The color pink abounds during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but a few years ago, InterContinental Milwaukee General Manager Tim Smith and his team decided to look for ways to extend the goodwill year-round. The results are two Pink Rooms that recently celebrated their fifth anniversary. A portion of the proceeds from each stay in the rooms is donated to a local breast-cancer-support organization — a total of approximately US$50,000 since the rooms’ inception.
The rooms were just renovated pro bono by two local designers to give them a completely updated look — not that they needed a boost to their popularity. Smith said the two rooms combined have posted 88% occupancy over the five-year period. He credited the hotel’s owner and management company, Milwaukee-based Marcus Hotels & Resorts, for supporting the rooms’ refurbishment, and adds that other Marcus properties in addition to other hotels within the InterContinental brand have either implemented or are considering starting similar room initiatives to support local charitable organizations.
HOTELS recently spoke with Smith about how the Pink Rooms got started, the secrets to their success and the power of their ongoing impact.
HOTELS: What was the main inspiration behind the launch of the Pink Rooms five years ago?
Tim Smith: The major inspiration was a combination of myself and three ladies in the sales office. We happened to notice once October ended, essentially there was no pink anywhere to be seen. It’s almost like people are taking advantage of the month of breast-cancer awareness to promote and sell products. We just started talking about ways the hotel could support a cause like this 12 months a year. The three of them actually started talking amongst themselves, and they all had breast cancer affect them in different ways. They came back to me about a month later with a plan to renovate a couple rooms within the hotel with a pink theme and use it as a fundraising mechanism for a local breast-cancer organization, ABCD. Every time we would rent one of the rooms out, we would donate US$25 to ABCD.
HOTELS: Is it primarily women who are interested in staying in these rooms?
Smith: Yes, and we find it’s women who have been somehow affected by breast cancer. One of the things we do within the rooms is we have pink computers, and when you check into a Pink Room you’re given a password-protected login to get you on to a blog where you can tell your story of why you wanted to stay in the room or what it means to you, and it’s really only read by other people that stay in the room. It has become this living, breathing blog for people to communicate with one another.
HOTELS: Can you share an anecdote about the rooms’ significance over the past several years?
Smith: Last Labor Day, Harley Davidson had its 115th reunion in Milwaukee. There was a couple who was originally from the Milwaukee area who has since relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, and they came back for the reunion. The wife has breast cancer, and they wanted to stay in a Pink Room, but we had a group of riders from Finland that had already booked the rooms. The couple stayed at another hotel but came over one day and asked if I could get a note to the people in the rooms and ask if they could take a look at the rooms. I left message for the folks from Finland, and they said feel free to show her around, so we did.
The husband called me a month later and said his wife wanted to stay in the room so badly they were going to fly back for a Green Bay Packers game. They made another trip from Anchorage, Alaska, to be in one of the rooms. That it meant so much to her really was a touching thing for me.
HOTELS: Why do you think the rooms resonate in that way?
Smith: I think it’s the fact that they’re sustainable. They’ve lasted five years. It’s not a one-hit wonder. It’s something that’s very serious, and guests know there’s a commitment from our hotel to make this work over the course of time.
HOTELS: What do you see as some of the highlights of the renovations of the rooms?
Smith: We gutted the rooms, so there’s really nothing left that was there a month ago. There are two rooms — one is a king, and one is a double-double. We did the rooms so they’re different from each other this time, whereas the last time they looked identical.
I was just blown away when I walked into the rooms. Just like they say in Ireland there are a thousand shades of green, we found there are a thousand shades of pink, and we used a bunch of different ones mixed with some earth tones to make it a subtle design. One is more feminine, so it has more soft pink tones. The other has more earth tones — there’s some taupe, maroon and lighter shades of pink that blend everything together and give some significance to it.
HOTELS: What is your hope for the future of the Pink Rooms? Do you see them as a permanent fixture at the hotel?
Smith: Absolutely. The company made another sizable financial commitment to get these rooms remodeled. Marcus Hotels & Resorts owns a hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, and they’ve just built what they call ribbon rooms with a blue theme. Their beneficiary is the Carbone Cancer Center in Madison. If you said, “Where do you want this to be in 10 years?” I’d say that every Marcus hotel would have something similar that went to a local cause.