Editor’s note: Expanding upon the Design feature in the January-February issue of HOTELS Magazine, this is the third of a three-part multimedia web series about the newly-opened Le Méridien Chicago – Oakbrook Center, covering Wischermann Partners’ third-party management perspective and execution challenges. Part one examines the evolution of Starwood’s Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts brand, and the second entry explains owner RockBridge’s concepts and strategies for this project.
Management: What keeps you up at night
The hiring, the budgeting, the inevitable delays. Le Méridien Chicago – Oakbrook Center General Manager Simon Fricker had a lot to worry about ahead of the Oak Brook, Illinois, hotel’s soft opening on August 4, 2014.
Although the hiring was about 90% done, as training progressed it was clear some of the hires were not working out. Some furniture had not arrived and there was always fear that a building inspector might find a violation, pushing the opening date back further.
“It’s always a bit of a struggle and we’re dealing with the hiccups as they come along,” Fricker told HOTELS. “There isn’t a general manager in the history of hospitality that wouldn’t want more time to open a hotel. It puts pressure on all of us. There are so many things to think about.”
That pressure brought upon the GM a whirlwind of emotions.
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Rebirth of a local legend
Fricker’s opening of Le Méridien Chicago – Oakbrook Center culminated a dramatic turnaround for a hotel property that had fallen on hard times.
The property is located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, adjacent to Oakbrook Center, an upscale, open-air shopping center. The hotel is also close to numerous corporate headquarters, within a stone’s throw from McDonald’s Corp., and close to Ace Hardware Corp., Blistex and Sanford.
Decades ago the hotel was a fixture of the community, but it was well past its prime when as the 172-room Renaissance Chicago Oak Brook Hotel closed in April 2011. Eighteen months later RockBridge Partners, a division of RockBridge, Columbus, Ohio, announced the purchase of a ground lease on the property from General Growth Properties, Chicago. RockBridge invested US$25 million in the property, including an extensive renovation.
Along the way, RockBridge appointed Wischermann Partners, Minnetonka, Minnesota, to manage the property.
“The vision for this property was clearly driven by the location,” said Paul Wischermann, president and founder of Wischermann Partners. “Oakbrook Center is such a lifestyle in it of itself. It’s actually the communal center for the village of Oak Brook and when you see brands which are represented in the shopping center, you start with Tiffany’s and Louis Vuitton, you immediately feel you need to come up with a complementary lifestyle solution. In my opinion, Le Méridien fit this perfectly.”
Wischermann said the location’s development challenges included ensuring everything followed schedule, a goal that sometimes proved elusive, because of “all the permits you need to have and working with a smaller community like this. It’s not like they have three or four hotel openings a year.”
Finding the right GM
Wischermann used a recruiter to hire Fricker, a Swiss national and a 1996 graduate of the BHMS Business & Hotel Management School in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Fricker was previously working as the food and beverage director of the 326-room Mandarin Oriental, Miami, a position he took in 2011 after helping open the 392-room Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas in 2009, also as food and beverage director.
Before that he served as general manager of the 185-room Gramercy Park Hotel, New York City, and as food and beverage director of the 239-room The Peninsula New York. “I learned so much from being part of the opening of Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas, and I’m applying that here in Oak Brook,” Fricker said.
There were several accomplishments on Fricker’s resume that convinced Wischermann that Fricker was the person to lead Le Méridien Chicago – Oakbrook Center.
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With his strong F&B experience, Fricker was instrumental in the conceptualization of the hotel’s restaurant El Tapeo.
The restaurant’s concept was chosen for its uniqueness in an area chock full of steakhouses and upscale American cuisine restaurants, and given its revenue importance for the property it was crucial to pull off the amenity just right. “The biggest decision to make was to select a concept for our ninth floor restaurant. Developing this concept was thrilling,” Fricker said. “We are expecting about two-thirds room revenue and one-third restaurant revenue.”
Initial challenges: sales, hiring, delays
Under Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ upscale Le Méridien brand, management decided that rather than offer discounts to boost opening occupancy, it would take the opposite approach.
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“We are part of a competitive set where rates are between US$120 and US$130, and the occupancy in our area is quite good, at 70% and ramping up to almost 80%,” Fricker said. “Our goal is to beat and vastly exceed the comp set’s average rate.”
Fricker added that the property’s 172-room size was advantageous for this rate strategy given the size of the hotel’s competitors, which include larger properties that need to fill rooms with large groups paying lower rates.
However, market conditions also pushed staffing costs above what the management team initially expected. The hotel has 122 full-time and part-time associates, and Fricker said the hotel needed to increase the salaries for certain positions to get the quality of staff it sought.
“The number one, number two and number three priorities of a hotel general manager in an opening are to hire the right people,” Fricker said. “The hiring process was hard in the beginning.”
Social media marketing proved an important outreach to potential staff, especially as the hotel brand was not particularly well known in the area and the opening date was pushed back due to delays.
The causes of the delays the hotel faced ahead of opening varied, ranging from collateral to structural.
One unexpected challenge was the installation of the dishwasher for El Tapeo. “We found out it was no longer working and we couldn’t make it work so that gave us a bit of a delay because we had to purchase a brand new dishwasher. We had to get a quote in, we had to install it and get it inspected and licensed,” Fricker said.
Another challenge was training.
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The right look
During this time, Julie Frank, global director of design, Le Méridien, was focused on making sure the hotel captured a local feel through the brand’s prism.
When talking with the hotel’s design firm, Gensler, Chicago, Frank settled on showcasing an authentic Chicago design narrative with the hotel’s artwork, emphasized with large mural in the lobby, discovery moments located throughout the hotel and the impressive views of the downtown Chicago skyline offered from El Tapeo, located on the hotel’s ninth floor.
“We’re so fortunate to have the view as the amazing backdrop in which to create the restaurant, so that was an immediate home run from the beginning,” Frank told HOTELS.
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One of the hotel’s most striking features is the entrance art, a mural created by Chicago artist Justus Roe.
Roe, who cites Google Maps as an influence on his art, had previously worked with Gensler to create the mural at downtown Chicago tech hub 1871.
Roe told HOTELS that his goal for the hotel’s mural, a sort of abstract urban landscape, was to achieve the same level of detail and intensity as the 1871 mural from the same muse — his hometown — with relatively little planning ahead of the time. “To be honest, all my pieces, it’s all Chicago. … I’m filtering that city experience,” Roe said. “There is no way I could sketch this out. I could do it a million times over and it would never be the same twice. That is part of the excitement, that added pressure, you know.”
It took Roe about two weeks to finish the hotel mural.
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Ready, set, go
After scrambling to have everything ready ahead of the soft opening, Fricker’s next challenge was to fine-tune operations ahead of the grand opening on September 9.
“I wake up in the middle of the night to think of the things that I might have forgotten, there’s so many things to think about,” Fricker said. “I wake up and I think, ‘Did I think of the salt and pepper shakers? The collateral? The keycards? We have a checklist — however, there are always things that can slip in between.”
Meanwhile Frank was busy ordering décor on Amazon.com and meticulously arranging books and pillows.
“It’s the last-minute touches, adding the styling elements,” Frank said. “I’m very meticulous about it; getting the right books, the right color books, and putting them in the right locations… You can never tell how pillows will look in a space.”
The grand opening witnessed a live performance from French cover band Nouvelle Vague, who do bossa nova twists on rock classics and was attended by local businesspeople and officials as well as RockBridge and Wischermann Partners executives and media.
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Looking ahead, Fricker said projected market conditions for 2015 looked favorable for the hotel.
“We feel very encouraged by the market upswing and the overall signs of increased corporate travel,” Fricker said. “We are hoping to see an increased demand for weekend leisure travel to the Oak Brook market. In general, we are very much looking forward to further expanding our share in the market, through both rate and occupancy.”
Paul Wischermann is bullish, as well, predicting slow but steady expansion via upscale management deals and strong performance for his existing portflolio.
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As for advice for his fellow GMs opening properties, Fricker emphasizes avoiding procrastination and starting the hiring and OS&E processes as quickly as possible.