Alien Warfare Outside Chicago's Hotel 71

Cool picture of Wacker Drive outside Chicago's Hotel 71, where "Transformers 3" is filming this weekend. I stole this pic from my friend Stephanie's Facebook, so... thanks Steph!

On an unrelated note, I've got a good excuse for not posting to this blog over the past six weeks. HOTELS has recently relaunched its website, and the good folks over there asked me to help them seed Hotelsmag.com with content prior to and during the launch process. So, basically, everything that I would have written for HotelMusings.com is getting posted over there instead. But it's only a temporary arrangement, and I'll be back posting here full-time in a matter of weeks.

Four Seasons: Eatin' Good In The Neighborhood

Being the talk of the town has never been a problem for F&B outlets within the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts portfolio. Getting locals to actually step foot in those renowned restaurants has been a bit more challenging.

Recently, the company began rethinking the way it designs its restaurants, eschewing the trappings of classic luxury and embracing a more modern aesthetic. I talked with Guy Rigby, Four Seasons’ vice president of F&B for the Americas, about the company's new policy of commissioning designers exclusively for the restaurants. Today, Rigby tells me, “casual elegance” is the goal for Four Seasons' F&B projects, although the company is careful to consider local market factors, realizing that classic formal dining is still the expected rule in certain cities around the globe, like Hong Kong and Paris.

"In the good old days, most hotels would be designed by one good designer and, by definition, would do the guestrooms and spa and the restaurants and the common areas, and so the whole hotels would take on a very similar look," Rigby says. Four Seasons would then come in and install a certain theme in the restaurant that would "fit inside that box.”

At the end of the day, even though each Four Seasons restaurant was ostensibly unique, they tended to have one thing in common: they were inherently targeted primarily at the hotels’ guests. While Four Seasons restaurants have long been recognized the world over for their excellent cuisine and superb service, they often feel unapproachable among the locals. "The experience was fantastic, but we were lacking a little bit of buzz,” Rigby says.

The overarching restaurant trend in many cities over the past decade has been to offer fine dining and an adventurous culinary experience in a more casual setting. Rigby admits it was a dramatic shift in hotel F&B design that was a long time evolving but which Four Seasons was slow to embrace. "We realize the most important thing is that when our guests go to the concierge and ask, ‘Where do the locals eat?’ that [the answer] be a Four Seasons restaurant," he says.

New Four Seasons restaurants, like the showpiece Culina Modern Italian (above) at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, forego outdated, unwritten rules like keeping dining room and bar areas separate and hiding the kitchen and service stations. This may not sound revolutionary, but for a brand as steeped in traditional luxury as Four Seasons, it most certainly is. “We have to make sure the restaurants we build in our hotels are in tune with the great restaurants that are going up outside our hotels," Rigby says.

In rare instances, that even means partnering with a celebrity chef, like in the case of Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak at Four Seasons Hotel Washington, DC. It also means making a concerted effort to moderate the sometimes eye-popping menu prices. "Our service has always been exceptional, but things like the quality of cutlery and stainless steel were getting out of hand,” Rigby says. “We don’t need to be charging US$85 for a hamburger; part of this creating a neighborhood restaurant is offering neighborhood pricing."

Here is a great slideshow of images from some of the newly concepted Four Seasons restaurants. Check out Aer at Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, in particular. Very cool.

IHG's Hilton Affront: 'They Got It'

During my interview earlier this week with Brian Ericson, IHG's director of loyalty development, about the company's new Hotels Anywhere program, I also asked him about IHG's aggressive campaign against rival Hilton Worldwide in February.

The "Luckiest Loser" contest enticed Hilton HHonors members to enter a drawing to win points from IHG's Priority Club that they had ostensibly lost during HHonors' recent point devaluation.

Did the Priority Club folks get any calls from their counterparts at HHonors? "I think we may have gotten a phone call or two, yes," Ericson says.

And?

"They got it. They certainly weren't overjoyed, but their reaction was basically, 'Well played.'"

As for the contest's success, Ericson says more than 70,000 HHonors members entered, including 14 confirmed HHonors "millionaires."

Just as crucially, the contest predictably garnered a good bit of press coverage, much of it positive for IHG. "We were extremely pleased with how Luckiest Loser turned out," Ericson says. 'We were really enthused about the amount of press coverage that we got, and even more importantly than that, how enthusiastically it was received almost everywhere in the press. We deliberately called Hilton out on this, but we did it in a relatively friendly, relatively lighthearted manner."

Facebook's 'Like' Button And Hotels

With Facebook phasing out fan pages in favor of the ubiquitous and oftentimes awkward "Like" button, hotel social media marketers are trying to keep up with the changes and what it means for their marketing strategy. To that end, Lodging Interactive has put together this helpful guide to using the Like button for the hotel set.

IHG Careful Not To Compete With Itself With 'Hotels Anywhere'

For a couple years, IHG has been boldly letting members of its Priority Club Rewards loyalty program redeem points for hotel industry gift cards, which let guests book room nights at hotels outside the IHG brand portfolio, a candid admission that its portfolio has some market gaps. But the company took things to another level with last week's launch of "Hotels Anywhere," which skips the gift card concept in favor of a direct online booking engine.

Hotels Anywhere is replete with rival chains like Hiltons, Marriotts, Westins and more, along with the IHG family of brands, of course. It must have been a tough sell to IHG franchisees, right?

"Generally speaking, once people—whether it be franchisees or other internal stakeholders—once they understand the program and how the map works, they tend to feel a little more comfortable with it," says Brian Ericson, IHG's director of loyalty development. "It's safe to say that this is not a directly competing product."

In other words, IHG makes sure customers using Hotels Anywhere are incentivized to book its own hotels first by offering them at lower redemption levels than similarly positioned rival hotels. At the same time, the program gives IHG loyalists a way to book free nights in places like Hawaii or the Las Vegas Strip, where IHG market penetration is low. Indeed, since the program's soft launch earlier this month, those two destinations have been the most frequently searched and booked, Ericson says.

Assuming IHG hotels really aren't losing room nights to rivals, the concept is a win-win for the company and consumers. IHG had found that some frequent guests were choosing to stay at other hotels now and then as a way to accrue points for future free nights in places like Vegas; to win back those lost room nights, IHG could either dramatically expand its portfolio or simply open up the redemption barrier. The latter, obviously, is faster and easier.

"Our hypothesis was that destination gaps like (Vegas) are a very bad thing for loyalty to Priority Club, and that people who might otherwise be inclined to stay all of their nights and earn all of their points with Priority Club may be strategically splitting their nights with another loyalty club, like Starwood or Hilton," he says.

But why make the leap from the "Any Hotel, Anywhere" gift cards to direct online booking? Ericson says many consumers were having a difficult time wrapping their heads around the concept, while others were understandably annoyed at having to wait four to six weeks for the cards to arrive in the mail. Hotels Anywhere is in the spirit of better customer service.

Hotels Anywhere uses unfiltered hotel inventory feeds from three third-party providers (Tourico, GTA and Hotelbeds) comprising 36,000 properties. Ric Garrido over at Loyalty Traveler crunched the numbers, and while IHG hotels in the system tend to offer the best rates on a value-per-redemption-level basis, the pricing at other hotels seems fairly arbitrary.

The average free room night booked on Hotels Anywhere thus far would normally cost about US$135.

Audio Hotel Room Keys To Debut In Holiday Inns

Holiday Inn Hotels looks to be the first chain to implement OpenWays' Crypto Accoustic Credentials guestroom access system, USA Today's Barbara De Lollis reports.

I wrote about the OpenWays system back in the January issue of HOTELS. In short, the technology sends an encrypted, unique audio code to a guest's phone prior to check-in. When played back outside the guestroom, the signal unlocks the door, letting the guest skip the front desk—guests would also receive a text message with their room assignments—while also eliminating the need for keycards, which is green and saves money.

According to De Lollis' story, the Holiday Inn pilot program will require participating guests—and yes, participation is optional—to download a special smartphone app in order to receive and use the aural guestroom keys. But the OpenWays system is theoretically designed to work with any mobile device, assuming it has a speaker and can receive messages, meaning that even "dumb" phones could be compatible.

The potential benefits for Holiday Inn in implementing OpenWays are several.

First off, the technology will be marketed as a cutting-edge guest amenity, drawing the kind of tech-forward transients that tend to be some of the highest spending hotel guests per capita.

Secondly, because Holiday Inn will require participating guests to register online in advance, that could translate into increased revenue via channel shift—that is, extra motivation to book on the brand site rather than a third-party site.

Furthermore, because guests will have to provide an active mobile phone number in order to access the technology, Holiday Inn gets an easy way to build a highly targeted and accurate mobile marketing database.

If enough guests take advantage of the technology, the need for front desk staffing would be reduced, saving on payroll or allowing workers to be reassigned to meet other guest service needs. And from an environmental standpoint, every guest who uses a mobile device to unlock their doors means one less plastic keycard that inevitably ends up in the trash.

And it is a relatively cost-friendly upgrade for Holiday Inn. Installation costs range from US$15 to US$55 per key, according to OpenWays CEO Pascal Metivier, and existing locks can be upgraded without needing to be replaced.

As for the system's security, Metivier told me OpenWays is at least as secure as a keycard. Like with a keycard, the unique audio key becomes obsolete upon checkout. Additionally, hotel staff have the ability to track guestroom access remotely and to cancel the audio keys in real time.

The pilot will launch in June at Holiday Inn Chicago O'Hare Rosemont and the Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center, De Lollis reports.

Twitter-Bastardized Word Of The Day: 'Twedding'

This may or may not become a regular feature of this blog: words that social media marketers make up that are hybrids of an actual word and "Twitter."

Today's entry comes from Holiday Inn Hotels, which is launching a Twitter contest to win a "Twedding Gift Giveaway." Twitterfolk who register here and also follow the @IHGDeals Twitter handle are eligible to win random wedding registry fare, with one person winning an entire free wedding registry. Which is cool, but then what will Aunt Linda get you for the wedding shower?

IHG Hires Student Designers For Fresher Perspective, Less Money

Candlewood Suites is getting a design makeover from the same group that gave its IHG sibling brand Staybridge Suites a guestroom refresh last year: SCAD.

No, SCAD is not a design firm. It is the Savannah College of Art and Design. The designers are students in the college's graduate-level interior design class.

I asked Rob Radomski, vice president of global brand management for IHG's extended-stay brands, why the company opted to turn to 20-something students rather than more seasoned professionals for such a major brand redesign project.

For one, he says the students bring a fresher perspective to design.

"We knew that we had to take a non-traditional approach, in order to get the results that we wanted, which were designs that weren’t what you’d typically find at an extended-stay hotel," Radomski tells me. "Partnering with SCAD gave us the opportunity to tap into the next generation of travelers, as I mentioned earlier, to see what they want when staying at a hotel. Some of these students had already spent time in the workplace, so they had experience staying at hotels, but they also had the knowledge about what’s next in terms of design trends. The students were very engaged with the project and had a unique energy that came through in the designs they presented."

Another factor is cost. The SCAD partnership saves IHG and its franchisees a lot of money compared to commissioning a design house. If the end result is just as good—and Radomski believes it might even be better in some respects—then why not?

"This frees up money, which we can use for other brand projects," he says. "Where the students can raise the value proposition even further is through their level of critical thinking. For instance, in the projects we’ve worked together on, they’ve demonstrated the ability to find meaningful cost savings through the use of different—and sometimes more sustainable—products and manufacturing processes. When our franchisees get ready to implement these designs, these sustainable products will save them money in the long run. Additionally, the students have a tremendous design sense, and we fully expect that guests will be willing to pay more for the designs they’re creating for us."

In the Staybridge redesign (left), Radomski credits the students with creating modern design elements that work for an extended-stay brand, namely components that address the need for personalization and storage.

"We have a desk hutch that frees up workspace on the desk and gives storage space for a guests’ office supplies, computer equipment, phone chargers, etc.," he says. "There are nesting tables that fit under the floating bedside tables that guests can use to sit down on and tie their shoes, or lay out their clothes in the morning or use as extra seating if needed. The students created ottoman cubes that have a removable top that can be used as a lap board, with space for storage inside. We also have customizable shelves in the closets, since some guests will need to bring more shoes or clothing, for instance, if they’re staying for a longer period of time."

The students are to present their final design concepts for Candlewood later this month, and the Candlewood brand team will then work with the concepts to come up with workable final designs.Model rooms are expected to begin construction in the fall.

IHG VP Explains Decision To Go Gowalla

FourSquare has been the dominant player in the nascent location-based mobile social media segment to date, boasting roughly 1 million users to date. But its chief rival, Gowalla, made a splash this week by partnering with IHG to serve as a primary information-delivery system for the hotel company's summer "Hit It Big" promotion.

Given that FourSquare has five times the market share that Gowalla does, the decision to go with the upstart over the "established" name (although let's face it, both are pretty obscure as far as the general public is concerned) was met with a great deal of head-scratching.

I asked Del Ross, IHG's vice president of global e-commerce solutions, the obvious question: Why Gowalla?

"It wasn't an either/or for us," he told me. "We always like to test and try new media when they emerge; it's really more opportunistic than anything else." Ross said he liked the way Gowalla enables and encourages the exploration of new locations moreso than FourSquare's interface, although he admitted the differences were esoteric enough that explaining them in detail would be difficult. He emphasized that the choice should not be interpreted as an endorsement of one over the other. "We just felt the style and the voice of the Gowalla approach just fit better with this campaign."

The learning curve is steep for companies using location-based social media, in large part because the user base is so fragmented. As such, Ross has no idea what to expect from the Gowalla effort. "We learn by research, but we also learn by doing," he says. "If we gain nothing but knowledge about this platform and understanding of how to use it, then we've won."

As for the promotion itself, IHG is offering guests double Priority Club points or double air miles if they register for the promo. And what exactly is the Gowalla tie-in? Guests who check-in to Gowalla while on property get notified of the promotion.

Not horribly exciting, but some sexier location-based social media promotions may be in the offing from IHG, Ross says—things like onsite discounts, incentives and added amenities. "All this stuff is in the hopper and in our idea basket today, and once we get a better handle on how this medium seems to work for us, and we'll go from there."

Wyndham Exec At Center Of NBA Referee Controversy

Maybe you heard about the NBA referee who was suspended by the league for throwing a ball at a heckling fan a couple days ago? Turns out the fan is none other than Wyndham Vacation Ownership CEO Franz Hanning.

Check out the video replay of the incident:

Social Media All About Language, Hotel Exec Says

The many avenues of social media have revolutionized hotel marketing tactics, but successful social media marketing is less about the conduit than about the messaging itself.

That is the conclusion of Antonio Batanero, senior director distribution and digital marketing for Sol Meliá Hotels & Resorts in the Americas, who tells EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta that successful social media marketing mimics the way consumers interact with their own friends and family. He sees social media as word-of-mouth marketing taken to the masses and modernized.

Batanero believes that marketing messages resonate best when companies speak with the same language as the targeted consumer. It's one of those things that you instinctively know but maybe hadn't thought of in exactly that framework. But it's no secret that those companies that have had the most success with social media have been those that use a casual, conversational, even colloquial voice, throwing off the binds of corporatespeak in favor of something more approachable to the average Joe.

Of course, if you're not trying to sway the average Joe—if you're aiming squarely at stuffy traditionalists—then your online voice should reflect that instead. Although, if you're trying to reach stuffy traditionalists, then maybe you're wasting your time on Twitter anyway.

Wisely, Sol Meliá understands that the ROI of social media cannot be measured strictly in dollar figures, instead judging success based on factors like comment volume and ratio of positive to negative feedback. None of that matters, though, unless the consumer interaction is truly a two-way street, taking those comments and turning them into a useful conversation.

"ROI must also be measured by the actions that you take based on customers’ feedback. In other words, if all your fans/followers are giving you tons of feedback on a specific subject of your hotel but you do not do anything to change that in the property, then ROI is extremely negative," Batanero says. "If you show people that you care about their suggestions and you are willing to implement them, then… ROI is incalculable."

Batanero lauds those companies that have instituted full-time social media overseers, saying "every company should have one." I don't agree with that entirely; I would say that every large company should have one, but for smaller hotel groups, there's no reason social media can't be done by people already on staff, in addition to their other duties. I agree that every company should have a social media presence of some sort, even if it's just keeping tabs on TripAdvisor comments a couple times a week.

Which is a nice excuse for me to link to one of the last articles I wrote for HOTELS, "Social Media On A Shoestring Budget."

HOTELS Magazine's Online Archives Still Exist, Sort Of

When Reed Business Information shuttered HOTELS magazine last month, it also scrapped the magazine's online archives. Sadness.

But back issues of the magazine do still exist online in the form of digital issues. They're not easily searchable, and online-only stuff like blogs, breaking news and podcasts are nowhere to be found. But still, it's better than nothing.

Here is a link to the last published issue, from April. From there, you can use the dropdown menu to access other issues dating back to 2003.

Pantone Hotel Opens; When Will Someone Open A Font Hotel?

Finally, graphic designers and production editors have a haute hotel they can call their own.


The Pantone Hotel opened this week in Brussels, featuring modern design decked out in just seven very precise dominant colors: Pantones 478, 200, 137, 1215, 238, 353 and 298. For those of us less accustomed to the famed color-matching system, that would be approximately brown, crimson, orange, beige, lavender, seafoam and aqua. And yes, you can select your room by color.

Pantone, in case you're baffled at this point, is a company that specializes in color precision, making sure graphic designers get the exact shades they're looking for. Why they would theme a hotel around this is a separate question, one that shouldn't obfuscate the concept's general awesomeness.

Naturally, the hotel's lounge serves colorful cocktails including the Pink Champagne Pantone 12-1107, the Lemon Drop Pantone 12-0736 and the Daiquiri Green 12-0435.

The 59-key hotel offers free WiFi. A room for tonight costs a very reasonable €59.

I'm Back

After an incredibly relaxing month-long hiatus brought on by the closure of HOTELS magazine (and exacerbated, in a good way, by my April nuptials), I'm back to blogging full-time.

My once-popular HOTELS blog, Musings & Miscellany, sadly is no more, lost to the abyss of cyberspace along with the rest of the magazine's online archives. For now, this will be my Web home, and I'll try to make a go of blogging independently. While I will almost certainly be writing for one hotel industry publication or another on a freelance basis—possibly even the soon-to-be relaunched HOTELS, though nothing is yet official—I must emphasize that this blog is unaffiliated with any other publication.

Additionally, in the interest of full disclosure, I am working on a contract basis with Plan A PR & Marketing as director of client communications. I'll be representing hotel technology vendors EZYield.com and Libra OnDemand, and while I'm admittedly somewhat apprehensive about the ethical implications of working PR while also doing editorial writing, I'm confident I can keep the two separate. At the very least, now you know, and you can draw your own conclusions about my impartiality.

Changing gears completely, I mentioned that I'm newly married. Did I also mention I'm now a professional lounge singer? Just kidding... although I did surprise my beautiful bride with my own rendition of Bobby Darin's "More." Take a gander, but please be kind in the comments section!