A Design Flip-Flop
The first hotel built ground-up with every detail monitored by Cohlan’s team was the Margaritaville Beach Resort on Hollywood Beach in Florida. Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group was the business partner.
“It was intimidating because we were translating an emotion into a lodging facility,” Cohlan said. “Every detail mattered.”
They hired Pat McBride’s design firm, which, among other things, helped come up with the idea of having a statue of an 11-foot-high pair of flip-flops as one of the hotel’s visual elements. The developer cut the flip-flops from the plan for budget reasons, saying it wasn’t functionally needed.
“No, we have to have it,” we told him. “We will own it ourselves — which we still do.”
The plan was to install the flip-flops in a corner. But they liked it when they tested moving it to the center of the lobby. Now they put giant flip-flops in every lobby.
“I knew we were onto something when I was sitting in the lobby and I saw a family take a picture of themselves in front of the flip-flops,” Cohlan said. This happened ahead of the Instagram era of hotels creating spaces that are visually appealing for photographing.
Other typical hotel design details include bathroom faucets shaped like whale tails. Lobbies include a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty modified so that she is holding a margarita glass. Properties also often have a replica of Buffett’s seaplane.
Cohlan’s team has applied similar scrutiny for detail to all aspects of hotel projects. The team makes sure that, for instance, developers have properly painted walls the correct bright colors without scrimping on the number of coats.
One of the Pioneers of the Lifestyle Hotel
It’s become trendy to say that hospitality companies need to deliver experiences because that’s what millennials and Gen-Z travelers crave.
Food and beverage are often a critical part of the formula. At the property in Hollywood, Florida, food-and-beverage sales account for about half the revenue. To be sure, that resort is a bit of an extreme case because of its location on the beach’s “broadwalk.”
“It’s a reflection of the strength of our branded offerings that lenders will give full credit to food and beverage cash flow at our properties, unlike what they would do with most any other hotel property,” Cohlan said.
Contrary to many people’s expectations, the hotel doesn’t endlessly blare Jimmy Buffett songs everywhere you go. Rather, the music is typically left for certain spots, such as the bar.
Most of the brand’s hotel guests probably haven’t attended Buffett’s concerts and aren’t Parrot Heads, Cohlan said. But it turns out a large number of people are interested in a particular vision of paradise.
“In this industry, words like experience and lifestyle have been, you know — to say this politely — overused,” Cohlan said. “I feel we’re the original experience and lifestyle brand.”
Sean O'Neill and Andrea Doyle, Skift