Mark Hoplamazian, president and CEO, Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Hyatt’s president and chief executive Mark Hoplamazian talks to Tom Otley about the company’s latest expansion plans
impact of each project we take on, which is fundamentally different to putting as many flags as you can on the map.
First Group wins Scot Rail extension
FIRST GROUP has been given a five-month extension to keep running the Scot Rail franchise into 2015. It had been due to expire on November 9, 2014, but the Scottish government has now extended this to March 31, 2015. Scot Rail, which operates services around Scotland, carries more than 81 million passengers per year. First Group chief executive
Tim O’Toole said: “Everyone at Scot Rail has worked tirelessly to deliver excellent service and improvements for customers. This is an exciting time for the railway in Scotland, with new trains, stations
HOTELS
and routes introduced since the start of the franchise. Our increasing number of passengers will see additional benefits up to and beyond Scotland’s important year of 2014.” Scotland will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in 2014, which is also the year of Scotland’s intended referendum on independence. Scot Rail is planning to
introduce extra services between Glasgow and Aberdeen, as well as enhancing Aberdeen’s commuter services.
Andaz has been troubled, hasn’t it?
Mark Hoplamazian
You recently bought the Hyatt Regency
Birmingham for a reported £35 million and are investing a further £6.5 million in the property. Why is it important to secure your presence in Birmingham? We don’t have an extensive distribution or presence in the UK
so we thought it was important to maintain a presence here. Birmingham is a transportation hub, inbound and outbound, and the group business that congregates within that city and the hotel is an important piece of our customer base. We also felt that the hotel needed some capital investment. By owning it and managing it, the additional capital we are going to put into it would help us get to a good result.
Edinburgh ACCOR: NEW UK HOTELS 14 1
FRENCH HOTEL GIANT Accor is adding four more hotels to its UK portfolio, with new properties in London and Edinburgh. The company has agreed deals to add one hotel in London’s Canary Wharf financial district and another three in the Scottish capital. The London property will be branded as a Novotel and will have 310 rooms when it opens in 2015. In Edinburgh, Accor will open a 103-room Ibis Styles hotel on St Andrew Square in the second half of this year. There will also be two new Ibis properties at Edinburgh Park and So Co Edinburgh, which will open this year and next year respectively. Accor has embarked on a major expansion drive in the UK, with the aim of increasing its hotel portfolio from the current 188 properties to more than 300 by 2015.
Distribution is important for travel managers. Are you focusing on expanding the number of hotels you have under the various Hyatt brands? We are. We now have around 500 hotels and a further 175 properties
in the pipeline for future openings, three quarters of which are outside of the US, and half of those are in China and India. Balancing growth with quality means we are not in a race to be the biggest hotel company – we are being deliberate and targeted so we can maximise the incremental
Only nine have opened in four years. We launched it in 2007 and have others that have been
announced, but we launched the brand in the teeth of the financial meltdown. If you compare it with the Edition brand by Marriott, we are doing well; and if you look at it relative to the roll-out of the W brand, then we are currently ahead of where they were at the same time. People talk about launching brands but when you are doing something which is a very conventional service model and you’re doing it in a difficult time, development is quite difficult to accomplish – it takes a lot longer than people think. I really believe that we’re on the right path with Andaz.
The Hyatt Place select- service brand has
done well in the US – will we see a presence in Europe? We have a couple under construction now, but we have looked mostly
at conversions or repurposing existing real estate into Hyatt Place, and that’s where we have dedicated our time, but it’s been difficult to conclude those transactions. We opened our first one in Costa Rica, with others following in Chile and China at the end of this year, so it will be a significant expansion of Hyatt Place and Hyatt House. But the megatrend is in the affluent middle class around the world and we are very well placed for that with the Hyatt brands – Hyatt Regency, Hyatt and Grand Hyatt.