Latest news with #CityExpress
New York Post
7 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
Marriott targets budget travelers with new mid-scale extended-stay option
Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano shared some insight on budget travelers during a Monday appearance on 'The Claman Countdown.' He told host Liz Claman that Marriott International's lower-income consumers 'continue to prioritize travel, but they want to do it at a more thrifty price point,' citing spending data the company has through its credit card relationships. That has driven Marriott International to 'push so strongly over the last two years into the mid-scale segment, which is a segment that historically we did not operate in,' according to Capuano. He said it started with the company's acquisition of City Express. The company acquired the City Express brand portfolio from Hoteles City Express, S.A.B. de C.V. in 2022 for $100 million. 'We also organically developed an extended-stay mid-scale product called StudioRes,' he noted to Claman. Marriott's first StudioRes opened on Monday in Fort Myers, Florida. The extended-stay hotel 'offers studio-style rooms complete with one or two beds, a lounging area, and a kitchen with a stovetop microwave, and full-sized refrigerator,' according to a press release. Asked about what makes it different from Marriott's other brands, Capuano told Claman it 'starts with the price point.' Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano revealed that the hotel brand has been pushing strongly into the 'mid-scale segment' of the industry for budget travelers. Helayne Seidman 'It starts with much more modest services,' he added. 'These are folks that could be on a temporary assignment, maybe a construction project or a consulting assignment. They could be digital nomads.' He said 'that product at that price point is really resonating with more cost-conscious consumers.' Capuano also touted the 'breadth' of Marriott's portfolio, saying the company can 'offer the right accommodation for every trip purpose, which often varies irrespective of income.' Marriott's brands include the Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Sheraton, Courtyard, Westin, Moxy and others. The company generated $6.26 billion in revenue during the first quarter. Its net income, meanwhile, came in at $665 million.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Marriott sees a ‘real opportunity' with City Express midscale brand
This story was originally published on Hotel Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Hotel Dive newsletter. In March, Marriott International opened the first U.S. City Express hotel, several months after it announced it would bring the midscale brand stateside. A conversion-friendly offering, City Express is a desirable option for franchisees looking to expand during a tight new construction environment, Marriott Global Development Officer for the U.S. and Canada Noah Silverman told Hotel Dive. Additionally, the brand aims to meet growing owner demand for transient midscale products — a category Marriott had not previously played in domestically. Born in the Caribbean and Latin America region, City Express wasn't always destined for the U.S. However, as Marriott's midscale strategy evolved, so did plans for the brand's expansion. Now, as the flag charts its U.S. course of growth — with a robust domestic pipeline — Hotel Dive sat down with Silverman to discuss Marriott's 'real opportunity' to capture both traveler and owner attention with City Express, and how loyalty plays into it. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. SILVERMAN: Our strategy, more broadly, continues to be to offer customers — regardless of their trip purpose or destination — a product that suits them. Our desire to extend our brand offerings into the midscale tier was driven by the white space that we saw in that tier — a growing customer segment and a real opportunity for us. As is the case for most of our brand acquisitions or new brand launches, we anticipate that these are going to be global brands. In the case of City Express, explicitly, our intention from the outset was focused on the Caribbean and Latin America. It was a brand that was exclusively distributed across that region, with a heavy presence in Mexico. We saw it as an opportunity to not only extend our presence in that market, but give us a foothold with a new, affordable midscale brand that was going to help fuel future growth in CALA, specifically. But, we always anticipate that these brands may grow beyond their home markets. Although expanding to the U.S. wasn't part of the original strategy for City Express, certainly it was something in the back of our minds that we thought might be possible. And our midscale strategy, more broadly, was blooming. So, because of its presence in CALA and because we were focused on growing into the affordable midscale space in North America, City Express became a very logical choice for us to do that with. Last year, we started focusing on launching a more conversion-friendly midscale brand in the U.S. and Canada. We chose City Express by Marriott as the brand to do that with. The concept of Project Mid-T is exactly the same concept that we now have with City Express. There are sometimes timing considerations associated with when we want to go to market with our plans to enter into a particular brand space, tier or product type that may be on a slightly different timetable from our choice of brand name. There could be any number of reasons that drive those timing differences, but we knew at the Mid-T launch exactly what we wanted this product to be. Evolving consumer trends in the world of midscale are different whether we're talking about City Express or Marriott's extended stay StudioRes brand. We saw a growing segment of travelers in the midscale extended stay space that was proving to be a valuable and increasingly attractive segment of consumers who we didn't have a product geared toward, and that was part of the motivation of our launch of StudioRes, and we feel good about the long-term trends and dynamics as they relate to the extended stay traveler segment. It's a little different with respect to City Express. It's primarily a conversion-focused brand in the U.S. and Canada, and we see it as an opportunity to enter into a space that has largely been undifferentiated. Our goal is to have the right hotel and right location for the right customer. With City Express, we saw an opportunity to not just grow into the midscale space and offer an opportunity for our community of franchisees to grow with us — which we knew they were very interested in — but also to have a product that could be the best in its class in the midscale tier. We are in an environment in which new construction continues to have challenges. So, offering a broader variety of conversion-friendly brands to our owners is attractive, not just for us as a company that wants and needs to grow, but also for owners of hotels that see an opportunity to take an existing hotel and reaffiliate it with a stronger brand platform and a more desirable customer base. We have the benefit of being a very large company, and not just in terms of the number of hotels that we have and the number of locations that we're in but also in an incredible customer base, loyalty program, set of sales engines, website and app that help drive bookings. So for an owner, the opportunity to affiliate with a platform as strong as Marriott, in the midscale tier where we did not previously play and with a conversion-friendly product, is seen as very attractive. Our Bonvoy program has been an extraordinary selling point for us to owners and franchisees for many years and a real competitive advantage for us. The strength of that program and the depth of the customer base is a big part of what fuels owners' success. As a Marriott owner, knowing the day you open your doors that somewhere between 60% and 70% of your customers are going to immediately come from the Bonvoy platform is a really powerful tool. It's a powerful tool in generating business at the hotels and returns for the owners of those hotels, and that's one of the reasons that we continue to invest a lot of time and energy into ensuring the attractiveness of that loyalty program just continues to get better and better. On a global basis, we have 154 open City Express by Marriott hotels, all but two of which are in CALA. We now have two that are open in the U.S. — one in Duluth, [Georgia], and we just opened our second outside of New Orleans. The pipeline globally is 76 hotels, including 51 in the U.S. We're expecting some openings in 2025 in markets like Manhattan Beach and Carlsbad, California, as well as at Orange County Airport in Santa Ana, California. Other openings are slated for Orlando, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Denver International Airport. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
