More Than A Place to Grab A Quick Drink

Marriott Hotels Re-Imagine Lobby Bars as Destinations

In its heyday, Studio 54 in New York was the hottest nightclub in the world. Guests danced on a floor decorated with the man in the moon with a spoon. On the balconies they did more than just drink. Celebrities controlled dark corners. One night, a devout Mormon showed up. His name was J. W. Marriott Jr.

Dropping in on new clubs and hotels is one of Marriott's favorite chores in running the world's largest hotel company. He swore off alcohol as a young man and he dislikes noisy places, but if a visit to Studio 54 or any other bar will give him a little more insight into what customers want, save him a table. People who work for him say it is emblematic of his commitment to keep Bethesda-based Marriott International Inc. competitive.

That's precisely what he is doing now, with his company beginning a dramatic makeover of its bars in response to demands on hotel companies to find quick new ways to increase value and generate more revenue. The pressures are driven by intense competition for guests because of a strong return to business travel and by private equity firms, particularly the Blackstone Group, which have swarmed to the hotel business, buying properties and hoping to flip them for big returns.

"This is certainly the most competitive this business has ever been," Marriott said, sitting in the lounge of his company's Ritz-Carlton on M Street. "We are seeing some really big money come in."

Sitting in a lounge and talking about bars would seem to raise some tensions for Marriott, whose religious beliefs call for him to steer clear of drinking. In fact, he resisted having the conversation at first, but he was ultimately gracious with his time. "I just do the best I can to live by the rules of my faith," he said. "But it doesn't matter to me that we are sitting here at a bar where they are selling liquor because 90 percent of the people that come in here want a drink."

He has juggled priorities -- be faithful to his religion, but serve his customers -- on trips to places such as Studio 54. Now Marriott International executives are drawing on what their 74-year-old chief executive has learned in a lifetime of checking out the next big thing, only to later watch it fizzle out. While some of Marriott's competitors have gone for see-and-be-seen derivatives of Studio 54 -- a new W Hotel in Dallas will have a version of Ghost Bar, a hot spot in Las Vegas -- Marriott International is headed somewhere else entirely.

It is transforming the bar into a constantly evolving part of the lobby, where guests can eat an omelet in the morning, conduct a meeting in the afternoon and have a martini at night -- all in the same classy place -- thanks to sliding walls, disappearing backs of bars, and subtle lighting and music changes.

The firm's executives have dubbed it "A.M. comfort, P.M. cool." The idea is to make the lobby -- a place where guests weren't spending money -- a destination with plenty of opportunities throughout the day for guests to employ their expense accounts.

"You're going to turn a loss into a gain," said John L. Williams, president of DiamondRock Hospitality Co., which owns several Marriott hotels and will include the new bar functions in its properties. "You are making a unit of the hotel more functional, more efficient, and more responsive to the customer needs of today," Williams said.

The bar updates are in many ways a natural extension of other changes that big hotel companies have made -- starting in the guest rooms with comfy new beds and moving into the restaurants with fancy chefs and organic food.

"They did the hotel guest room and they did the destination restaurants and now the focus is on the bar," said Stacey Shoemaker Rauen, the managing editor of Hospitality Design magazine, a trade publication. "Hotels have the full attentions of their guests, so why not make better use of the bar and lobbies?"

Marriott International generally avoids aiming for hip, splashy changes. The company's internal culture still hews faithfully to the firm's founding six decades ago as a folksy root-beer stand. The closest Mr. Marriott, as he is known around headquarters, has come to integrating hip into his own life was the recent acquisition of an iPod for his office -- and that was a gift from his children.