BERLIN — As the lines between leisure and business guests continue to blur, hoteliers said the key to staying relevant to travelers is to be flexible to their needs and true to what they already do well.
Speaking during "The New Urban Status Quo: The Rise of the Hybrid Guest" session during the Adjacent Spaces at the International Hospitality Investment Forum, Daniel Johansson, director of development and acquisitions for the Cheval Collection, said the key to success with changing guests is to remain true to the core of what your company does well.
"Whatever you do in terms of your concept, whatever your brand is, you need to stay authentic to it and true to it, I think," he said. "Because there are a lot of successful models out there."
William Laxton, CEO of Mactaggart Family & Partners, said for his company that has meant leaning in to flexibility for its guests and integrating into its communities in strong locations versus trying to be a one-stop shop.
He said that often means instead of focusing on its own food-and-beverage offering, Mactaggart will leverage nearby restaurants and bars to give guests a variety during their stay while streamlining operations.
"And that, in our model, is what we think people want," he said. "They want the autonomy, the flexibility, the choice to have breakfast in three different places across their stay."
Torsten Kuttig, director of hotel development for ECE Work & Live, agreed, adding that the way to bridge the gap between leisure and business stays is often location and leveraging amenities off of the property.
Kuttig said he's noticed a blurring of the lines in brand concepts in city centers over recent years.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell is it a leisure hotel or a business hotel because they want to attract those hybrid guests," he said. "They want to attract people who come there with different ideas for their stay."
Conversely, Philip Ward, senior adviser for KSL Capital Partners, said his company has made food and beverage core to their offerings for the recently acquired The Pig Hotels boutique chain.
"Ultimately, you're trying to find as many ways as possible of generating revenue out of the assets that you invest in, the businesses you invest in," he said. "So certainly the hotels that we either finance or that we own, whenever there's an opportunity to major on different facets of the same guest, the whole guest within different hybrid forms, we've done so."
He said The Pig's food-and-beverage offerings have also been successful in drawing in locals around hotels.
"We like the fact that we have Michelin star restaurants, which attract locals as well as people that come and stay in the hotel and spend the night there," he said. "So, I think our different strategies will lend themselves to the ability to attract people across different sources of revenue."
Ward said it's important to remember that almost all hotels host guests with different occasions for stays at all times, some with more of a leisure focus and others traveling for business. He pointed to The Belfry, a luxury resort in the U.K., as a property that does a good job balancing those different kinds of demand.
"During the week, you typically have lots and lots of business people go there for off-site seminars and so on and so forth," he said. "Then on the weekend and during school holidays, it'll be families. It's the same asset, same product, same service used by different populations, so you end up having a very nice revenue profile across both the business part of the year and the leisure part."
Theo Bortoluzzi, business development manager for Kerten Hospitality, said reaching those different types of guests often comes down to being flexible as a brand on what your properties are and what they can offer.
"That's why at Kerten, we don't really work with brand standards that are too strong," he said. "When you look at different properties in different locations, [strict brand standards] would just not make sense."