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How to Start a Boutique Hotel
Luxury hotels were a big deal in Atlantic City in the 1920s, as depicted in HBO's hit series Boardwalk Empire. In the 1950s and 60s, Atlantic City was actually known as the "Queen of Resorts" before gambling was legalized in 1976 and monstrous casino hotels took over the landscape. So when New York City-based companies Cape Resorts Inc. partnered with Normandy Real Estate Partners L.L.C. a few years ago, they wanted to re-create the luxurious boutique hotel of Atlantic City's historical past. They developed the only boutique, luxury, and non-gaming hotel in Atlantic City, The Chelsea, to cater to travelers looking for a refined, independent experience away from the casinos.
"We recognized that there wasn't a natural market for this type of resort at the time we were developing The Chelsea," says Jane Mackie, vice president of marketing at Cape Resorts, a company focused on smaller properties built on the principles of luxury, comfort and service. "But we also recognized that there were no options in town for the upscale traveler who might just want to get away, spend some time near the water and do something different. People want a hotel experience sometimes more than just a bed and breakfast or motel, and less than the large casino hotels."
Opening in May 2008, The Chelsea features 330 rooms and two suites, but is focused on an intimate and exciting experience that doesn't revolve around gambling. From a design perspective, it fits much in the mid-century form of the town, and philosophically it focuses on its waterfront location with a full-service beach, two outdoor swimming pools and an upscale nightclub. Since opening, the resort has outperformed a volatile market in town, catering namely to leisure guests on weekends with high amounts of disposable income. Unlike the casino resorts in town, no rooms are complimentary.
Starting a boutique hotel in a time of economic volatility as seen in the past few years is a risky proposition, but if done correctly, it can be a profitable business venture. As travelers change their vacationing patterns, they want more out of their experiences than some of the traditional big-brand hotel chains can offer. In this guide, we will discuss what exactly a boutique hotel is, the principles to focus on when opening one, and how marketing yourself differently can lead to success even with competition from larger, branded competition.
How to Start a Boutique Hotel: Definition of a Boutique Hotel
Ask three different people to define a boutique hotel, and you'll get three extremely different responses. At the most basic level, boutique, or what some refer to as lifestyle hotels, offer a level of intimacy in an increasingly impersonal world. For many travelers, it's the element of surprise, in a positive manner, which helps them choose a boutique hotel over a branded facility. But how many rooms does it offer? How big is the property? And what makes a boutique different from any other small lodging options?
"To me, a boutique hotel is no larger than 150 to 200 rooms that can sometimes operate as part of a brand but more often are known for independent ownership," says Rick Swig, owner and founder of RSBA & Associates, a San Francisco-based consultancy firm for many in the hospitality industry. "They're usually not very cookie-cutter in terms of design or experience, and they display distinct characteristics of the target market. So when a customer walks in, they see customers who look like them, think like them and has common values."
Boutique hotels were by many accounts invented in the 1980s, with the first noted as The Morgans Hotel in New York City, The Blakes in London and the former Bedford in San Francisco. As time went on, customers became disenchanted with the similar service they had always received from larger chain hotel brands, and wanted something unique and different, in terms of look, feel and level of personal service delivered. What many customers say when asked what they prefer about boutiques is the connection they as guests have with the hotel staff, a level of personalized service that isn't achieved in larger hotels.
"To put it quite simply, you need a clean hotel designed to fit the needs of the customer you're looking to attract," says Joe McInerney, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based American Hotel & Lodging Association. "You need the right design, the right destination and the right location. If you don't have all of that, you're not going to be successful."
Dig Deeper: How I Did It: Butch Stewart of Sandals Resorts
How to Start a Boutique Hotel: What to Focus on When Opening a Boutique Hotel
From the very start, as McInerney notes, the biggest factor in success as a boutique hotel is destination and location. In terms of destinations, you need to look at cities that can attract a pretty diverse market segment, from the traditional leisure traveler to the business traveler and then events and conventions.
Dating back to the days before it was a casino town, Atlantic City has been a destination for wealthy urban residents from three of the largest metropolitan cities in America. It is located less than three hours by car from Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C., making it an ideal weekend or even overnight trip. These facts were critical in choosing Atlantic City as the location for The Chelsea.
Ideally, those cities are not seasonal destinations, and there are visitors both during the week and on weekends. Regarding location, you need to be centrally located to the other things in that particular destination that are going to drive business to your hotel.
"My favorite exercise when you're looking to buy or develop a hotel is to stand on the proverbial roof of the building and look around you," says Swig. "You need to look at what other businesses are going to send customers your way, and if you can't see enough of that within a one mile radius, you're probably in the wrong location."
To Swig, the keys to measuring success with a boutique hotel are as follows:
Defining the hotel's purpose and/or niche
Developing a high-quality product created to appeal to an underserved clientele
Conveying a clear, interesting message to the target market
Not spending too much money in development to make profitability with your product difficult to achieve
As you design the hotel, you should be forward thinking in terms of amenities but also consider the market you are in. For The Chelsea, they focused on Atlantic City's past while also incorporating modern amenities. There are historical photos throughout, but a salt-water swimming pool, restaurants with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water and distinct post-modern design scheme.
"It's important that it look good, but sometimes there's too much emphasis on style," notes Mackie. "Through our experience with other properties, we've learned that the largest driving force in return customers or repeat business is an overemphasis on service. It's easy to get people to come once, but the hospitality industry is all about getting people to come back again and again. So we focus on making the experience unforgettable."
Dig Deeper: How to Pick a Site For Your Business
How to Start a Boutique Hotel: The Cost of Opening a Boutique Hotel
In the last few years, the industry has seen a rise in rooms for luxury and middle-tiered hotels with a decrease in supply from older hotels and many economy-based. There is certainly opportunity for a boutique, which could fit between the middle and high-end of that spectrum, but you need to be smart about your investment. According to a recent cost estimate guide published by HVS, a global industry consulting firm based in San Francisco, "the expectation is that projects will return in the second half of 2010, with an overload in 2012 similar to what happened during the post-9/11 recovery."
In terms of start-up costs, buying an existing property and renovating to fit your needs is much more cost-effective than developing an entirely new project. Cost will also vary based on how many rooms you are building, as well as the additional amenities of the resort. This is considered a per key basis, or how much money is spent on the resort compared to how many room keys exist. According HVS and their 2009 end-of-year study, the cost per room (when factoring in land costs, site improvements, soft costs and working capital) could be anywhere from $75,000-$400,000, depending on the hotel and location. To determine the local per-key sales figures, check out the HVS study or find a local hotel industry consultant in the market you are targeting to figure out the going rate.
For many in the hotel industry, it's a minimum-wage (tip-based job). For a boutique hotel, you need to hire experienced hotel workers with great customer service skills. As Mackie says about Cape Resorts, "Customers always say, 'My God, you have so much staff, how can you afford it?' And that's exactly what we want. We just say that is really what the brand is about. The whole experience is delivered by the staff and its emphasis on training, so you need to find the best." Smaller staffs should be paid more based on the level of service you're asking them to provide.
The limited overhead as a smaller hotel both help boutiques post larger profit margins than many bigger brands, according to Hotel Investment Advisors, another industry consultant. Part of the profit margin is the cost you can charge your customers, which can sometimes be double what the larger local brands are offering for similar rooms but without the personal touch. Initially you won't have the brand equity that the larger brands have built up over time, so it may take you longer to reach the point of breaking a profit.
Dig Deeper: The Best Hotels for Business Travel
How to Start a Boutique Hotel: How to Market Your Boutique Hotel
An oft-overlooked aspect of opening a smaller hotel is your product distribution, or how you market yourself. Because you don't have that existing brand recognition of the larger chains, you need to get the word out there about your resort. By defining your resort as a brand of one and communicating your standards in the same way that larger resorts do, your customers will gain a level of comfort and familiarity with your resort. Telling a unique story behind the location or history of the hotel (for The Chelsea, it's nod to Atlantic City's past) can put you over the top in terms of occupancy and success.
The good thing for many start-ups is that the Internet has made this marketing aspect considerably easier. You can now put your boutique hotel on a level playing field with some of the larger branded properties thanks to the benefits of travel search engines like Expedia, Bing, Hotels.com and more as a great way to raise your brand recognition.
No matter how you break it down, it comes down to your return on investment as a boutique hotel. But with no franchise fees and the opportunity to operate with your own customer service ideas and brand characteristics, boutiques offer the chance to succeed as an independent hotel.
Dig Deeper: Forget Travel Agents, Social Media Has the Power
Getting Your Resum� Ready for Google
With old Facebook pages, forgotten blogs, tagged photos, and other casual online activity floating around the Internet like so much space junk in orbit, a person never quite knows what a search of his or her name might spit up. Reputations are at constant risk, thanks to sites like Unvarnished, where both friends and foes can post anonymous comments about others. Job seekers are at special risk: Almost 80 percent of recruiters surveyed in a recent Microsoft study checked out applicants online, and 70 percent of those eliminated candidates based on what they found. But whenever this many people have a problem, it's a sure bet that entrepreneurs are working to fix it. Here are four young companies vying in the business of polishing online personas.
ReputationDefenderThe site, launched in 2006, offers four subscription services, with monthly fees starting at $8.25. MyReputation generates a monthly report showing every reference to you on the Web; MyChild notifies subscribers when their children are mentioned online; and MyEdge pushes positive Web content toward the top of search engines. MyPrivacy finds and deletes personal information online from direct-mail lists. ReputationDefender can also seek out and remove specific information about you on the Web.
Paid Subscriptions: 20,000
NaymzEven if you manage to get your online persona popping up on a Google search just as you want it, readers won't necessarily believe what you are telling them. Naymz provides a layer of legitimacy by allowing invited friends and colleagues to post references on your Naymz profile page. The free site, which has 1.8 million users, also has a scoring system, based on a background check as well as what people say about you. A paid version, at $144 a year, includes options to track visitors to your page and monitor in real time how and where your name shows up on the Web.
Paid Subscriptions: 10,000
SchakraAfter developing software for companies like Microsoft, Schakra launched a Parental Guidance Facebook application in June. The app alerts parents when their children make potentially damaging changes to their profiles -- like posting obscenities or inappropriate photos, or becoming friends with someone outside their age group. The service is free, but a paid premium version is set to launch next month. It will give parents the ability to know when specific words or phrases they have banned show up on their children's Facebook pages.
Paid Subscriptions: None. The paid service launches next month.
Brand-YourselfAfter many unsuccessful job interviews, Pete Kistler realized he was being mistaken for an ex-convict with the same name. Struck with the importance of online reputation, he joined two other students at Syracuse University to form Brand-Yourself in 2008. The service, at $9.99 a month, creates a personalized website that shows up high on a Google search of the user's name. It walks the user through search-engine-optimization techniques and suggests blogs and social sites he or she should link to or comment on in order to improve online visibility.
Paid Subscriptions: 5,000
The Line: ReputationDefender has set itself apart by patrolling and removing information from the Web. Its multiple-product model may help it pull in revenue. Naymz's reputation score and recommendations -- and the 1.8 million users who have joined its free site -- make it a LinkedIn on steroids. The challenge is persuading those users to opt for the paid version. But Schakra will never run out of parents who are concerned about what their children are posting on Facebook, and Brand-Yourself is marketing to recent college grads, perhaps giving these two late starters the long-term edge.
Don't Try to Sell Too Soon
Dear Norm,
In November 2008, I started a business making baby slippers from used wool sweaters and used leather jackets. I sell them mostly on Etsy, where my business is thriving. I've received many more requests for wholesale accounts than I can fill. I've trained my second subcontractor and have added adult slippers to my line. My goal is to sell the business in about five years to a company that already uses recycled materials to make footwear. What must I do to make that happen? Should I trademark my name? Patent my design? Raise outside capital for expansion?
-- Josie Marsh, founder, Wooly Baby
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
If you want to sell your company, you need a proven business model with strong cash flow and good growth prospects. Although Josie has been in business for two years and has attracted a following, she still has a way to go. Her sales aren't enough to interest a serious buyer. She also has capacity problems. And she's vulnerable to copycats. I advised her to trademark her company's name, which she can do inexpensively at an online trademark site. Securing a patent, however, is expensive and time-consuming, and she might not get one in the end. Instead, she should spend her time and capital on increasing sales. I suggested she consider marketing through services such as Google Affiliate Network and Commission Junction. She also needs to increase capacity. Finally, I cautioned her against seeking outside capital. She'd have to give up too much equity to get it. It's better for her to bootstrap for now.
Josie asked me how she would know when to approach prospective buyers. It wouldn't be for a few years, I said, and she had enough to do right now without worrying about it. I told her to check back with me in 12 months, and we'd reassess her situation then.
Please send all questions to AskNorm@inc.com. Norm Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur. His co-author is editor-at-large Bo Burlingham. Their book, The Knack, is now available in paperback under the title Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/inc/channel/start-up/~3/cPbjceO-Hp8/dont-try-to-sell-too-soon.html
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