LONDON—GLH Hotels Limited might tout its position as “London’s largest owner-operator hotel company with over 4,000 hotel rooms” on its website, but many would be forgiven if the group—or its former name, Guoman—had hardly registered on their radars.
That will soon change, said CEO Mike DeNoma.
A subsidiary of Singapore-based GuocoLeisure Limited, London-based management company GLH is a 2013 re-launch and renaming of the parent company’s hotel wing Guoman.
At present, GLH consists of 33 Thistle properties (31 in the United Kingdom, two in Malaysia) and six properties under a flag also called Guoman (five in London, one in Shanghai, which opened in 2010).
The Guoman brand eventually will be phased out as part of GuocoLeisure’s strategy of transforming its hotel wing into a “world-class global hospitality entity. Its owner-operator strategy will focus on major global cities with a 10-year ambition to deliver the best guest-centred experience in the industry and launch new globally distinctive brands in the luxury, upscale and value segments,” according to GLH’s 2013 annual report.
Existing Guoman properties include: the 239-key Charing Cross Hotel; 282-key Royal Horseguards; 346-key Grosvenor, The Victoria; 801-key The Tower; 1,019-key The Cumberland; and 442-key Guoman Hotel Shanghai.
New brands
Three of the London Guoman properties are being rebranded as Amba hotels (a 4-star flag launched last October), DeNoma said. The Charing Cross will mark the first Amba conversion and is set to open October 2014.
The Cumberland will remain a standalone property with an emphasis on meetings business, the CEO said. Guoman’s Royal Horseguards Hotel will become GLH’s London flagship and branded as Clermont, a luxury brand also launched last fall that shares a name with GuocoLeisure’s London casino, the Clermont Club. Three Clermont hotels are planned to open by the end of 2016, including one in Singapore in a tower twice the height of London’s The Shard.
The newest brand to enter the GLH fold is 4-star Every, which will debut in November. Announced in July, the brand will get a jump start through conversions of four Thistle hotels. More Thistle conversions to other GLH brands are likely, DeNoma said.
Also on the docket is an economy brand launch within 90 days, followed by a luxury boutique brand next year, he added.
GLH is targeting 30 key cities in the U.K., as well as China, Malaysia and the United States, according to Colin Roy, GLH’s chief marketing officer.
Executives are approaching expansion with some degree of flexibility.
“We’ll work generally on a 10-year contract basis, but two concurrent 10-year options could be at (owners’) discretion. We will have skin in the game and show owners results. We’re prepared to buy, launch, lease or manage, regarding opportunities on a hotel-by-hotel basis,” DeNoma said.
Expansion will be divided equally between new builds and conversions, the CEO added.
“Looking at Europe, chain penetration is low, and most is sub-brand, so we see opportunities,” he said.
Global research
GLH emerged from extensive customer research, DeNoma said.
“Our global research has plotted where every brand would be and double-checked the properties’ names and brands’ trust marks. Where most brands are launched on a local level, we designed everything for a global rollout,” he said.
London would be the initial focus, DeNoma said. Putting capital into that city would help leverage a global strategy based on satisfying unmet needs. Topping that list is fast and free Wi-Fi.
“More than half our guests told us that Wi-Fi is more important than a good night’s sleep, which is mindboggling. If they cannot contact their families and offices, they’re not going to sleep very well anyway,” Roy said.
“Wi-Fi is a human right. I believe the person who said he’d rather share a toilet with his neighbor than not have proper, working Wi-Fi,” DeNoma said.
Costs—for both guests and owners—will be kept in check by only providing amenities guests need and want.
“In the boutique sector, the majority of guests are sold useless non-room facilities—restaurants, meeting rooms, saunas and spas—for which there are no need when you’re in one of the great cities such as London,” DeNoma said.
“And for owners, these bells and whistles do not yield out. … These unnecessary offerings make hotels look tired and much more expensive to refurbish,” he said.