says he supports expansion at T.F.
Green Airport.
Crowne Plaza director analyzes market competition, hotel expansion
J. Rudi Heater
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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Position: Director of Hotel Operations for the Crowne Plaza
Hotel and Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Warwick
Background: Born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, Heater has
traveled as far west as Arizona and as far east as Myrtle Beach, S.C., working
in the hospitality industry for 36 years. He moved to Warwick seven and a half
years ago from Baltimore to take over as director of the Crowne Plaza hotel.
Heater was named General Manager of the Year for 2003 by Intercontinental Hotel
Group, the parent company of the Crowne Plaza, the Holiday Inn and other franchises.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in history from Stetson University in
DeLand, Fla.
Age: 56
Residence: Warwick
Q. How did you start your career in the hospitality industry? Do you have a degree in hospitality or tourism?
A. No, I have a degree in history. My first job was in hotel housekeeping, which means I carried a broom, pushed a mop, things like that. And a year and a half later I decided college was the way to go, and I’ve been in this business ever since. I worked full time in a motor hotel in Florida while I was going to college. When I got my degree I was preparing to either go to graduate school or teach, so I fell back into this business that I knew and fell in love with. After being in housekeeping for four months, a job came open as a bell person. I applied for it, got the job. From there I went to front desk clerk. When I got out of college, I had been working third shift as a night auditor; I went to work with the Hyatt Corp. in 1970 in Atlanta. I was hired to be a front desk supervisor, but never actually saw the front desk. The day I got there they put me into the reservations department. I moved from assistant reservations manager to reservations manager to room service manager to catering manager to front office manager to housekeeping manager to room service manager to general manager.
Q. Did you come to the Crowne Plaza and work your way up?
A. I came to the Crowne as a general manager of 12 years in August of 1996 after being approached by an executive recruiter, the principal of the company. We had conversations about where we could take his single property holding. He had one hotel at the time, and we agreed on a 10-year strategic plan, written on the back of an envelope. There was a chemistry, so I left my former company and came here.
Q. What was written on the back of that envelope?
A. First and foremost was to change the name of the hotel, and by that I mean changing the brand of the property. This hotel was a Holiday Inn, but it has never really been a Holiday Inn – which is a mid-market brand. This hotel has always run more upscale. We wanted to stay with the same franchise, which is now Intercontinental Hotel Group, and so the logical brand move was to Crowne Plaza. We accomplished that in 1998. The second major step was to expand meeting and banquet facilities, and we did that Sept. 1, 2001. The third step now is to create a balance between the banquet facilities and too few guest rooms. We are going into the ground within the next 30 to 45 days (as of March 17) with a 103-room expansion, which will make us the largest hotel in Rhode Island, with 369 rooms.
Q. Is there a market for that many more?
A. This is really a strategic shift for us. A full-service hotel – a lodging facility with food, banquet rooms, etc. – cannot compete in rates with a limited-service hotel. Our infrastructure costs are so much larger on a day-to-day basis, so we’ve shifted from competing with all of these new hotels that have opened recently and we are going after a new customer. We have grown our meetings business, known as conventions, from 9 percent when I first arrived in 1996 to 40 percent of our rooms occupied by people attending these conventions now. The goal is to have 60 percent of our rooms occupied by meeting guests.
Q. Do you consider the convention center your competitor?
A. Not so much with the Rhode Island Convention Center, but we go head to head every day with the Providence Biltmore and The Westin, specifically.
Q. What does this hotel have that those two competitors do not?
A. We are close to the airport and, frankly, our meeting space is more upscale, and we are more competitive in guest room rates (ranging from $119 to $199 compared to The Westin $159 to $329). The disadvantage is we are not sitting in the city center, and a lot of companies like to stay in the city because of the leisure time activities. Our No. 1 target is not Providence, though. We are much more interested in going up the (Route) 128 corridor to compete with Boston. We are interested in going to New Jersey, where we have a huge feeder market there, and competing against New York City. You wouldn’t think a hotel in Warwick, Rhode Island, would be in that market, but if we are ever going to grow our meetings occupancy to 60 percent, a doable goal, that is where we have to go fishing.
Q. The airport must be a major selling point for you.
A. We have T.F. Green 1.8 miles from the front door of the hotel, and that is huge. We are so convenient for the drive market too, which many of the corporate meetings are. We have over 700 complimentary parking spaces, and believe it or not, that matters.
Q. Are you supportive of the airport extending its runway?
A. It is my belief that if the airport wants to grow – especially in light of the direct competition with Manchester Airport – we will have to expand the runway system. I realize that isn’t a very popular position to take in Warwick, with the current administration, which we work very well with. It’s a conscious decision we have to make. The polish is off the apple, between the recession, Sept. 11, and other things, enplanements are down. We have to make a decision – is this where we want T.F. Green to be from now until the end of time? If it is, then we are fine with the runways it has. If we want to grow T.F. Green, and every person in the lodging industry, north of Newport, clearly understands that it is a huge economic engine for the hospitality industry, then we need to expand the runway. It will help the hotel, and the entire economy because the more funds from outside come into the state, the better we are. We can no longer live and die by manufacturing in this state, though it is huge in the national economy, the service industry is rapidly catching it.
Q. How has the hospitality industry changed in your years in the business?
A. In over 36 years I’ve been in the industry, the most impactful has happened in the past five years with Internet reservation systems. Last year, 13 percent of all reservations came through the Internet, and it is predicted that number will increase to 24 percent by 2005. That kind of change is huge. It’s great for the traveler, not so hot for the hotels, because it has driven prices down. I also see a lot less focus in the past 20 years on individual, gracious hospitality. Hotels 30 years ago were very focused on the individual traveler. We knew likes and dislikes by person – the famous keep a file on a guest kind of a thing – and we’ve gotten away from that as an industry.
Q. Why has that happened?
A. The industry has gotten a lot bigger. We’ve had three huge explosions in the industry in the past 30 years. As brands consolidate, you get into mega-marketing. Crowne Plaza is its own brand, but it is under the Intercontinental Hotel Group, which has seven hotels under its umbrella. Consolidations will continue to happen. There is a school of thought that eventually there will only be two or three hotel companies operating in the U.S. within the next 30 years, with the exception of a few that choose independence.
Q. What lies ahead for the company?
A. We have begun the process of constructing a Hampton Inn on Division Street in Pawtucket this summer. There is an unfulfilled demand in Pawtucket. The only thing they have there is what people call the Ground Round, and that is the only hotel between Providence and the Massachusetts line, so we saw the opportunity there. We have a contact with Pawtucket to have the foundation down by September. We are also the developer chosen by the Providence Redevelopment Council for parcel 12, downtown Providence – a small triangular lot at the end of Union Station parking lot where all the RISD sculptures are. It is owned by the city, but we are the developer, so within three years we have to negotiate a buyout with the city, and we have to build a hotel.
Q. The area won’t be saturated with hotel spaces?
A. Warwick is, downtown Providence isn’t. Any more hotels coming into Warwick will have a serious detrimental effect on everyone, until there are more room-night generators. Bring in another Amgen and we’ll have the demand for more. We are not a resort destination like Newport. It isn’t an issue of attracting more people here on leisure, for Warwick, the market is driven by corporate travel.
