| Frequents travelers Christopher Wethers and Elaine Van Carmichael are checking into Marriott Courtyard, Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton Inn hotels less often now that they've discovered Hyatt Place, a midprice chain that Hyatt launched four years ago.
Wethers, who travels at least 50 days a year, likes to check into his room quickly and bypass the front desk. Van Carmichael, who's on the road 150 days a year, likes dipping into decorative wire baskets on the lobby counter for fresh, free apples.
Once a hotel company known mostly for its upscale downtown hotels and resorts, the Hyatt Hotels (H) group today is transforming itself into a larger, cutting-edge company that serves a broader array of travelers such as Wethers and Van Carmichael who seek lodging at a midrange price (about $130 a night) with amenities such as fast check-ins and free fruit.
Hyatt has been changing during the hotel industry's biggest downturn since the Great Depression, which has hammered upscale hotels particularly hard. The company has started to show success, reporting increases in occupancy during the first quarter. But the real test will come when travel rebounds and hotel rates are likely to rise.
Hyatt — which operates about 430 hotels compared with Starwood's 1,000, Marriott's 3,500 and Hilton's 3,600 — didn't focus in the past on expanding.
For its 53 years, Hyatt has been controlled by the billionaire Pritzker family and didn't operate under the same financial pressure that its larger rivals did, says Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University's hotel school. Efforts by Hyatt to break with the past were sometimes stymied by feuds about control of the family's holdings.
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Source: Hyatt |
