One-on-one: Viceroy Hotel Group’s Nicholas Clayton

This brand leader expands his vision internationally with a fresh and chic approach to luxury experiences

Nicholas Clayton at the Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi.

Viceroy Hotel Group is on a roll. This quarter, the management company will open Viceroy Maldives with 61 villas (32 are over the water) and it’s about to announce a deal for a New York City hotel. A Viceroy in Istanbul will also open this year, followed by another Turkish property, Viceroy Bodrum, in 2014.

This comes on the heels of a successful year when its portfolio of hotels—which includes properties under the Viceroy and Tides brands in Anguilla and St. Lucia, British Virgin Islands; Miami; Mexico; Palm Springs, Calif.; Snowmass, Colo.; and its newest addition, the Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi, its first property in the Middle East—have all garnered consistent praise from consumer publications and websites.

What Nicholas Clayton, president of Viceroy Hotel Group, is aiming to do with Viceroy is to build a brand that delivers all of the benefits of an established, large, luxury hotel company, such as gracious and consistent service, and combine it with the perks of a smaller, boutique hotel company with entrepreneurial, edgy ways that enable it to have, say, a nightclub in its Miami property or a DJ playing out by the pool in its Santa Monica, Calif., location.

“Why can’t you have both?” he said. “Let’s let our hair down every once in a while and have fun, because not everyone appreciates the formal and stuffy nature of some hotels.”

Viceroy also shows humor with uniforms—allowing staff to wear attractive garb that’s not as rigid as with some other hotel companies. At the Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi, a stylist does the staff’s hair before they go on duty so they can appear to be on the same luxury par as the guests they are working with.

Clayton is no stranger to the well-established luxury brands. His career has taken him through leadership positions with The Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental, where he honed his executive skills on both the operational side as well as the development aspect of the hotel business. He’s just as comfortable opening a new resort, with all of the challenges it brings, as sorting through the opportunities of spotting potential brand locations in Europe and Asia.

A big start

The luxury hotelier actually had every intention of being a stockbroker as he studied finance and business administration in college. Then he was promoted five times at his jobs at the two Four Seasons in the Dallas area, where he worked as he went through school. By the time he graduated, the markets had cooled down and jobs in the financial sector weren’t as enticing as they had been. He decided to take his hotel experience to The Ritz-Carlton, which at that point had only seven hotels. The company at the time was identifying those with leadership qualities and promoting them quickly through the ranks.

“I was also willing to travel, so that made it easier,” said Clayton, who found himself over the course of 13 years handling nine top assignments; his first gig as a GM was at The Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani, on the Big Island of Hawaii.

“I was 32, it had 550 rooms, a couple golf courses and it was quite a big responsibility,” he said. Other roles led him to Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, Sydney and Singapore, where The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia was frequently recognized for outstanding customer service and overall quality.

After 13 years with The Ritz-Carlton, Clayton began talks with Mandarin Oriental, which was expanding through Asia and Europe at the time. Leaving his career with The Ritz-Carlton was not an easy choice, especially since they weren’t that keen on his leaving. As he weighed the pros and cons of making a move, Clayton said his acquaintances asked him some compelling questions.

“They said, ‘What do you know about Asia?’ and I said, ‘Well, I have been in Singapore for three years, I know a little bit, but not everything.’ They said, ‘What do you know about Europe?’ and I said, ‘Well, I like Europe a lot, I don’t know everything about it.’ They said, ‘Okay, so those are the things that you don’t know. The key question is what do you know about Ritz-Carlton?’ and I said, ‘Everything,’ and they said, ‘That’s the answer to your question. Because if you want to grow, if you want to learn, then change.’”

The move unleashed some exciting times for Clayton, who became Mandarin Oriental’s SVP of operations. In Europe, he and his team worked in Munich, Geneva and London and did pre-opening work for Prague and Barcelona. They renovated nearly the entire portfolio in Asia, signed deals for Tokyo, for Hainan in China and for a second hotel in Macau. Along the way, he and his team added operational structure to the portfolio.

The 61-villa Viceroy Maldives is scheduled to open in early 2012 on the remote island of Vagaru

Making Changes

After six years with Mandarin Oriental, someone at the Kor Group approached Clayton very persistently. So, on a trip to the U.S., he met with management.

“I saw what they were doing; I saw these cleverly done four-star boutique hotels, which I thought were really smart and which I really appreciated,” he said. But, bottom line, Clayton felt it didn’t really fall into place with what he had been doing thus far in his career.

“And then I saw the plans for Anguilla and I saw the advanced stages for Miami. At the time, Snowmass was on the radar and there were a few other projects in the works and I could see that there was real potential,” said Clayton, who also observed that the company was recruiting others from the luxury hotel arena for positions in development and finance. It seemed like another change that had learning potential.

“I said okay, and I jumped off the precipice again to kind of create something from nothing,” he said. That was in 2006; since then, what was the Kor Hotel Group changed its name to Viceroy Hotel Group as an umbrella company for the sister hotel brands that formerly fell under Kor— Viceroy Hotels & Resorts, The Tides and Urban Retreats.

Three years ago, Viceroy got a cash infusion when Mubadala Development Company, a wholly owned investment vehicle of the Government of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, became a 50-percent partner in its management company.

“They bought half the management company with a view to make the next edgy Four Seasons,” said Clayton. “They like Four Seasons and the principle of Four Seasons in the way of quality, but I think no one wants to be so conservative. People want surprises; they don’t want predictability as much. They want predictability in the service but not in the spaces—[those] have to be more exciting.”

Along those lines, Viceroy this year plans to do a full renovation of L’Ermitage Beverly Hills to make the public spaces more dynamic and to blend its outdoor areas with its interiors. It hired as its next chef Joseph Elevado, who trained under Nobu Matsuhisa.

It’s no secret that Viceroy Anguilla, known for its unique design, has been a success story in the Caribbean since it opened two years ago, garnering top dollar from a loyal guest list that hails in large part from the affluent Northeastern markets in the U.S.

The resort is so important to the brand that when Hotel Management spoke with Clayton recently, he was headed down to Anguilla with 35 additional staff from corporate and other hotels to assist at Anguilla during the entire holiday season. Additional money has also been pumped into the fledgling resort to step up the look of the public spaces and add on more family-friendly facilities, such as a basketball court, a rock-climbing wall and a tennis pavilion. A cliff-top deck with daybeds has also been added.

By all appearances, the new Maldives resort opening this quarter will have a similar feel to Anguilla, with a focus on high-level service and a collection of unique villas. Complementing this resort is the architecturally unique Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi, which is a true showpiece for the brand. Having these two hotels, in Asia and the Middle East, will give Viceroy the chance to expand further into those regions.

“In China we may open an office in Beijing or Shanghai and put a development person there,” said Clayton, noting it’s imperative to have an office on location in Beijing or Shanghai, or both, “or they won’t do business with you there.”

Europe is definitely an arena for expansion, said Clayton. In fact, Viceroy was chosen to be the operator of the new Bebeköy development in Istanbul, Turkey. The Viceroy Istanbul, a luxury urban resort featuring both a five-star hotel and long-term residential services, is scheduled to open in September 2012 and will mark Viceroy Hotel Group’s first European property. Viceroy, in partnership with Safir Grup of Bodrum, will open the Viceroy Bodrum, a luxury resort and real estate property in southwestern Turkey on the Bodrum Peninsula. Set to open in 2014, Viceroy Bodrum’s accommodations will range in size from 470 square feet to 2,050 square feet.

The U.S. remains an attractive venue for new openings; Clayton indicated that an opportunity in Manhattan for a “four-star urban retreat” was imminent.

The rest of the country is up for grabs as well; however, Viceroy isn’t looking to expand for the sake of expansion. “Things come up in Chicago, things come up in Boston, but it’s all about whether the developer has the panache, the finance, the backing and the wherewithal to get it done,” he said. "One reason why we may be seeing more Viceroy hotels is that “we provide a fresh new brand where the market is saturated,” Clayton said.

Going forward, the goal will be to truly establish a luxury footprint in the industry, and to do that, Clayton intends to stick with certain basics. “I say that 92 percent of luxury is simply luxury—the consistency of eye contact, the great smile, the work sincerity, the ability to never say, ‘no,’ escorting people to their destination, showing you care, collecting preferences and having the great technology to anticipate needs,” he said, alluding to a web-based CRM platform the company is investing in that will assist in building one-page guest profiles.

So far, Clayton is pleased with the progress Viceroy has enjoyed in the public eye and he’s excited about its future.

“I look between Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast and I think our hotels do pretty well,” he said. “We see a good percentage of our portfolio having some degree of recognition. That’s what my attraction to Viceroy is and that’s what guides my focus on it going forward because I think we have been crawling and walking, and now we are starting to jog.”