Monday, Nov. 15, 1999 | 11:16 a.m.
The Four Seasons hotel at Mandalay Bay has won the first five-diamond rating in Las Vegas history from the American Automobile Association.
The prestigious rating has been awarded to only 58 lodging properties in the country this year, and 18 of them are Four Seasons hotels.
The Mandalay Bay Four Seasons, which opened in March, is also the first to achieve a five-diamond rating in less than a year of operations.
"My first reaction is that it's a great honor for all the employees who really made it happen," said Randy Morton, general manager of the 424-room, nongaming hotel situated within the Mandalay Bay resort complex.
"It really comes down to a service award, and fortunately we met and exceeded Triple A's standards," he said.
Triple A inspectors made three unannounced visits to the Mandalay Bay Four Seasons from May through August, checking in without identifying themselves as researchers for the award.
"They really experienced the hotel as fully and completely as any normal Four Seasons guests," Morton said.
Mandalay Bay is owned by Mandalay Resort Group Inc., which began building the massive resort complex at the south end of the Strip when it was still known as Circus Circus Enterprises Inc.
The company changed its name earlier this year to capitalize on the popularity of its newest resort and signal a shift in its overall marketing emphasis away from the lower end of the casino gaming market and toward higher-end customers seeking a wider entertainment-based experience.
"It was really the vision of the Mandalay Resort Group to bring in Four Seasons and integrate it into the hotel complex," Morton said. Four Seasons operates its 424 rooms and suites and its restaurants autonomously and receives a management fee for its efforts.
The Four Seasons had a few of the early glitches that characterize any new resort opening, most of them because of unexpected high demand from customers eager to sample the offerings of the high-end hotel operator.
"We'd scheduled a soft opening as part of our original strategy," Morton said. "We brought in 158 Four Seasons employees from other properties to help instill the company's culture and standards in those we hired from the local work force.
"We wanted to provide the same level of service you'd expect from a Four Seasons in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Hawaii."
Since August the hotel has been running at capacity. But it's still aiming at developing relationships with local customers.
"One of our goals in social catering is to heavily market our capabilities for weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate meetings and other events," he said. "We've also had a lot of Nevada residents who want to stay with us and experience something different on the Strip."
Neither Triple A nor Mobil, which issues five-star ratings, had designated a Nevada hotel for its top honor before today. Triple A added two other Four Seasons -- one in Atlanta and the Aviara resort in Carlsbad, Calif. -- to its list of five-diamond winners. The luxury chain now has a record 18 hotels on the list.
Triple A inspectors judge service, amenities and ambience in rating winners. Size counts, though in an inverse manner: Big Strip resorts with 3,000 or so rooms have a tough time competing in the service category with smaller, more intimate hotels.
Bellagio, the $1.6 billion Mirage Resorts Inc. hotel-casino that set the standard for high-end elegance among Strip resorts, hasn't received the top ratings from either Triple A nor Mobil. Nor has the smaller Desert Inn, whose owner Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has a couple of hotels on the Triple A list, including the St. Regis in New York.
Mirage Resorts' Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas has received four-diamond awards from Triple A and four-star awards from Mobil.
Lodging analysts consider Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels Inc. the world's top operator of deluxe resorts. The company operates 44 hotels with more than 13,000 rooms, and has 18 more projects with 4,000-plus rooms under development.
About 60 percent of its room inventory is in North America, but expansion abroad -- more than 75 percent of the rooms under development are overseas -- will give the company geographic diversity that should protect it from slumps in any one area, analysts say.
The company owns the Four Seasons Vancouver, the Pierre in New York and the Four Seasons Hotel in Berlin and holds minority interests in nine others. It derives a large portion of its revenue from management fees.
Founded by hotelier Isadore Sharp in 1960, the company "has established itself as the premier luxury hotel brand in the world," according to a recent analysis by Bear Stearns & Co.
"In our view, it has achieved the same level of status that the Mercedes brand enjoys in automobiles and that the Cartier name enjoys in fine jewelry," Bear Stearns said.
"By consistently exceeding guests' expectations of service and value for the price paid, Four Seasons has cultivated a strong core of loyal repeat customers.
"While luxurious and well-appointed, the physical characteristics of a Four Seasons hotel are not demonstrably better than those provided by many other luxury hotels," the investment firm said.
"It's distinguishing characteristic is its ability to universally and consistently deliver service. This is what built the brand and is what gives the brand value."
Three years ago Four Seasons signed an agreement with the Carlson Cos. to increase distribution of Four Season's Regent Brand. The deal called for Four Seasons to earn a third of the franchise fees Carlson gets for new Regent hotels, including the new Resort at Summerlin in Las Vegas.
Four Seasons reported a 21.8 percent jump in net income for the third quarter, fueled largely by strong revenue per available room growth in the United States and Asia.
Credit Suisse First Boston lodging analysts expect the company to maintain strong growth through the end of next year, and to benefit from the openings of new Four Seasons hotels in Scottsdale, Ariz.; London; Paris; Dublin, Ireland; Caracas, Venezuela; and Cairo and Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, over the next 14 months.
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