John Greenleaf is chief executive of Doubletree by Hilton which has more than 325 hotels including seven in London. He talks to Tom Otley about the brand's latest plans and developments
The roll-out of new Doubletree Hotels has been extremely quick - that’s because it is such an effective conversion brand. Do you get feedback from travellers that the hotels are inconsistent in quality because they are conversions?
I can’t recall someone making a complaint that because it’s a conversion it’s not acceptable. We typically get high ratings on the service we provide, and the high level of consistent service is the glue that holds the brand together, because we can’t rely on the physical aspect of the brand for consistency, and that’s one of the attributes of our brand and allows us to grow so quickly.
But travellers might think that it’s just a rebadging of an existing property
That’s a difficult perception for us to overcome. I recognise that with other brands, it’s just a new brand and the napkins in the restaurant but that’s not the case with us. Take our Sheffield property, for instance: the rooms were redone, there’s a new upscale restaurant in the lobby which sets the flavour of the hotel in a different way, and as a result the hotel is performing very well. For us, conversion is renovation and investment.
So you would accept any hotel if they promised to spend money?
No. We don’t accept every hotel into the Doubletree family and as an example of that I've said no to three hotels who wanted to join just last week. We don’t take anything that comes our way but we are having a lot of properties being offered and we can be particular in what we require.
There is variety, though, we have some hotels that are fascinating with only 30 rooms. But, in general, we have only a handful with fewer than 100 rooms and they are exceptional - perhaps because they have been successful as resort hotels and can become more so under the Doubletree brand. Typically it would be 150-plus rooms, and if they have fewer, they would add rooms as they are renovated and brought into the programme.
Are there any Doubletrees in Europe that are new builds?
Yes, the new Doubletree in Lincoln is a new build, which is right on the water, on the wharf. It has a wonderful restaurant on the top floor with views of the cathedral, 115 rooms, and the reception for that hotel has been outstanding.
So why do owners of these properties sign with you rather than with another hotel brand?
Number one: we’re easy to work with. Number two: the hotels we have as part of the brand are very high quality and have high service delivery, and number three: they perform - the ramp up is significantly better than other competitor brands they have experienced. They see a very positive outcome which is why they come back to do a second, third or 10th hotel.
What’s Doubletree’s position on wifi and whether it should be free?
More than 60 per cent of our guests get wifi free through negotiated rates with our major clients and HHonors members - some 40 per cent of our rooms in Doubletree are HHonors members -so it’s a minority being affected by paying for wifi but it's a very vocal minority.
The availability of free wifi is something we are looking at, and that includes considering tier pricing where there would be a certain level that is free and then pricing it for a greater bandwidth, but we haven’t landed on a price yet. We also have to bear in mind that our owners have to look at that revenue stream. We have arrangements with two or three different suppliers for our wifi in the hotels, so we count on delivery of that service to be consistent, and the vendors, AT&T in the US and BT in the UK allow us to increase the bandwidth when necessary.
We’re deep into our analysis and I’m confident that before too long we will be able to offer something to our owners.
What’s your expansion like for this year?
We have around 325 properties, with around 70 which are managed. The predominance of our growth in Europe is franchised. For the future, we have 121 signed deals in our pipeline, and we will open about 60 of those this year, and at the end of the year I will imagine the pipeline will be similar. We opened 49 Doubletrees last year.
How to you maintain standards when you’re opening hotels so quickly?
We monitor all of the hotels very carefully. All the hotels are monitored and graded in the same way. We have constant views of guest scores on a number of measures, and there are quality assurance visits twice a year to make sure the standards are consistent, and there are programmes to help and sanctions for those that consistently fail.
How do you feel about social media review sites like Trip Advisor?
We love the public feedback - we value it and we respond to it. We take very seriously the rankings we get, because we are focussed on our guest scoring system that I just mentioned but travellers don’t read that, they read sites like Trip Advisor. Every hotel has a social media champion. It’s not a dedicated person, but they are identified and trained. So we have a very structured way to respond. In China, we have the largest number of followers on their equivalent of Facebook, so we are listening well, which is one of the characteristics of the brand.
Talking of China, presumably they are new build hotels rather than conversions
Between now and 2017 the number of deals in China is greater than anywhere else in the world and they are all new builds. Maybe they aren’t suitable metropolitan areas for a Hilton but are perfect for our brand.
Are they the same kind of hotels as the Doubletrees in the UK?
There are local adaptations, and where we are doing predominantly new builds we can make those adjustments. The social business in India, for instance requires more square metres for banqueting space. In China, the hotels are developed at a higher tier, it’s that way for Hilton as well and other hotel companies - our brands are not unique in this way. Typically in China we will have three restaurants, whereas here in Europe they typically have one.
doubletree.hilton.com