一直都在的小巧精致
Ivar Yuste
Co-founder and Managing Partner of PHG Hotels & Resorts
依巴尔·尤斯特
PHG酒店顾问公司创始人及任事股东
“我们已经把经营酒店的本质遗忘了吗？”在出售专业见解之余，作为资深酒店人的依巴尔·尤斯特也不时对酒店行业发出这样的拷问。在他看来，今天的酒店投资环境下，对规模和数目指标的考量盖过了质量。于是，尤斯特质疑，现在的酒店业，“四两拨千斤”不再受欣赏了吗？提供比顾客预期还要好的服务——酒店精神沦为次要了吗？
当今酒店投资的一派景象。一方面，投资者竞相在大手笔交易的聒噪中宣告自己下一笔收购的宏伟；另一方面，一些规模较小的酒店在生意、质量、顾客满意度上虽然已经对大牌竞争对手实现了“四两拨千斤”，却被早早排除在考虑之外。它们不少仅仅是输在客房数量、酒店规模上，或如本文作者尤斯特打的一个比方，它们和“名牌酒店那种点心模具般的品牌指导方针”没有完全接轨，足以令商机一次又一次地被忽视。现状就是这样，对数目、规模执着不放是现在给酒店估值时的主流做法，小巧精致的酒店，也只有等到投资者把整个目光都投向竞争对手们忽略的地带，才会出现在投资者的雷达上。而这意外发现会叫投资者感叹，美一直都在，只是之前不懂欣赏。
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
Sometimes the noise of large-volume operations and the race to announce the next largest transaction can become a distraction from the fundamental financial objectives that our clients and partners have.Only when we take the deliberate decision to focus on those opportunities that 90% of our competitors are not pursuing, we start discovering and seeing things that we were not able to appreciate before. They were there. We just were not paying attention.
Every day, fantastic hotel managers achieve superior returns in the market in properties that are, day in and day out, being ignored by the mass volume approach that most investors are taking to hotel asset analysis. One can also discover excellent project opportunities, in locations where there is no hotel track record, or transactions that at first glance seem impossible to execute.
If it doesn’t fit the cookie-cutter guidelines of a large hotel brand (with heavy overheads that need to be allocated to the deal), a business opportunity could be neglected over and over again. If the deal is too small in room count or in equity size, it is usually discarded right away. Never mind that the property is outperforming a better-located competitive set.
Likewise, if there is no track record in the destination, even if the site is in the very center of the city, maybe it is because that location was never meant to have a hotel in the first place. (Who can deny the logic of this overwhelming argument?)
If the right price for the asset is below the debt value that the bank is willing to accept, the transaction is not viable and was never meant to happen. (This is when the buyer discovers he can buy a hotel and actually get paid in the process.)
Aren’t we forgetting what hospitality is about? Superior service, true luxury, exquisite attention to detail, exceeding customer expectations, outperforming larger properties. All these concepts seem completely secondary most of the time. The same seems to happen when we prefer not to take calculated risks or to innovate. Is being second to market interesting at all?
Great to see that, from time to time, a different breed of investors and operators is also looking where the majority of the market is not.
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