Danziger Thinking Big At Wyndham
By Jeff Weinstein, Editor in Chief -- Hotels, 2/28/2009 11:00:00 PM
After taking a five-year hiatus from the hotel business, 30-year industry veteran Eric Danziger is back in the business he loves, now as president and CEO of Wyndham Hotel Group, the world's largest hotel franchise company.
With 12 brands and 7,000 hotels in the Wyndham stable (many of which Danziger is quite familiar with due to a stint with Wyndham in the 1990s), he says job one is to better leverage the size of the organization with customers and owners. “We need to act more like we operate together, while at the same time grow the individual brands,” says the outgoing Danziger, a John F. Kennedy afficionado who paid more than US$50,000 at auction for a pair of JFK's gold cuff links and his tortoiseshell sunglasses.
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Wyndham Garden Hotel Midtown Convention Center opened in December as the first New York City hotel to offer Wyndham ClearAir allergy-friendly rooms. |
Danziger grew the Wyndham brand in the '90s to 100 hotels and helped the company successfully go public in 1995. He then joined Starwood Lodging as president and CEO, helping grow the portfolio to some 1,600 hotels worldwide, and later he served as president and CEO of Carlson Hotels Worldwide, where he helped diversify the portfolio.
After spending time out of the business in northern California to be closer to his family, Danziger is back in the saddle and sees his first challenge as to grow the Wyndham brand—first in the United States, and then around the world, with the help of alliance partner CHI Hotels, Malta. He is just as excited about the proposition of rejuvenating the iconic nature of the Howard Johnson brand and the U.S. version of Travelodge.
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Wyndham Hotel Group’s new President, CEO Eric Danziger. |
That being said, the Wyndham brand is definitely his top priority. “The Wyndham brand has had foster parents for years. It went from a hospitality company to a real estate company without the love and nurturing a child needs to grow,” Danziger says. “I want to rejuvenate Wyndham as a hotel and management brand and explore global opportunities. The U.S. will come first, as we need more of the major markets.”
To gain that required leap of faith from owners, Danziger says the Wyndham brand must elevate its level of performance with sounder fundamentals. He also believes Wyndham must better separate the attributes of the core brand with the Wyndham Garden brand.
As he searches for management contracts, Danziger hopes to bring a higher level of credibility to the negotiating table, and with all the expected conversion opportunities soon coming to the fore, he somewhat jokingly says he would like to see Wyndham perceived as the big St. Bernard rescue dog of hotel brands.
Not one to mince words and always at the ready with a colorful quote (“I want to make dust, not eat it.”), Danziger recently told USA Today that he will review the company's decision to roll out the Wyndham brand with its Michael Graves-designed prototype, which it initially launched in 2006. He prefers that the Wyndham-branded hotels have more of a sense of place, which in some cases might not be in keeping with the Graves style for new properties.
Danziger also wants to develop more cross-selling opportunities, better harness the power of its loyalty program and create more brand consistency and clarity. And yes, Danziger will turn his focus to the brands he grew up with, Howard Johnson and Travelodge, to see if they can be revitalized for the next generation of travelers.
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