Leading Hotels Restructures Business To Get Back To Basics

NEW YORK? Leading Hotels of the World is launching four joint venture companies that will allow it to outsource a number of services it currently provides to its clients. The move will allow it to return to the core business of marketing luxury hotels, said Paul McManus, president/ CEO of Leading Hotels, which represents 340 luxury hotels in 74 countries. It will also allow Leading Hotels to expand its product offerings next spring by launching Leading Resorts and Spas. The company last year launched Leading Small Hotels, whose portfolio now consists of 60 properties. The joint ventures, over which Leading Hotels has control, create companies that will handle group sales, marketing, financial and quality assurance services. “We are about the luxury hotel business,” said McManus. “In coming back to that we are taking on partners who are specialists? The idea is that the joint ventures all offer the basic services that Leading Hotels participates in.” Leading Group Sales? whose aim it is to increase group sales to member hotels? creates a partnership with the David Green Organization, which is acclaimed as having a group meeting database of 50,000 records. “The most important thing is very much the data mining, telemarketing and telesales and the opportunities that come with that,” said McManus, noting that Leading Hotels will also take the program international to London and is considering Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich as other options. Leading Marketing Services is a partnership with Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown which creates a full-service marketing, advertising and public relations firm aimed at affluent travelers. Leading Financial Services creates a partnership with Pegasus Solutions, which takes over Leading Hotels? commission-paying functions. “This allows us to reallocate assets within the organization from the peripheral things like technology,” said McManus. “If you are involved in technology, you can?t be in it a little bit,” he said, noting why Leading outsourced this task. “Pegasus is a public company, they are in the technology business.” Leading Quality Assurance partners Leading Hotels with a London-based company called Gap, which will create guest service programs for hotels. As for how Leading Hotel members will be charged for these new services, McManus said, “It?s a matter of creating a schedule of charges related to what we do for a living here.” He also said that hotels will be able to subscribe to some of the services on an elective basis. For example, if something is found wanting in a hotel?s quality inspection, that hotel has the option of participating in some of Leading Quality Assurance?s programs. By farming out these tasks, Leading Hotels will also be able to focus more heavily on its consumer marketing efforts, said McManus. It also enables the company to continue to enhance its strategic marketing alliance program, which it launched this year to run joint promotions with other luxury brand companies like Crystal Cruises, LVMH and Virtuoso (formerly API), the travel agent association that specializes in luxury travel. Aside from the new Leading Resorts and Spas, McManus wants to grow through geographical distribution. “We are looking at Eastern Europe, South Africa and newly emerging destinations,” he added.