as in, “I’m so glad to be here today speaking before the Great Western conference.” Not just once did he make this gaffe but it was throughout the speech. As I say, it made me chuckle, but it rightly infuriated and embarrassed the Best Western officers and staff. I’m sure the company paid Haig a hefty fee for the speech, for which the least he could do was get the name of his benefactor correct. After this fiasco, I heard rumblings that Best Western tried to get its money back, or stop payment on the check, but I never heard the outcome.
I’d like to hear from any Best Westerners or others who may remember this simultaneously funny and sad incident.

The numbers weren’t great by any means, but the recent fourth-quarter financial results from the major publicly-held hotel companies weren’t as bad as they could have been, and quite frankly, as bad as they had been the previous year. Most used the words ‘earnings’ and ‘profits,’ which were quite an improvement over last year’s ‘losses.’ It’s more positive news coming on the heels of the moderately and surprisingly upbeat mood at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit last month.
Starwood opened the earnings calls on Feb. 4 with a fourth-quarter loss ($107 million, largely due to charges in the vacation ownership business), but RevPAR fell only 7.9 percent, the best number in two years. Amid the strengthening demand, Starwood changed its outlook for 2010 to flat to positive five percent growth in RevPAR from flat to down five percent.
Marriott turned a fourth-quarter profit ($106 million) and RevPAR was down 12.2 percent, but improved occupancy numbers led to an improved 2010 RevPAR projection, now up two percent to down two percent, from the earlier projection of flat to down five percent. Wyndham also swung to a profit ($73 million), RevPAR declined 11.9 percent and the company said it could turn positive by midyear.
Choice Hotels posted an increased profit ($23.6 million vs. $18.7 million a year ago), but RevPAR fell 14.4 percent and the company was less optimistic than its higher-end counterparts, calling for a two to four percent drop in RevPAR this year. Recovery so far has been at the higher end, as Starwood and Marriott’s results indicate, but the luxury and upscale segments clearly fell the furthest and have the most ground to gain.
Who knows what all these numbers mean, but less bad and maybe kind of good is certainly better than horrible and dire, which is what we heard all of last year. Demand is clearly starting to grow, and although we know rate won’t be nearly as quick to follow, at least there’s some level of hope it will sooner than later.

It’s not ready to announce a new brand—if it ever will—but a Marriott official today said the mega-hotel company has been studying the all-inclusive resort segment “for two years.” Speaking at the inaugural Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment Summit in Miami, Ed Fuller said he thinks “there is a role for us in all-inclusives.” Fuller heads all of Marriott’s international operations.
By contrast, Jim Abrahamson, chief of IHG’s Americas division, said his company isn’t considering an all-inclusive brand, even though several of its properties in Latin America operate in the segment. “For us, we need to operate all-inclusives as a defensive measure in some markets, such as Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) and Cancun (Mexico),” he told the crowd of 200-plus delegates.
Abrahamson and Fuller were on a lunch-time leaders panel at the conference that originally was slated for four participants. The other two executives—Steve Joyce and Thorsten Kirschke of Carlson—were snowed in and couldn’t make it to the conference, which wraps up tomorrow.
Fuller said Marriott currently has 19 properties in the Caribbean, but that roster could double or triple within five years. Most of the growth, he said, will come in three-star properties, such as its Courtyard brand. Likewise, Abrahamson predicted IHG will double its Caribbean presence in five years, mostly through conversions. The company currently has 10 properties in the region.

IHG today announced its “Luckiest Loser” competition, which takes direct aim at competitor Hilton. IHG is offering jilted Hilton HHonors members a chance to win big Priority Club Rewards points. Hilton recently adjusted its loyalty point values, in essence devaluing members’ points by about 20 percent. IHG is offering its Priority Club Rewards members a chance to earn back lost Hilton points. The ‘Luckiest Loser,’ the PCR member who has the highest verified HHonors points balance, will earn two million Priority Club points, enough to redeem about 80 free hotel nights. Another 20,000 ‘Lucky Losers’ will be awarded up to 400 million total Priority Club points.
“If you want your loyal customers to stick with you during tough times, it’s vital to show you appreciate them and give them more value, not less. So it’s no wonder there was such a negative reaction to Hilton devaluing their points program,” said Tom Seddon, chief marketing officer, IHG.
First the Starwood lawsuit and now this? It’s a smart and aggressive marketing move by IHG, which will surely gain some new members and maybe steal some of a competitor’s most loyal customers.
What’s next, Days Inn hiring Paris Hilton as a spokesperson?

As the lodging industry moves sluggishly toward recovery, the common wisdom was we would now be knee-deep in hotel transactions of all sorts—individual properties, portfolios of hotels and even a chain or management company or two. With plenty of hotel real estate in distress and a pile of equity money burning holes in a lot of pockets, I and many others thought dealmakers would be hard at work by now linking buyers and sellers.
It just hasn’t happened, and no one I talked to at last week’s ALIS Conference in San Diego had a definitive answer as to why. Here are a few possibilities:
• Hotel owners have yet to come to terms with the naked facts that their properties are no longer worth what they think is fair value. In fact, in many cases, these hotels aren’t worth what the owners still owe on them. On the other side of the coin, a lot of erstwhile buyers think they can pick up product on the cheap, like 20 cents on the dollar. When the two sides meet somewhere in the middle, deals will begin to flow.
• Banks and other lenders have little appetite to own real estate—especially assets as complicated as hotels. And if real values are anywhere close to the 20 cents on the dollar buyers think they are, then the banks don’t want these troubled assets on their books.
• Another variation on this line of thought holds that banks realize values are way down and the hotel industry is beginning to rebound—albeit very slowly. Their rationale may be to wait until hotel fundamentals improve significantly and values rise concurrently, and then sell.
The real answer, of course, is probably a blend of these and other reasons. A few things we know for sure: hotel real estate is distressed, a lot of lenders are holding bad paper and a lot of private money (one estimate says $40 billion) is waiting to make investments. This all points to a scenario of increased dealmaking. Everyone thought it would have happened by now, and no one knows when the current trickle will become a torrent.
It will be interesting to watch once the dam breaks.