Survey puts Marriott unit ahead of
big competitor in luxury-hotel category

By Jonathan Friedland

In the quest to be seen by hotel guests as the best, Ritz-Carlton Hotels pulled ahead of rival Four Seasons Hotels by more than just a neck in J.D. Power & Associates' annual survey of North American properties.

Ritz-Carlton, a unit of Marriott International Inc., Washington, outranked Toronto's Four Seasons for the first time since the poll, which measures guest satisfaction, separated out the luxury category three years ago.

The win, which gave Ritz-Carlton a "commanding lead" over Four Seasons, according to the survey, came despite an aggressive expansion program by Ritz-Carlton, which has opened 15 new hotels in North America over the last two years.

The survey speaks "to the foundation we've laid in offering first-class service," said Simon Cooper, Ritz-Carlton's president and chief operating officer. "It gives our team a lot of confidence we can do this hotel after hotel."

Elizabeth Pizzinato, a spokeswoman for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, said the result is "puzzling to us" because "the research we regularly elicit from independent sources indicates that our service quality has continued to improve." Calling the survey "one of many that we look at to gauge the quality of the guest experience at our hotels," she said, "We would have been delighted to rank first once again on the J.D. Power survey, as we have for the past two years."

The survey, which polled nearly 13,000 guests over a six-month period earlier this year, covers six industry segments. Among the other winners: Hilton Hotels Corp.'s Embassy Suites in the upscale segment and Hilton Garden Suites in the mid-price full-service segment, and Marriott's SpringHill Suites in the highly competitive mid-price limited-service segment. J.D. Power says the survey differs from many others done by industry publications and consumer magazines in that it focuses entirely on the perceptions of guests who have recently stayed in one of the 54 major hotels covered.

The survey also found that contrary to what many consumers think, booking reservations on the Internet doesn't necessarily lead to a lower hotel room rate. While some hotel companies, particularly those with loyalty programs, try to drive customers to their websites with cheaper deals, price breaks are mainly confined to the luxury and upscale brands. For the less expensive properties, "there's less wiggle room, so there is less online discounting," said Linda Hirneise, partner and executive director of the hotel practice at J.D. Power, Westlake Village, Calif.

The release of the survey comes as the North American hotel industry is showing glimmers of recovery. While business travel remains weak compared with levels before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, leisure traffic has picked up steam over the summer. That is causing the fall in hotel room rates to flatten out and apparently ending the kind of aggressive discounting prevalent over much of the last 18 months.

Still, the J.D. Power poll found that many travelers remain nervous about security conditions and that satisfaction with security measures taken at hotels is either flat or declining. "The security issue is huge," said Ms. Hirneise. "Hoteliers have to work harder to make security more visible to their guests."