New generation of boutique/lifestyle hotels ripe with attitude By Michael Milligan, Travel Weekly, 08/08/2006 As hotels go, few are as provocative as this one. It is called the Night. Located on West 45th Street in Manhattan, the exterior of the hotel is painted black and draped with a large white banner embossed with a huge letter "N." Inside, the luxury boutique creation features a bold, black-and-white, arguably stark, decor. It is all very dramatic, decidedly Gothic and, in the words of Vikram Chatwal, the developer who created it, "somewhat naughty as well." Naughty is almost an understatement. Take the hotel's Web site, www.nighthotelny.com. Inside, viewers will find a collection of images of an eclectic group of sultry, young, half-dressed types in vaguely elegant yet subtly lighted rooms. All are photographed in black and white, of course, and seem as if they could have been culled from an avant-garde movie -- Anne Rice channeled through Federico Fellini. The overarching sense is one of decadence and mystery. It also exemplifies the fastest-growing trend in hotel development -- a generation of boutique/lifestyle designs that are stubbornly iconoclastic. What they have in common is that they resist having anything in common -- with each other or with more traditional hotels -- giving each a unique character. "Night is quite a seductive place," Chatwal said. "The building itself is like an old townhouse manor. It is a Gothic-looking house. It has an aesthetic. The black and white decor really adds to the elegance the building, which has a European touch." Fitted with high-tech gadgets and services, Night is expected to appeal to leisure and business travelers, particularly in the fashion world and others in the arts, as well as to those seeking a cutting edge, boutique hotel experience. Although Chatwal already owns two hotels in Montreal and London, he believes he has created a lodging concept with broad possibilities in the luxury trappings of Night and its similarly flirty sister properties, named, not-so-coincidentally, Time and Dream. Like Night, Time (on West 49th Street) and Dream (on West 55th Street) are part of Chatwal's new brand called Hautel Couture, a sort of play on haute couture, the fashion industry's term for one-of-a-kind, high-fashion designs. Hautel Couture by Vikram Chatwal, the brand's official name, hews to a similar principle, except that while future Night, Time and Dream hotels will be cut from patterns similar to the originals, each version "will be tailor-made for a particular property and the city," Chatwal said. He'll soon find out if the concept works. A new Dream hotel is scheduled to open on Sept. 1 in Bangkok and another in Miami next year. Opening an unconventional hotel like Night or launching a brand is always a gamble, but a hotelier with a dream couldn't pick a better time to roll the dice, because the lodging market is booming. "RevPar (revenue per available room) has increased by 8.4% this year and will continue to increase at more than double the rate of inflation by 2007 and 2008," said Bjorn Hanson, head of the Hospitality & Leisure Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Lodging Econometrics, a Portsmouth, N.H.-firm that tracks hotel real estate, reported 3,377 hotel projects, totaling 448,156 rooms, in the construction pipeline at the end of the first quarter. That's just 536 projects short of the record set during third-quarter 1998. By mid-2007, Lodging Econometrics forecasts that the 1998 record will be shattered. "In 2006, the increase in construction room starts will increase by 44% over last year," Hanson predicted. At the same time, demographic changes are spurring hotel growth. Generation X travelers, those born between 1965 and 1980, have already overtaken the so-called Silent Generation born between 1930 and 1945, and they are now elbowing out baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, as the dominant travel market, according to the research firm of D.K. Shifflet & Associates. As a result, the future of hotels and hotel brands is being shaped by this growing recognition of both Gen-Xers and the generation that follows them -- what Hanson called Millennials, also known as Gen Y. "There is an emerging clarity" about Gen-X travelers, he said. "People are learning more and more about how to respond to the needs of Gen-Xers." At the same time, a crucial factor spurring the development of new hotel brands is the growing availability of capital. "There is a record number of equity funds that will fund new hotel brand development," Hanson said. "Some of them are venture capital firms. Some are firms that have invested in hotels in the past passively but now see an opportunity to align with brand/management roles and not just the real estate investment." Last November, the Blackstone Group, a multibillion-dollar private investment firm, purchased La Quinta Corp. for $34 billion. And Blackstone recently paid an estimated $2.6 billion for MeriStar Hospitality Corp., which owns 57 upper-upscale, full-service hotels under Hilton, Sheraton, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Westin, Doubletree and Radisson brands in major markets and resort locations. That purchase totals 16,507 rooms in 19 states and in Washington. The Blackstone Group is just one example among many. Add all those factors and it becomes clear that "now is the time to launch brands or brand extensions," Hanson said. He predicts, "Brands that are launched now will have a high survival rate." Little wonder that several new hotel brands have already been announced this year. They range from Hilton Hotels' decision to expand the Waldorf-Astoria into a luxury brand to the creation of a boutique hotel chain by Nicky Hilton, kid sister of paparazzi and tabloid favorite Paris Hilton and granddaughter of Hilton Hotel founder Conrad Hilton. And the new brands -- Aloft, Gansevoort, Solis, NYLO and others -- seem firmly in the upscale camp. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, nearly 70 luxury and upscale brands were introduced between 2000 and 2005, compared with less than 15 in the midscale and economy categories. By comparison, between 1994 and 1999 nearly 40 economy and midscale brands and slightly more than 20 luxury and upscale brands were introduced. Elon Kenchington, managing director of Hotel Gansevoort, a luxury New York hotel that aspires to become a national brand, said history has shown that to break into the marketplace, a new hotel has to have more than a flashy name and a concept. "A lot of other companies came in the marketplace, and they developed so-called hotel concepts," Kenchington said. "They sort of tried to oversaturate what they were doing. It was more a question of product placement" than real brand building. He said that they lost sight of "what the brand was and the integrity of what they were doing and the whole purpose of what they started out doing and where it went to. We are a little different." Hotel Gansevoort began as a boutique hotel in New York's trendy Meatpacking District. Among other things, it features a nightclub and a pool on the roof. "Who would have thought that in New York you could find a hotel with this expansive, 5,000-square-foot rooftop," Kenchington said. "The pool is just one of the features. On the other side of it, you've got a beautiful, landscaped garden. We put a cabana there, and we have massages during the day, and at night it becomes a very exclusive [club] area where anybody who's anybody wants to be." Hugo Boss designed the staff uniforms. Now its creators are developing two more hotels. The Gansevoort South, Miami, is slated to debut in South Beach in the fall, followed by the Gansevoort West in downtown Los Angeles early in 2007. The two new properties, like the one in New York, are designed to bring a resort concept to city centers. "We are creating an urban oasis," Kenchington said. Gansevoort, he said, has no intension of becoming a chain. "We are going to be a group of great hotels that deliver great service in unique facilities. We will bring all of the resort [amenities] to the middle of a busy, bustling city center," said Kenchington. Meanwhile Karisma Hotels, which operates several hotels in Mexico, is months away from pulling the wraps off its most ambitious resort yet. Called the Azul Blue Hotel & Spa, it takes the all-inclusive resort concept to new level, according to Rienk De Jong, Karisma's director of sales. "It is not the typical all-inclusive hotel," De Jong said. "We don't have buffets. We don't have lines." Instead, this luxury, 96-room resort, currently under construction in Tulum, Mexico, and scheduled to open Nov. 1, will have fine dining restaurants (from their room, guests will be able to see the top gourmet chefs at work on closed-circuit TV), a top-of-line spa, butler service and a "stress-free environment." "That's the focus of the hotel," De Jong said. "This is a resort created not just to assist our guests in releasing stress but also to prevent the occurrence of even the smallest possible stressful situation during their vacation experience. "It is a huge promise, and we are committed to delivering it." The property will consist of six villas, each with 16 suites accented with hand-carved mahogany doors and such high-end amenities as rooms with plasma TVs and Jacuzzis. On top of that, the hotel is all-inclusive, De Jong said. Guests won't need cash during their stay. "We are one of the first brands to combine the level of a five-star luxury service with the convenience of no-cash transactions and offering it within the intimacy of a boutique hotel atmosphere," De Jong said. He believes the Azul Blue concept could lend itself to more resorts in the future. "We are trying to create a new category" of hotel, he said. This just might be the ideal time to do it.