NEW YORK— Leave it to out-of-towners to become the consummate New Yorkers. That is what has happened to Rony and Jacob Oved, two brothers who launched New York Inns Hotel Group, the ultimate result of being stranded one night in the Big Apple and thwarted repeatedly in attempts to find an affordable and acceptable hotel. Now, eight years after making good on their promise to create hotels that would meet those criteria, the former shopping-mall-building brothers, together with their vp/sales and marketing Cezary Cwintal, are aggressively pushing their three-hotel portfolio into the metropolitan spotlight as the “boutique hotels for the budget-minded.” The Oveds originally parlayed their real estate expertise and connections to acquire distressed brownstones, which are strategically distributed across the city. “We saw these walkups that are very typical of what you see in Europe and we saw that there was a need for inexpensive lodging in Manhattan and also some more personalized types of lodging,” said Rony Oved. The three properties— The Union Square Inn, Murray Hill Inn and The Amsterdam Inn— cover downtown, midtown and uptown, respectively. All three have just completed an estimated $1 million in significant renovations. To get potential guests familiarized with what they have to offer, the executives have created and launched a new Internet portal, www.nyinns.com, effectively creating a one-stop shopping option for the web savvy. “We decided simply to jump in deep water and bet everything on the Internet,” said Cwintal, “And it’s starting to pay off.” Last year, the Group decided to consolidate the operations, rather than market each property individually, and worked with Esoftware.com and Ehotels Strategies to help build the portal. “Once we put all the ducks in a row and started to be present online, to our surprise our visits [hits]jumped from 2,000 a month to half-a-million a month,” said Cwintal. In addition, the Group, which also owns the Central Park Hostel, a 250-bed dormitory-style facility that also is online, has been able to raise its ADR and occupancy rate “because we’re not paying a third-party, like Travelocity or Expedia, or any management system like Utell,” said Cwintal. “We’re trying to do this on our own. It’s not easy; it’s difficult,” said Cwintal. “It requires constant attention every day, but it pays off. We jumped 75% compared to last January and our online bookings increased to 45%. We have been amazed at the results we have achieved,” he said, adding that the 41-room Union Square Inn on East 14th Street and the 50-room Murray Hill Inn on East 30th Street are getting the most hits. ADR is currently hovering at $100 while occupancy is at 67%, he said. Rony Oved said the properties have always been able to do well— “we did a lot of F.I.T. student travel groups. They came to us with open arms because as we got deeper into the ‘90s, the ADRs were getting so high… they were happy to do business with us. That was an integral part of the initial beginnings but then as the Internet came into play, that really leveled the playing field for us. Now we’re able to market ourselves to so many different places that we couldn’t have done before with the budgets we had for marketing,” he said. The properties’ market draw also has changed. Two years ago, inbound foreign travel accounted for some 65% of share vs. domestic guests, said Cwintal. Today, it is vice versa. The company, however, still advertises on European travel websites. “Being present there gives us some kind of distribution in Europe,” he said. “We’re trying to do as much of the marketing as we can on our own, so instead of dumping the empty rooms to the third party for minimal price, we’re trying to improvise and sell them on our own for a little higher rate.” Cwintal said the Group would not eliminate the third-party websites altogether, but would continue to try and minimize the number of rooms sold through such arrangements.
