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the hotelier
Denise Coll Summer 2010 DENISE COLL is president of the North American Division of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.
MPG I have a hospitality degree and, when I was a student, I went through Howard Johnson’s management training program. After school, my first job was as a guest service agent at the Sheraton Boston. I subsequently spent 22 years with Sheraton. In 2004, after a brief period working for an independent management company in Boston, I joined Starwood.
Who have been your mentors? In the late seventies, Pat Birmingham, the general manager at the Sheraton Boston, was one of the first people who took a personal interest in my career. I was an hourly, front office associate and, as I took on supervisory roles (of which I wasn’t qualified), he made the commitment to me that he would help with my training. I will always remember spending two hours a week with the GM of the largest hotel in the city learning how to control a 1,300 room property. I’m thankful for Mr. Birmingham’s commitment to me and have always tried to have that same focus with the people on my team.
Tell us about your priorities at Starwood. Our primary focus has been on doing everything we can to motivate people to continue to travel.
We’re working hard keeping our brands relevant and fresh and we’re addressing the needs of our customers. We are also focused on the meetings business within North America. From a Westin perspective, we think that meetings are alive and well and we’ve begun to see the meetings market return.
What are the latest meeting trends? Westin has rolled out and is presently piloting Clutter-Free Meetings.
When you think about how people meet today, typically everyone is sitting around the table with a laptop and working very differently than they did five or ten years ago. A clutter-free meeting takes the meeting supplies - notepads, pens, water pitchers, etc. - and puts them in a central supply station in the room. It gives the customer the ability to customize the space based on the way they choose to work. Our meeting planner satisfaction scores have improved and, from a sustainability perspective, clutter-free meetings have resulted in a 24% reduction in waste.
Westin has been focusing on wellness and renewal. You may be familiar with “superfoods” which was initially our breakfast offering. We have expanded this into meetings with our superfood meeting breaks. We received terrific customer responses from both of these new programs.
What is the major challenge facing the industry? The biggest challenge is getting the business back to the appropriate balance between occupancy and rate. We have seen a strong recovery through the first quarter, but it’s happening on the occupancy side. Rates have not yet recovered but we anticipate that we will see some rate recovery in mid-2010.
Coupled with that is the luxury segment. Globally, Starwood is one of the largest luxury hotel companies and the recovery of the luxury market is critical to us. It is beginning to bounce back and typically recovers even stronger than before the downturn. We are anticipating that that will happen again.
We’ve seen the use of technology begin taking the place of face-to-face meetings. Tell us your thoughts about the current value of face-to-face communication and its future. I think the importance of face-to-face meetings is as strong today as it ever has been. Having said that, we are also trying to understand our clients’ meeting needs as they look at managing their own expenses.
Everyone was in a cost cutting mode in 2008-2009 and I think that has stabilized. We continue to focus on maintaining cost structures but now there’s an emphasis on growing our top lines. From my perspective, the ability to grow your top line is contingent upon the relationships that you build and maintain with your customers. That requires face-to-face communication. We are seeing corporate travel and business meetings return and this is an indication that companies are back on the road doing business with their customers and wanting to insure that their relationships are solid.
Meeting planners have the responsibility to show that there is a return on investment from their meetings. In addition to our planner incentive program, we’ve created planners’ edge specialty events which are easily executable on-site events. It’s a turnkey, budget friendly, entertainment solution that gives planners the ability to do their after hours events on site. It’s things like culinary competitions with our chefs or “sushi rock and roll” where they create the sushi with the chef. They’re simple, fun, cost effective and very innovative.
Starwood is also paying attention to the technology. We have installed TelePresence technology in one of our North America hotels and one in Australia. TelePresence provides virtual “face to face” meetings with ultra-high definition video, superior audio and life-size imagery. We see it as a “win-win” because it will be the combination of face-to-face meetings and the use of technology that will ultimately define the future of this industry.
What are your thoughts about preparing for the recovery? I really believe that this is a great time for our industry which is a critical contributor to the overall stability of our economy. In the U.S. alone our industry generates close to 8 million jobs with a $195 billion payroll. It’s important for us to never lose sight of the relevancy of our industry and the impact that we will have on the economic recovery.
The industry came together early in this crisis when we had to deal with the negative rhetoric regarding travel and meetings. The United States Travel Association’s efforts with their Meetings Mean Business campaign really made a difference and helped put us in a good place to take advantage of this recovery.
We must all continue to be engaged with our customers and our associates to insure that we are creating great experiences that make people want to travel. |
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