bcosinteno

After rumors for several days, Hilton has confirmed that the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas will rebrand and become the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas. The Mandarin Oriental Agreement ceases on August 30th, so it's safe to assume the hotel will start operating as a Waldorf Astoria shortly thereafter. The hotel and resort will undergo a 50 million renovation.

https://www.hotelmanagement.net/tran...aldorf-astoria

pauleeepaul

Nice.

cjd

Good news. Stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Vegas a couple of years ago. Nice stay, but it will be nice to get some Hilton benefits in future. From memory, we had to use the Aria to self park, which was a bit of a trek to the hotel.

MS02113

Not necessarily. Management might wait until renovations have been completed before re-flagging, leaving the property to operate under a generic name in the interim. See, for example, the lengthy conversions of Concorde Opera Paris to Hilton and more recently The London NYC to Conrad.

arlflyer

Woo, what promises to be another option for when I'm looking for a property with no elite benefits and lots of resort fees.

Friendly Traveling Deathmerchant

Potentially fantastic.

I've been to every LV Hilton property except the new TRU, and it's great to see a little higher class place join the mix. Hopefully the prices aren't out of line with other comparables in the area!

Gig103

I wonder how this will affect membership to Virtuoso & Amex Fine Hotels.

writerguyfl

The Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas currently carries a AAA 5-Diamond rating. I just checked and noticed that there are no Waldorf Astoria hotels in the world with that esteemed rating. I wonder if the new owner will push to keep that rating. Given that there are six other properties in Las Vegas with AAA 5-Diamond ratings, it might be smarter to trim the staff a bit and become a 4-Diamond property, like most of the other Waldorf Astoria properties in the US.

christianj

Do you really think that maters to most people? If you do your due diligence and book according to reputation and reviews I wouldn't think a downgrade to AAA 4-Diamond would impact them that much. In sure many people have stayed at some pretty highly rated hotels that turned out to be not so great and some lower rated ones that were great. Ratings should be taken with a grain of salt....just look at LH getting a 5 star Skytrax rating when their business class isn't as good as half the other airlines in the world.

Bicoastal Yokel

Interesting... Does this mean a Labor Day weekend stay would earn points?

writerguyfl

Most people? Nope. But, I honestly think it matters to the type of clientele that AAA 5-Diamond properties wish to attract.

If you want to stay at the "best" hotel, you'll probably look to an established ratings system (AAA, Mobil, Forbes) and not Trip Advisor. Those "official" ratings systems are based on actual criteria. So while they do still require that grain of salt, at least they aren't polluted by people who think that a full-service hotel should get a one-star rating because it doesn't provide free breakfast like a Hampton Inn.

Kagehitokiri

its easy to keep 5 diamond & 5 star, and buyer chose waldorf over curio franchise

im curious how (method) hilton is competing with marriott for contracts these days

although marriott may have some kind of 'deal' with cosmopolitan

interesting re hilton in general, HNA is selling their 25% stake

writerguyfl

I worked in hotels. I do not agree that keeping top level status is easy. One poorly selected or poorly trained new employee can put that rating in jeopardy.

arlflyer

Legitimate question, because I know you're an industry person - how much weight does AAA hold with high-end hotel patrons anyhow? I know that growing up, my parents used all the AAA materials...and we were standard, middle-class people who went on road trips using our TripTiks and stayed at Best Westerns.

Are people who are staying at five-whatever hotels really using AAA ratings? I'd think they would be looking at FHR, Virtuoso, T&L, Conde Nast, or some rating entity so rarified that plebes like me are not even aware of it.

writerguyfl

I readily admit that I'm biased towards AAA as a standard, so I'm not sure I can adequately answer your questions, arlflyer. I, too, grew up in a household that used those AAA materials. Fast forward to my first hotel job. I was a Front Desk Supervisor when our hotel attempted to move up from AAA 4 to 5-Diamond rating status. Everyone in management studied the lists of requirements for months. Unfortunately, the attempt to move up wasn't successful, mostly because we hadn't increased staffing levels adequately. (Lots of 5-Diamond service requirements involve anticipating guest needs. That type of service tends to be labor intensive.) The final reviewer told our General Manager that she'd had given us 4.5-Diamonds, if half Diamonds were a thing.

That's a long way of explaining why I tend to value AAA as a ratings scale. It's also a reason why I might be biased into thinking AAA ratings are more important than they are.

Still, I do think that AAA 5-Diamond status does resonate with the people that seek out top tier hotels. It's a fairly elite club. But, if a hotel has that rating at AAA, chances are good that they will be similarly rated with other services.

With the internet, I do think that AAA's importance has diminished. I'm sure many hotel executives believe that, too. I' don't think that's a good thing, though. From experience, I know that AAA ratings are based on explicit criteria and it's often objective. Instead of feelings, it's things like: Did the Front Desk Representative address the guest by name during check-in? Additionally, inspections are done by trained people. I'll take training over the "everyone's an expert" mentality that is pervasive on Trip Advisor.