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Bill Marriott and Ian Schrager To Do Boutique Business Together
6/14/2007 at 9:45 AM
Tags: Hotel News, Marriott Hotels, Bill Marriott, Ian Schrager, Schrager Hotels by Marriott, Gramercy Park Hotels, Peter Sanders
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning on the hotel industry's strangest bedfellows to date--Bill Marriott and Ian Schrager.
The 75-year-old Marriott hotelier (and blogger!) has wooed the Gramercy Park Hotel designer and former club boy to create a boutique hotel brand for Marriott Hotels.
The paper reports that Schrager will be involved in the design, creation, and marketing of this new boutique brand. Marriott will also have no "overt presence", similar to the chain's Ritz-Carlton brand. Meaning the brand's name won't be anything like "Schrager Hotels by Marriott." Still the plan is quite aggressive for this new Schrager brand:
Marriott says it hopes to have five hotel deals signed by the end of the year, with a goal of 100 hotels under development globally within 10 years.
Such hotels will pop up in key markets like Los Angles, Miami, Las Vegas, London and Singapore first.
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What's interesting to note is how Marriott and Schrager entered this partnership. Peter Sanders of the WSJ writes that Bill himself ventured on down to the Gramercy Park Hotel while it was still under construction and liked what he saw.
After the place opened, Bill said he felt more comfortable in this boutique hotel than others he had stayed at. He liked how the bar was separate from the lobby and the private rooftop club. He especially liked how it felt warm and friendly and the use of colors.
Guess we must be the 75-year-old here and not Bill, since we called the place a scary gothic sex castle, not to mention it was drafty and we forgot our cardigan!
So far, there are no real specifics on what these hotels will be like. Sanders reports that Schrager won't simply rip-off the hotels that he created while at Morgans Hotel Group and that he will not focus so much on a look, but rather the "feel" of it all, whatever that means. Straight from the Marriott press release, Schrager says:
People today are sophisticated and they understand good design, quality, originality and commitment to excellence. They will not accept something derivative and they want the ethos and soul of a hotel to be authentic and have character.
Hard to believe this kind of hotel will operate under a Marriott umbrella huh?
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