We've only just begun: Wyndham Hotel Group profile
Hotelier Middle East has been fortunate enough to interview CEO and president of Wyndham Hotel Group Eric Danziger on a number of occasions.
His love of the Middle East and his position as the head of “the world’s largest hotel company” always suggested the hospitality giant could do a great deal in terms of expansion in the region.
But up until recently, the amount of properties in the Middle East for a company of its size was in all fairness modest.
That is all changing, and the promise of a focus on the Middle East that Danziger emphasised in previous years is coming into fruition with a raft of new properties.
Two months ago, the company announced the first Wyndham Grand and the first Planet Hollywood Hotel for the region — both in Doha — while some of the company’s 15 brands will also be making debuts in the near future (see the map on pages 80-81).
Yet as unrest in pockets of the Middle East refuses to settle and keeps the region in the spotlight of the world’s travellers for all the wrong reasons, does Danziger feel his focus was ill placed?
“Not at all,” he enthuses, “the United States had a revolution 200 years ago and some countries are born from change.”
And while Danziger stresses he doesn’t have a political view on the unrest, he maintains that “some countries like Egypt may end up being greater, better business opportunities over the long term because of what’s gone on”.
He adds that it is also important to get across the message to consumers that the Middle East is a “big place” and not one state with a lot of cities in it.
“I come [to the Middle East] three or four times a year, it’s that important by the way — each time I come I get more enthusiastic about what’s next and how we can continue to add to that,” he explains.
You certainly get the sense that Danziger is still incredibly excited by the opportunities he sees for Wyndham in the region and is pleased to be focusing on announcements of done deals, rather than discussing potential partnerships.
“I said two years ago that we were deeply committed to the area and you know it takes a while to get inertia going and activity — we’re particularly excited about the whole Gulf,” he says.
There is an acknowledgment that due to the unrest there are “opportunities today, which make us less excited about a couple of places currently”, although he feels in the long term these countries will be fine.
“But in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and some of the other Emirates there are opportunities. In Doha we have a Ramada Encore, we are converting a fabulous hotel to a Wyndham Grand, we announced a Planet Hollywood — so we have a great and growing interest in bringing our brands out here.
The company has a couple of Howard Johnsons coming to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We have 15 brands so we’ve only just begun our expansion into the Middle East really.”
Regional opportunities
Wyndham Hotel Group International vice president, development Middle East and Africa Bani Haddad is responsible for making this focus on the Middle East turn into new signings and hotel openings.
It’s no easy task with more operators fighting for fewer opportunities. So where does he feel the opportunities for Wyndham exist?
“Doha is obviously one of the opportunities, the UAE remains high on the list and clearly Saudi Arabia,” Haddad explains.
“The size of the country, religious tourism and domestic business tourism, makes it significant and there is a lot of our company to bring there.
We have the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham, Super 8, we are bringing Wyndham, so there are still a lot of our products that we can bring over there.”
Haddad also feels there is room in the Saudi Arabian market for the branded, extended-stay product, a sector that he believes “is absent at the moment”.
“These are our big markets that we think will be the future in the next year or two,” he adds.
Danziger confirms “Bani has a target!”, but the company doesn’t want to claim ‘x’ amount of hotels by a certain date. “I don’t believe in that,” Danziger says.
“If you do a good job people want to be part of it, so why set a target that you could hopefully do better than? When you do such a good job people will say ‘I want to be Wyndham, I want to be Planet Hollywood, or Ramada, or Super 8, or can I have a Days Inn?’.
“There are 2000 Days Inns in the world, the Gulf states could have a 1000 — I don’t know, but the opportunity is huge, the market is ready for our kinds of brands, not just the top tier, although we have them in Wyndham Grand and Wyndham, and so it’s to our mutual benefit for owners, consumers and me to bring them here.”
The Future
Danziger is clearly in no doubt that there are opportunities for some of the company’s current portfolio of 15 brands in the Middle East.
And with such a range of different hotel types to keep an eye on, he would be forgiven for taking his eye off the takeover market, but this will not be the case.
“We are in the business of acquiring brands that are complementary and helpful,” asserts Danziger.
“If we have every type of product that they (consumers/owners) might want or need and it’s within our company then we are there. If you think about the brands we added in the last six months. TRYP by Wyndham, which is a mid-serviced Mediterranean brand in Spain, Dream and Night, Planet Hollywood, they are all very complementary to the ones which existed before.”
While the acquisition of TRYP raised a number of eyebrows in the hotel community, Danziger says because Wyndham is “a global company, we think global and TRYP was a global opportunity”.
And there are certainly no plans to cap any further acquisitions.
“Could there be others [acquisitions]? Of course, because we are in that business,” he says.
“Some we will acquire in our future, although I’m not reporting anything, some will convert into the existing 15 brands, some might be complementary and be an additional product. That’s our business, acquiring brands and making sure that they fit in the portfolio.”
The other side of the business is finding hotels that will fit into the existing brand portfolio and this brings up Danziger’s move to make a major shift in the company’s development outlook.
“I don’t want our guys who are in the business of growing hotels to spend a lot of time in a remote destination that our consumer generally isn’t going to, because it’s not value to anyone to have one hotel,” he says.
While not wanting to name a specific country, Danziger divulges the company has pulled back developers from destinations where the group could have acquired a hotel.
But the plan is to get multiple properties in destinations rather than piecemeal properties scattered across the globe.
“I would rather go deep in the Middle East for example, than
to say ‘let’s add five new countries that aren’t even around here’, so it’s very focused,” he asserts.
“I think you will see more depth in the markets in areas like here with continued resources — maybe more of a regional office presence as an example — those are the sorts of things that show our commitment to the area.”
Nobody likes cutting rates (apart from the consumer) so you have to add value in order to capture the imagination and secure the stays of most guests.
But Danziger explains that one of the company’s mantras is to make sure “in each brand that we only spend money on things that that brand’s customer values, appreciates, recognises and pays for”.
“To try and impose a cost on a user is unfair to the owner, because the consumer of the product doesn’t want a certain service, but they have to pay for it because you have built it into the rate and that’s not right — so value is by brand and by expectation.
“A brand is a promise, but the execution of the promise is everyone’s job and that’s full and complete focus. I think the best way to grow a company is to just do a great job with what you have and then people want to be a part of your company — instead of you having to go out and sell to people to convince them to become part of your company.”
Danziger on … the web
We mention to Danziger that we noticed that many of the group’s general mangers had been very proactive in responding to comments on TripAdvisor and ask whether a proactive online presence is company-driven.
He explains that there will be more of an association with the review site in the future and that it encapsulates the need for recommendations from other customers.
“When I ran a hotel I knew that I could save a disappointed customer by responding to them and showing them I cared — ‘give me another chance’,” he says.
“TripAdvisor is no more than that, an opportunity for a hotel that back in my day was a phone call or a letter. So we encourage that opportunity to engage with the consumer, the bottom line is you improve your business when you listen.
“God gave us two ears and one mouth; you should listen twice as much as you speak. If you listen and do something, you make yourself a better business and save a customer who might otherwise have had a beef,” Danziger adds.
“A couple of months ago, a consumer staying at a Wingate was filming himself on his bed explaining a complaint he had and he posted it on YouTube.
I called him in his room and he was so impressed he took it off YouTube and put another one on — this is communication of consumers via technology — there is no comment card, it’s him filming it and posting it now.
“I said ‘uh oh, I have an unhappy guy, someone who is so unhappy and tech savvy that thousands of people will see his complaint’.
What better way of getting 7000 hotels to understand the value of responding than for me to do that, which I did and we saved him — that’s what matters.”
Haddad on … challenges for development
“Some of our brands are still not present here and as always the introduction of new products and brands to any market takes time, and that’s truer in the hospitality business than any other.
“Developers are cautious about their investments and are more likely to invest in a proven brand regionally than a new one.
That said, many investors are now looking for new products as they are realising that there are significant advantages in being a ‘first in’, particularly where the brand is supported by an international infrastructure such as the one we provide.
These advantages include the novelty, having no brand dilution, attracting new market segments and, perhaps most importantly, unrestricted growth potential.”
Bringing the family together
Wyndham Worldwide has a complex history of takeovers, splits, mergers and acquisitions.
When Danziger took over the Wyndham Hotel Group in 2008, he inherited a veritable mixed bag of hotel brands, all with their own identity, but without any real sense of belonging or place within the wider Wyndham group.
“I would say the brands were run individually,” he explains.
“What I wanted to do was explore the power of each brand and then explore the power of bringing them all together. We have done that in many ways — for instance we had our first ever global hotel conference, where 6000 people came from all over the world and we had all 15 brands represented by people in one room sharing what we do — that’s very powerful.”
Certainly everyone appreciates a sense of belonging, but group hugs aside, the business opportunities for working together are more tangible.
The group has recently introduced cross selling as a way of helping consumers do business with it, essentially utilising the company’s size to its full advantage.
“As big and powerful as we are, in the old days if you went to, let’s say, our Howard Johnson website, and you put in Howard Johnson Dubai, it would have said ‘sorry no results’,” Danziger explains.
“Now if you search for a particular brand in Dubai and there are none, the website will suggest our other brands that are present. That’s what I mean about bringing the group together more — as the largest hotel company in the world we need to act like that and behave in that way.”
That is not to say a few website tweaks will suffice in terms of cross selling. Danziger concedes that if you rang a hotel in one of the group’s brands it is currently unlikely the receptionist would be able to recommend a sister brand if they weren’t able to take the business.
“It has not [got to that point], but it should. If you make a reservation at the call centre you would get that, but it may take some time to get in that deep [where the hotel person can recommend a sister hotel].
That’s the reason we did things like the conference, so that people who are in this hotel can meet people who are not in this brand.”
Planning Planet Hollywood
Fancy having the gloves Sylvester Stallone used in Rocky displayed in your table, or Marilyn Monroe’s dress framed on the corridor wall?
Having being named franchiser and manager of the Planet Hollywood Hotels brand last September, Wyndham is currently putting the final touches together on what guests will experience at the hotels.
The only Planet Hollywood Hotel currently in existence is in Las Vegas, but that is all set to change with the brand opening its star-studded doors in Qatar in 2014.
While Danziger explains that not every market can have a Planet Hollywood Hotel as it is very unique, he does see a few more for the Middle East.
“It’s a uniquely exciting brand — the brand persona is global — everybody knows Planet Hollywood,” he asserts.
“Some of the unique characteristics will be entertainment related, for example, a few things I can tell you, although we are in a complete final development stage, we have tens of thousands of pieces from movies at our disposal.”
Aside from memorabilia, the company has commissioned a special ‘Hollywood mirror’ that will have a button making the lights “super bright” — a classic image of backstage stars’ dressing rooms.
There will also be a “significant number of TV screens showing movies” as well as a special “guest arrival experience”.
Yet Danziger is quick to explain it won’t be a themed ‘Mickey Mouse’ experience — the focus will be on making a hotel experience that is “interesting, fun and different, but with five-star quality”.
We thought that this type of hotel had Dubai written all over it, so does Danziger envisage the brand arriving in the emirate soon.
“I see one — I think we have generated significant interest, but we want to be sure it’s the right location, the right owner. When these things are aligned then we will do one.”
The GMS’ views
NAME: Vinay Dang
PROPERTY: Howard Johnson
Hotel Bur Dubai
ON WYNDHAM: Being part of the world’s largest hotel company is a great strength. It gives us confidence to set ambitious targets in terms of revenues, and it is a great motivator for exceeding the group’s set standards.
ON HOWARD JOHNSON: The brand is well known in the region and it offers the right connotations for our hotel category, catering to mid-level corporate and leisure travellers. With international marketing tie ups, online access to travel agents worldwide and sales support, it offers us a wealth of opportunities. The strength of the brand means that the end consumer relates to a hotel and chooses it over its competition.
NAME: Saqib Anwar
PROPERTY: Ramada Encore Doha
ON WYNDHAM: I have been working with Wyndham Hotel Group for a year now and I must say that it has been a great experience to be leading the pre-opening and now the operations of the hotel. The whole leadership team at Wyndham Hotel Group has always been approachable and available to assist at all stages. Team work and support have been the mantra from day one to launch and operate this new brand for the Middle East region.
ON RAMADA: Ramada Encore is a new stylish business brand for the Middle East region, which is exciting. It benefits from the relationship with the Ramada brand, which is a well-established, recognised and popular brand in the Middle East.
NAME: Yasmine Maalouf
PROPERTY: Ramada Beirut Downtown
ON WYNDHAM: As part of Wyndham Hotel Group, we benefit from one of the world’s largest reservations systems.
ON RAMADA: Ramada also gives us the opportunity to learn online through the Wyndham Worldwide University, which is key for the training of our people at all levels. It helps us excel in service delivery and facilitate professional development for staff. It is definitely a positive and rewarding experience to work for one of the world’s leading hotel groups.