Ian Schrager Hotel Designer – Not Hotelier

Andrew Calvo | November 20, 2007 | 0 Comments

The recent interview by Portfolio Magazine’s Lloyd Grove of Ian Schrager has been getting a lot of press lately – and rightly so – you do not find too many interviews which ask deep questions and actually teach you something rather than wondering, why did i waste my time reading this? This interview further proves that Portfolio magazine is going to be a great great publication, and is not just fluff like Business 2.0 is. (Just for the record – I’m not renewing my Business Week subscription when it expires; ever since their redesign in October it’s just too boring for me)

Anyway, within the article were a good deal of interesting tidbits which I thought explained a lot about the mind of Ian Schrager – his goals for building hotels/residences, growing his company, and of course – the question on everyones mind – whats going on with his joint venture with Marriott?

Here are a few of the good points-

Schrager is not all about high end, luxury hotels – he’s planning on building a well designed, yet inexpensively priced hotel in Miami.
That low priced hotel in Miami is probably the starting point for a new hotel brand by the Ian Schrager Company which will be well designed, yet have a low price point.
He is clearly more passionate about the design aspects rather than the hotel business itself.
He seems to be more interested in doing residential projects lately rather than hotel projects because “it’s an easy business”.
He seems to be perfectly content by staying small – meaning, not growing to a company the size of Starwood, Hyatt, or Hilton.
The intention of the Marriott joint venture is to be bought out after a certain point of time.
Working with Marriott is going very well – no major culture clash.

One of the initial articles I posted on this blog questioned the joint venture between Schrager and Marriott – the conclusions that i reached:

The relationship would not be smooth.
Marriott STILL would not have a brand as popular or as well known with the “hip crowd” as W currently is.
The joint venture would be more beneficial to Schrager than Marriott.

While it seems as though I was wrong on the first point, the second point remains to be seen, and the third point i think is right on the money. This article actually made me feel bad for Marriott, because its obvious that Schrager has more to gain than Marriott – and he is almost just riding on Marriott’s coattails – being able to take advantage of their smooth operating procedures, developers and deep pockets to further his name, whereas while Marriott will be able to become a bit more “hip” it’s not going to change the Marriott’s overall “feel” or remove it from it’s boring, staid appearance – unless they differentiate it as they do Ritz-Carlton.

You have to respect Ian Schrager – and I definitely do – but more as a hotel designer, rather than a Hotelier; maybe its because I personally would not be happy with a small company – I personally want to be a part of (to tell you the truth – I’d like to start a major hotel company from the ground up) a hotel firm with multiple brands, and worldwide locations. Having just a few locations – even if they are well known – just doesn’t excite me.

This article made one thing very clear to me, Ian Schrager is not in it to be the biggest and the best, he’s in it to create some magnificent buildings – residences, hotels, clubs – primarily via unique design and architectural elements. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s just not the approach I would take.

If you haven’t already – read the article – it gives great insight into Schrager, and makes you appreciate him more.

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