WATERFORD, CT— Waterford Hotel Group is looking to leverage parent company Waterford Group’s array of hospitality services to bolster its position in the hotel management market. Waterford Hotel Group currently manages 26 properties representing 3,200 rooms in nine states. But despite company principals having an ownership stake in 22 of these locations, Waterford Hotel Group considers itself a third-party management firm, Robert Winchester, president/business development for Waterford Hotel Group told HOTEL BUSINESS®. “Our focus is to manage properties that the ownership has the same philosophy that the management company principals have, and that is to manage hotels that the owners are committed to keeping as competitive products in the marketplace,” Winchester said. That obviously includes the properties parent Waterford Group acquires including the Hartford Hilton, which it bought earlier this year for $28.5 million. Waterford Hotel Group will manage the 390-room property and it will undergo an extensive renovation, Winchester said. Waterford Group was one of five developers that submitted a proposal for the property. In another clear case, albeit more high-profile, of leveraging the Waterford Group’s lines of businesses, Waterford Hotel Group will also manage the 409-room Marriott now under construction in downtown Hartford, part of massive convention center, residence and retail project on a 30-plus acre site known as Andriaen’s Landing. Other Waterford Group businesses are involved in the development and construction of the project as well with the hotel expected to open in the summer of 2005, according to Winchester. “One thing we can do for a particular group [as a result of its parent company]is identify land, get the appropriate approvals, build it and operate it,” Winchester said. “We are vertically integrated as a company that way and we can pull on other resources from our parent company and sell it as a package,” he said. Although the company has a strong presence in the northeast, it is also looking toward the south and out west for further management and development opportunities, Winchester said. “We would go anywhere in the U.S. that made sense. Right now we do have a heavy concentration in the northeast.” As a company, Waterford Group is flag neutral, according to Winchester. “We try to pick the best flag in the markets that we get into. We have a Marriott under construction and we recently repositioned a hotel from an independent to a Radisson,” he said, adding last fall it also repositioned a Holiday Inn in Cromwell, CT to a Courtyard. Going forward, Winchester said he expects the company’s management business to grow modestly to possibly 30 hotels by the end of year through a combination of new construction deals, acquisitions and more third-party management contracts. “If you look at three deals we have in the hopper right now; one is an acquisition, one is a new development and we have one in the pipeline. I think our growth will come from many areas,” he said. However, the Waterford Hotel Group has proved it will also get out of contracts if the arrangements do not make sense for the company. In fact, the company recently terminated four management contracts this year including three Residence Inns owned by Equity Inns, Winchester said. “We made a decision to mutually agree on a termination of managing three properties for one REIT. There is nothing weird about it, we just looked at what fit better in our portfolio of managed hotels,” he said.
