Today at the ALIS Conference in Los Angeles, Marriott & Ian Schrager will officially announce the name of their new hotel brand, and unlike the “scoop” reported by the New York Post – it is to be called “Edition Hotels”, not “Schrager Hotels”. According to the NY Post, the hotel company was supposed to be called Schrager Hotels, but according to an interview with Ian Schrager back toward the end of 2007 he claimed that it would not have his name on it – but it would defiantly have his mark.

I haven’t been able to find a working website yet, www.EditionHotels.com does not lead to anything, (as of 9:30AM 1/29/08) but I checked the WHOIS record for EditionHotels.com and it was purchased by the Ian Schrager Company on November 1st, 2008.

According to two articles today, one in the Los Angeles Times and the other in the Washington Post, the first Editions are going to be in Paris and South Beach (a renovation/re branding of the South Beach Marriott)- the Paris property being the first to open in 2010.

Choosing the name “Edition” is actually genius – each hotel will be called “Town” Edition, for example, Los Angeles Edition, New York Edition, so on and so forth, currently they are expecting to open locations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Scottsdale, Costa Rica and Madrid. No word yet on the obligatory New York city location, but with Schrager supposedly working on a hotel in the Chelsea section, it is a possibility that one may open there – although I would expect New York’s first Edition to be in a more high-profile area. Supposedly they are working on another 20 deals

There are no renderings or logo or any details yet on what what the hotel experience will look like – hopefully they will launch a website today which will provide some information on that – but it is expected that the hotels will be easily recognizable as Ian Schrager products. Until more details are provided its difficult to tell if it will blow away W Hotels, or just finally be a serious competitor to the brand – it’s only taken Marriott 10 years!

Well, so far so good with this Schrager/Marriott partnership – I seriously had doubts that their partnership would go smoothly, but apparently they have so far proved everyone wrong. As I’ve stated before, I’m not a huge fan of Marriott – not because I don’t respect them, I do – they have a great business and are very well known but, their hotel product doesn’t excite me..

The potential of Edition Hotels does.

andrew@alconic-inc.com

Popularity: 9% [?]