ARE YOU STILL PURSUING A
RESIDENTIAL ADDITION TO AN
EXISTING HOTEL OPERATION?
• Residential marketing –with the market full of comparable units for sale
you need to consider how to differentiate yourself from your competitors
in terms of presentation, service and operations. You might only get five
minutes to convince people of the services you can offer whilst they go
through the traditional viewing experience, which is considerably less than
in traditional hotel marketing. Professional marketing guidance is strongly
recommended.
• Legal platform – I strongly recommend structured legal and sales advice
before you start to guide you through home ownership rules, management
agreements, lease-hold contract, service charge budget, home association
rules, building regulations etc. You need to be aware of the building
liabilities and warranties that you have to back – some can elapse within 12
months, some only after 10 years. Lastly, what will happen if you need to
sell the hotel – what happens to your residential services?
• Space Planning – it is very tempting to max out your available sellable
space for storage, garage parking and other commercially attractive
opportunities, but don’t forget that you might also have a team of service
professionals who will live and breathe your mission and vision. If there are
space constraints you will hinder their efforts for years to come, this might
lead to higher staff fluctuation, higher cost of operating the building – and
eventually erudition of the customer’s trust. Definitely a false economy.
•
Alignment with existing business – are you venturing into luxury residences
or family-friendly offers? How do you plan to align both operations? This
simply states the obvious: are you ready to have another 24/7 operation in
addition to your hotel – with guests that technically never leave (which can
create its own dynamics!)?
Are you still pursuing a residential addition to an existing hotel operation?
Knight Frank flags the entry of smaller hotels or even non-branded hospitality
brands as a new trend to watch. Regarding marketing strategies, your
customers want to be associated with your brand and partake in the benefits
of your offering. You will appeal to the like-minded customers that want to live
and socialise with other people that share things in common.
Whilst the residential market is still very competitive it still offers substantial
benefits, but in order to thrive and survive you have to ask yourself: what can
I do better and where can I be different from what the competition does?
Chris Graham from Graham Associates forecasts that a lot more 3 or 4 star
operators will venture into the serviced apartment markets as it won’t be the
sole domain for established luxury operators anymore.
74 ILHA
About the author
Sebastian Moritz has more than 25
years of luxury hotel experience in
senior management roles, with a variety
of international hotel companies,
including Fairmont Hotels and Resorts,
Intercontinental, The Hazelton Hotel
Toronto and Shangri-La Hotels.
His residential experience covers
management roles at One Hyde Park
Residences (Mandarin Oriental Group),
Ten Trinity Residences (now Four Seasons
Hotels) and Belgravia Gate, before
founding MORICON Consultants. He
currently consults Lodha Group UK
on their two London projects – Lincoln
Square and No. 1 Grosvenor Square with a
combined sales value of £ 1.5B.
He was educated in Switzerland and
holds an MBA from Henley Management
College. Sebastian has Member status
at IRPM and Assoc. RICS and currently
studies for B2R Accreditation. http://www.
moricon.net/about/