Motel 6 opening signals brand's new direction

The grand opening of the Motel 6 Northlake-Speedway was more than just a ribbon cutting of the brand's first newly constructed Phoenix-design property. It marked an unofficial beginning of Motel 6's next phase. And the important themes for the brand going forward, as illustrated by the new room design, are simplicity and efficiency.

Ever since the sale of Red Roof Inn in April 2007 and the announcement of this Phoenix prototype in 2008, the brand has been working to restructure the organization in a more efficient way, which would best push Motel 6 and Studio 6 to Accor's top priorities in North America.

"The idea was to restructure a little bit so coming out of the old organization it would be stronger than it was before," said Olivier Poirot, CEO of Accor North America. The first steps in this process were combining Accor NA with Accor Latin America to form Accor Americas and then reorganizing the executive team. From there, the new prototype was slowly implemented and is now available in 50 retrofit properties. Poirot believes, so far, all of this restructuring has shown results. "We have been able to increase market share over 12 consecutive months."

The core of the Motel 6 mantra has been to offer rooms at the lowest price of any national chain for both guests and franchisees. Poirot said the new design contributes to that. It has the look of a trendy, modern guestroom and has a small footprint but looks bigger because of some design decisions, such as putting closet space behind the flat-screen TV panel, making the bed a platform, removing all casegoods and installing a wood floor.

Jim Amorosia, president and COO of Motel 6, noted the role of the retrofit properties in the company's current and future success, which is what made this grand opening an important day for the brand.

"The prototype is key to the public recognition of the future of Motel 6," Amorosia said. "It was key to take the design and lay it into an existing building. ... We were expecting our RevPAR growth [for the retrofit properties] to be good, but we got great [growth] in the high single to double digits in retrofit locations.

"We have been pleasantly managing the growth process, where every month our RevPAR against segment has grown,” he continued. “We're getting a bigger share of the pie. That's a key message to our franchisees—when you invest smartly and price smartly, so guests say to themselves 'why wouldn't I do this,' you gain share, occupancy share, RevPAR share... and more than likely can drive rate share too."

Poirot said in the last three to five years, about 60 percent of the Motel 6 portfolio has been renovated, and in the next three to four, the rest of the 40 percent will be renovated following the Phoenix model. In the end, close to half the portfolio will be fitted with the Phoenix room design.

"Over a 10-year period, we constantly maintain the product," Poirot said. “By the end of the year, a total of 55 properties around the nation will look like this."

At the upcoming franchisee conference, leaders will be sure to promote the success stories of the new room design and the importance of brand consistency. After all of the organizational and on-property changes, it is time to move forward on the same page, according to Bernard Rudler, EVP of franchise and procurement.

"The focus today is consistency," Rudler said. "What could we do for the brand to improve for each customer—a new feeling, be more together and offer all together a better service, better processes.”

A specific goal moving forward is to focus on sales. The Northlake-Speedway property highlights the main sales strategy by showing the $39.99 room rate in lights underneath the lit-up Motel 6 sign. Poirot believes the combination of the new room design, the low, flat rate and a new sales strategy will broaden the brand’s appeal. Both Poirot and Ambrosia said there will be an increased push toward the Sunday to Thursday business traveler and to international travelers.

“Motel 6 has been historically more leisure than business dominated,” Amorosia said. “In our strategy, sales packages and marketing, [we’re trying to] expand our market base. We’ll continue to market to 35- to 65-year-old adult, but open that up and market to 24- to 35-year-old adults and market aggressively to international travelers. We changed the way we viewed [business to business] sales and doubled our national sales force.”