1675-6 Sagamore 06-461(2-E 1410
PRT
3 of 11, 5 Terms
mhcur A SOUTH BEACH VISION: BOUTIQUE AND CHIC 12/16/2002
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 2002, The Miami Herald
DATE: Monday, December 16, 2002 EDITION: Final
SECTION: Business Monday PAGE: 7G LENGTH: 116 lines
ILLUSTRATION: photo: Jason Pomeranc (a)
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: BY CARA BUCKLEY, cbuckley@herald.com
MEMO: Checking In: Travel and entertainment
A SOUTH BEACH VISION: BOUTIQUE AND CHIC
Jason Pomeranc was 6 years old when New York's Studio 54 nightclub opened.
He was 13 when the club's masterminds, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, opened
their first boutique hotel.
Today, Pomeranc, 31 and a frontman for the new team managing the arty
Sagamore hotel, is stepping up to challenge Schrager's reign as the prince of
South Beach boutique cool.
—My crowd is not here yet, " he says. —They're in St. Barth's, Aspen.
They decided to stop coming [to Miami] a couple of years ago. We're seeking
them out. "
Pomeranc is a relative newbie to the boutique-hotel world, but his run
already smacks of success.
Two Februarys ago, he and his team, Thompson Hotels - which includes his
father and two older brothers - opened the stylish, 100-room 60 Thompson hotel
in Manhattan's Soho.
The hotel's look, billed as ' -warm modernism, " and pedigreed restaurant,
run by Jean Marc Houmard of the preen-friendly eateries Indochine and Bond
St. , quickly developed a chic following.
A year later, when Pomeranc was checking out the Winter Music Conference in
Miami Beach, he stayed at the Sagamore, whose museum-quality modern art draws
an in-the-know crowd that has affectionately rficknamed it —the Shagamore. "
Marty Taplin, the hotel's owner, always believed the place could do better.
Dozens of suitors, from major hotel chains to independent boutique owners, had
offered their management skills. But Pomeranc made the best impression.
He was young, fresh and connected. Sixty Thompson boasted good service,
something Taplin feels most boutiques lack. Plus, the hospitality biz was in
the kid's blood; his father, Jack, had opened a dozen or so airport hotels.
A deal was struck. Thompson Hotels bought into the Sagamore - though Taplin
and his wife, Cricket, are still majority owners - and took over its
management this month.
' The Taplins have provided an ideal template; it's in the vein of a
luxurious European resort, " Pomeranc says. "All it needs now is to be
brought up to date. "
Among the changes afoot: transforming the library into a low-key nighttime
lounge; landscaping embellishments, maybe a lap pool; a restaurant, likely run
by a known restaurateur; and design and lighting touches that temper the
hotel's Spartan feel.
The vibe Pomeranc is going for is casual, knowing, arty, cool, an image he
and his associates work to cultivate. He does business in jeans and an
open-necked shirt. His publicist read Joan Didion's Miami to familiarize
herself with the team's new neighborhood. Last week, during a photo shoot, his
assistant wandered the hotel barefoot, artfully unshaven, a lit cigarette
dangling from his lips.
"The feel should be organic, " Pomeranc says. "The guest shouldn't feel
like they're walking into a preprogrammed environment. "
Speaking of guests, Pomeranc has drummed up a wish list: creative,
intelligent, artistic sophisticates equally at home in London, Prague, New
York, Berlin, with enough pocket change to fork out $400 to $900 for a hotel
room.
He plans to tap the Taplins' art connections, along with his own. To foster
a .following for 60 Thompson, he sent out zippered, hooded sweat shirts to 500
favorite clients, among them shock artist Damien Hirst, actors Jake Gyllenhaal
and Russell Crowe, and Wes Anderson, who directed the films Bottle Rocket and
Rushmore.
These hipsters, he says, rarely alight on Miami Beach now, but he believes
he has the means to draw them in.
"The people who stay at 60 Thompson are tribal in that sense, " he says.
"They're part of the new American Bohemia. "
Sagamore's 'hood, Collins Avenue near 17th Street, has become quite the New
York boys club. Along with Schrager's Delano and the Shore Club, which
Schrager now manages, Andre Balazs, who owns Soho's trendy Mercer hotel, just
bought the Raleigh up the block.
Pomeranc says he is unfazed by the competition. The more hip hotels that
Miami Beach has, he says, the more that Miami Beach will become a must-go-to
destination along the lines of Capri or St. Tropez.
The expansion to the Sagamore also broadened the Pomerancs' vision.
Thompson Hotels is about to open a small hotel in New York's Columbus Circle,
by the entrance to Central Park, and is looking to partner again with Taplin
on one in L.A.
•
TAG: 0212170089
5 of 11, 12 Terms
mhcur BOUTIQUE HOTELS UNDERGOING 'EVOLUTION' 04/12/2002
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 2002, The Miami Herald
DATE: Friday, April 12, 2002 EDITION: Final
SECTION: Business PAGE: 1C LENGTH: 110 lines
ILLUSTRATION: color photo: Eric Raffy (a) , Andrea Melotti (a) .
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: By CARA BUCKLEY, cbuckley@herald.com
BOUTIQUE HOTELS UNDERGOING 'EVOLUTION'
On the face of it, Santiago Pozo could be any disgruntled hotel guest with
a laundry list of complaints. The room was too small, the rates too high, and
the service downright rude. "I couldn't hang my clothes, nobody helps you
with your suitcase, they're too cool to help, " Pozo, a Los Angeles-based film
producer, said of his stay at the Delano Hotel in South Beach.
A new batch of South Beach hoteliers are taking note, hoping to tap a
contingent of customers that may be dissatisfied with the chilly service and
cramped quarters that characterize South Beach's most famous - and most
successful - boutique hotels. They're also filling what they see as a niche:
affluent clients who want luxury, and elbow room, along with a boutique
hotel's visual delights.
"When Mrs. Schwartz is paying $400 to $500 a night, Mrs. Schwartz wants a
big closet to hang her clothes in and a big countertop to put her makeup, "
said Marty Taplin, owner of the newly opened Sagamore Hotel, which boasts more
than 300 modern art installations, paintings and sculptures. The hotel's
smallest room is 450 square feet.
At the Clinton Hotel on Washington Avenue, which is currently in the midst
of a $12 million overhaul, architect Eric Raffy takes pains to point out the
rooms' ample counter space. Friendly service, he said, will be stressed.
"Hotels have gone through an evolution, " Raffy said. The hotel aims to open
in July. "We're going to be service-oriented. For guests now, that's very
important. "
Customer service never went out of style, but Ian Schrager's hotels - he
owns the Delano along with eight other boutique hotels in Los Angeles, New
York and London - have been noted for being long on attitude and short on
friendliness.
"I think the Delano is very snooty, and I think it should be, " said Chase
Burritt, a hospitality analyst with Ernst & Young. —It's the property
everybody wants to stay in, and the one all the new competitors are trying to
improve on. "
Schrager's staff denies the Delano's service is selectively meted out,
saying that the Dela-
no's popularity speaks for itself.
"It always insists on the utmost courtesy from its staff, " said Howard
Rubenstein, spokesman for Ian Schrager Hotels. "It is constantly innovating
new programs designed to enhancing its guests' stay. " Not that the Delano has
anything to worry about: it remains one of the most successful properties in
Florida, if not the United States.
The Delano's room revenues have been estimated at $300 per room, compared
to $190 at the nearby Loews, and the industry average of $57.
Compared with other South Beach hotels, experts say the Delano is
weathering the travel industry's woes better than most. This despite the 15.7
percent dip boutiques saw last year in revenues per available room, an
industry measure tracked by Smith Travel Research, and compared with the 6.9
percent dip in the industry as a whole.
"It's about market share, " said Scott Berman, a hospitality analyst with
PricewaterhouseCoopers. " [Schrager is] successful, and the Delano is
capturing its fair share. "
Schrager, who was vacationing and unavailable for an interview, is credited
for making boutique hotels, with their highly stylized furniture and art, an
obsession in the 1990s.
What sets his hotels apart is their combination of fantasy and chic, a
motif that made his previous venture, New York's storied Studio 54 nightclub,
co-run with Steve Rubell, a runaway success. Robert Mapplethorpe photographs
line hallways of his first hotel, Morgans in New York. Fifty-foot white sheer
curtains greet Delano guests. A room at the Sanderson in London features a
silver sleigh bed and a landscape painting on the ceiling.
Even though Schrager rooms were pricey and small - using Delano bathrobes
costs extra, and one guest groused about having to 'stand on the bed to
unpack my suitcase" - customers lined up, and revenues per room for boutique
hotels nearly tripled the industry average in 1999. The concept was copied,
Starwood's W brand comes to mind, and boutiques gained footholds in hipster
climes: South Beach, New York's SoHo, London and L.A.
" [Schrager is] a marketing genius. He knows his clients and how to reach
them, " Berman said.
"He's a master, no question, " Taplin said.
But, Taplin said, the beach has a gap in supply for luxury hotels that make
customer service and space priorities, a paucity that has helped fill rooms at
Brickell Key's Mandarin Oriental.
"When my single friends came to beach, I put them up at the Delano, "
Taplin said. "But when some business associates from out of town came in with
their wives and families, they needed more luxury space, and accommodations
and service they're used to when they go to Beverly Hills and Paris. "
Other Beach hotels, like the Tides on Ocean Drive, tailored themselves to
high-end clients seeking spacious rooms and good service from the outset.
Before reopening the property in 1997, owner Chris Blackwell knocked down the
Tides' walls to expand rooms and trained staff to excel in the hospitality
industry's main staple: hospitality.
"We may ultimately profit less from having 45 rooms instead of 115, but
we're focused on the guest experience, comfort and service, " said Brad
Packer, spokesman for Island Outpost hotels, which include the Tides and ten
other hotels in Miami Beach and the Caribbean. —Chris wanted it to feel like
staying in the home of a good friend. "
While hotels like the Shore Club and the proposed Ritz-Carlton will vie for
the same chunk of the luxury pie, the Delano is still a hot ticket.
" [The Delano] was first and has first mover advantage. It sets the
standard, " Burritt said.
But Taplin says he already has evidence that the Sagamore is nipping at the
Delano's heels: Rapper/producer P. Diddy stays there.
"I told his group I was a little nervous that maybe I did it too
upscale, " recalled Taplin, whose hotel could easily pass for a museum of
modern art. "They said, 'Man, this hotel is in a zone of its own. ' "
CAPTION: CHUCK FADELY/HERALD STAFF GAME PLAN: Architect Eric Raffy is
overseeing the Clinton Hotel's renovation. "We're going to be
service-oriented. For guests now, that's important. "
CHARLES TRAINOR JR./HERALD STAFF WORKS OF ART: Andrea Melotti, managing
director of the Sagamore Hotel in Miami Beach, stands in the hotel's lobby. In
the background are just two of the property's more than 300 pieces of art.
KEYWORDS:
TAG: 0204130115
10 of 11, 9 Terms
Transfer complete. Press [RETURN] to return to' Menu:
Type first letter of feature OR type help for list of commands
FIND MOD PRT S-DB DB OPT SS WRD QUIT
❑FIND
Enter search statement (mhcur)
❑sagamore
DOC DATE FREQ LINES DB HEADLINE
1 02/25/2005 1 87 mhcur BIG ON FOOD? GET EVEN BIGGER THIS WEEKEND
2 02/18/2005 1 83 mhcur IT WAS BEST OF THE TIMES FOR THE DISTRICT
3 01/21/2005 5 73 mhcur LIFTS AT PRIVE AND SPIES AT SAGAMORE
4 01/09/2005 1 147 mhcur MONSTERS' CALL
5 12/01/2004 1 458 mhcur ART BASEL SCHEDULE
6 11/27/2004 1 17 mhcur MOBILE ART ALLOWS YOU TO VENT
7 11/22/2004 1 101 mhcur AT HAL HARBOUR: ALL THAT GLITTERS COULD BE B
8 10/31/2004 1 130 mhcur GLAMOUR, GLITTER OF SOUTH BEACH RESTYLED BY
9 10/31/2004 1 128 mhcur GLAMOUR, GLITZ MINGLE WITH CORPORATE TOUCH
10 09/17/2004 1 89 mhcur REALITY IS, YOU COULD BE NEXT BIG THING
11 09/13/2004 2 137 mhcur REAL ESTATE
12 09/06/2004 2 78 mhcur REAL ESTATE