Dolce Hotels and Resorts, Rockleigh, New Jersey, continues to expand throughout the U.S. and Europe with new hotels under development in Vittel, France, and Velas, Portugal. In early 2013, the upscale conference hotel-focused management company with 24 hotels operating today will open The Alexander in Indianapolis, which will anchor the US$155 million CityWay project.
HOTELS recently caught up with and Dolce President and CEO Steven Rudnitsky to talk about the state of business and what differentiates Dolce from its competitors.
HOTELS: How is Dolce performing and what is your outlook for 2012?
Steven Rudnitsky: We had a good year last year with very positive revenue performance up about 14%. I expect to see continued growth – hopefully more on the rate side. I am not sure how much more occupancy people will see in upper-upscale segment. Our hotels continue to perform well and we are projecting high single-digit growth again this year.
In Europe, we saw a little drop off in the group booking pace in back half of last year, but this year has been surprisingly strong. Our projections so far are in line from a rate standpoint with a booking pace several dollars ahead of the prior year. Overall, we are about 8% ahead of last year on group booking pace – split down the middle between rate and occupancy. Europe is even a bit stronger than that right now.
HOTELS: How are the needs of your customer changing?
Rudnitsky: The corporate customer is demanding more flexible booking patterns and business terms. Clients used to arrive on Monday and depart Thursday. Now there is no consistent pattern. Clients expect attrition and cancellation penalties to be waived. The average size of corporate meetings is smaller overall. Technology absolutely is critical. Clients expect us to provide sufficient bandwidth to accommodate online learning and video conferencing. Millennials expect us to accommodate their technology needs everywhere, including meeting rooms. We don’t charge for Internet access and our system allows for unlimited number of devices to connect at no charge. It will be interesting to see how the competition addresses connectivity as they have been collecting a lot of revenue over the years charging Internet fees that people won’t need as more people pick up tablets.
HOTELS: You use F&B as a differentiator. Can you explain how you approach it now?
Rudnitsky: Healthy F&B choices are very critical. We use our trademarked Nourishment Hubs as a big point of difference. We don’t wheel food in; we have stations outside conference rooms set up a certain way. We also build on the Hubs with our “Thoughtful Food for Thoughtful Minds” program, which is also trademarked. For main courses and breaks, we use nutritional ingredients to keep attendees alert and energized. We are buying more fresh ingredients from local sources with eye on sustainable production. We are putting our chefs out front and center featuring regional specialties as today everyone loves to interact with chefs.
HOTELS: Where else are you investing on the operations side?
Rudnitsky: We need to continue to refine is CRM system in a way where we can better anticipate and meet client needs better than ever before – not just from a meeting planner standpoint, but from a guest standpoint.
HOTELS: Tell us more about The Alexander project.
Rudnitsky: It is a great development we competed for among several of the big brands. The Buckingham Company out of Indianapolis is the developer and this will be the model for Dolce’s new urban hotel. It is a hybrid between a center city lifestyle hotel and IAC certified conference hotel. Construction is under way and we are scheduled to open first week of January 2013.
HOTELS: You have a new managing director in Europe named David Anderson. What are his marching orders?
Rudnitsky: To be an extension of our corporate office, to continue to make sure we are executing against brand standards across are European portfolio and, most importantly, to foster and build relations with existing owners and be a direct line of sight for owners there to our corporate office.
HOTELS: What are Dolce’s growth plans?
Rudnitsky: We are very focused on several deals in Europe and North America. We picked up four management contracts last year and hope to pick up another five or six in 2012. More importantly, we are in search of a multi-unit deal. We have capital partners committed to investing in a multi-unit scenario that strategically fits for us. That is probably more realistic in Europe right now where most of these deals, in some shape or fashion, are owned by banks. There are a lot of ways for us to approach it but we view ourselves as strategic partner with a core competency around operating properties. There is plenty of money in search of deals but few operating companies that are scalable the likes of Dolce in the upper-upscale and conference hotel space. That gives us a chance to work with a lot of investor types to grow our business.
HOTELS: What are Dolce’s long-term plans?
Rudnitsky: I spent a lot of my time in China during my previous life, and there is a notable opportunity to expand there and in the Middle East. We would need to do it with right partners and in China with a joint venture structure. We are always interested in talking about moving into China, but more in a holistic fashion with somebody who would be a partner on the ground who has both of our interests front and center. In the Middle East it would probably a one-off scenario given how fragmented the market is.
