New Image for May Fair London via You Tube & Paris Hilton?
After $150 million renovation The May Fair seeks to generate a new image by creating its own YouTube channel, welcoming celebrities, and offering a “Suite” Year for $585,000.
From his name to his suit and tie, Charles P. Oak seems the quintessential London hotel manager – which he has been for many years. But in stewarding the May Fair through a $150 million renovation – completed in 2006 -- Oak has sought to redefine the property, in the ritzy Mayfair neighborhood, and to create a buzz.
The YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/themayfair) allows the hotel, says Oak, “to show a whole other dimension of the hotel. We can freshen it every day.” Currently, the channel features Oak’s interview with Ms. Hilton (facing each other across a couch); an interview with Myke Gray, a former rock star who is the hotel’s personal trainer; tours of the suites and more.
“When people think of five-star London hotels,” says Oak, ”they tend to think of the same old same old. We want them to think differently.”
Despite the global financial crisis, says Oak, “We are maintaining occupancy of more than 90 percent and the last quarter looks very positive” -- this despite the fact that half of the hotel’s business is from the U.S.
Oak, like most hoteliers these days, is trying to maintain room rates
while moving toward the always popular “value added.” Seeking to take
advantage of the somewhat improved currency exchange rate, the hotel is
offering a rate of about $228 per night for a minimum three night stay
on weekends. During the week, a bed and breakfast package that includes
room, full English breakfast and VAT goes for about $400, $350 during
the very quiet Christmas/New Years period.
A solid 40 percent of The May Fair’s clientele come from meetings –
necessary, says Oak, to fill 406 guest rooms. While The May Fair is one
of the Radisson Edwardian Hotels group, says Oak, “we are very much our
own brand.”
All told, rates are down about 18 percent from last year because of the strengthening dollar.
And there’s that “suite” year. The hotel is offering the 1,600
square-foot Amarillo Suite for $585,000 for 365 consecutive days. The
one-bedroom suite provides views overlooking Stratton and Berkley
Streets, butler service, a dining table that seats ten, a remote
controlled fireplace, plasma televisions, individual phone number and
voicemail.
But no guarantee that Paris Hilton will stop in for a visit.
We began our recent report on ‘Family Travel Rising’ with the following:
“All the evidence -- whether you are looking at the Amex-Harrison Group study we reviewed in our last issue, or the Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluence Report completed in September, -- shows Family First when it comes to disposable dollars.
We believe family focus is going to be front of mind for a long time to come, long after the punishing economic climate has subsided. Provider brands will be hard pressed to provide much more than kiddie or junior, or young adult activities. Smart travel agents will have to rise to higher levels of creativity and performance on the family front to sustain customer loyalty and earn the benefits of word of mouth in the neighborhood.”
And last week we caught our favorite global traveler-editor-writer-commentator during a quiet moment at home in England, the home of The Gostelow Report. She shared these thoughts:
• The hotel industry has been very slow to realize that this big expansion in family travel was going to happen. We’ve had “connecting rooms and you can put the kids next door”. They moved on to two swimming pools rather than one. One was kid friendly and one was not. But we really haven’t had anything more than that.
• We are seeing more and more bigger family groups. Operators are having a real challenge coping with such groups because it’s not a group per se, but they form their own groups. They want to be private. They want their own thing. .They tend to do their own excursions. They suddenly want a bus to take them all out. So it’s a real, real challenge. And so far the hotel industry has not realized this is happening. Now, it’s not only families. We’re also seeing more and more groups of friends traveling. And the hotel industry is not incentivizing enough – say a pair of DINKs come- Double-Income-No-Kids. There’s no incentive to them at the moment to bring along two other friends or even four other friends. And there’s big potential on the marketing side there.
Everybody knows her, but her bio is worth repeating.
Mary Gostelow, president of Gostelow Travel: Hottest Hospitality News Worldwide, is an inveterate traveler on the road more than 300 days a year. She owns and publishes the definitive Gostelow Reports, monthly market intelligence briefings to the top levels of the hospitality industry. She is the editor of KIWI's online Wow! Magazine, and also sends out a monthly update to top travel professionals worldwide.
At the same time, she is contributing editor to such publications as Elite Traveler, enRoute, Hotels and Le Magazine.
Nat Ives, in Ad Age Online Sept 6, cites new data from Ipsos MMR which assures that well-off readers read print publications just as much now as they did 5 years ago.
Also, survey respondents making more than $100,000 annually said their average hours online had grown to 22.1 each week from 10.7, while the time they said they spent watching TV sunk to 18.6 hours from 23.7 in the 2003 survey. Read the full Ives story at http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130685. Lux 360 attended the client briefing this week and will provide additional perspective in our Sept. 30 issue, interviewing Ipsos MMR President Bob Shullman.
Imagination Marketing 
