Kurt Ritter – ITCM Interview

Tuesday, 23 November 2010 12:31

Meeting Kurt Ritter in London, it had to be the first topic of discussion. Kurt is President and CEO of the Rezidor Hotel Group, whose brands encompass Radisson Blu, Hotel Missoni, Regent and Country Inn as well as Park Inn. These amount to over 400 properties throughout his region of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Rezidor is part of the Carlson group, which has a total of 1075 locations in 77 countries. In our discussion, I discovered that in almost all cases, a new member of his hotel group comes into being as the result of a property owner’s approach to Rezidor. The owner of the old Palace Hotel in Southend considered that the time was ripe to regenerate Southend, he received support from the town authorities and Rezidor agreed that the Park Inn brand would be most relevant to Southend’s needs. ‘There is very good access’, says Kurt, ‘it is on the sea but within easy reach of London and a high quality, moderately priced hotel located in Southend can serve a wide catchment area. There is already a market in the area but we are confident that the existence of this new hotel will create a bigger market.’ Britain is dotted with cities that have successfully re-invented themselves. Liverpool and Manchester are flourishing as the result of investments in their facilities. Blackpool is on the up.
‘MICE business is very important for the Park Inn brand’, emphasises Kurt. ‘Southend can become an ideal location for meetings. We don’t expect things will change radically overnight, but the owner of the property and Rezidor are prepared to be patient and to rebuild Southend’s image slowly but surely’.
This approach means that Rezidor receives offers continuously from owners in many different locations. ‘The owners know their locality better than we can’, says Kurt, ‘and so we don’t see it as our primary task to look for locations where we should introduce our properties. Of course, if we see an opportunity, we can approach someone in the area and point it out and it can come to fruition, but in most cases we are approached with an offer.’
Rezidor enters into various kinds of contracts with the property owners with regard to fees, targets, possible leases and so on. It Is Rezidor that identifies the brand that would most suit each specific location.
Rezidor can celebrate its 50th anniversary, if you go back to the opening of the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in 1960, which is now called the Radisson Blu Royal.
‘We introduced the name Radisson in 1995’, Kurt recalls, ‘and Park Inn in 2003. We have a strategy that sees each of our brands as placed at a certain level in a particular type of location. A Radisson Blu, for example, would not be one of the super-luxury properties, but would rank 4th or 5th, say, in a major conurbation. A Park Inn can play a similar role in a smaller town.’
Because of this strategy, Rezidor can be up and running in a newly important location in the minimum of time. ‘We are growing rapidly in emerging markets,’ explains Kurrt. ‘There are hot spots for hotel business appearing, for example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Angola, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya. Then there are Gambia and Zimbabwe. Local populations are suddenly seeing their existing properties as tired and becoming part of the Rezidor family can help them in upgrading to suit new demands for quality of service and facilities.’
In those areas there are 16 Rezidor properties operating and 20 shortly to be introduced. A Radisson Blu is shortly to become the first property of international standard in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. ‘It will, of course, be compatible with its location, not a high rise tower, but the quality that guests nowadays expect everywhere’.
Independent research has recently shown that in Europe Radisson is by far the leading ‘Upscale’ brand in terms of guestrooms in the pipeline, whilst Park Inn has the top position in the ‘Midscale’ brands.
Radisson showed 5,399 compared with the second, Hilton, on 3,601. Park Inn amounted to 6,047 compared with Hilton Garden Inn on 4,075. Other Upscale brands further down the list included Kempinski, Sheraton, Renaissance, InterContinental and W; whilst the Midscale list included Holiday Inn, NH, Scandic, Marriott Courtyard and Novotel.
Expansion is certainly the name of the game for Kurt Ritter and his colleagues. The Carlson aim is to increase the number of its properties by about 50% by 2015 – and it is currently on target.

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