USA today
Forget the idea of hotels as just somewhere to sleep. In the USA, hotels are pushing their brands to the limit, turning themselves into happening nightspots and places to shop, and spinning off everything from product catalogues to their own CDs.
Westin Hotels & Resorts has developed a customer catalogue to answer the demand for its popular Heavenly Bed, launched in 1999. The company is selling four beds a day in the USA, at nearly $3,000 (£1,970) a pop including bedclothes and mattress.
Last year came Westin's $10m (£6.6m) Heavenly Bath initiative, which has seen 95% of its hotels in North America installing high-powered showers, curved shower curtain rods (with extra inches to avoid "curtain cling") and improved towels, robes and toiletries. All of these items are also sold through catalogues or online.
Westin's sister company W Hotels (both are owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts) also has in-room and online catalogues. These feature bed linen, games, desks and customised CDs that appear in its hotel rooms.
W is enjoying retailing so much that it opened W The Store at its new W New York Times Square hotel last December. An extension of the hotel's trendy Living Room Lounge, the store is a joint venture with Platform, the company behind Troy, a home decor shop in Manhattan. W calls the store a "reinvention of the traditional hotel gift shop". Says spokeswoman Maggie Leigh: "It sells everything from Dolce & Gabbana boots to headache tablets, and it's doing very well."
Roger Cline, chairman and chief executive officer of consulting firm Roundhill Hospitality in New York, says it's logical that hotels consider new areas of revenue. "It has come to the hotel business somewhat late, but clearly the industry needs to find other ways to increase its share of the customer wallet in addition to overnight accommodations and food and beverage," he says.
For W, it has resulted in extending the customer offer. Says Leigh: "We are now officially a one-stop shop. You can go to a W, eat in a restaurant, hang out in the lobby, hang out in a great bar, sleep in a bedroom and go shopping. It's become almost like a resort - it's everything you need."
W's partnership with nightclub entrepreneur Rande Gerber - which has seen Gerber's trendy bars open in many of W's hotels - is part of W's drive to offer cool places to hang out in as well as stay in.
This is exactly the aim of the owners of the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, which opened last November. They want to make the 455-bedroom hotel - tiny by Vegas standards - a hit nightspot through offerings such as Skin, an outside nightclub around the hotel pool, and Rain in the Desert, a multi-level club and concert venue with water sofas and a computer-programmed river of water.
General manager Jim Hughes believes Las Vegas is going back to its roots of good nightlife. "Twenty years ago it was all about gaming, then they tried to make the transition into family entertainment. That was a big bust. Gaming, while always present, is taking somewhat of a secondary role. It's all about entertaining the people. If you provide the entertainment, you pick up the gaming, hotel and food business."
According to Cline, today's hotel guests want more than a decent room, they want something they don't get sitting at home. "I think a good portion of the travelling public have accumulated enough stuff. They're sitting on a lot of examples of material goods and so they're concentrating more on experiences."
Hotels are delivering, and the "experiences" keep getting more interesting. For example, boutique company Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group offers weekend city breaks with free tattoos thrown in. Joie de Vivre Hospitality in San Francisco has "Shopaholic" weekends with store discount coupons, Band-Aid plasters (for aching feet) and bottles of water laid on.
US food trends
Three years ago San Francisco couldn't get enough of Aqua's tuna and foie gras. The wobbly stack started with a sticky Cabernet jus underneath a butter-soaked rösti, topped with a 2in-thick barely seared piece of ahi tuna, and a similarly cooked slab of foie gras, with shredded deep-fried onion as the perilous final garnish.
Sound rich enough? Well that was the way things were heading in many of the USA's fine-dining rooms until 11 September last year.
Thankfully, though, even before that fateful day, there were signs of a revolt. Chefs were paying more attention to their fabulous local produce - with an increasing number crediting suppliers on menus - and more and more were letting the produce speak for itself. Seasonality became the buzz word on every US chef's lips.
Flavour layering has become popular, too. Individual intense flavours are layered, or balanced, one upon the other, allowing each flavour to be savoured.
Customers are also seeing a greater choice on their menus across all levels of dining in the USA. For example, four different cuts of meat may be customised for the diner, who can choose from a line-up of different sauces.
Also fresh to the food scene is the term "nouveau global", which takes its place alongside Asian fusion, nuevo Latino and traditional European cuisines as a major influence in the USA's fine-dining rooms. At Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, for example, you will encounter fennel lemon chicken, Thai-braised pork, Moroccan-spiced lamb and hoisin ginger beef tenderloin, all on one menu. Vietnamese and Cuban cuisine, though, are currently getting the lion's share of the global attention.
The very latest US buzz word, however, is raw. Not sashimi, or carpaccio, but raw vegetables, fruits and nuts. Yes, vegan is the way to go if you listen to San Francisco darling Roxanne Klein. A growing number of the USA's top chefs are following Klein and incorporating raw into their menus - chefs such as Norman Van Aken in Miami and Trotter in Chicago. There are even plans for a chain of raw food restaurants around the country, such is the success of New York's first, called Quintessence, which opened 18 months ago.
Even your everyday chef, apparently, is gravitating towards healthier fare - sushi is on the up, and omega-3-giving nuts are being sprinkled all over the place, on everything from salads to roasted meats. Organic food is moving into the mainstream, with natural fast-food chains also on the increase.
Predictably, immediately post-11 September, the wind was well and truly knocked out of the sails of upmarket US restaurants, with people turning to local, neighbourhood restaurants in search of comfort food. Meatloaf, macaroni cheese and chocolate pudding sales soared, while the fiddly excesses of fine dining were curbed. Dishes in many such establishments became simpler, prices were adjusted downwards and even the odd patriotic theme crept in - such as blue corn tortilla filled with red beans and rice - although recent National Restaurant Association research indicates that Americans are now returning to pre-11 September dining-out habits.
by Fiona Sims
New ways to pamper guests…
Health and spa amenities are ever-popular, but hotels are having to change with the times. Tom LaTour, president and chief executive officer of the 36-strong Kimpton Hotel and Restaurant Group, believes yoga will change the face of hotels.
Such is the demand at his properties that he is considering taking some guest rooms out of service and turning them into yoga rooms.
LaTour, who has been practising yoga for 10 years, says people want a dedicated room rather than practising in their bedroom. "They need music, floor pads, pillows, perhaps a fountain or water feature," he says.
Meanwhile, some more extraordinary sorts of pampering treatments are emerging. The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas has been making headlines in the USA with its Botox parties. Botox, or botulinum toxin A, is the country's hottest new cosmetic enhancement - supporters say it temporarily gets rid of wrinkles and crow's feet.
There have been five Botox parties at the Palms, attracting up to 60 guests. They gather under the tutelage of Dr Paul Nassif - Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon and husband of Adrienne Maloof, one of the family owners of the Palms - who administers injections for $300 (£197) and upwards. Profits are shared between the hotel and Dr Nassif. Not only is it a potential money-spinner, "It has increased awareness [of the hotel]," says general manager Jim Hughes.
The three-story Spa at the Palms, attached to the 455-bedroom hotel, also holds candlelit yoga parties (British actor Craig Ferguson was a recent patron).
… and four-legged customers too
In a country where pet grooming salons and gourmet pet bakeries are becoming as everyday as Starbucks, it's not surprising that US hotels should be the next to turn to pampering pets. In New York the competition to attract four-legged guests is getting strong.
At the Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park South, each pet is given a 22-carat gold-plated ID tag on check-in with the hotel's details in case of emergency. Dogs receive home-baked dog biscuits and cats receive a gift bag of catnip.
Each room has hand-painted pet "dinnerware" with matching place mat and a quilted pet travel mat. Burberry doggie trench coats are available, as is dog walking. There are even doggie spa treatments, such as the Calming Synergy Spritz (made with essential oils, said to promote calm in new spaces). All these are complimentary.
At the SoHo Grand hotel in New York, owned by Hartz Mountain Industries, 117 of the 369 bedrooms are set aside for guests with pets, and each room undergoes specialised cleaning. Grooming brushes, pet toothbrush and toothpaste are laid on, as are pet sitters on request.
"When we first opened [in 1996] almost no other New York City hotels allowed pets," says spokesman Paul Lerner. "As we had guests come and stay, the word spread quickly."
Dogs arriving at the W New York Union Square receive welcome bags with toys, treats and "clean-up" bags for the walks.
And for those people travelling without their pets and in need of company, some hotels now offer complimentary goldfish. At Kimpton-owned Hotel Monacos in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, New Orleans and Washington, DC, live fishy companions are delivered to rooms in their bowls.
A similar goldfish service at New York's SoHo Grand is so popular the hotel has doubled the size of its fish quarters and added a new breed of goldfish.
US wine trends
So, hands up who thought Sauvignon Blanc was still number two in the USA? Well, we have news for you: sales of Pinot Grigio have been soaring recently, so much so, in fact, that it has overtaken Sauvignon Blanc to become the number-two white varietal behind Chardonnay.
The Italians must be cock-a-hoop. For years the French dominated the US import scene with their French ways and French varietals (despite the Italian heritage of many US wine dynasties). Consequently, the success of imported Italian Pinot Grigio has made an impact on US winemakers.
Oregon, of course, has been having a fine old time with the grape (where it's called Pinot Gris), regularly trotting out world-class examples. But the Californians have also been getting to grips with it. In just one year alone, sales of Californian Pinot Grigio leapt almost threefold, from 70,000 cases in 2000 to 200,000 in 2001.
Americans, it seems, have shed their rather uptight image and embraced the wine grape - the USA saw a dramatic 64% increase in wine production from 1994 to 2000 after new plantings post-phylloxera, making more than 273 million cases in 2000 - that's about 9% of the world's wine production.
And when we say the USA, we're really talking California - as most of the country's wine production is there (although wine is produced in 36 US states, among them Virginia and Arizona - even, now, Hawaii, but don't hold your breath).
Napa is still the USA's jewel, with its top wines being auctioned to Silicon Valley billionaires at silly prices. Neighbouring Sonoma has its fair share of serious wines, too, though they are generally more affordable (and more approachable). The next Napa? Well, the pundits reckon it's Santa Barbara County in California's Central Coast. It's grown from virtually nothing into a $100m (£65.7m) business in just 30 years. Try a Chardonnay from its Santa Ynez Valley and you'll see why.
So what's happening on the US red front? Merlot may be the new Cabernet, but Syrah could shortly become the new Merlot. Plantings of Syrah, which has its spiritual home in the Rh"ne, have thundered along on the West Coast. The frenzy in California and Washington State indicate an anticipated appetite for Syrah of gigantic proportions. It has finally moved out of the realm of the boutique producer into the hands of the big boys such as Gallo. Why? Well, Australia's monumental success with the grape (where it is known as Shiraz) might have something to do with it. But there's no doubt that the grape thrives there. It's versatile, adaptable and, frankly, easier to grow than Cabernet. It buds early, adapts to cool conditions, but ripens early enough to show off even in warm regions.
It took them a while to learn how to control it, though - the USA's first dealings with it were rather relaxed, to say the least - sprouting out all over the place in all that fertile soil and hot sun. But now they've got to grips with it and are using a wide choice of rootstocks and paying greater attention to clonal selection. Move over, Cabernet.
by Fiona Sims
Hot operators
Rick Federicochief executive officer, PF Chang's China Bistro
Why he's hot: PF Chang's combined Chinese food, fine wine and decor with good old American service to make Szechwan chicken trendy and two-hour table waits the norm (you can't book ahead). The award-winning chain is spawning copycats such as Big Bowl, owned by Brinker International, and the new Yan Can from Pizza Hut parent company Yum! Brands.
Smart move: Pei Wei Asian Diner, a fast-food spin-off of Chang's, for those who just can't wait two hours.
Future moves: currently 69 restaurants in 32 states, and growing by 13-15 a year. Pei Wei has seven in three states, with plans for more.
Phil Romano
founder and chief executive officer, EatZi's Catering
Why he's hot: the man behind the Fuddruckers hamburger chain has blurred the lines between restaurant and supermarket with EatZi's, launched in 1995. You can eat in, take out or have them cater for your party. Chefs mingle with customers; opera blares through the sound system. Aisles are narrow and stores small (8,000sq ft) to make you feel as if you're in your own kitchen.
Smart move: maintaining ties with Brinker International, the restaurant conglomerate (he launched their Macaroni Grill chain and still acts as a consultant). Brinker is a business and financial partner on EatZi's.
Future moves: currently four stores, in Texas, Georgia and Maryland. Wants to go national.
Pattye Moore president, Sonic Corp
Why she's hot: she oversaw the brand relaunch of what claims to be the USA's largest drive-in chain, Sonic Drive-In. Moore has pumped up the advertising budget by 65% over the past decade. She is said to spend much of her time on the road, testing out the 50-year-old chain's burgers and signature cream pie shakes for herself.
Smart move: keeping Sonic's "carhops", who deliver the food to your car. Sonic says it helps it stand out in an industry "overwrought with automation".
Future moves: currently more than 2,400 drive-ins in 30 states; 190 to open this year.
Tom LaTour
president and Chief executive officer, Kimpton Group
Why he's hot: the 20-year-old boutique hotel company innovates and inspires with "chill" rooms, tall people's rooms and its Red Eye hotel packages (eye cream and a slice of cold pizza laid on). Fans and copycats include W Hotels, Starwood's popular boutique brand.
Smart move (or was it?): takes credit for pioneering live goldfish in hotels seven years ago. Trouble is, now every boutique is doing it.
Future moves: currently 36 hotels, wants to be in every major US city.
George D Johnson Jnr
chief executive officer, Extended Stay America
Why he's hot: the seven-year-old Extended Stay America (ESA) claims to be the fastest-growing company-owned and operated hotel chain in US history. Has made Fortune magazine's list of 100 Fastest-Growing Companies three times.
Smart move: realising it's not just travellers who want hotel rooms. ESA's guests include people on work assignment or training, relocating, waiting for homes to be built or tending to a family member in hospital.
Future moves: currently three extended-stay brands and 448 properties in 42 states. Up to 50 will open this year and there's plenty more to come - ESA claims that demand far exceeds supply for its low rates, from $279 (£183) a week.
Rande Gerber president, Midnight Oil Company
Why he's hot: started in 1989 with the Whiskey bar in New York, now the empire has swelled to 20 bars and nightclubs. Everyone, from celebrities to normal folk, wants to drink there. Gimmicks include curtained booths (for your Gwyneths and J Los), oil-filled floors and "floating" DJ booths.
Smart moves: hooking up with W Hotels (12 bars are attached to W properties); and marrying supermodel Cindy Crawford, ensuring even more column inches.
Future moves: he's keeping mum about future plans, but says business is good: "If times are good, people are definitely drinking, and when they're bad, sometimes they drink even more."
