Newest Marriott dominates area

Hotel firm to have 10 properties in central Arkansas

FILE — The downtown Little Rock Marriott
FILE — The downtown Little Rock Marriott

Signs came down and others went up and on May 1 Little Rock’s dominant hotel, the Peabody, became the Marriott.

The Peabody, with its strong regional identity, had been in operation 11 years, having taken the place of the Excelsior, the city’s first modern high-rise hotel.

The ducks, the symbol of all Peabody hotels - starting with the original in Memphis and one in Orlando, Fla. - and seemingly a natural fit for a state with a reputation for being ideal to hunt the wild mallard, are gone.

In comes the Marriott with a $16 million upgrade, the first phase of which has been completed, with more renovations to come.

The Marriott also comes with wide name recognition, and much interest in the city.

Those looking for signs of what this will mean for Little Rock as a convention and tourism center may be heartened by the fact that, already, bookings are up, says Bruce Skidmore, director of sales and marketing for the full-service hotel, a position he held with the Peabody.

Reservations for individual travelers for the balance of 2013 have increased at least 30 percent - and the number is growing daily - over last year, Skidmore said.

And that’s with the Marriott’s vaunted national reservation system up and running for only a month, starting three weeks before the public celebration of the changeover, Skidmore said.

Still, there may be doubters. After all, the Peabody achieved the Forbes Travel Guide four star rating (out of five) in November 2009. The Capital Hotel, which is at 111 W. Markham, across from the Marriott, was awarded a four-star rating by Forbes in February. (The Marriott’s official address is Three Statehouse Plaza.)

With 10 properties, Marriott is a dominant flag in the 133-hotel Little Rock area in terms of numbers - especially in the higher end of the market - according to Smith Travel Research. Six of those Marriott hotels are under different brands at varying price points. With the acquisition of the Peabody, the Marriott soon will have three properties in downtown Little Rock.The Courtyard at 521 President Clinton Ave. in the River Market District has been in operation since 2004. And the Residence Inn at 219 River Market Ave. is under construction and expected to open this summer.

Each brand has its loyal customers, which limits in-house competition, says Michael Terry, a professor at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida in Orlando which, with 3,200 students, is the largest such college in the world.

There are cases of intracompany “encroachment,” which can even lead to a court case, but not often, Terry said.

The Peabody brand followed the Excelsior, which was built by Arkansas developer Doyle Rogers and opened in 1982. Rogers had imploded the Marion and Grady Manning hotels - which drew thousands of onlookers to the banks of the Arkansas River - to make room for the big hotel.

Over the ensuing years, however, the Excelsior had begun to get mixed reviews and the Memphis-based Peabody Hotel Group stepped in and bought the lease to the city-owned property, invested $42 million and reopened it in early 2002.

NO FOUR STARS

There are no hotels under the Marriott brand in the U.S. with a four-star rating, though in the Marriott “family” there are some, and even some five stars, under the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott brands.

Forbes probably won’t evaluate this newest Marriott, Terry said. But Terry, 66, said he doesn’t think the community “[needs] to worry about that.” It’s simply the way Marriott International runs its business, which, the company said in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, includes 3,800 properties under 18 brands and brought in $12 billion in 2012.

“Marriott is so big and has such a good reputation that most of the world is going to be very happy to come and stay in that wonderful hotel,” Terry said. “They’re not only the biggest, they’re the best, certainly, in the United States, and, I would contend, the world.”

Marriott International has a worldwide reservation system and a loyalty points system. “It puts them on the national scene. [The Little Rock hotel puts its name] in front of hundreds of millions of people who are flipping through the Marriott portfolio,” Terry said.

Gretchen Hall, president and chief executive of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the name “Peabody” didn’t have much recognition in, say, Seattle.

Marriott is a different matter, she said.

The Peabody did not have a national sales force or reservation system either, Hall notes. And Marriott’s loyalty system, where members acrue points that may be used for room upgrades and other perks, is a “tremendous asset,” she said.

MAJOR RENOVATION

The biggest chunk of renovations will start early in 2014 and will include guest rooms and public spaces. The lobby lounge will give way to the Marriott concept of the “great room.”

The Peabody “really doesn’t have a functioning lobby,” Skidmore said.

Mallard’s bar has become the Velvet Humidor for those who like to smoke cigars. An additional set of doors has been installed and work is under way on the ventilation to mitigate any escape of smoke from the lounge, he said. The Capriccio Grill has been renamed the Pancetta Regional Kitchen, and the menu is undergoing a change, to be completed June 1, he said.

Televisions, which were 12-year-old tube types, have been replaced with 42-inch flatscreen LCD sets, Skidmore said.

Room rates have dropped about $10 a day, he said. Sunday through Thursday, rates start at $149, and on weekends at $119.

The Marriott has 213 fulltime employees, Skidmore said, adding that he didn’t know how many were employed by the Peabody, nor how many former Peabody employees were hired by Marriott. The hotel will hold a job fair to fill other positions, he said.

In December, the Advertising and Promotion Commission signed an intent agreement to lease the hotel to Fairwood Capital, a Memphis-based investment company.

Fairwood settled on the Marriott brand and the Little Rock Board of Directors approved it. The city owns the land and improvements where the hotel is located. The hotel is connected to the city’s Statehouse Convention Center.

Davidson Hotels and Resorts, which is based in Atlanta but was founded in Memphis, was selected as the management company. Davidson manages 46 hotels, from Boston to Hawaii, said Pat Lupsa, executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Davidson’s roots are with Holiday Inn, for which its founders worked. And it used the Holiday Inn formula of establishing itself in small markets, Lupsa said. Over its four decades, the company has upgraded its portfolio with an emphasis on full-service, mid three-star properties, he said.

Along with the reflagging of the Peabody on May 1, the suite where Doyle Rogers and his wife, Raye, 90, lived for 19 years while it was the Excelsior was renamed for him. He died Feb. 4 at age 94.

Raye Rogers said that she “felt Doyle’s presence” at the renaming ceremony.

Rogers recalled that the bricks from the imploded Marion - with its fabled Gar Hole lounge, a favorite gathering place for legislators - were in much demand.

In fact, she and her husband wound up with 7,000. They had intended to build a swimming pool at their Batesville residence out of them, she said, but the Rogerses were confronted by the presence of shade trees, and there was a standoff on building the pool and dealing with the leaves in the fall, or not building. The trees won. The bricks are still stacked on the couple’s property.

Hotel General Manager Bill Fontes said that the Rogers family plans to provide memorabilia for the suite.

Business, Pages 67 on 05/12/2013

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