From one side, the hotel offers views across Central Park, a must-visit attraction in New York City.
Category Killers
These select-service brands — or “modern essentials” hotels as Marriott now calls them — may not have the prestige of sister labels Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott, but when it comes to making travel more accessible for leisure and business tourists alike, not to mention generating bold returns for owners, Courtyard and Residence Inn stand tall.
Identifying early the potential of the Courtyard and Residence Inn brands to bring in the big bucks, Gross has worked side-by-side with Marriott to innovate in this space.
The collaboration has resulted in the ground-up construction of five Marriott branded hotels in New York City: Courtyard by Marriott Times Square; Courtyard by Marriott at JFK International Airport; Residence Inn Philadelphia Center City by Marriott; Residence Inn by Marriott Times Square; and Courtyard by Marriott and Residence Inn by Marriott Central Park.
G Holdings is now constructing a 160-room Courtyard by Marriott in Long Island City.
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Sorenson describes the brands, which have been in operation for around 30 years, as “category killers”, powerful separately, but offering even more flexibility together. He estimates that there are around 100 dual-pack properties combining various Marriott brands across the US.
“I’m certain either one of them could have done fine on their own but here you’ve got an A+ location, with two distinct products which will appeal to two distinct kinds of stays – Residence Inn with its all-suite product focused on longer-term stays, and Courtyard which might be a shorter term stay and more transient business. You really tap into two distinct kinds of customers.
“From Harry’s perspective and from the ownership perspective, it also gives you the ability to leverage the infrastructure, and some of the support services, whether that be accounting for example, and apply that to two different hotels to get more economy of scale,” asserts Sorenson.
Gross agrees, commenting: “We have the advantage of two reservation systems, therefore, we benefit from the two brands. Instead of having to fill 639 rooms every day from one brand, we can fill up almost half and half from two different brands, so in terms of satisfaction of guest needs, in terms of extended stay on one side and the Courtyard transient customer on the other side, we accomplished that.”
The fact the hotels are on top of one another made the project even more appealing, he continues.
“I think that New York is unique and we have a site that is 100ft by 100ft, that’s all. And we are going up 760ft in height. That’s really possible only in New York. You cannot get this kind of building anywhere else.
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