Hilton health expert calls for consistency

Hilton Hotels vice president of global fitness and spa Keith Burnet explains why the company’s spa development strategy must be answerable to owners as well as aligned to each hotel’s geography and brand

The next few years are set to be a period of major development for Hilton Hotels’ spa operations, with the company’s spa supremo Keith Burnet preparing to lead the launch of 120 spas worldwide.

Since joining the company in September 2006 as vice president of fitness and spa, following five years at Hilton-owned LivingWell Health Clubs and eight years at David Lloyd Leisure, Burnet has been promoted to look after the spa business globally.

“In addition to the 80 spas that are operating, we have 120 that are in the pipeline or under development round the world.

Therefore, what’s key is creating the appropriate standards and concepts for each one of our hotel brands,” says Burnet.

“Whether that means each brand’s spas will be called the same thing is up for debate; what we are really focused on is developing the concepts and building them in such a way that they’re flexible to location but have really inflexible standards — the sort of concepts that you can take and add modules to and plug them into each brand in different parts of the world.”

Following the acquisition by Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC) of hotel business Hilton International from the UK-based Hilton Group in 2006 and the subsequent all cash buyout of HHC by The Blackstone Group in July 07, Burnet explains that Hilton has been undergoing a process of “transformation” or internal integration.

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While this is a lengthy process, it will open up many opportunities and synergies for the ongoing development of the company’s spas, says Burnet, who last September was appointed vice president of global fitness and spa; previously his remit didn’t include the US. Reporting directly to Hilton Hotels president of global operations Ian Carter, Burnet says this promotion “gives me much more control over our strategic direction related to spas and all our leisure business”.

Going it alone

Firstly, the brand partnership announced last May with spa supplier L’Occitane has already been quashed and it seems working with third parties will not be part of the strategy going forward.

Burnet explains: “L’Occitane didn’t work out and I think when your strategy involves working with third parties, obviously you’re introducing another person to the process. You have to be really aligned and it has to be a true partnership where both parties benefit, but I think ultimately with L’Occitane their vision was different from ours”.

Currently, the 80 “pure full service spas in the business”, two thirds of which are in Hiltons, have different names, different philosophies and different operations — some are run in-house and some are external.

“By the very nature of spas, wherever they are in the world and whichever property they are in, the reality is that they are all going to be different, so our key focus as we go forward will be about driving consistency through the operating standards and the service standards. There will be less focus certainly on branding. The objective isn’t necessarily to create one brand for the Hilton hotels or one brand for Conrad, so that’s probably been the change since I got more control over the direction,” says Burnet.

He admits that there’s a lot of work still to be done, however, particularly where meeting the needs of owners is concerned.

“A really key part of our motivation is giving our owners a solution in the spa space. At the moment, if one of our developers is selling the Hilton brand to an owner and the owner asks for the key selling points to the spa, there is a blank space. The key for me is to fill that blank space and to give our owners confidence that we have the expertise to be able to deliver a concept  into his hotel and, if required, actually operate it,” says Burnet.

He adds that while the company has some great spas, they haven’t necessarily been designed with the hotel in mind.

“They’ve just been kind of ‘plonked’ there and they aren’t necessarily aligned with the hotel brand or the customers that will attend that hotel, so with any sort of concept that we might create for any of the hotel brands trying to align the two is really key, especially in the different geographical regions.”

One brand that is already defined is at the Waldorf=Astoria Collection, Waldorf=Astoria Hotels and the original Waldorf=Astoria, which have a relationship with Guerlain and are operated by Spa Chakra.

“We’ve just opened a Guerlain Spa in the Waldorf in New York operated by Spa Chakra; it’s an amazing spa and certainly for the Waldorf=Astoria Collection that would be an inspiration for future hotels.”