THE HOTEL OF THE FUTURE
Ron McAnaugh, an area general manager for Marriott International Inc. whose properties include the new JW Marriott, sees more restaurants that cater to locals and hybrid meetings ahead for hotel properties.

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 22, 2021

Even in the darkest days of 2020, Ron McAnaugh had a lot to look forward to. McAnaugh, who’s been with hospitality giant Marriott International Inc. for nearly 40 years, counts the newly built JW Marriott among the properties in his jurisdiction. He’s an area manager for Marriott; beyond the JW Tampa and Tampa Marriott Water Street, he oversees the Westin Cape Coral, The Vinoy in downtown St. Petersburg, Tampa Airport Marriott and the Renaissance Tampa International Plaza. When it’s built, the Edition Tampa will also be under his purview.

While the pandemic raged, construction continued on the 26-story JW, which was developed by Strategic Property Partners. SPP is the developer of Water Street Tampa and controlled by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ investment fund, Cascade Investment LLC. The 519-room Marriott, complete with two new restaurants, opened just before Christmas and is set to be the host hotel for Super Bowl LV, which will be played at Raymond James Stadium on Feb. 7.

McAnaugh spoke with the Business Journal about opening a hotel in a pandemic and what’s kept him in hospitality since the early 1980s.

The JW Marriott’s been open for a few weeks. How’s it going? Good, very good. There’s still some work to be finished; when you have that big of a building, the punch list is pretty long. Until you get in and start working, you don’t know what needs to be tweaked. We don’t have as much group business as we would like, of course, but the group business we are getting is around sports, and there’s more work to it. [The Toronto Raptors, which are playing at Amalie Arena to avoid Covid-19 travel restrictions in Canada, are housed in the hotel and converted fourth floor meeting space to a practice facility.]

They need more space, and there are more restrictions, so it takes a lot more resources to deliver on their expectations. But I’m not complaining because without them — virtually all the group business is from the basketball and hockey teams.

What’s been the most surprising thing about opening the JW? The sixth floor restaurant has been very popular, and it took off right away. At the Raptors’ first home game — it was surprising how many people found it and were able to enjoy it. The locals are finding it; I’ve talked to quite a few Channel district and downtown residents eating there.

You’ve been with Marriott for almost 40 years, and I have to assume the last year has been the toughest. How are you feeling now, at the dawn of 2021? Well, that’s a good point. I’ve opened a few hotels but opening one in a pandemic added a whole new dimension in terms of the unknown of the labor force. You’d think with the pandemic and number of people who lost their jobs we’d have had lines of people and that really wasn’t the case. We found what we needed, but the number of people who applied was much lighter than we thought it would be.

Will Covid result in any permanent changes to the hotel industry? I think we’ll have lessons learned as it relates to sanitation, which is all good. There’s no doubt it created awareness, whether it’s Covid or flu or whatever it may be, it’s important that sanitation practices are thorough. I also think organizations will be streamlined. We’ve streamlined our organization.

Meetings, I don’t know where we’ll go. More socially distant? That may be the case. I think customers are going to be apprehensive about packing the rooms like they used to. I think there will be some of that. And no matter what, corporate America is going to come back slower with the number of people they send to meetings.

I think we’ll see more hybrid meetings. There’ll be a virtual component as part of it, regardless. So let’s be honest — the people putting on meetings, depending on the group type, they can still achieve revenue by charging people to be part of the meeting even if they’re not there. Our buildings are built fairly strong from a IT perspective so we have a great bandwidth to connect people. That’s part of the beauty of being new.

What are your thoughts on the shifting of hotel bars and restaurants to become destinations for locals? At the Marriott, when we were redoing Anchor & Brine, our No. 1 target audience was locals. We know the guests are going to see it and if it’s relevant, they’ll stop and have a drink. They’re easy to capture. The locals, you have to work for it. We used to build hotels with big barriers that were unwelcoming to people. We have to take down the barriers. You want people to not even realize they walked into a hotel – you want them to feel like they walked in to a bar that’s attached to a hotel. With the bartenders and the right service team, it’s like the “Cheers” thing. Everybody wants to go where everybody knows your name.

What’s kept you with Marriott all this time? They let me. Ha ha ha, no. I’ve worked with the company 37 years, but I’ve had the opportunity to work at 10 hotels, roughly, and every time it’s almost like a new job, but I always know somebody. We’re a big company, but we’re a small company in some ways. It’s allowed me to — I don’t want to say reinvent myself — but challenge myself by going and doing new things.

Will the Edition be a totally new experience for you? [The Edition Tampa includes 172 hotel rooms and 37 condos]. I worked at a hotel that had an ownership portion, meaning every room was owned by someone. But this condo portion will be different. There's not a lot of owners, and I'm not sure what the percentage of absentee owners will be, but it’ll be fun. When we get a guest that stays for a super long time, I typically get to know them. It’s like our marina guests who keep their boats with us.

It becomes a different relationship. It’s a friendship in some ways. It’s rewarding when you build those kind of relationships and are able to deliver against them.

What's it been like to watch Water Street rise around you? I hadn’t walked much, to be honest, up by the Edition in a few months. I was over there last month in the Edition, doing some tweaks to the spa and some other things with SPP, and I was just amazed to see what all is up already. When you see the residential, it is just first class. I never thought I was an apartment or condo person, but I may be. These are pretty slick. We’re down here in this corner and we’re much more developed but when you get up there it looks like a mini city coming up.