Two of Orange County’s premium oceanfront resorts are seeing changes—and not just physical.
Montage Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach’s Waterfront Hilton Beach Resort have both wrapped large renovations this year; valued at more than $150 million combined.
Now the heavy lifting in terms of operational changes begins.
Two female general managers are leading the charge: one was among the first employees at her hotel; the other is the first female GM in her luxe hotel company’s 16-year history.
Both oversaw long-planned, large-scale renovations in the past year that added amenities that were aimed to bring a more boutique, independent vibe to their respective branded hotel properties.
Montage’s Anne-Marie Houston calls herself “fortunate” to “work for a brand … open to creativity.”
Waterfront’s Paulette Fischer said, “Customers are looking for properties with a more residential feel.”
Work Parties
Renovations at the properties include spa upgrades, especially at Waterfront Hilton. It opened its new 8,000-square-foot Drift Spa in October, wrapping up a three-year renovation that began with the addition of a new tower where rooms run about $300 a night.
The expansion was the largest change for the hotel since it opened in 1990, Fischer said.
She said hotel owner Robert Mayer Corp. in Irvine gave execs “a lot of autonomy” on the changes, from offering annual $4,600 memberships at the spa—aimed at the local market—to decorating anew each month a large, selfie-friendly Adirondack chair in the lobby.
Public and private spaces got a multi-million dollar makeover at the Montage, where room nights average around $700. New spa elements range from sustainable to superfluous—a diamond facial, for example.
As hotel guests become more savvy and shy away from experiences they’ve already had, Fischer and Houston have their work cut out for them in terms of amping up the originality and wow factor.
High Rise
Waterfront Hilton was among the first hotels in Huntington Beach, one element of local hospitality visionary Robert Mayer Sr.’s decades-long contributions to remaking the city’s beachfront.
Fischer checked the first guest in nearly 30 years ago.
“It was my first job right out of high school.”
She grew up around hotels here and in Hawaii—her mom was in the industry in Maui—and Fischer considered it “dynamic, interesting … work [that] became my biggest passion.”
She worked her way up through every department and was named GM in 2014.
Her favorite part of the job has always been the front desk interaction with customers that she experienced in her first position at the hotel; she said she tries to remain involved at the front desk, and has frequent contact with many of the resort’s repeat customers.
Her job now regularly requires focusing on the bigger picture—and a view from two towers—at a resort with 441 rooms and suites and averaging 75% occupancy.
Challenges can be expansive—“not being able to accomplish as much as I would like”—to the down-and-dirty: keeping the hotel open and profitable over 36 months of major upheaval.
The biggest component was the new nine-story, 151-room tower that opened in 2018, a $140 million project that accounted for a third of the 445 new hotel rooms added in OC last year.
“It was a huge undertaking to operate the hotel as if there wasn’t construction going on,” she said. “Our employees had to get very creative.”
This included window graphics and rolling hedges as barriers to obscure views of the ongoing work.
Two Towers
Plans are already underway for another renovation—a revamp of the older, 290-room first tower that runs 12floors —and two new restaurants are opening at the resort in the next two months.
The property also has 36,000 square feet of meeting space.
Fischer is hiring—staffing is at about 600 now—and “gearing up for our busiest season.”
It’s a hands-on style that resonates with those workers and leads to higher retention than hospitality is known for, said Gen Waiton, the resort’s director of human resources. She joined the hotel after graduating from California State University-Fullerton with “no intention of staying there.”
That changed “under Paulette’s leadership and mentorship,” she said.
“Paulette was director of rooms … we would work the Saturday morning front desk shift together,” Waiton said. “I have so much respect for her … her joy for her work is contagious.”
Chocolate Spin
Houston also leads close to 600 employees at Irvine based Montage International’s flagship property, in Laguna Beach.
She joined as resort manager in 2017 and was named GM of the 248-room resort in May, after a career at high-end resort locales on four continents, including stops at properties in Thailand and Dubai.
Since going local she’s developed a few OC habits: a workday starts with hot chocolate at the Montage, made from the produce of a cacao plantation in the Dominican Republic.
As befits the hot chocolate habit, she favors the food and beverage department’s “creativity and passion.”
Weekends take a different pace.
“I start the day with a triple set of spin classes at Soul Cycle,” Houston said—another touchpoint with Fischer, also a spinning devotee.
Details
As Houston shows off Montage’s multimillion dollar renovation that wrapped last month, her attention to detail is clear: she spends as much time explaining the new bathrobes as the new lobby.
“Attention is critical to our collective success,” she said. This attention reaches outside the hotel: she’s been known to personally respond to customers on Yelp.
Her employment of the “sustainability” mantra goes resortwide—sugar cane cardboard, bamboo toothbrushes, less single-use plastic—and extends to employees: nurturing new leaders for Montage.
The parent company’s luxe Montage brand and lifestyle Pendry Hotels unit are growing, with a dozen open or in development from Hawaii to New York and Montana to Mexico.
Luxe Lucre
Montage and Waterfront resort both made spa investments a critical part of their revamps.
The latter has never had a spa; next-door neighbors Hyatt Regency and Paséa both do.
“We felt it was incredibly important,” she said, “and it has been extremely popular since it opened in October.”
Montage’s 20,000-square-foot spa has been a fixture for the resort. New additions include partnerships with skincare companies Tata Harper and Valmont.
Spas do more than give resorts bragging rights: CBRE Hotels forecasts revenue per available room decelerating from about 3% last year to roughly flat by 2021; bolstering luxe spa options—a massage can run $400—bolsters bottom lines.
