OPUS Hotels recognized as Best in the World by Conde Nast Traveler Magazine

It’s time to say “bye-bye” to big hotel chains and their long lobby lineups and “hello!” to the friendly service of boutique hotels. Readers of Condé Nast Traveler Magazine have done just that.

OPUS Hotels was recently recognized amongst the world’s hospitality elite as “Best in the World” and “Best in Business Travel” by readers of Condé Nast Traveler. In fact, OPUS Hotels was the only boutique brand included on the Best in Business Travel list which has us feeling very thankful considering that travelers have a lot of choices.

Year after year, OPUS Hotels is widely recognized as best of the best by esteemed outlets including Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure and Forbes Traveler. OPUS Hotels, for consecutive years, has even been included in the Presenters’ Gift Baskets at the Academy Awards.

As General Manager of OPUS Vancouver, I am extremely proud to share these achievements with our Team.

So what sets OPUS Hotels apart in a crowded market?

Without giving away all of OPUS’ fabulous secrets, here are the top 5 reasons savvy business travelers crave a dose of OPUS while on the road:

1. Complimentary Welcome Beverage
   After a long day of traveling and being assaulted by frisky airport security agents, it’s nice to unwind with a drink. That’s why OPUS Hotels offers every guest a refreshing welcome cocktail at check-in (something airport security could consider before those invasive pat-downs).
2. Residential Ambience
   Something to read other than the room service book? A custom music selection to rock out to in the shower? Rooms at OPUS Hotels are unlike any other. Inspired by five fictional guests, each room has its own personality, from modern and minimalist to artful and eclectic. Rooms are complete with a unique selection of artwork, books, magazines and music.
3. Luxury BMW Downtown Chauffeur Car Service
   Time is money. Jet-setting business guests don’t like to wait in taxi queues, nor do they care for chatty cabbies blasting foreign radio. That’s why OPUS Vancouver and Montreal offer all guests complimentary downtown drop-offs in the hotels’ luxurious BMWs. So whether guests are attending a button-down business meeting, or simply popping off for some late night Chinese – OPUS makes sure they arrive in style.  
4. Whimsical Service
   After a long day at the office, guests return to a sensory wonderland in their rooms. From freshly turned down bed linens and cool water carafes to relaxing mood music and retro candy bedtime treats, getting into bed with OPUS is an unforgettable experience.
5. Award Winning Bars & Restaurants
   The Zagat rated, award winning bars and restaurants at OPUS Hotels are sought-after destinations themselves. No visit to Vancouver is complete without meeting over drinks at OPUS Bar or enjoying a taste of La Dolce Vita at OPUS’ Cento Notti Pop-Up Restaurant. OPUS Montreal’s KOKO Restaurant + Bar is the city’s premier dining and nightlife hotspot, and was recently included on Condé Nast’s Hot List, Hot Nights List. Hint, hint – a perfect venue to entertain discerning business associates and clients.

This past Thursday, September 15, OPUS Bar was one of 80 venues across the world, to be selected and invited into an exclusive membership to, well party… I mean really party. The event tagged as The “Global Party”  and hosted by the hottest bars, clubs and lounges across the world, from Paris to London, to New York to LA.  Yes, a prestigious list to be included in for international cities. There were only 3 locations in Canada chosen, along with Vancouver there was Toronto and our friends up in Whistler. The evening was a showcase of everything luxury from the VIP Land Rovers used as Chauffuer Service, to the Perrier Jouët Penthouses to the Grey Goose lounge in OPUS Bar. I even pulled out my best “James Bond” black and white classic suit, as we all love to play dress-up sometimes.  The crowd was a great mix of the who’s who of Vancouver, from the media to Vancouver socialites to sports personalities like our beloved goaltender for the Vancouver Canucks, Roberto Luongo. The night went quickly for all, as the champagne flowed freely… and the delicious canapés were devoured by everyone, to provide that needed sustenance to continue well into the night .  Near the end of the evening, one of the guests at the event approached me and asked what the main “theme” or “purpose” of the event was.  After taking a long sip of my Grey Goose, which was perfectly chilled, I replied  “To Party!”

If you’re a frequent traveler, this scenario might be all too familiar. It’s late. You stagger to the front desk of your hotel, bruised and battered by the horrors of modern travel, only to be welcomed with the words, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a room for you.”

“What?” you cry. “But I have a confirmation … here! … It says my reservation is guaranteed!”

Silly you. Don’t you know that the credit card number you provide at time of reservation guarantees one thing only: that the hotel will charge you if you don’t show up?

As hotel occupancies climb, relocates are making a comeback. As a long-time hotelier, I have the dubious distinction of having performed scores of relocates in my career, and I know how inconvenient and frustrating it can be for travelers.

But you’re not as helpless as you might feel. While there’s no surefire way to avoid being relocated, there are ways to fight the odds – and, if your number is irrevocably up, to negotiate the most favorable terms.

What exactly is a relocate? Also known as walking or bumping, relocates occur when a hotel has more reservations than rooms. Like airlines, hotels overbook in order to maximize occupancy, banking on cancellations and no-shows, and sometimes we get caught with our pants down. Unlike airlines, however, we don’t announce overbookings to a holding lounge full of travelers or ask for volunteers. We handle relocates discreetly, swiftly dispatching you to another hotel while giving you little choice in the matter.

The early bird catches the room. Hotels typically assign rooms as guests arrive, so our options decrease as the day progresses. If we’re sold out and you arrive late, you’re vulnerable. But then you also might be upgraded, since suites are often the last to go. Not a gambler? Call the hotel in advance to say you’ll be arriving late and ask them to hold your room. And always do your homework; if a hotel is a chronic walker, you’ll read about it in online reviews.

You are what you pay. I didn’t tell you this, but the higher your rate, the more preferential your treatment. Reserve the presidential suite, and we won’t dare walk you. Book through an online travel company, which keeps up to 30% of your rate, and you’re vulnerable. Book through an opaque website, and you’re a walking target. It’s not that we don’t love you, we just love our more loyal and lucrative guests better.

Are you on the no-walk list? The truth is, sometimes we do have a room – just not for you. Depending on the hotel, certain guests never get walked, like loyalty club members, frequent guests, corporate clients, VIPs and tattooed bikers. If you don’t qualify, you can always try pleading your case; in cases of undue hardship rooms can miraculously materialize. You can also try arriving in a wedding dress or clutching a heart monitor. But if there’s no room, there’s no room.

Trade up, not down. The good news is the hotel will pay for your room that night, plus taxi fare and a long distance call. But here’s a dirty little secret: hotels prefer to relocate to a slightly inferior hotel, hoping you’ll come running back into our arms on your next visit. You have the right to insist on a comparable hotel. Hell, we’re paying, so why not ask for the Four Seasons? But if the city is full, you might well be cozying up with the farm animals at the Barnyard Inn.

You’ll never believe this, but … It’s hard to admit we had the gall to sell your room to someone else, so some employees invent little white lies like burst water pipes, electrical problems or guests who refused to check out. A truly unscrupulous hotel might try to foist the blame on you, claiming your reservation was mysteriously canceled or booked for this date five years ago. Always get an email confirmation at time of reservation, check it for accuracy, and bring it with you. If you mixed up the month and year, that’s your bad, not ours.

Now don’t get all huffy. Yes, relocating is evil, unforgiveable really, and hotels do it largely out of greed and incompetence. But it’s not a conspiracy, and we’re not singling you out for having cheap luggage or travel hair. Mostly it’s a numbers game. Chances are the long-suffering graveyard agent who relocates you had nothing to do with overbooking the hotel. So cut him some slack, be firm but pleasant, and resist the theatrics and hostage-takings. If you need to vent, save it for the general manager.

For relocate stories from OPUS, click here and here.

Do you have a relocate story? Share it here. 

Travelers beware. A similar trend started about a decade ago, after word got out that boutique hotels were more profitable than other hotels. Suddenly hotels large and small were calling themselves boutique. But then a number of players tarnished the boutique reputation by emphasizing style over comfort and hiring mannequins for staff. When the big hotel chains got into the action, the boutique reputation suffered even further. Soon hotels couldn’t distance themselves quickly enough from the contemporary boutique moniker. A new buzzword was needed, and along came the next generation of boutique hotels: the lifestyle hotel.

What exactly is a lifestyle hotel? No one really knows. Essentially, a lifestyle hotel offers services and amenities that cater to a demographic with shared tastes, income levels, habits, attitudes and/or values. As a traveler, no longer are you obliged to leave your lifestyle preferences at home while on the road. If you can’t bear to put Muffy the teacup poodle in a kennel, you can bring her along, and your hotel might even offer special meals, a spa and Pilates classes for canines. Whether you’re a vegan environmentalist, a Crackberry-addicted techno-geek or a yoga-loving lesbian, there’s bound to be a lifestyle hotel for you. But don’t call it a theme hotel; themes are for amusement parks and kids. This is sophisticated stuff.

This time the chains are leading the charge. Starwood has Element and Aloft; Marriott has Edition; Hyatt has Andaz; Intercontinental has Indigo; the list goes on. In many ways lifestyle hotels are a great fit for the chains. Whereas boutique hotels tend to be high-priced, exclusive and urban, lifestyle hotels tend to be more reasonably priced, inclusive and accessible, located in secondary markets like small cities and suburbs.

The biggest challenge for the chains is fulfilling the promise of lifestyle hotels to keep current with traveler preferences. This can be exhausting—and expensive. Running a traditional hotel is far easier; you can maintain the same décor, employees and services for decades and pass them off as old-world charm. By nature the chains are slower to react because they have a lot of players to please. Let’s take a fictional chain, Guilty Pleasures Hotels & Resorts, for example, and say they’ve decided to roll out a signature scent. Hotel scents, a questionable trend in my mind—when I travel all I want to smell is lemon-scented disinfectant—are intended to round out the multi-sensory experience while subtly signaling to guests that they have arrived at their preferred hotel, they will never stay anywhere else, and they will spend lots of money.

Corporate office eventually settles on a scent that combines hints of jasmine, apple pie, whisky, opium and hundred-dollar bills. They dispatch samples to member properties and, of course, everyone hates it, particularly the manager of the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia property, where whisky is forbidden. He suggests oil as an alternative, which offends the manager of the chain’s eco resort in Montana. The debate goes on for months, until corporate office issues a decree that all hotels must use the scent or face expulsion. By then, however, travelers tastes have changed, and hotel scents have been found to be directly responsible for global warming.

When I joined Opus Hotel’s opening team in 2001, I came from a traditional hotel background and had no clue how to market a contemporary boutique hotel. Fortunately, by then a number of boutique hotels in other cities had gotten things terribly wrong, and I was able to learn from their mistakes. I wrote a manifesto for staff that specified the vocabulary we used to describe the hotel. Words like hip, sexy, cool and trendy were banned. If you use these words to describe yourself, you just aren’t.

Back then, all we had to work with were a few design boards, a chaotic construction site, and the ownership’s vision, which encompassed three key words: fresh, warm and sensual. From this we developed our mission statement and values and recruited a management team with classic luxury training who were entrepreneurial enough to adapt to a contemporary boutique environment. Today freshness, warmth and sensuality pervades every aspect of Opus, evoking not only the lifestyle preferences of our guests but the hotel’s soul.

Soul? Soul is an essential part of any hotel, and of lifestyle hotels in particular. It is everything abstract: personality, culture and spirit, that intangible feeling that prompts a guest to remark either “It just felt right” or “Something was missing.” Soul is often overlooked by hotel executives because we can’t see it, write it into an operating manual or charge a fee for it. Some hotels have all the right elements in place—beautiful design, quality amenities, competent service—but feel like the other definition of soul: the spirit of a dead person. Soul cannot be factory-produced or mass-marketed; more than anything it’s shaped by employees. By defining the hotel’s vision and values and using them to guide every decision, management develops the hotel’s culture and, over time, its soul evolves organically.

Will lifestyle hotels endure or be relegated to the garbage heap of overused and abused travel trends? Only time will tell. Regardless, given the stresses of our troubled economy and the headaches of modern travel, the timing couldn’t be better for a boom in hotels that contribute to travelers’ wellbeing by catering to lifestyle preferences.

Take the Lifestyle Concierge quiz and find out which of Opus Hotel’s five lifestyle-inspired décor schemes match your personality.

On July 9, Trilogy Properties Corporation, owner-operators of Opus Hotel in Vancouver and operators of Adara Hotel in Whistler, purchased Hotel Godin and re-flagged it Opus Montreal. Since I promised long ago to be a blogger not a flogger, I will resist the temptation to go on and on about this beautiful property, the fantastic staff, its ideal location. I’ll leave that to the website.

I know what you’re thinking. The irony hasn’t escaped me either that, after years of bashing hotel chains, I now work for one. This “chain” is only two hotels, but already I’ve caught myself uttering such odious phrases as “economies of scale” and “chain standards”. Not that hotel chains are evil. Some of my best friends work for them, and I myself have worked for several. They serve many critical functions. For example, they house drunken conventioneers wearing badges and silly hats so boutiques don’t have to. And they fill rooms with low-rated government business so we don’t have to either.

While the term “boutique chain” may sound like an oxymoron, there are a number of successful ones out there: Morgans, Thompson, Joie de Vivre and Kimpton to name a few. It’s not chains themselves that are the problem, but chain mentality. I have an inordinate fear of reporting to some over-caffeinated vice president at corporate office in some obscure state like, say, Delaware who considers herself an authority on all things hotel, yet has never actually worked in one, nor, evidently, even stayed in one. Terms like “chain conformity” also make me shudder. This involves head office issuing a decree that all hotels in the chain offer the same service—like, for example, using the same folksy, cliché-ridden guest welcome letter crafted by the president—regardless of whether it’s a chic urban hotel or a remote resort.

Of course, many travelers are scared of boutique hotels. And who can blame them, given some of the appalling ones out there. Some travelers want the predictability of a hotel chain, where it looks and feels like home no matter where they are in the world. These are the people you see in Paris dining at Burger King. Boutique travelers want surprises, as long as they’re pleasant. You’ll see them dining in some off-the-beaten-path, authentic café in St-Germain-des-Pres.

Does the fact that Opus is now plural mean that our fierce individualism, our irreverent, bad-ass spirit will be crushed? Hell no. The truth is, we’ve never actually been bad-ass. Perhaps a bit irreverent, but at heart most of us at Opus are somewhat conservative hoteliers. We understand that, above all, travelers want comfort, convenience, and intuitive service. In Vancouver and Montreal, Opus will offer this and more: a unique and special experience that reflects the local history and culture.

I’ve been traveling to Montreal a lot lately, and anyone who travels east on business will relate to the joys of traversing time zones. You lose an entire day flying. The lateness of your flight is directly correlated with the earliness of your morning meeting. Your luggage takes forever to arrive, and it’s a very tense time because everyone carries the same black suitcase and you’re certain that pushy lady with the bad perm made off with yours. The taxi queue rivals the line at the passport office. If you’re lucky, you get to the hotel by midnight, which is okay because it’s only 9:00 pm back home. Except you can’t sleep. At all. Even with medication. You muddle through the next day in a jet-lagged, overmedicated, sleep-deprived haze. Finally, 6:00 pm arrives. Your day is over. Except a barrage of frantic emails from back home ensues, chaining you to your computer until their workday is over, three hours later. When you finally do adjust to local time, it’s time to fly home, where you suffer the same trauma in reverse.

While in Montreal I’ve been living in the hotel, which sounds glamorous, and sometimes it is. Hotels are magical places, staffed by super-friendly people who open doors for you, call you sir, and make your bed way better than you ever could. I love having my own little shampoo containers and jam jars. But a certain degree of privacy is sacrificed. On Tuesday my “wakeup call” was delivered by an irate guest screaming into my phone about a mishap at check-in.

Language is more formal in Montreal. In my capacity as acting general manager I’ve been introducing myself to staff like a typical westerner: “Hi! I’m Dan.” Yet when they introduce me it’s, “Je vous présente Monsieur Daniel Craig, le directeur general.” This makes me feel exceptionally important, wealthy, and, inexplicably, taller. I’m considering insisting on the same introduction in Vancouver, perhaps with “par excellence” thrown in for good measure. But I’m a little nervous about how it will be received.

Speaking of which, what is it that compels certain hotel managers to act like royalty? Over the years I’ve observed them prancing about their hotels, expecting employees to fall at their feet in their presence, seeming to relish the terror they strike in their hearts. Did we go back to the 18th century and no one told me? “That little minion didn’t curtsy when I passed—off with her head!” Shouldn’t managers want staff to expend this time and energy fussing over guests?

In my world, good hotel management boils down to one word: respect. Earned respect, not ordained respect. Treat everyone with respect—guests, staff, colleagues, owners, suppliers, that perky saleslady who’s called you five times this week, and, yes, even that high-strung VP in Delaware—and they will respect you. Humility is also essential. Guests and staff must always come first. If it has to be about you, consider a career in show business. Add hard work to the mix—as Thomas Edison said, there is no substitute for hard work—, integrity, and a bit of luck, and you have the recipe for success, whether you work for a five-star hotel, a roadside motel, a chain or an independent.

These are the values we’ll be bringing to Opus Montreal. We look forward to seeing you there. A la prochaine.