Eva Ziegler

Ziegler, a petite Austrian with a broad smile and firm handshake, had just presented the brand with a slick video to British travel agents at the annual ABTA jamboree. “W is a contemporary lifestyle brand not a luxury brand,” she asserts.
The brand’s lifestyle appeal is seen in the ‘passion points’ of design, fashion and music. The design is clear in the choice of architects for the various projects – Ricardo Bofill in Barcelona, Rockwell in Puerto Rico or Geomim in Istanbul. The unassuming Michaelangelo L’Acqua has just been appointed Global Music Director with a similar fashion post about to be filled.
This is a hotel brand, but one that has always done things differently, a so-called ‘category buster’ when it opened in New York in 1998. Yes, W Hotels may have followed in the footsteps of the first independent, boutique hoteliers but they were the first global brand to successfully do so. And whilst other hotel groups are playing catch-up in the lifestyle sector (InterContinental with Indigo, Hyatt with Andaz, and Marriott with Edition, for example) W are already into the diffusion game with Aloft Hotels, a select-serve version of W.

The current priority for W is global expansion. “We are moving the brand away from its New York roots (where there are currently six hotels including one recently launched in Hoboken) and taking it to the world,” enthuses Ziegler, of the brand with 35 hotels of which nine are already outside of the US, including the recent openings in Doha and Istanbul. The expansion plans include the opening of eleven hotels in 2009 with an expected fifty hotels by the end of 2011. Ziegler venerates the Barcelona hotel in a staccato series of sound bites as “transformative”, “iconic”, “a global landmark” and significantly as “the first W in Western Europe”. This much-delayed project is the one that kick starts the brand in Europe. Early trading is good according to GM Richard Brekelmans, “We opened on-time, on-budget and full – we can’t ask for more than that. Whilst it is early days for us, we have started strongly on both occupancy and rate and the bookings in the system are in line with expectations for the last quarter of 2009, whilst interest for 2010 is exceptional.”

If Barcelona is the key that unlocks Europe, other significant openings will help build momentum. W London Leicester Square, designed by Concrete, is set to open in Autumn 2010, W Paris-Opera by Rockwell Group in 2011, followed by St Petersburg, Milan, Manchester, Athens, Amman and Marrakech. This just in Starwood’s EMEA division alone.
“We are targeting globally aspiring cities, just like the brand’s birthplace of New York,” explains Ziegler. “Exclusivity will be maintained and multi hotels in the same city will only occur when we can approach different sub-markets within that destination just as we have successfully done in New York on a purely geographical basis.”
Ziegler sees her role as brand leader to encompass a 360˚ view of global development, charting a course that envisions its strategic future. Experience with global brands such as Toyota, Coca-Cola and Saatchi & Saatchi give Ziegler the armoury to achieve this. That she is also global brand leader for the Le Méridien brand of Starwood is, in her mind, far from a dilution of ideas. “The two brands have very different mind sets but there is a great deal of cross-pollination that takes place. All my team members have dual roles looking after both brands, and the opportunity to see both brands together is very powerful.”
A key role is the management of brand standards. How have these been adapted from a US-centric core to meet the different audiences the brand is now encountering? “From the hardware point of view certain aspects are not changed. The bar will always be visible from the lobby. Every hotel needs to be transformed at night via the programming of lighting and music. Product-wise we will keep the various names (Sweat for the gym, Wet for the pool, Wired for the business lounge) but change the way they are interpreted locally,” explains Ziegler.

“We are lucky in that our owners are usually fans of the brand –they are our audience in the first place so we can get them to work with us. We will find consensus with the owner in appointing the design agency. After that we generally leave it to the sensibilities of the agency to come up with the creative elements of the project.”
At this point, the issue of authenticity arises. “We interpret authenticity in an abstract and playful way, developing a design narrative that is relevant to the immediate location. In our Fort Lauderdale property Clodagh have brought elements of the fauna and flora of Florida into the hotel with, for example, a figurative alligator form for seating. Here in Barcelona, the Mediterranean is the main theme with sparking turquoise, beiges and white contrasted with coral red. The important thing is that the design must be brought alive at a local level.”
Ziegler extends the interpretation of W’s brand standards to the software of the hotels. In W lingo hotel staff are the ‘talent’ recruited through ‘casting’ sessions and then trained. To catch her breath she happily defers to George Fleck, Director of Marketing who knows the programme backwards as he has been with the brand almost since its inception. “We use the maxim of hiring for attitude and training for skills,” he explains. “Casting in Barcelona took place adjacent to the beach with full brand ID and a DJ to set the scene. We needed to see which of the prospective talent (8,000 turned up for the ‘audition’) ‘got it’.” For the 400 selected, brand immersion followed, tutored by ‘Wizards’ from other W’s.
“We have had to adapt various Americanisms from the brand language,” continues Ziegler. “A ‘Well hello there’ greeting may work in Atlanta but does not fit with the formality of Hong Kong so we had to change this. Our talent here in Barcelona need to understand that American guests will most likely eat relatively earlier in the evening and probably not want to linger over their meal compared a local group of diners.” The reality on the ground in Barcelona was of a courteous but friendly staff-client ethic. Ziegler is on a roll and with it the W brand, “I am energised by visiting the properties and seeing them come to life.” A life that is big on style and not short on luxury.