Striving to be best of brand is Eastons Group approach

Steve Gupta, president and CEO of Easton’s Group of Hotels

MARKHAM, ON—Recession or no recession, Steve Gupta, president and CEO of Easton’s Group of Hotels Inc. has opened or rebranded three hotels in the past six months and plans to grow his company from 10 to 14 hotels in the next two years.

In March, Easton’s opened a Hilton Garden Inn at King and Peter Streets in the Toronto entertainment district. The hotel has 224 suites including 56 special rooms with Jacuzzis and six-jet showers, plus 3,000 square feet of meeting space.

Another Hilton Garden Inn celebrated its opening in late July. This one is a former Comfort “This hotel is history-making,” Gupta told CLN in an interview. “It was the old RCMP headquarters at Dundas and Jarvis. For seven years, it was abandoned but the government was still paying heating, cooling and maintenance. Many developers — I think the number is 57 — tried to buy it over the years. I made the deal in 15 minutes. I converted the building into a Comfort Suites, but I had in mind that I would one day make it a Hilton.”

The lobby of the new downtown Toronto Hilton Garden Inn housed in what was once the RCMP Headquarters

Then in mid-August, Easton’s opened their third Hilton Garden Inn in six months, at Dixie and Eglinton not far from Toronto airport.

Plans for next two years

But there’s more.

Gupta plans a Courtyard by Marriott with 122 rooms and a waterslide to open in Kingston off Highway 401 in December or January. The hotel is part of a fashion outlet mall, situated at one end of a u-shaped complex, with a Boston Pizza on the other end.
Next year in June or July, Easton’s plans to open Ontario’s first Marriott SpringHill Suites in Vaughan, Ontario.

“This is a state-of-the-art contemporary style Generation 5 hotel — the first of the new generation in Canada. It’s a crossover brand between Residence Inn and Courtyard, with an average room size of almost 450 square feet, and a spa-type bathroom with separate sitting area,” he said, adding that a traditional Marriott SpringHill Suites is now open in Montreal.

A Generation 5 guest room is almost 15 feet by 12 feet, complete with a fridge, microwave and bar cabinet, Gupta said. The bathroom runs the complete length of one side of the room. The toilet is in a separate area with a small hand sink. There is a separate vanity, and separate shower, all of them with furniture finishes. The doors are stained wood, rather than standard painted doors. A mirror over mirror with lighting built in behind makes the bathroom more spa-like and high end. There are some rooms with bathtubs—mainly for families—he added.

Gupta also plans to open a Homewood Suites by Hilton in the same Highway 400 and Highway 7 area in fall 2010. And the 14th Easton’ s Group hotel will be a Residence Inn by Marriott slated for Ottawa in 2011.

“We are looking in Calgary and Edmonton and have some things in the works that may go ahead simultaneously,” he added.

“Over the past four or five years, interest rates have been dramatically low, attracting ‘new’ developers who came in to develop some limited service hotels. Now with the credit crunch or tightness of credit, they are all finding a hard time to carry on. Stronger developers with personal relationships with banks or financial institutions will be the only ones building,” Gupta said.

“In Canada we had the 60s and 70s when only a few full-service hotels were built in the downtowns of major cities. Downtown land is very expensive. In today’s market, it is very difficult to build full service hotels because the cost is outrageous.”

That’s why Easton’s is working with limited or focused service, upper mid-scale brands such as Courtyard by Marriott, Residence Inn and Hilton Garden Inns.

“We took those brands and moved them a couple of notches up,” striving to make their hotels the best in the system. For example, the Courtyard brand normally has 2,000 square feet of meeting space—but the Easton’s Courtyard in Brampton, Ontario has 6,000. “It’s almost a full service hotel—it offers the same facilities as a full service hotel at a mid-scale price,” Gupta said.

It’s an approach that works well, as witnessed by the many awards Gupta and the Easton’s Group have received, including Hilton Garden Inn Developer of the Year 2009, Canadian and International Hotel of the Year for Comfort Suites City Centre Toronto 2003, the Markham Board of Trade Business Excellence Award for Entrepreneur of the Year 2004, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2005, and the Pinnacle Award for Hotel Company of the Year 2000.