Benchmark Hospitality International, a company long associated with the conference center market, is venturing into new territory with the launch of a new brand called the Personal Luxury Collection.
At the same time, the company is strengthening its West Coast presence with the acquisition of Seattle-based MTM Luxury Lodging, a hotel management company with five properties that, along with eight hotels already in the Benchmark portfolio, comprise the new brand.
The former MTM Luxury Lodging properties include Bardessono Hotel & Spa, which is located in the Napa Valley town of Yountville, Calif., and one of just two hotels in the world to earn LEED Platinum certification. The other four hotels, all in or near Seattle, are Hotel 1000, Sorrento Hotel, Willows Lodge and Bellevue Park Hotel (under construction and scheduled to open in 2013).
The eight Benchmark properties moving into the Personal Luxury Collection are Costa d’Este Beach Resort in Vero Beach. Fla.; Hotel 718 (opening in Brooklyn, N.Y., in November); Hotel Granduca in Houston; Marenas Beach Resort, Sunny Isles Beach, Fla.; Sorrel River Ranch, Moab, Utah; The Villas and Cottages at Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu, Hawaii; and the Villas of Grand Cypress in Orlando.
While many of the hotels in the new brand are not conference center properties and some are boutique in size, Alex Cabanas, chief development and strategy officer for Benchmark, told Meetings Focus West that the brand is targeting the group market, particularly executive meetings.
“Benchmark has a long history of serving small, high-end meetings, and this will extend into new markets,” he said. “We have 200,000 meeting planners in our database and MTM has another 30,000 or 40,000, so now these customers have some new locations to choose from. The response has already been tremendous.”
Acknowledging that the world “luxury” has been problematic for the corporate meetings industry in recent times, Cabanas said the new brand is emphasizing “individual service, not ostentation.”
“It’s about training our people to understand the needs of individual guests and to treat them how they want to be treated,” he said. “It’s a new definition of luxury.”
In acquiring MTM, Cabanas said the fact that it is West Coast-based was part of the attraction, along with the fact that the hotels represent “a collection of unique assets that are very engaged in the local communities. Our approach has been very similar, so it’s a good fit.”
Expanding the Personal Luxury Collection through management opportunities in other locations is a high priority, according to Cabanas.
“We’d like to be in all the top 25 markets in the U.S., and we’ll also be looking at destinations globally,” he said.
In the short term, Cabanas said Benchmark is pleased to have acquired properties in the Western U.S.
“We were relatively weak there, so this fills in some dots for us,” he said.
Is the new brand an indicator that Benchmark is moving away from its focus on the conference center market?
“Absolutely not—this is by no means a departure from our commitment to the conference center space,” Cabanas said. “We see this as an opportunity to be recognized by owners and developers for something other than conference centers, but we’re not giving up our leadership position there.”
