Montage Hotels & Resorts is serious about spas. While having a spa is now a must for any high-end operator, for Montage it’s much more says the group’s vice-president James Bermingham: “We look at spas as being core to the fundamental beliefs and attributes of the brand.”

The management company part owns and operates three sites in the US – in Laguna Beach, California; Deer Valley, Park City, Utah; and Beverly Hills also in California. It was set up by the 35-year hotel veteran Alan J Fuerstman, and a group of undisclosed investors, in 2002 to serve top tier affluent travellers. The group’s growth has been purposefully slow and considered. Each resort has been built from the ground up to create a distinctive offer with spacious accommodation.

Meticulous thought has also gone into the development of Montage’s spas, including an ongoing, extensive 264-hour training programme for its therapists. It’s a worthwhile investment, according to Bermingham: “the spas generate millions in revenues and pretty extraordinary profitability levels too.”

So, what makes the resorts and company stand out and why are spas so crucial?

Prime location
Having been in the hospitality industry for 28 years, Bermingham is no stranger to high-end hotels and has covered varied roles in F&B, rooms, operations and sales. He began his career at the Clarence Hotel in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland – “I worked for the summer and fell in love with the business”, he says – before working for Sheraton in London and transferring to North America.

Bermingham met Fuerstman at the St Regis, Houston where he was general manager and Fuerstman was an area manager for ITT Sheraton’s Luxury Collection. He went on to become opening vice-president of hotel operations for Mirage’s Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi and then general manager at the acclaimed Latham Hotel in Washington DC. Then in 2002, Fuerstman approached Bermingham to take on the role of general manager at Montage’s first property in Laguna Beach. “It was a wonderful opportunity to start a new company and brand,” says Bermingham.

He feels that site location is part of the group’s winning formula. “Montage is keenly focused on extraordinary destinations and great locations within those. Alan [Fuerstman] is very disciplined and patient. He’s turned down many more projects than he’s completed. Our selection criteria is that we want a Montage in proven luxury destinations where very high average rates are achieved. Within that destination we want one of the top three locations, if not the single best.”

Each property is then a reflection of that location in its architecture, art, design, food, spa and services. “This is a significant differentiator,” says Bermingham. “Our emphasis on luxury is different as we focus on the spirit of place and discovery so that even loyal guests find something new whether it’s a beach (summer), mountain (winter) or the urban excitement of Los Angeles. And I think Spa Montage is just a wonderful example of all of those brand attributes.”

As each site has been purpose-built, Montage has had the opportunity – and luxury – of planning the spas into prime locations within the properties. At Laguna Beach, this means being positioned on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, while in Deer Valley you’ll be sitting in a hot tub looking down a valley with some of the most beautiful mountain scenery you’ll ever see.

“Although they’re different from each other in design and architecture, all three spas are breathtakingly beautiful,” says Bermingham. “They’re also extraordinary in scope and scale – in Montage Beverly Hills the spa covers 19,000sq ft (1,765sq m) and is spread over two levels which is almost unheard of in an urban location. Then in Laguna and Deer Valley they’re even larger.”

Comfortable luxury
Another standout feature is that while all three Montage resorts are positioned as ultra-luxurious, they manage to deliver this in a subtle, almost casual way. “We’re not as large in scale as the great luxury brands out there, but Alan saw this an opportunity to create a residential feel,” explains Bermingham. “We believe passionately that regardless of the purpose of your visit, you should be comfortable – whether you’re in one of our lobby lounges in a ball gown or just coming back from the beach wearing your shorts and flip flops. And that means personalisation and the very highest levels of service, amenities and programming.”

In the spas, for example, bespoke touches are key. Each has a product dispensary where creams and oils based on the natural Spa Technologies line can be custom blended, often using indigenous ingredients, for each customer for use in professional treatments and for retail. In addition, the signature service Surrender is a 120-minute treatment where therapists prescribe a series of modalities according to a person’s physical needs, stresses and strains. Notably, this high-end offering comes with a matching top line us$455 (€364, £291) price tag.

Ultimately, however, the real difference comes down to service. Bermingham says: “You have to be very careful when you offer comfortable luxury that the service doesn’t become casual. There’s still a formality that’s required, as well as humility, passion and graciousness and that’s a powerful combination. Yet that’s why it’s so important to pick the right characters [in associates].”

Montage prefers to hire staff from the surrounding areas of resorts – “it’s one of the most effective ways of creating that spirit of place” – and initially looks for key traits in people including being naturally respectful, humble, passionate and having great integrity and an appetite for learning.

“We have such a powerful training programme at Montage that once we find the right character in an individual, we can then teach them the technical skills,” says Bermingham. To this end, the company separates out training from the normal human resources division. Each property has a trainer in every department, a director of learning for each hotel who reports into the general manager and an overall corporate director of learning who has a direct line to Bermingham. “It’s designed this way because we truly want to create a learning environment and to deliver brand consistency in terms of the service experience.”

The focus on training is particularly evident in the spas in the Montage portfolio. From day one, the company teamed up with the American Spa Therapy Education and Certification Council (ASTECC) – recently renamed the Advanced Spa Therapy Education and Certification Council – under the guidance of spa therapist, teacher and consultant Anne Bramham (see p35) who also helped to develop the treatment programme and the recruitment process.

“Anne Bramham is one of the shining lights of the spa world,” says Bermingham. “Her holistic approach to wellness is very much aligned with ours and her expertise, authenticity and commitment is unlike anybody else’s I’ve seen outside of Spa Montage. She is a very important part of what we do.”

Montage was one of the first spa operators to offer personalised treatments with its signature Surrender programme. Special training courtesy of ASTECC’s 240-hour (now 264-hour) postgraduate programme equipped staff with the necessary skills to offer the customised guest programmes, which also gave the company a competitive advantage. Significantly, just three years after its 2002 opening, Spa Montage Laguna became the first spa ever to be awarded five stars from the Mobil Travel Guide (now known as the Forbes Travel Guide) and many more accolades have followed.

Bermingham says: “I’m afraid to think about what we spend on spa training for fear that we’ll stop doing it! But that’s what helps us to deliver customer loyalty and great financial returns so I see it as less of a cost and much more as an investment.”

Demand generator
But just what does Spa Montage deliver in business terms? While Bermingham won’t disclose exact figures, he does say: “there’s a very compelling economic reason why we elevate spa to the level we do, because it drives revenue and profitability in addition to being a very important part of the overall experience. As a sub-brand of Montage it’s very well-known and highly respected.

“First and foremost, however, it’s a big demand generator – not only from a guestroom perspective but in drawing in local business. Alan strongly believes that if you want to create a world-class brand your community needs to rave about you.”

It’s for this reason, says Bermingham, that the amount of local business is regarded as one of the most important key performance indicators in the spas. On average, 40 per cent of spa customers are day spa visitors from the surrounding regions with the rest made up of hotel guests. Similarly, just over 80 per cent of Montage resort customers overall are from the US. Bermingham adds: “We were very much off the international radar when we first opened, but now it’s very much there.”

In fact, Bermingham isn’t ruling out international expansion and cites London as one of the most important cities outside of the US. Domestically, New York, Washington DC and Miami are markets the company is most interested in.

Elsewhere, in Los Cabos, Mexico, Montage already has a plot of land “where the desert meets the ocean” for development. The plan is to build a full-service resort there, complete with a Spa Montage, at some point but for now work is on hold. Bermingham explains: “The Mexican economy has struggled a bit more than others. But also there are many more new opportunities for conversions and refocusing on existing buildings and we’ve never ruled out this kind of investment, it just so happens that our first three properties were new builds.

“The good news is that the luxury consumer and traveller is back. And as long as we continue to select new Montage projects in compelling destinations, in great locations and in creating a sense of place, comfortable luxury and highly personalised service then we’ll be in great shape.”

To read our mystery shop review of the spa at Montage Laguna Beach see Spa Business 2005, issue 3, p102.