Cantillon: Hotel marketing guru knows all, but says little

Hugh Taylor, the former Hilton marketing chief and now the chief executive of Michels & Taylor Asset Management, wasn't giving too much away about his new Irish venture this week when he spoke at the Hotel Property Conference in Dublin.

Taylor, an OBE, and his business partner, former Hilton boss Sir David Michels, want to bring a regal touch to the Irish hotel market in partnership with Ulster Bank and its parent Royal Bank of Scotland.

The decorated duo have teamed up with the bank to launch a new hotel brand in the Irish market. The plan is to slap it on about 23-30 hotels that are effectively controlled by Ulster Bank, which was a heavy-duty backer of the hotel sector
in the boom.

But with the hotel market well into its recovery mode and asset values rising, what’s the point in this joint venture?

RBS wants to reduce its exposure to Irish sins of the past, and Ulster Bank will surely be deleveraging quickly in the next year or two. Why shell out to build a new brand for hotels that, in all likelihood, will be sold off to foreign investors quite quickly?
They will then have to be rebranded all over again.
It seems silly.

Perhaps that’s why Taylor, a wonderfully plummy chap, was keen to tell the conference that it won’t just be targeting Ulster Bank hotels after all, as previously thought. “We want to have a broader base,” he said.

Taylor and Michels know pretty much everything there is to know about the hotel game. But the one thing Taylor wasn’t keen to share at the conference was the name of the new brand.

The market watches and waits with interest.