Hotel Management — March 2012
Change Language:
The New GM
Hyatt 48 Lex’s
mark wagner
Hyatt veteran leads a boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan
To prepare for the opening of the 116-room Hyatt 48 Lex, GM Mark Wagner spent many sleepless nights executing his vision for the flagship boutique hotel.
“I started here in January 2011, working with Hersha Hospitality Management to open this hotel,” Wagner said. “I’ve helped open hotels but once the doors were opened, I’d go back to my hotel. This is the first time I got to see it all [the way through].”
While it wasn’t Wagner’s first opportunity to open a hotel, it was the first time in his career he stayed on in a management role.
“It’s a stressful time,” he said. “You wake up in the middle of the night asking, ‘What did I miss? What didn’t I order?’”
For Wagner, who was raised in Los Angeles, a career in hospitality emerged from one of his earliest jobs. “I was working as a bellman and doorman at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego during college,” he said. From there, he decided to go into Hyatt’s corporate management program.
The chance to experience each department of hotel management proved to be an inspirational period for Wagner. “It was a rotational program back then. I had nine months to learn the operational facets of the entire hotel,” he said of his training at the Hyatt Regency at Embarcadero.
Wagner has worked at a variety of hotels for Hyatt over the course of his 14-year career with the company, including a challenging stint at the Hyatt Regency Dearborn in Michigan during the early years of the recession.
Prior to his stint in Michigan, Wagner worked at several Hyatt properties in New York City.
“The large part of working at different hotels in the same city is understanding the product you’re selling,” he explained. “Hotel size is also important. When you go from a big 1,300-room hotel to a small 250-room boutique, it’s a challenge. Everyone views those big hotels as great experience for young managers, but whenever I promote someone I send them to a small hotel first.”
His time in Michigan, in 2007 and 2008, brought economy-driven challenges in a market that was already suffering.
“It was a beautiful hotel that ran at very low occupancy because it was right in Dearborn,” he said. “We had a Ritz-Carlton right next door as well. The market drove maybe 60 percent occupancy for the year and that’s when things weren’t going so well.”
Compared to his years working in New York, Wagner’s time in Michigan tested a different set of management skills. “The people I worked with were amazing, it was just so difficult because every year you negotiate your accounts and you’re looking for incremental growth,” he said. “There it was quite the opposite. We were actually trying to negotiate just to keep rates at the same level.”
Wagner said the next Hyatt working off the same boutique model as his current property is under development by Hersha in Manhattan’s Union Square, but will feature a different layout than the Hyatt 48 Lex, which offers a Lexicon Lounge area on the second floor adjacent to meeting space. “You have to know who your audience is, who’s in the neighborhood and who your going to cater to,” he said. “We have four boardrooms we knew were going to be highly sought after by the few blocks around us.
“It’s a new product for Hyatt, a Hyatt standalone,” he said. “It is something you will see more of from Hyatt, taking on more of a neighborhood feel that will cater to its surroundings, as opposed to being the same hotel in every place.”
mark wagner
Hyatt veteran leads a boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan
To prepare for the opening of the 116-room Hyatt 48 Lex, GM Mark Wagner spent many sleepless nights executing his vision for the flagship boutique hotel.
“I started here in January 2011, working with Hersha Hospitality Management to open this hotel,” Wagner said. “I’ve helped open hotels but once the doors were opened, I’d go back to my hotel. This is the first time I got to see it all [the way through].”
While it wasn’t Wagner’s first opportunity to open a hotel, it was the first time in his career he stayed on in a management role.
“It’s a stressful time,” he said. “You wake up in the middle of the night asking, ‘What did I miss? What didn’t I order?’”
For Wagner, who was raised in Los Angeles, a career in hospitality emerged from one of his earliest jobs. “I was working as a bellman and doorman at the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego during college,” he said. From there, he decided to go into Hyatt’s corporate management program.
The chance to experience each department of hotel management proved to be an inspirational period for Wagner. “It was a rotational program back then. I had nine months to learn the operational facets of the entire hotel,” he said of his training at the Hyatt Regency at Embarcadero.
Wagner has worked at a variety of hotels for Hyatt over the course of his 14-year career with the company, including a challenging stint at the Hyatt Regency Dearborn in Michigan during the early years of the recession.
Prior to his stint in Michigan, Wagner worked at several Hyatt properties in New York City.
“The large part of working at different hotels in the same city is understanding the product you’re selling,” he explained. “Hotel size is also important. When you go from a big 1,300-room hotel to a small 250-room boutique, it’s a challenge. Everyone views those big hotels as great experience for young managers, but whenever I promote someone I send them to a small hotel first.”
His time in Michigan, in 2007 and 2008, brought economy-driven challenges in a market that was already suffering.
“It was a beautiful hotel that ran at very low occupancy because it was right in Dearborn,” he said. “We had a Ritz-Carlton right next door as well. The market drove maybe 60 percent occupancy for the year and that’s when things weren’t going so well.”
Compared to his years working in New York, Wagner’s time in Michigan tested a different set of management skills. “The people I worked with were amazing, it was just so difficult because every year you negotiate your accounts and you’re looking for incremental growth,” he said. “There it was quite the opposite. We were actually trying to negotiate just to keep rates at the same level.”
Wagner said the next Hyatt working off the same boutique model as his current property is under development by Hersha in Manhattan’s Union Square, but will feature a different layout than the Hyatt 48 Lex, which offers a Lexicon Lounge area on the second floor adjacent to meeting space. “You have to know who your audience is, who’s in the neighborhood and who your going to cater to,” he said. “We have four boardrooms we knew were going to be highly sought after by the few blocks around us.
“It’s a new product for Hyatt, a Hyatt standalone,” he said. “It is something you will see more of from Hyatt, taking on more of a neighborhood feel that will cater to its surroundings, as opposed to being the same hotel in every place.”
Message