Marriott's Edition Hotels Face Challenge of Scaling Up Uniqueness

Marriott International's Edition brand, co-created with hotel impresario Ian Schrager, may finally be clicking with developers after a decade-long slow burn. The Tampa Edition that opened in September marked the 15th property in the series. Top executives expect to double that footprint within five years.

"Since we opened Tampa, we now have leads coming in from South America at a greater pace," said Josh Fluhr, who earlier this year became Edition's senior vice president and global managing director and spoke to Skift in his first media interview since. "Each new outpost reaches a new layer of concentric circles of people to experience what the brand is all about, and that drives growth."

Marriott's Edition brand of hotels straddle lifestyle and luxury segments by taking a strict approach to hiring, training, and development. Yet it's proven harder for Marriott to crack the lifestyle category than it had hoped back in 2007 when it first partnered with Schrager to create Edition. In 2008, executives forecasted they would have opened about 100 Editions by around now, rather than 15.

"The design is very bespoke," said Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano on stage at Skift Global Forum in September. "So I’m not sure I necessarily think it’s not moving as rapidly as we would like. We always want things to go a little more quickly. But behind that 15 open hotels, there are another 12 to 15 signed, or under development, projects. It’s not a brand that we’re going to have 1,000 hotels."

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