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So Long Sahara? SLS Hotels Encounter Some Turbulence
It seems like only yesterday that a nightclub operator and hotelier practically meant the same thing but thanks to the rough economy, it's become very clear to Sam Nazarian that a hotelier has far bigger troubles than a nightclub owner.
The Wall Street Journal took a look behind the scenes at Nazarian's SBE Entertainment company which counts several nightclubs frequented by the brainless cast members of "The Hills," restaurants prominently featured in the background of paparazzi shots, and of course, the SLS Hotels which include The SLS Los Angeles, The Sahara in Las Vegas and the old Ritz Plaza in Miami Beach.
While the SLS Hotel in LA has been generally well-received, especially thanks to its Bazaar restaurant manned by superstar chef Jose Andres, the other two properties are languishing in debt and construction nightmare. And SBE is suffering for it:
In the past 18 months, Mr. Nazarian has cut much of his development team, including architects and designers, and outsourced legal counsel and other services—downsizing his corporate staff nearly in half to around 55 people.
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No More Weekdays at The Water Club (Again)
Just in case you weren’t convinced that the cool weather is here to stay in the Northeast, here’s a big hint by way of Atlantic City: The Water Club at the Borgata is closing up shop on weeknights. And if you think you’ve heard this song before, you’re not going crazy: the Water Club also closed rooms midweek back in March, when business was slow, re-opening for the summer party season in May.
Guests wishing to stay at the property Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays can be accommodated at big brother, the Borgata, and it doesn’t look like all weekdays will be blackouts. When we checked out the online reservation system, we noticed that the week of November 15 is showing up as available, from $209 a night. Also, you can crash at the Water Club for just $159 a night tomorrow night.
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The Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda Gets Moved to Friday Nights
The Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda, a Mandarin Oriental hotel, has decided to close down its 100-year-old main building at the end of November because it was pretty much just for show and besides, the hotel is building a newer, better, bigger resort behind it. As if! But remember those days when hotels could do that sort of stuff on a whim?
No, the Elbow Beach Hotel is closing down the old building because of--you guessed it--the economy. And even worse, the hotel is going to lay off about 160 workers between now and November.
ABC News reports that 131 rooms will be closed, leaving essentially only the 98 luxury suites and cottages open to guests. The hotel would like to renovate the old building during its closure (which should last for several years) but there are no firm plans. The hotel will also outsource its food and beverage operations as well.
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The Shore Club No Longer a Sure Thing
Even though The Shore Club in Miami Beach may cost a pretty penny to spend the night (rates in the high season once fetched $1,000 a night), it looks like the hotel's owners are not immune to the recession woes.
While the Shore Club is managed by Morgans Hotel Group, the hotel is owned by Philip Pilevsky and his son, Michael. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pilevskys have gone delinquent on their $111.5 million securitized mortgage. Earlier this month, the hotel owners even threatened to close the hotel down but later managed to get another loan to pay the payroll and other critical expenses for the hotel. Yet, that still wasn't enough.
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The Jane Hotel Ballroom is Closed for Now
The latest news in The Jane Hotel v. Neighbors and Pissy Dogs is that the ballroom has been closed down, after city officials raided the bar last week. We're hearing from the hotel that the space will re-open "in a few days" after some "tweaks" are made. However, Gothamist says the bar will be closed for several weeks. Whenever it does re-open, a maximum occupancy limit of 75 people may be enforced and only the front bar will be open, not the ballroom.
There may also be some tentative plans to introduce a light food service even though the real deal restaurant/cafe inside the hotel is not open. Either way, if you've booked your room at the Jane for for a New York City visit and were hoping to party with the modelizers and their prey beautiful people in the ballroom, you'll have to head on over to the Standard Hotel's tentatively-named Boom Boom Room just a few blocks away. Oh wait, you can't get in there either.
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The Jane Hotel Now Facing Neighborhood Angst
As if dealing with grumpy tenants wasn't enough, The Jane Hotel finds itself fighting another battle with folks who aren't too happy about its presence---the neighbors.
A blog and a Twitter feed called Nightmare on Jane Street have been setup to monitor/publicize all the crowds, events, and noise levels coming out of the Ballroom at the Jane Hotel. Example:
1:15 AM Update: Once again a crowd of over 100 people has congregated in front of the Jane Hotel hoping to get in with dozens more loitering in front of 99, 111 and 130 Jane. We counted six hotel employees in orange jackets lining the block from end to end attempting to manage the taxis–oddly, this doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on the noise.
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Recession Great For Hotel Deals, Not So Much For Hotels
Our sister site Jaunted recently reported that no one's really traveling on airplanes these days. Now it turns out that all those people who aren't flying also aren't staying in hotels, and won't be for at least the next year:
An “overhang” of hotel rooms being built will depress prices through 2010 following the biggest first-half drop in room rates since in at least five years... “Through the go-go years, more and more hotels were built,” David Roche, president of Hotels.com, said in a telephone interview. He said prices probably won’t recover until late 2010... Lodgers worldwide paid 17 percent less on average for their bookings through Hotels.com in the six months compared with the same period in 2008.
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Boston's Hyatt Hotels Have No Love for Housekeepers
This bathroom will now be cleaned by outsourced housekeepers.
It's never easy for the hotel housekeeping staff. The things they have to put up with from us guests! But whether or not you agree that they should receive an extra tip for their work, you have to admit the latest news from the Hyatt Hotels in Boston is unfair. The Boston Globe reports:
Hyatt Hotels Corp. laid off the entire housekeeping staffs at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Hyatt Harborside Hotel after the morning shift had ended on Aug. 31, citing challenging economic conditions, and immediately replaced them with workers from an out-of-state staffing firm. The housekeepers had been training those very workers, from Georgia’s Hospitality Staffing Solutions, who they were told would be filling in for vacations.
So basically, these housekeepers--some who have worked at the hotels for years--were asked to train their replacements without even knowing it. Not cool.
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The Quail Lodge in Carmel Closing Down in November
Some sad news outta Carmel. The Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley will close its hotel operations on November 16.Last week, owner Neil Galloway announced the closure of the hotel side of the golf resort, citing that even though the company heavily invested in the hotel and "we've worked hard" the Quail Lodge has had a net loss every single year for the past eight years.
Even in 2007, a record year for the hospitality industry, the Quail Lodge still lost money. For that reason, hotel operations will be shut down and the closure is expected to be permanent. Since the hotel is part of a golf resort and club, Galloway says that side will still remain open to the 300+ members and that they will continue to service events, but reductions in some services will also be made.
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More Financial Blues for The Fontainebleau
You’ve probably already heard that the still-under-construction Fontainebleau Las Vegas went bankrupt. (Although the Miami Herald reports that the property’s lawyers won an additional three weeks in bankruptcy protection this week, as they try to sell the sucker off.)
But what about the Fontainebleau Miami? Well, things aren’t quite so sunny in SoFla either. While the former Rat Pack playground was re-launched with grand Victoria’s Secret-fanfare last year, it appears that the Soffer family who owns the landmark hotel might have overdone it with the $500 million they spent on renovations.
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NH Hotels Runs Ad With Child in Bikini; Gets Banned
Oopsies – we may have been impressed by NH Hotels this week for plugging their cheap rooms and offering us a dream holiday, but they’ve got in a teensy bit of trouble elsewhere – the UK advertising watchdog has just banned one of their ads because they reckon it showed a child in a “sexually provocative pose”.
The picture was part of an email campaign and series of ads called The Organizers (ridiculous tagline “an organized group with a license to save”). Supposedly, the ads have been promoting good deals – although we found them so baffling, seeing as they seemed to consist of photos of models rather than telling us what the deals were, that we never realised this, and used to just hit delete.
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The Maui Prince To Remain Open; Hilton Portland to Close for a Few Selected Weeks
The water will not run dry at the Maui Prince.
Some good news for Hawaii: The Maui Prince Hotel will actually not be closing next month as was first reported earlier this week. Instead, the hotel will remain open under new management.
There was always a possibility that the hotel would not close if it could get a new management company to come in and run the place. But interestingly, Wells Fargo--the bank that's now in charge of the hotel, thanks to its owners defaulting on the mortgage--would not say which company is managing the hotel. Any of you know which company it is? Spill it.
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