NEW YORK— As it prepares to open its two latest hotel projects a month apart in fourth quarter, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts remains confident its luxury segment base “has legs” — and strong ones at that— to continue in an expansion mode, despite the prevailing sluggish economy and any number of outside influences worldwide. “I believe it’s a question of the definition of luxury. We don’t believe luxury represents excess or excessive spending or gratuitous spending without value,” Wolf Hengst, president/worldwide hotel operations, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, told HOTEL BUSINESS®. “It’s about value and being taken care of — consistently— being able to travel efficiently. And as long as there are business men and women who make a living by traveling, there are going to be luxury hotels.” With more than 20 projects in development, the operating company has set an ambitious agenda for the next few years. This on top of opening three hotels within the last year— in Riyadh (250 rooms), Amman (197 rooms) and Tokyo (57 rooms) in the Marunouchi central business district— and reopening the Four Seasons Hotel Prague, its 161-room property that sustained “significant” damage to its lower levels and back of house as the result of intense floods that hit the city in August 2002. Next up is The Four Seasons Hotel Miami, which will debut Oct. 1 on Brickell Ave. in the city’s financial district. The 220-room hotel will encompass 84 condominium/hotel units and 186 bona fide condominiums. Located one block from Biscayne Bay, the mixed-use development includes a two-acre pool terrace, office and retail space and a 25,000-square-foot spa. The following month, The Four Seasons Resort Great Exuma at Emerald Bay in the Out Islands of the Bahamas is scheduled to come online with 219 rooms, and will incorporate a 10,000-square-foot spa and fitness center. “Luxury in the resorts is no different, either,” said Hengst, “Because time is the most precious element anyone has. The last thing you want to worry about when you go to a hotel is things not working and your holiday being marred by the unexpected, which happens all the time. So what you’re doing is you’re paying for the value of not having to worry about anything like that. I believe we’ll never go away; that’s like saying: ‘Mercedes-Benz has no future.’” Even so, that car maker has seen fit to create its C Class, a lower-cost (around $30,000) vehicle within the luxury brand. Would Four Seasons consider a similar strategy, perhaps via a brand extension? “No, we have no interest in doing it, and we don’t think we should. We manage hotels that have to perform at the highest level of service at all times. It would be inconsistent with our culture and our ability to run hotels that don’t function at that level,” said Hengst. “We’ve never thought about it in 41 years and we’re not going to think about it now. We’re going to stay with what we do best.” Still, the luxury brand has added some levels beyond its pure hotel function, notably residential units, and is using those components as it expands globally. For example, by year’s end the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole is slated to open in Wyoming, where a 124-room hotel and 13,000-square-foot health club and spa will be tandemed with a 40-unit Residence Club, well as 17 private residences, that will realize some synergies. “I think we bring brand value to a mixed-use development, particularly if it involves a residential or a condominium aspect,” said Hengst, who acknowledged the market for such high-end residential units is not as robust as it was three or four years ago. “But I am convinced it is going to come back,” asserted the executive. “If you look in Whistler (B.C.) where we built and sold, together with Intrawest, a condominium/hotel, it was sold out in three-and-a-half hours— the fastest real estate transaction for a hotel like that ever. So I have to say the brand has a lot of value and will continue to have value, just n
Wolf Hengst