Millennium Ready To Take On Marriott, Starwood And Hilton

NEW YORK— Millennium Hotels and Resorts (MHR) is ready to tackle the industry’s giants now that the company has completed its executive line up, and is set to launch a major renovation project on eight properties. MHR’s present portfolio— consisting of 56 hotels worldwide— was created late last year when parent company Millennium & Copthorne Hotels bought Regal Hotels International, CDL Hotels International and the Seoul Hilton. This year the company is focusing on bringing its 13 U.S. properties, many of which are in core urban markets, back to their former glory. “Our competition basically is the Sheratons, the Westins, the Marriotts and the Hiltons. We are going head to head with them,” said Bob Morse, MHR president and executive director. “Our business mix will look very similar to theirs. We’ll have less transient business, since we’ll have a more difficult time penetrating that market segment due to the fact that we don’t have those big marketing budgets,” said Morse, who said that MHR will be going after the locally negotiated rate market, the corporate group market and the association market. The company has also stepped up its sales force to sell MHR properties to the market, said Morse, noting that the sales force will soon be armed with technology tools that will allow them to tap into live MHR inventory while they are on the road selling. Part of that will come about as the result of a relationship MHR has with a new company called SWAN (Service World Network) which is now headed up by Scott Anderson, former Internet vp at Cendant Corp. MHR has an investment in SWAN and is also a client of the firm, which is a fledgling company that provides a network of management, technology and other support services to independent and branded hotels and small- to mid-sized chains. SWAN is comprised of five companies that will provide a full suite of services: Richfield Hospitality Management operates more than two dozen hotels, while Sceptre is a reservations management and distribution system that represents 200 hotels. Three other companies are presently under development that will complete the SWAN suite: E-Risk Pro is an on-line and “terrestrial” company that will provide a full line of insurance products and risk management services; E-Purchase is a convergence purchasing company that delivers on-line and off-line services, including procurement, design services, FF&E, contract negotiation, group discounts and volume leveraging; and E-Answers combines software products that are available into an Application Service Provider (ASP) network which delivers property management, sales and catering, yield management, human resource systems, Intranet “community” and forecasting models. Through SWAN MHR will enhance its corporate and technology infrastructure, and, as a result, its sales force will be able to sell more effectively, said Morse. “We were a sales and marketing organization that had no continuity and no presence in the marketplace,” said Morse. “We would book a piece of business here, a piece of business there. There was no cross selling,” he explained, adding that on a percentage basis MHR employees people than its competitors “because we are more reliant on the group and consortia and locally negotiated rate market because “we don’t have that big brand name, that front-of-mind recognition.” Branding is a topic MHR will broach in the New Year, with branding promotions being rolled out in first quarter. MHR will make a big push into the marketplace in the second quarter, he said. One key tool in selling MHR to its designated markets is the new “Classic Millennium” guestroom, which the company will add to a number of its hotels by March 2001. Modeled after the rooms in the new tower at the Millennium Broadway in New York, the model will be used for most MHR hotels getting at least a portion of their rooms upgraded, including Regal U.N. Plaza in New York, the Regal Cincinnati Hotel, the Regal Riverfront Hot