Few industries have been harder hit by Covid-19 than business travel, yet a New York startup is betting it can lure corporate road warriors with a newly redesigned hotel downtown.
Mint House, a Midtown-based hospitality startup, will launch its first New York hotel Friday at 70 Pine St. near Wall Street. The company is taking over operations from another hospitality startup, Lyric, and revamping the hotel for travel in the pandemic era.
An app on your phone checks you in and unlocks the door. Guests can pre-select groceries to stock the fridge and full kitchens in each suite. Many rooms will also come with Mirror workout equipment, the Lululemon-owned Peloton competitor.
"We are offering as many services as we can for guests who don't want to leave their suite," said Alex Herrity, chief product officer for Mint House.
The company is also promoting its cleaning procedures, which were designed with help from Ron Klain, the Ebola czar for President Barack Obama and newly-named chief of staff for President-elect Joseph Biden. Klain is vice president at venture capital firm Revolution, one of Mint House's investors.
Travel shakeup
The U.S. Travel Association projects spending on business travel will drop 55% this year, and still be at least 10% below 2019 levels by the year 2024. Amid that shakeup, analysts expect hotels to increasingly adopt technology to limit interaction between workers and guests. Hilton, Marriott and Wyndham have all pledged in recent months to expand contactless check-in and entry options.
"These types of technologies have gone from a convenience to a necessity," said Emily Weiss, leader of the global travel industry practice for the consulting firm Accenture.
Hotels are also turning their attention away from providing lobbies, gyms and other social gathering places.
“Hotels are facing a new trend I am calling hyper-solo, where business travelers want to be alone or with only their colleague or group,” said Chekitan Dev, a professor in the hospitality school at Cornell University.
Those changes could sound alarms for workers in the industry, which has already faced mass layoffs in recent months. Automation could accelerate the long-term loss of those jobs, though Weiss said new opportunities could open through providing services to guests outside of traditional check-ins.
70 Pine
Mint House will employ 12 people to watch over the 70 Pine hotel's 132 suites. The suites range from 500 and 1,200 square feet, on three floors of the 67-story tower, which otherwise houses apartments but was once the headquarters for Citgo and then AIG.
Mint House did not disclose the terms of its deal to take over the hotel's management. Lyric, the previous operator, is shifting its focus to hospitality software.
Mint House was founded in 2017 and has raised about $15 million from investors. The firm manages about 500 hotel rooms in Denver, Nashville, Miami and Minneapolis and hopes to grow to as many as 2,000 rooms by the end of 2021, including with more New York locations.
The company has been advertising in recent months to traveling nurses and government workers, as well as white-collar employees seeking a workspace away from home. After hotel occupancy plummeted in March and early April, levels recovered to about 80% over the summer and have hovered there since, Herrity said.
While Zoom will likely eliminate some types of business travel, Mint House is betting remote work will create demand for hotels to host far-flung workers for visits to the office.
That type of traveler will stay longer, "want more space and would rather use DoorDash than hotel room service," Herrity said. "We think we are getting ahead of that trend."
"hotel" - Google News
November 20, 2020 at 02:13AM
https://ift.tt/2KgP2qE
Mint House takes over 70 Pine hotel in NYC, plans design changes for pandemic era - Crain's New York Business
"hotel" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3aTFdGH
https://ift.tt/2xwvOre
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Mint House takes over 70 Pine hotel in NYC, plans design changes for pandemic era - Crain's New York Business"
Post a Comment