The interview: Paul James, St Regis & The Luxury Collection

ABTN talks to Paul James, global brand leader of Starwood’s St Regis & The Luxury Collection, about growth plans and trends in business travel

How do the two brands you look after fall within the Starwood banner?

There are around 1,000 hotels in total across the Starwood portfolio and 100 or so of those fall directly into the two luxury brands. There are currently 81 Luxury Collection properties and 28 St Regis hotels. For St Regis, under half the hotels are located in cities while for the Luxury Collection¸ which is a niche luxury brand, around 60% are in cities as they work well in urban locations – most of them in destination cities such as Paris or London. Across the two brands, 40% of our business is corporate, 40% is leisure and the final 20% are groups.

What trends have you seen for corporate business over the last few years?

The first place we saw occupancy stabilise in 2010 was in the more leisure-orientated hotels such as London and New York. But by 2011 we were seeing the continued strength of the leisure market being matched by the corporate market. Last year we finally got back to the levels we last saw in 2007, although the group market is still challenging for us.

Which areas of the world are you seeing strong corporate sales?

There’s real strength in Asia and we have openings coming up which we think will achieve market level occupancies quite quickly because demand is continuing to build. It’s too early to tell how 2012 is going to go – there has been a slowdown in travelling since before Christmas but nothing dramatic. We have to be cautious but what’s encouraging is that occupancy is still high.

What are your plans for expansion and openings over the next few years?

St Regis is going through a major growth initiative and we have aggressively gone after growth. Back in 2000, we just had the original hotel in New York and decided to grow the brand from there. We concentrate on marquee cities and destination resorts. By 2007, we had 13 hotels and there were 28 by the end of 2011. We opened our first property in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi last year and we have another Abu Dhabi property and one in Doha opening in the next few months. We will have more hotels opening in China as well. We also have a healthy pipeline of new hotels in cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires and Cairo which will be opening in the next few years. The goal for St Regis is to have 45 hotels by 2015 because we know there’s an opportunity for a luxury global brand.

The Luxury Collection has also been growing but these are individual hotels with less than 200 rooms which have very clear brands of their own – such as the Hotel Danieli in Venice. Growth has come all over the world and includes both city hotels and resorts. We will have 90 by this time next year with 10 new hotels including two in China, two in India, two in Australia and two in Thailand. These openings include properties in Shanghai and Chennai.

Do you sell to the corporate market centrally through Starwood?

Yes we do and it’s a huge advantage as we have a very robust corporate sales organisation which has a relationship with most large organisations either through TMCs or directly with us. This gives the business traveller more flexibility and choice across all of the Starwood brands and it also applies to the loyalty programme SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest). We find that our customers tend to stay in a multiple of different brands as it may be that they have to travel to places where there is no St Regis or Luxury Collection property – they have to go to where business takes them, and this is the strength of a company like Starwood.

What kind of business facilities do you offer corporate clients in your properties?

We believe that the dedicated business centre is as outdated as a bank of telephones in the hotel lobby. In our portfolio of hotels, we are looking at how we can utilise lobby spaces where people can work using their laptops or iPads, or just relax. For example, at The Lanesborough in London we have Sony laptops in every room – the first reaction was that laptops were outdated because everybody has an iPad but there are things that iPads can’t do that laptops can. We are reacting to the way people tend to do business. Another example is the St Regis in Florence where we took out a family restaurant and made it into a reception area with low seating and a library area – we didn’t define its use and it has become a social public space where you will find business travellers catching up on emails during the afternoon.

How important is the UK corporate market for your two brands?

Business from established markets is growing and the UK is still very important when we come to review how we spend our marketing budgets. Of course, we want to spend more money on China, India and Brazil but we also don’t forget to spend money in the UK and Germany. The business is global and guests are coming from all over the world.