A Place With Some History
Paul Burnham Finney, The New York Times, 2/5/2008 (excerpted)
Not long ago, historic hotels were often a little frayed at the edges, spurned for fresher alternatives like the trendy boutique hotels.
But many hotels with a past have been fixed up in recent years, their marble staircases polished, their thick carpets cleaned or replaced. As a result, business travelers are increasingly treating them as destinations in themselves, offering a night or more that takes the blur out of the regular run of business hotels.
“Historic hotels,” said Bjorn Hanson, who tracks the hotel industry's ups and downs at PricewaterhouseCoopers, “are a better-performing niche.”
Take the Peabody in Memphis, with its daily parade of ducks through its lobby at 11 a. m. and 5 p.m. (inspired by a general manager's duck hunting trip to Arkansas some 75 years ago). Its guest rooms, indoor pool and athletic club were spruced up a couple of years ago. It also offers wireless access in its rooms, a 21st-century amenity now found in many historic hotels.
“Until Wi-Fi, landmark hotels were up against a brick wall — literally a building often worth preserving — when it came to rewiring rooms,” said Shirley Talbert, reservation specialist at the 210-member Historic Hotels of America, a marketing organization linked to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The organization began with just 32 hotels in 1989. Among the historic celebrities are the Algonquin in Manhattan, seat of the Round Table, where the literary and witty gathered through much of the 1920s, and the Tudor-style American Club resort, an hour's drive north of Milwaukee, built by the Kohler plumbing-fixture company in 1918 to house immigrant workers.
“Travelers think most historic properties are luxury hotels — and they're right,” said Kelly Earnest of the Peabody, whose Club Floor rooms begin at $345. “Some 25 percent of our customers are executive travelers.”
Last year, according to the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International, the hotel industry in the United States had a 63.2 percent occupancy rate, with an average daily rate of $104, while the luxury market alone had a 72 percent occupancy rate, with a $288 average daily rate.
“Enjoying the older properties is largely for executives who can choose and afford that kind of travel,” said Bill Carroll, senior lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and a former Hertz executive. “The minute everyone else discovers these distinctive hotels, they're no longer as cozy as a club.”
Historic Hotels does not have a monopoly on properties over 50 years old, its benchmark for becoming a member. “I'd guess that out of some 30,000 hotels in the U.S., 6,000 are independent and of those, 600 to 900 are historic,” said Robert A. Gilbert, the hospitality organization's president and chief executive
Why bother with hotels that sometimes have the quirks that come with age?
“The big thing is the sense of place,” said Mary Billingsley, a spokeswoman for Historic Hotels of America. “You walk through the doors and you're in a different world.”
“More often than not,” she added, “the employees think they're stewards of history.”
Another draw for business travelers is that longtime amenity — location. “Our corporate hotels are downtown where you traditionally found businesses — hotels like the Twin Cities' Saint Paul done in Italian Renaissance Revival style, and the River Street Inn in a former cotton warehouse in Savannah,” said Ms. Talbert of the historic hotels group.
Some of the best elderly but rejuvenated hotels are in Texas where tycoons have built hotels as a showcase for their millions.
In Dallas, the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, styled after an Italian Renaissance palace, was originally the home of a cotton magnate, Sheppard King. The oil heiress Caroline Rose Hunt bought the property in 1979 and turned it into a hotel that keeps the ambience of a private residence.
San Antonio has its four-year-old Watermark Hotel and Spa, set along the River Walk in the 19th-century L. Frank Saddlery Building (where custom saddles were manufactured for Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, and for John Wayne as well). Next to the Alamo is the history-laden Menger Hotel, which opened in 1859 on the site of Menger's brewery. It has played host to Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant and to Presidents William McKinley, William Howard Taft and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In New York, the Plaza, which recently completed a $400-million interior face lift, is a one-of-a-kind magnet for well-paid executive travelers. A symbol of luxury, the French chateau-style palace celebrated its 100th birthday in October with fireworks and a 12-foot scale-model cake.
The monumental hotel, now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, is scheduled to reopen next month with a starting room rate that can only be described as modern: $865 a night, butler service included.
