Hospitality Design - August 2013 - 89

1. One half of the Grupo
Habita team: Carlos
Couturier and Moises
Micha.

2. Striking doors
salvaged from an
old bank vault set
the palatial vibe at
Downtown Mexico.

3. At Endémico
Resguardo Silvestre, the
hotel’s 20 eco-friendly
cabins are perched on
stilts and spread out on
nearly 100 acres of land.

Expert Advice
HD’s signature event, Owners’ Roundtable, heads back to HD
Americas, Wednesday, September 25th, with—appropriately—a focus
on the Americas. In our version of speed meeting, some 15 hotel
brand executives, owners, development trackers, and developers will
share their insight and experience—the good and the bad—working
in the region, rotating tables every 10 minutes. Since Vail Brown of
STR (Smith Travel Research, Inc.) will start the conversation with a
development outlook, and Lodging Econometric’s Bruce Ford will be
one of the table hosts, we checked in with them for an update on what’s
happening in the region. Here’s what they shared:

2

• In the top 25 U.S. markets, there is an unprecedented amount of
renovation occurring, driven by a backlog of CapEx projects, new brand
standards being exercised, and a re-invention of “an amenity creep”
inside large hotels, says Ford. That equates to hotels evaluating their
F&B offerings, from minibars (back in action) to signature restaurants.
• With the drought of new hotel construction entering its fourth year in
the U.S., conversion is the most attractive growth plan, reports STR.
• Ford says the top U.S. cities showing the most robust development
pipelines are New York, Washington, DC, and Miami, with Boston and
Orlando following suit. Interestingly, South Beach will be home to six
new branded hotels by the end of this year.

3
Each of your hotels is a true original. How do you constantly
reinvent yourselves?
What defines the concept of each hotel in the first place is its location—
they are rooted in the location. New neighborhoods that have not been
fully developed are very interesting for us. Sometimes we look for the
property, and other times, the hotel finds us!

You use a different designer for almost every property—many
of them undiscovered by the mainstream audience. Why?
We are keen on not using very well known interior designers, so that their
style is not predominant in the hotel.

Keys to success?
Stay honest to our beliefs and focused.

You seem to have a well-oiled machine. What’s it like working
with family and friends?
Sometimes it can be a great challenge, but what has worked to our
advantage is that each of the four partners has one area of responsibility
and we respect each other.

• The hotspots in the Americas are where the international arrivals
are. Previously, if a European or Latin hotel company was coming to
the U.S., New York and San Francisco would be the ﬁrst and second
targeted cities; now, according to Ford, it’s New York and Miami. “Miami
gets the resort and New York gets the urban hotel,” he says.
• Brazil has nearly 75,000 guestrooms in the pipeline according to Ford,
but Western brands are still struggling due to high taxes on importing
products, extended construction timelines, and difficulty converting
existing buildings to comply with brand standards.
• Ford points to significant development happening in Central
America—Mexico in particular, which is up 20 percent. STR adds that
in the Caribbean and Mexico, 22 hotels have recently opened in the last
12 months, and 131 projects are in the construction and planning stages.
• “Overall,” says Ford, “we have bounced oﬀ the bottom from the
downturn and are improving dramatically as we move up the real
estate cycle for the next several years. The future of the hotel economy
looks bright, and pipelines are growing as a result—conversions and
renovations are robust.”

hospitalitydesign.com August 2013

089
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