The Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa strives to maintain the same great service
and amenities from its days as a Ritz-Carlton.
Dignitaries and attendees take part during the March 7 unveiling of the Eau Palm Beach’s new sign.
Guests relax in the lobby as they check out some of the resort’s offerings.
Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
INSET BELOW: The beach bag and flip-flops that each resort guest receives.
By Steve Pike
The Palm Beach estate-style lobby basically is the same. The restaurants have the same names — Angle and Temple Orange — and Eau Spa remains one of the world’s great luxury spas. But dig a little deeper at Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa in Manalapan and you’ll find a greater wealth of guest experiences and awareness than when the 309-guest-room hotel operated as The Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach.
At least that’s what John Bradway, Eau Palm Beach director of marketing, hopes guests will find. Bradway came to the beachfront property in August and has been hard at work ever since, building the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa brand.
The hotel ownership group — RC/PB Inc. — de-flagged the hotel as a Ritz-Carlton property in July after a long dispute with Ritz-Carlton parent Marriott International.
The hotel was renamed Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa — the name coming from its 42,000-square-foot Eau Spa, which is recognized as one of the top spa brands in the world.
“The spa did build some credibility in the property, but ultimately my job is to get (guests) loyal to the Eau brand,’’ Bradway said. “We’ve put together a comprehensive sales-and-marketing program and we’re advertising throughout the Northeast in newspapers, on TV and in lifestyle publications. And we’ve launched a new website.’’
That’s all great, but in the world of luxury hotels and resorts, brand loyalty plays a major role. Guests often are loyal to one hotel brand — for example, the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons or St. Regis. Taking away a favorite hotel brand is akin to taking away their favorite flavor of ice cream and replacing it with another.
“We’ve converted so many people’’ who were concerned about the management change, Bradway said. “All we say is, ‘Come give us a try.’ It’s about getting people through the front door. Once they see the improvements we’ve made and the place hasn’t (visually) changed dramatically, they like it.
“A big part, too, is that 92 percent of the staff stayed on. People are loyal to brands, but they’re also loyal to service and loyal to people.’’
It also helped that Bradway knows the Palm Beach luxury market, having spent 14 years at The Breakers Palm Beach, where his roles included assistant club operations manager, director of reservations, director of strategic marketing and, ultimately, director of innovation. Bradway also served as director of marketing at Round Hill Hotel & Villas in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and most recently was senior director of brand management at Denihan Hospitality Group in Manhattan, a family-owned hotel company with a portfolio of 14 hotels.
“The opportunity to come back to Palm Beach, where I started my career and launch a new brand was something I couldn’t resist,’’ Bradway said. “We’re building all new marketing programs from scratch. The previous marketing (under the Ritz-Carlton flag) was all outsourced. Now, being an independent hotel, everything is done internally.’’
That’s where the deeper guest experiences come in. For example, each guest receives a beach bag with flip-flops; a Keurig coffee maker in each room and an Illy espresso maker in the suites and a new Mediterranean breakfast buffet.
Each guest receives a wet-bathing-suit pouch the night before departure for swimming the day of departure; and the lobby “turndown’’ at 5:30 p.m. daily features more than 100 candles and a toast to what Bradway calls “the new-fashioned” Palm Beach.
“It’s a new way of positioning Palm Beach so it’s not the old, traditional kind people expect,” Bradway said. “We put the emphasis on the unexpected.’’
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