Sternlicht Speaks: 1 Hotels Is Still On

Barry Sternlicht’s 1 Hotels brand is still in the plans, though don’t expect to see any of the eco-chic projects go up until the market bounces back.

That is the most newsworthy revelation from a fascinating 27-minute video interview Sternlicht gave to Bloomberg News earlier this month. (To view the interview in its entirety, go here and then click the small "Play" icon.)

In the interview, the industry icon calls this downturn "worse than 9/11" from an economic standpoint and predicts that hotel demand will start to creep back up sometime around mid- to late 2010. “But that’s just a wild guess," Sternlicht says. "I could be totally wrong.”

When demand does come back, it will start from the bottom sectors up. Even people who can afford luxury travel are avoiding it out of respect for their struggling friends and neighbors. "You don’t want to brag," he says. 

"Family austerity time," as he calls it, will continue until the economy is fully back on its feet, and predicts the luxury segment will be the last to bounce back.

As for Starwood Capital Group’s false-starting 1 brand, it seems to be moving ahead, albeit slowly. As green infiltrates all levels of the hotel industry, Sternlicht believes as much as ever in the concept of a green luxury brand, both from a profitability standpoint and for right-thing-to-do reasons.

“There’s a customer, just like W, that will pay more for this experience," he says. "If we can show people how to live green and they can do it without sleeping in burlap and without eating carrots, they might take it home. So for me, it’s like, this works great, but if we can use it as a role model of how you can have great experience while living in a healthy environment and have a carbon neutral footprint and use less power and use less energy, it’s just a fabulous thing.

“I was 35 when I started W. I’m a little older now. I’ve got a couple kids. I’ve gotten a lot more involved in the environmental movement and I think if you can do good and do green and make money at it, then you have a winning formula.”

(Once again, a hat tip to one of my favorite hotel industry bloggers, Andrew Calvo, for pointing me to this interview. You should bookmark his blog. And bookmark this one, too!)