Fly Me To The Moon

nazca8

Just stayed here 2 weeks ago and got free breakfast as titanium instead of points. Since the restaurant is under renovation, the breakfast was moved to the W lounge/bar area, which they converted to breakfast area. Me and my wife were not impressed at all by the breakfast provided here, which lacks quality (on the pastries and hot food), although they offered to make us fresh scrambled egg or omelette. I remembered that the Le Meridien Etoile had much better breakfast spread and quality than at this W. So may want to double check with the hotel if/when the restaurant renovation will be completed, if you care about having god breakfast.

rockstarclown

How bad is the renovation? I just booked two nights at this hotel using Chase Sapphire points, which did not give me the warning that the hotel was undergoing renovation. I don’t mind not getting breakfast but is there noticeable construction all over?

Do you think Chase and/or the hotel would give refunds?

update: called up both the hotel and Chase and managed to switch rooms. Supposedly the Cozy, and Wonderful rooms are not affected by construction but the Spectacular rooms basically have their windows covered by scaffolding and a billboard?

The hotel was saying there is nothing internally affected by rennovations...or at least when I’ll be staying there (nov30)?

nazca8

Yes, like the hotel said, the renovation is only visible from the outside. The outside part of the building facing the Opera has scaffolding all over, but no renovation that I can see on the inside of the hotel. Unless of course if you are in one of the "Spectacular" room.

nicolas75

In Paris, the owner of the W hotel - a trendy design brand that opened in March 2012 not far from the Opéra Garnier, terminated the management contract with Marriott.

Source : Les Echos (in French)

UA-NYC

Nice location but the property had a lot of drawbacks IMO

donotblink

I stayed there many times and enjoyed the hotel. Sad to see it go.

bocastephen

I suspect quite a few hotels will be telling Marriott to get lost over the next year or so. Some will rebrand, but there could be a growing number of strictly independent, high quality properties who will eschew being tied to a brand franchise agreement.

spgplat21

With Americans and citizens of a bunch of other countries not traveling as much, the benefits and appeal of a global brand have certainly diminished. So this is probably an easy way to save money while they are trying to subsist on more local and regional travelers. If and when global travel returns, I think you'll see a number of these properties re-join global brands once it makes business sense again.

escape4

Makes a lot of sense, but I wonder how those contracts are set up however. If I was a hotel owner with 100% flexibility I would probably "turn off" my hotel chain affiliation for like 6 months only to restore it like it used to be once things are closer to feeling normal; not sure if they can turn on the dime like this though.

TGLoyalty

There is a fixed cost to leaving a brand / re-branding and the unknown of becoming just another hotel in the OTA websites.

I can’t believe this is purely to save on fees for a few months when occupant will be extremely low.

bocastephen

Independent hotels of a certain caliber do very well without being a franchised brand, and can join consortiums to share marketing and booking tools, like Leading Hotels of the World. Unless you're a mediocre quality business class hotel, there is little reason for a higher category property to remain with Marriott given what a mess the company has become. Or a better idea is to get rid of Arne Sorenson which might help stop the number of properties fleeing Marriott.

spgplat21

I completely agree, I just have a more negative outlook on global travel and was viewing this as more of a 1 to 3 year decision. So even when occupancy picks up as general travel increases, I don't think it will be back to same level with travelers (including Americans) that put more focus on a property being part of a global chain.

As someone else noted, there are a lot of great high-end independent properties that do quite well with travelers from all of the world without the marketing help from a global chain. I just don't know that this property is quite up to that level in Paris so that's why I was guessing it will rejoin a chain at some point, especially since it seemed to do so well with the W branding for so long.

HNLbasedFlyer

Or, simply go out of business.

Very few Paris hotels will thrive just on leisure travel. I suspect every hotel is looking at every spend line item on the balance sheet and cutting everything they can and hoping business travel comes back sooner rather than later.

And if corporate travel does come back - the booking engine they require to be used may not include independent hotels in the pool of properties that can be booked due to corporate discounts.

bocastephen

That's not really true at all - no booking engine excludes independent or consortium properties, to suggest that only Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt properties are on the corporate radar just doesn't make any sense. Independent properties are on their own to negotiate rate deals which are often better, and more flexible than what is offered by chain hotels. You're forgetting that I am in the travel business and have extensive knowledge of this fact. Corporate discounts negotiated with specific properties are more prevalent than just the "codes" that people trade on Flyertalk, and those rates are often more appealing than discount code rates - which, by the way, are also controlled at the property level, not by the brand.

Business travel won't be coming back - if it ever comes close to 2019 levels, we're looking at years. The entire travel industry needs to reboot itself and refocus on leisure/aspirational travel. The decision by the W, and other properties who have been fleeing Marriott, is a good one.