Fairmont Eyes Increased Demand, Rates With ‘Experience Packaging’

NEW YORK— Fairmont Hotels and Resorts will be leveraging the power of its brand in North America this summer through several new programs which represent an aggressive push to capture greater market share from both leisure and business travelers alike. “We’re optimistic there will be reasonable levels of demand as we go into the summer. Obviously, we feel like we’ve turned the corner in terms of some of the challenges we’ve faced,” Brian Richardson, vp/brand marketing, told HOTEL BUSINESS® during a meeting here last month. “We’re putting a great deal of emphasis on packaging.” Toward that, Toronto-based Fairmont is encouraging its properties, particularly in the United States and Canada, to put together “experience-related packaging.” “That takes us into the realm of golf, spa, culture and really challenges our properties to be a little more creative,” he said. Richardson added Fairmont believes there is an emerging market for the type of packaging the company wants to make available this summer.”We are actually positioning it as ‘experience packaging,’ and it cuts across a number of categories,” he said. “With some of the challenges that North America’s faced behind us, people are ready for these kinds of packages and will respond favorably to us making them available.” Experiences may revolve around a variety of offerings. For example, food and beverage is the focus at several properties. At The Fairmont Palliser in Calgary, Canada, the “Sizzle in the City” package allows a guest to be chef for a day. The guest consults with executive chef Shaun Desauliners to plan a menu, goes shopping for food and wine, dons whites, cooks the meal, then savors the end result in an exclusive setting. A suite and limousine to and from the property is included. The hotel is set to capture $1,169 (double occupancy) for the one-night package. Similarly, The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto partnered with VIA Rail, Niagara Airbus and several regional wineries to offer “Fairmont City to Vineyard Express,” which incorporates a day of wine tasting at vineyards. “Increasingly what we find in talking to our guests and buying syndicated research is people are less interested in acquiring things and more and more interested in acquiring experiences. So we’re really trying this summer to put more more emphasis on creativity, but not to the point of being irrelevant,” said Richardson. He considered the initiative as a platform, “the beginnings of a much more aggressive approach by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts in terms of that kind of packaging.” Part of the initiative is also bringing Fairmont’s “hotel-within-a-hotel” concept, which already is in 18 of its Caribbean and Canadian properties, to three U.S properties. Dubbed the Gold Floor, the concept is a dedicated private floor akin to concierge levels with separate check-in/check-out area, concierge service and a raft of luxury and business services. The trio of properties incorporating the Gold Floor include: The Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii; The Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston; and The Fairmont Washington, D.C. Each Gold Floor will include aspects unique to the property. For example, when the Boston property debuts the concept this month, the focal point will be a 2,500-square-foot, residential-style lounge incorporating a living room with working fireplace. In D.C., Gold guestrooms have canopied beds with recessed reading lights operated by bedside controls, with tech touches such as high-speed Internet access, flat-screen digital television sets and DVD/CD players. Guests in Hawaii can sink into a custom-made mattress covered with a three-inch feathertop mattress. There is even a famous bed package at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal, where 35 years ago the late music celebrity John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono held a “bed-in” in suite 1742. The “Give Peace a Chance” package, recalling the song Lennon wrote and recorded there, has a premium of about $1,462 ($1,969 CDN) for a one-night st