REPORT FROM THE U.S.—In many ways, the Courtyard by Marriott brand is a product of the people.
Paul Novak, who developed the first 225 Courtyard by Marriott hotels, said Marriott International officials decided to go straight to the source market Courtyard was built around—business travelers—when it came to designing the brand. Industry practice at the time, he said, was to be more insular and include only a few designers and brand executives.
The result of the seemingly never-ending stream of focus groups was a brand unlike anything the hotel industry had seen up to that point. It was a brand that offered some of the comforts of a large, convention hotel, but at a lower price point.
“Ultimately, the product got built by taking components of a hotel room that the customer said they wanted and then we tried to figure out what the pricing was to provide that to the customer in a physical building,” said Novak, who today is executive director of hotel acquisitions at Whitman Peterson.
And what was on customers’ wish lists back then?
- Closet doors;
- an instant water heater installed at the bathroom vanity instead of a full coffee maker;
- a limited restaurant menu for breakfast and dinner instead of a full-service restaurant;
- no bellmen; and
- easy drive-up access to the hotel’s front door.
Novak said Marriott was trying to fill a mid-market need that didn’t exist at the time. “(Baby) boomers couldn’t afford to stay in a Marriott at the time, but they envisioned themselves as the type of individual that preferred the quality of a Marriott or Hilton, but couldn’t afford it,” he said.
Thirty-three years after the first Courtyard hotel opened in Atlanta, the brand is continuing to grow and evolve. The 1,000th Courtyard recently opened its doors in Walla Walla, Washington.
“I can’t say we thought there’d be 1,000,” Novak said. “There might have been some wishful thinking of that.”
The early years
Callette Nielsen, the current global brand manager for the brand, said Courtyard has been a significant product in more ways than just by helping pioneer the select-service space. She said a lot of people, including herself, have been influenced by the brand. Nielsen spent the first six months of her Marriott career working at a Courtyard property.
“It’s been integrated into so many people’s lives at corporate,” she said. “So many people started their careers at Courtyard, or spent time in Courtyard, and it has a special meaning to many people in the building.”
Novak said the Courtyard concept (which was given the codename internally of Courtyard after a Rodeway Inn hotel in Dallas that featured the familiar courtyard style of the Gen 1 brand) began at a time when Marriott was a much smaller player than it is today. He said there were about 100 Marriott properties open as Courtyard was being developed.
When it came time to test the product, Novak said executives picked three markets: Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; and Dallas. Washington was ruled out because sites were too difficult to secure, and Dallas was nixed because the market was performing too well and officials wanted to test Courtyard in a weaker market.
That left Atlanta. “Ironically, by the time we got the first Courtyard open, the two markets had flipped and Dallas was weaker,” Novak said, “so part of our test never was successful.”
Reaction to the brand was exceedingly positive, he said.
“J.W. (Marriott) Sr. was still alive, and he was very excited about it,” he said. “And when he saw the physical property and the bricks and mortar and what we were offering to a whole new group of business travelers, there was huge excitement.”
However, there were some people within the company who didn’t give a lot of notice to the fledgling brand.
“It took until the opening to generate a company-wide interest in Courtyard because it was a little bit lower of a product than were the sophisticated full-service hotels,” Novak said. “What you ended up finding were some of the younger employees and almost the entire operating team building Courtyard were younger associates working at full-service Marriotts. They saw an immediate opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of this brand new brand. The younger associates saw a great career path.”
Some people within Marriott at the time also questioned the amount of money being spent to secure sites, Novak said.
“I believed in the classic hotel statement of: location, location, location,” he said. “If you had to pay a slight premium for land to get the best location in a market, that was the thing to do. You’re not going to be able to pick up the building and move it. You’re going to live with that location for the rest of the life of that property.
“We bought some spectacular sites, and if you travel around the United States and look at the first 200, 225 Courtyards, most of them are still in operation. And most of them are still the best sites in those submarkets,” Novak said.
A ‘go-to brand’
Beau Benton, president of LBA Properties, developed his first Courtyard property about 20 years ago. About a quarter of LBA’s 61-hotel portfolio is Courtyard branded, and Benton said the brand likely will always occupy a high-profile position within the company’s portfolio.
“From our development standpoint for so many years, a lot of our product in the early years was in smaller markets,” he said. “We found that it was a brand that could come in and really perform above anything else in a lot of those markets. It kind of became our go-to brand over the years for development in those markets.”
He added: “I think anytime we’re looking from a development standpoint, that’s one of the top brands we’re going to look at, and if that flag is available, there’s a good chance that would be the one we would choose.”
Nielsen said that going forward, the brand will continue to grow and change. Declining to discuss specifics, she said the brand is working on a new Courtyard prototype that will launch in 2016.
“Our ultimate goal is to have a brand that continues to lead,” she said.
Looking back, Novak said there is at least one thing he wishes had been done differently as it relates to the Courtyard build-out.
“Instead of doing two stories, I wish we’d done more mid-rise buildings,” he said. “It would have been a better utilization of the land. The early ‘80s was a different time; a lot of land was available.”