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Luxury hotel/resort chain bows to economic pressures
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Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts has started axing some of its signature flourishes, bowing to pressures by some financially strapped owners of properties that bear its name, The Wall Street Journal reports. Cuts include eliminating huge vases of fresh flowers, closing high-end restaurants on slow days and outsourcing laundry.
In the past, the company, which holds long-term contracts with the hotels it manages, viewed downturns as passing cycles that didn't warrant altering its expensive-but-successful formula. This time, though, Isadore Sharp, founder and chief executive of the Toronto-based firm, agreed to some concessions that wouldn't hurt service.
“Like most companies, when things are going well there's always the sort of excess that is allowed to be built in,” Sharp told The Journal. Now, he said, “there will be changes that will be built in forever that will be more efficient."
But Sharp also had little choice, the business newspaper noted: Of the 82 hotels that fly Four Seasons flags, at least a dozen are in financial distress.
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