I read recently the current owners of La Font Inn in Pascagoula, MS are closing the hotel’s food and beverage operations and will probably soon shutter the entire property. The region’s already-depressed economy never really recovered following Hurricane Katrina, and business is difficult to find for a 50-year-old, unbranded hotel past its prime.
Of course, similar scenarios play out across the country all the time. Ailing economies, changing consumer tastes and plain-old old age often make hotels obsolete. However, this closing is nostalgic for many seasoned hoteliers because La Font Inn was owned for many years by the late Doug Fontaine and his family. Doug, a southern gentleman straight out of Central Casting, had a management style that is rare in today’s corporate, bottom-line-first style of hotelkeeping. He ran the hotel as a de facto civic center; it was the place where politics, commerce, leisure and even some sordid activities all merged in a sleepy Gulf Coast town. It’s even the spot where the career of now-disgraced U.S. Senator Trent Lott started and ended.
I knew Doug back in the 1970s and ‘80s, when he was very active in industry affairs and served as chairman of the AH&LA in 1982. As I said, he was a gentleman and part of a dying breed of hotel owners who view their businesses as more than just a cash cow or real estate appreciation machine.

Before you get all bent out of shape after reading the headline, by no means am I suggesting pursuing green design and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a bad idea. In fact it’s a great idea, one that will provide operational efficiencies, most notably in energy and water conservation, as well as potentially yielding local and regional incentives. But as it becomes more popular, it’s losing a bit of luster as a marketing perk.
It’s not totally happened yet, but from this vantage point, the recent surge in hotels earning LEED certification has made it less newsworthy than when it was just a few properties a year. The first year when more than one project earned some level of LEED was in 2007, when four did. In 2008, just seven hotels followed suit and last year the number climbed to 25. We were at 10 by the end of March and judging by my inbox, it’s a safe bet the pace will continue or improve, so we should see 50-plus hotels earning LEED this year. There are 951 projects currently registered, which means they are at least aiming for certification.
Now we’ve got entire chains talking about LEED certification (Courtyard by Marriott and another unnamed hotel company) and just this month Marriott was honored by the USGBC with LEED Gold status for its headquarters and Wyndham followed days later with news of LEED Silver.
The bar is being raised. Three years ago, it was almost worth a story when any hotel qualified. Now it takes news of a chain going after volume certification to warrant major play, which tells you just how far this movement has come. And although it’s not mainstream yet, it’s definitely no longer a niche or a fad.
Beyond the potential payback and local incentives available, whether the local newspaper or trade press writes of a hotel being green, it’s still worth it to many of your guests. So don’t be afraid to tell them about your environmentally friendly efforts and maybe they’ll come back to visit and be willing to pay a tad more to do so.

So that’s why there was so little mention of the Regent brand at March’s Carlson conference. Carlson and Rezidor have reached an agreement to sell the global Regent brand—including all intellectual property, the hotel management and lease contracts for properties in operation and under development and the Regent Seven Seas Cruises license—to Taiwan-based Formosa International Hotels Corporation (FIHC). FIHC is the original owner of the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei, which was opened 20 years ago by the Regent founders Robert Burns, Adrian Zecha and George Raphael. Future Regent hotels will be based on the concept of luxury mixed-use, lifestyle development, the release says, and the brand will return to gateway cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Beverly Hills, London, Paris and the like. The chairman of FIHC, S. Steven Pan, said “our mission is to build Regent into the most admired luxury hotel brand in the world…”
The new Ambition 2015 plan was rich on details for nearly all the other Carlson brands, most significantly the huge push with Radisson. There was no mention of the purchase price for Regent, but I’m guessing a good bit of the proceeds will go toward the $700-million Carlson plans on spending to open flagship Radisson locations in the U.S. Carlson plans on a $1.5-billion revamping of the brand, counting corporate and franchisee contributions, which is a daunting number considering the fragile state of the economic recovery. This will certainly help.

A recent post to the always-entertaining HotelChatter blog discussed a not-so-new scam thieves are trying (apparently with some success) to foist onto hotel guests. In the scam, the thief calls a hotel, asks for room 520 (or whatever). Once connected, the scammer pretends he or she is from the front desk, saying there is a problem with the guest’s credit card info. The would-be thief asks the guest to read back the card number and the secret 3- or 4-digit code on the back.
I don’t see this scam working in most hotels, because as part of their training, hotel telephone operators (or whoever answers the phone at a property) are told not to put calls through to rooms without asking for the name of the guest. It’s a simple way to avoid this kind of scam or even something worse, such as an attack on a woman guest.
While that may be SOP at most hotels, this would be a good time to reinforce that rule for anyone at your property who could allow a guest to fall victim to such a ruse.
While it may ultimately be the guests’ responsibility to not succumb to such a trick, you as an innkeeper have a moral, if not legal, obligation to prevent this kind of crime.

The quiet (pun intended) Upper Midwest brand is making some noise, or hoping to under the direction of Paul Kirwin, the former and longtime exec at Carlson. Northcott Hospitality’s new CEO wants to aggressively grow the brand and the former all-new build brand known for its Soundguard Construction is aggressively targeting conversions. AmericInn is holding its annual convention this week in Las Vegas at the Golden Nugget, which is new in of itself. The brand has generally held its yearly meeting in the Midwest near its headquarters outside the Twin Cities, but Kirwin believes if the brand is to grow beyond its roots, it must expand its thinking and actions. In addition to the conversion strategy, AmericInn is getting a new modern prototype, altering its fee structure, tweaking its marketing message and has already launched an electronic loyalty program.
Approximately 500 attendees are at the Nugget and so far the response has been positive. Check back later this week for a more thorough wrap-up of the event with more details on the new approach for AmericInn.

Red Roof may be having some financial troubles, but many of its guests like the chain for a somewhat-surprising reason: exterior corridors. A new survey commissioned by the chain says many of its customers—bikers, seniors and pet owners, in particular—like the outside entrances found on many of the chain’s properties.
The chain thinks it may be tapping into a counter-trend. Marina MacDonald, SVP of sales & marketing, says since many chains are forcing exterior-corridor properties out of their systems, she believes her brand has an opportunity to create a profitable niche. She’s got a point: While many travelers view exterior corridor properties as out-of-date, unsafe and drafty, others actually prefer the convenience of a drive-up hotel experience.
To accentuate this advantage Red Roof perceives it has, the chain is planning a spruce-up day at its properties followed by a property-versus-property competition to determine the chain’s best-looking exterior.

They’re dancing in the hallways at Hilton Worldwide’s headquarters in Beverly…err, McLean, VA today as executives and employees celebrate last night’s announcement that the company and its parent, The Blackstone Group, restructured nearly all of Hilton’s substantial debt load. The deal extends the maturity of the debt until November 2015 and reduces total debt by a whopping $4 billion. To make it happen, the company purchased $1.8 billion of its debt and converted $2.1 billion of junior mezzanine debt to preferred equity. Without knowing more particulars, it sounds as though someone, probably Blackstone, took a haircut on the deal.
Hilton has been under a lot of financial and legal pressure lately, and this deal will go far to loosen the vise and enable the company to hang on until the hotel market completely turns the corner back toward prosperity. Blackstone bought Hilton in mid-2007, at the top of the market, for $20 billion. Since the industry downturn, rumors have swirled that the company has been struggling to meet its debt obligations and that it might look to shed some brands. (If the latter is still the case, Hilton honcho Chris Nassetta should call Steve Joyce at Choice Hotels. Joyce has openly coveted Hilton’s Doubletree brand, figuring it to be a good fit into Choice’s currently brand lineup of mostly limited-service flags.)
Of course, Hilton still has one nagging problem looming: the lawsuit and federal investigation surrounding allegations that Hilton stole company secrets from Starwood to jump-start its now-abandoned attempt to enter the upscale lifestyle hotel business.

Both the consumer press and the hotel press have reported unusually good news in recent weeks. At the end of last week, the big national story was the jump in new jobs (162,000) added to the economy in March. And while there is debate on the composition and value of those jobs, it should be clear to all that adding jobs is better for the economy than losing them. The result has been cautious buoyancy in consumer sentiment. People feel better when the news is hopeful, often leading to more spending, which leads to more jobs, etc.
Similarly, recent news releases from Smith Travel Research have given hoteliers a spring in their steps that no one has seen since 2008. Last Thursday, STR reported hopeful upswings in both occupancy (up six percent) and RevPAR (up 4.2 percent) for the previous week. Even average rate, which nosedived in late 2008 and hasn’t recovered much since, was only down 1.6 percent last week. You can’t deny things are looking up for the hotel industry.
And the forecasts from STR, PKF and others point to even stronger gains by the end of the year and into next. PKF sounded the most optimistic note, forecasting RevPARs will soar by double-digit percentages once we make it to 2012.
Yet, we need to rein-in our enthusiasm a tad. Yes, business (and the economy) are getting better, but only slowly and not evenly across all segments, markets and locales. And there’s no guarantee some event or trend could trigger another downturn in the economy (the dreaded double dip) that would likewise mar the lodging industry’s march toward recovery.
It’s prudent to rejoice at improvements in business, locally, nationally and globally, but don’t get carried away thinking good times are once again right around the corner. I suspect we’ll see a lot more pain before life returns to what we remember as normal, if that ever happens at all.

I think maybe I made the wrong career choice. First a news report last month that Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta sold his home in Los Angeles for $18 million (losing almost $10 million), and now news that Starwood CEO Frits Van Paasschen received compensation valued at $8.2 million last year. The story says Van Paasschen made a base salary of $1 million and the rest of the compensation came via stock options that were more lucrative as the trading price doubled from 2008 to ‘09.
There’s no point to this other than that’s a lot of money (and I’m jealous). I can’t say if they deserve it. I know they’re leading some pretty big global companies during some really tough times.

Earlier this week, a judge in Washington D.C. dismissed a lawsuit threatening the $537-million hotel project across the street from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and the city could break ground as early as next month, according to a Washington Post story. More legal challenges could come, from the Wardman Investor alleging favoritism, or from just about anywhere else. The architects handling the 14-story Marriott Marquis project are from firm Cooper Carry, the same company that designed the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square and Lancaster County Convention Center in Pennsylvania. I spoke to Bob Neal for that story, the same guy involved in this project, and recall him saying these legal challenges and lengthy delays are the norm anytime public money is involved. Pope Bullock, the other Cooper Carry architect who partnered with Neal on the Lancaster project and this one as well, told me last year that this DC project “is the most complex construction you can imagine.”
it’s a long way from being done, but this massive project is worth keeping an eye on, from both the development and design sides of the business, to the legal side.