S16 E04: Christoper Norton, CEO of Equinox Hotels

[Music] You're listening to the luxury item, the podcast on the business of luxury and the people and companies that are shaping the future of the luxury industry. Here's your host, Scott Kerr. When my guest on the luxury item, Chris Norton joined Equinox Hotels, a CEO about a decade ago, he stepped into something totally new, tasked with adapting Equinox's fitness as a lifestyle approach into Equinox Hotels, the executive forged a new category of luxury rooted in restorative and regenerative hospitality. With Norton at the helm, Equinox Hotels opened the doors of its first location in New York City's landmark Hudson Yards development in 2019. He is responsible for overseeing all facets of Equinox Hotels and executing a future growth strategy. Norton describes Equinox Hotels as redefining luxury hospitality for those who embrace high performance living, with luxury transcending the white-glug grandeur of the past and focusing instead on meaningful details and seamless experience. Under Chris Norton's leadership, Equinox's ambitious expansion plans include opening 33 hotels over the next decade, at least half are slated for the US, with confirmed projects in Texas, California, Hawaii, and Nashville. Internationally, Equinox targets key global destinations, including London and a major futuristic wellness resort at Niam's Magnet Development in Saudi Arabia. Prior to joining Equinox in 2016, Chris Norton had a long tenure at four seasons hotels and resorts, where his most recent role was president and chief operating officer. Welcome to the luxury item, Chris. Nice God, how you doing? Good, good, happy New Year, I'm so happy that you can join me today. I'm very honored. You know, when Equinox launched its hotel in 2019 in the Hudson Yards here in New York City, you had said that it's more apparent than ever that there are two types of luxury today. Old world and old-fashioned luxury and an experienced type of luxury that focuses on programming and integrating every experience a guest could possibly have, just didn't want to go either or they wanted to do both. So what were you seeing in the world of luxury hospitality and how did you want to rewrite the playbook for Equinox Hotel? I thought that, well, that's for this way. I know that luxury always changes, has changed and will change. If you wind it back 20 years, 48, 100 or 200 years, people think about luxury in a different way and if you go to different countries, people think about luxury in a very different way. So you know, and I knew that with a newer generation, a younger generation that was becoming more and more affluent, with technology changing drastically, that people also change their lifestyles. And they consider luxury today is quite different than our parents did, or even we did 20 years ago. So we wanted to build something that was really oriented towards people's values and people's lifestyles and was relevant to them and important to them and was rare, which are the basic definitions of luxury. And this rarity and the craftsmanship in which we wanted to build the product and the offerings was going to be centered around these new values and hence creating something that didn't exist and that was going to create something new and exciting and something relevant for a newer mindset. This is only an age group, but a mindset. And so we kind of dusted off what I called some of my interviews, you know, said the brass buttons and white gloves is kind of an image of the past, the crystal chandeliers, kind of thing of the past, the golden dinner plates, thing of the past. And then we wanted to build a guest room around not the color of the cushions, but the quality, the stage it sets for the best sleep possible. So that's what we built. And something a little bit more relaxed and something that was speak to this new mindset. And we combined it together with the club side and so we suddenly created an environment that was seamless, that combined our four pillars that we brought in, which was, you know, the movement from the club side, the region and the nutrition from the hotel side and the community from the club side that kind of created this different, very different universe that people would experience. And there were many naysayers in the hospitality industry expressed doubt that a fitness focus brand could successfully pivot into luxury hotels. That equinoxes expertise. Yeah, that equinoxes expertise in gyms wouldn't translate to high and hospitality or would have limited appeal beyond the fitness community. What made you confident that you had a winning formula? I had always been, I had always enjoyed the gym, but me the gym was a very important part of my life. And as hard as I work, it's more I traveled, it's more important that it became. And I would remember dreading going to places, even on my own vacation, where I knew I wouldn't have a good gym and where I couldn't follow my routine, which was actually one of the best hours in the day. Right. And so even in my previous life, I started building bigger and better gyms. There were more amenities than membership driven businesses. But intuitively, I knew it always was important, including resorts in the mall, where we build really amazing gyms and these remote resort locations. And people loved it. They would come down to the great workout. And so when I met the equinox folks, it just rang home and just connected so quickly. But they were talking about and pitching, you know, was like using to my ears and building a 212-ver-mortel with a 60,000 square foot club. And for my listeners who don't know, Hutchyn Yards is a high profile mix-use development on the far west side of Manhattan. And it's the largest private real estate project in US history since Rockefeller Center. Equinox is a subsidy of the related companies, the same real estate developer behind Hutchyn Yards and nearby Columbus Circle related acquired equinox holdings back in 2005. When did the idea of evolving equinox from simply a fitness brand, since what lifestyle brand come about? So when I joined them in 16, so this is nine years ago, I think they had been dreaming about this for probably five, ten years. They had always liked the idea of hospitality because very cleverly and brilliantly, they had succeeded on the club side unlike any other gym out there to offer a lifestyle. People prefer to be a member of a tribe almost. And instead of going to the gym, this is part of your life. To expand it and say, as a lifestyle brand, not a gym brand, we want to be in hospitality and we are in hospitality. And the clubs, if you think of it, a lot of it is human interaction and the house of the liberal environment. They wanted to extend it and they just didn't know how to do it. So they reached out and connected. But I think it was always a dream Scott that they had. Now here we are open for since 2019 with a good number of hotels under development and it's going to be amazing. Yeah, you said you joined in 2016, you spent about 28 years at four seasons where you were overseeing global operations. So what lured you over to Equinox? I know you just mentioned that you were, you know, they were sort of pitching it to you. But what lured you over? Well, we first talked about possibly combining the brands. The idea that the Equinox folks had was that they would kind of do the brand and the club side. And you know, four seasons would drop the engine into it and do the operation piece. And so we kicked it around and then eventually they reached out to me and said, listen, why don't you know, how do you feel about if you come on board and then we do the set house. Which, you know, four seasons is an amazing company and when you're the, when you're the president, chief operating officer of, you know, the arguably the largest and best luxury independent luxury of the company in the world. And I don't know if you have a tough call to make. But I found the story was so fascinating to be able to have a black piece of paper and create something around new and different. And not just another one of the same that I kind of took the plunge and you know, the no regrets. So that's how it's how it started in a meeting room in New York. Equinox has become renowned for its bold, visually striking and often controversial ad campaigns over the years. And it's a spark significant public discussion and helps shape its image as an upscale boundary pushing lifestyle brand back from the Terry Richardson campaigns in the early 2010s to the, you know, commit to some. campaign in 2016 and last year's Wanted All campaign. The common themes throughout have been about living a high-performance lifestyle, speaking to people who like to find their edges and push their boundaries. Most luxury hotel customer service strategies center around delivering a seamless guess-first experience. Given this high-performance lifestyle segment, how is your guest experience philosophy different? I think in some ways it is not because the things that don't change in human behavior and luxury, I think, is the qualitative human interaction. It's a good, basic good service. That sounds kind of oversimplified. But I think instead of concentrating on refined service, we highlight it fast, friendly, and anticipatory as a service ethos. Instead of saying, ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen, we relaxed the environment around the service. But we kept the speed of the precision. We see ourselves more as a precision-brill team in the hotel that executes flawlessly and fast and consistently. That's kind of the attitudinal approach to it. It's for designing a sports car than a limousine, I think. That's how it differs. But I think the quality in 2020 and '23 were selected as top 50 hotels in the world. When we just had opened a few years ago, I think the only other brand in the US was Aman. I think we deliver at a very high level in that part. But I think we're a bit bolder. We probably take some risks and a bit edgier in the way we deliver our messaging and advertising. And a bit more provocative. And in the new campaign, uses surreal AI-generated slop images alongside real photos of fit people to spark conversation about what is real in a world saturated with artificial content, well positioned in Euclinox as the place where real, hard-earned transformations still happen. So the broader question I want to ask you has to do with AI. So do you think AI-swopped is eroding some of the core signals of luxury like craft, scarcity and human effort? Yeah, I don't think so, Scott. I tell you why. I see we all have the same discussion term, the good and the bad of AI. If you take a look at a video we launched, a video clip we launched about a month ago to announce the opening of our Amala Resort. This is the west coast of Saudi Arabia. It should happen in the next few months. There's an incredible one, I think it's a minute and 10 second clip about this hotel launch. You actually don't see the hotel in the video. And so it's typical for us. It's a bit more fashion based and it's very edgy. And it's just this beautiful, gorgeous shots of this beach and ocean and pool and water and horses galloping along with the agents of stunning. And we used a very high quality AI studio to produce the whole thing with us. And we had choices, you know, so it looked like AI should it look real, should it look hybrid. And we made it look real, but they have people know and people are fascinated by it. And it's become a new craft, I think, down at that level. And it's amazing. And we all go to the movies and a lot of it, the battle effects are really going to say, "I." So I think it's this becoming part of our world, not to embrace it. I think it would be not good judgment. So we fully embrace it and it's become so much part of our world that will become more part of our world. So why not live with it? Related companies design approach has always been centered on creating innovative, sustainable and inspired urban living. The Equinox Hotel is no different. The building itself was designed by renowned architecture firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill. Rockwell Group, who are experts in luxury hospitality design handled the hotel interiors and guest rooms and interior design for the spa and fitness club by Joyce Wang Studio. In designing the hotel, how do you overcome the challenge of offering high quality luxury that matches the Equinox ethos without resorting to clichés or superficial design tactics of some of the sleek luxury hotels? I think it was very simple. I think all of us, we had a lot of discussion among many people in the related side, the Equinox Club side and myself. And not always easy discussions and tortured ourselves to make sure we got the details right. But we all had, we all very much shared the same value systems and on substance and style. And so the discussions were actually quite easy, but the difficult part was that we were all incredibly detailed. So we spend a lot of time making sure that things work and that things make sense. And that the substance of the design was felt the way you lived in the space. And it actually was an incredible, one of the most fun things to do in my book, creating these incredible product experiences. And we're all on the same page. The Harvey, the feedback, whose chairman for the group is obsessed with detail. So we would spend hours really going through a lot of stuff. And so it's probably the attention of senior executives, you got on this one project, it's probably disproportionate. But I think that's why it turned out so well. And so the, you're very, we use very high-grade fabrics, material, stone, as beautiful woods. And things that are long-lasting, I think. And they spoke to the kind of the brand design ethos and language, which kind of makes it kind of felt like a sister brother relationship between the club and the hotels and all can just sit together. David did an amazing job on the guest rooms, Joyce Wang did a spectacular job on the club and this far. And so I think it all sit really well together and we get a lot of good comments from people that stay with us and very high repeat guests. So you said in several interviews that health is the new wealth, it's more than just a catchphrase now. It really reflects a real shift in cultural values, economic behavior and even social status, particularly among affluent individuals and within the luxury marketplace. Increasingly people are equating health, wellness and longevity with true success and status, sometimes placing them above material displays of wealth. Why do you think enjoying a longer higher quality life is now viewed as foundational elements of a successful and affluent lifestyle? I think we have come to realize through the younger generations, I know my kids have to feel that way. They value, this is something, I mean, telling me something we guess all know, but we all value, quote, the experience more than we value the purchase of stuff. So, again, that's has been said a million times. But I read this recently, I read something, you have a thousand problems until you get sick, then you have one problem. To realize that actually the maintenance of your health is not necessarily fixing something that's broken, but there's a lot of things you can do that in addition are very enjoyable. Around the movement and nutrition and the right region and sleeping right and having the right community around you and all that stuff, it becomes very fulfilling to people. I think it's just a realization that has grown and been democratized and people have embraced it. As you know, as I grew up in Switzerland, some of those values I grew up with back in the 60s and 70s where people embrace basic things that were just healthy lifestyles because they translate into a better, better longer life. And that has become almost mainstream today, I think. And we're seeing hotels are really capitalizing in the wellness boom and more diverse and specialized offerings than ever before. But longevity seems to be on everyone's lips these days. The longevity industry is hot with investments skyrocketing over the past couple of years. And wealthy individuals are willing to spend big on prolonging youthfulness. We've seen hotels offering guests IV drips for hangovers to personalize nutrition programs, full body MRIs and stem cell therapies. How is equinox embracing the longevity trend? We have been embracing it certainly since I've been there before. You could argue that really good exercise and regularity is part of this. But it's changing. There's a lot of effort being made on all fronts, including club, retail, hotel, food, the restaurants and a constant questioning ourselves on your what can we do better? So, a few last year we started launching the sleep labs and so we took a whole bunch of rooms in the hotel and we started tinkering and using them as labs to see how we can create the next generation guest room for us. And you know, as we open our next hotels, we're not just going to open and copy the rooms we have here, but from the approach for the private bar to how the mattress works, to how the bathroom works, to what the shower can do differently and better and you know, a whole list long of things that brings it technology and you know, it's being tested and you know, we launch them and we sleep in them and we have guests in them and we kind of them. So, I think it's a constant question yourself on how you can do things better and investing time and money to keep evolving and keeping ahead of it. And you know, if you think as a single hotel brand with our flagship hotel being the first in New York, we have kind of hunched way above our weight class, I think, as far as the recognition of the brand globally and where we stand on owning sleep, you know, we have become the hotel that it goes beyond the pillow menu for us. You know, it's kind of like, it was the old-fashioned thing, you could pick what pillow you want. But we really have become experts, I think, in creating perfect environments for guests when they travel to get the best possible sleep they can and that's just such an important commodity for everybody. So, I think it's this continuous continuous quest to reinvent yourselves. And community is also a core pillar of your strategy. This whole idea of a club within a hotel model is growing in popularity and many ultra-lugory hospitality brands and boutique operators have been investing in this area. How does Equinox Hotel foster a sense of human connection or communal engagement among your guests, you know, to give people reasons to get together in order to win over and keep their loyalty within the brand? Yeah, first we created the experience to be seamless. Second, we recognized that, you know, in the old world order, the only way a hotel would attract the court of the locals would be through F&B because usually, most of the time, if you're locally, don't stay at the hotel. Most hotels don't do a very exciting job on doing food and beverage. The restaurants and bars, functional, but not usually not very exciting. And when you travel, you go to the Cozynesian, you ask, you know, first question, yes, where's a good local restaurant I can go to? The club business is very different by definition. You want your club to be next to your house or next to your office. It's the club, you know, in Hudson Yards, I think, maybe 4000 members now. It's a busy club, which means you have probably 1500 locals come through the door. And a lot of them, you know, after they work out, they change, they go to the restaurant, the bar, or the hotel guests end up with the pool. And you get pulled into a local scene, like, you know, no other hotel can provide, really, I think. And people love it. So I think by mixing them two together, this local energy and, you know, is engaged, high performance kind of people that mix in with a hotel traveler who, you know, a lot of them, you know, a good 35, 40% of all guests go and actually work out in the main club. This is a lot. So, you know, I think it's a really interesting way of kind of creating that magic. And the Soho House famously had a robust community strategy by making community really the core of its brand, not just the benefit, aside from financial mismanagement and rapid expansion, some of the many business challenges. Soho House faced, included declining exclusivity and people felt the environment became uncreative and generic. As you scale rapidly, how do you prevent equinox hotel from weakening its brand identity and member experience decline? So I will do another interview with you in the two years when we can, you know, we can call, we can call the expansion rapid. We have been very thoughtful, very strategic on where we, where and how we grow. We had a strategy very early on that we wanted to be a global brand quickly. So we started expanding, you know, started looking at outside projects. We, the next hotel we're opening is a resort on an integrated marina. We have some announcement coming up shortly for some urban destinations. The US still remains a credibly important market for us, of course, and you will see some announcement there. We just announced an integrated marina in the Caribbean in Anvilla, where we have some 60 branded residences and 60 hotel rooms on this beautiful, incredible marina that we're building. So we were very careful to how we would do that. So I do, I we're not there yet to call this a rapid out of patrol expansion, I think. So that's not that's the least of my worries. And we're very high on quality and execution. So it's a good pace for us. You know, I know you had a launch plan of up to 33 new hotels over the next 10 years. And you mentioned, mentioned a few of them there in the pipeline. I know you have Texas in California, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and others, and international products. I'd love to tell you here about the Saudi Arabia's mega development, Neum, what you're doing over there. Potentially Europe. So what do you think will fuel the strong global demand for a luxury hotel that's centered on high performance living? So in a first, if you think, so let's say we have, you know, this next wave of announcement coming up, COVID didn't help. It's kind of still on everybody down a little bit. But you know, I think the 30 is certainly in grass, and maybe it'll take us a little bit longer than we thought, but you know, I'd rather do it right in a little slower than two fast. What we have found, you know, the first hotel has been such a success. Not only from the product, the innovation side of it, but if you look at our numbers, you know, if you take a peek at it, the hotel performs incredibly well. It's very profitable. And so I people, you know, people when they first hear of it, they kind of get inquisitive when they walk through it, they get it. And so the developer that we are working with can just see the property and you see what we can do. I think it's going to be just a natural for other countries that embrace us to come in. This whole longevity fitness high performance living, you know, so a global trend. It's not only here in Chelsea that we have it, but I mean, I was in Saudi recently, you know, they have 70% of the 30 plus million Saudis are 30 years old, who are around, who are very young population. Cittness has become a huge trend. You know, the French, we've always seen my French, that shouldn't be careful, but I say about the French, but you know, the big get the big get eating with the belays and the cigarettes. You go to France. I mean, I'm in a little town in Provoles, but there must be six or seven gyms around my house for various different levels and price ranges. And everybody kind of works out and goes in, but they also go out because it's community in Saudi, it's community because, you know, you don't drink. So you can hang out in gyms and you know, you can have a good time. So I think it's something that is just, you know, kind of natural. And we're certainly way ahead of the curve. But I think it's, I think it's, I think we're certainly the future. I'm wondering how high performance living translates into merchandise. So hotels are upping their merch game and hotel merch is no longer an afterthought, but another revenue stream. And we're seeing luxury hotels are collaborating with fashion brands on capsule collections that range from, you know, trench coats and crew neck sweaters, velvet slippers, t-shirts and pajamas. Some hotel groups are launching their own brands and selling them in upscale retailers. Would you, when oxo tells ever consider flexing its branding muscle in the fashion space? So you know, the club site has retail areas in most of the clubs. I think well, maybe all of the clubs, but most of the clubs for sure. And some of the offerings that have a great variety and a court, towards orient towards the their members are quite successful. Some of them co-op, collaboration with other brands, some of the way equinox branded. Interesting enough, the equinox branded stuff as far as I know always sells very quickly. People love wearing like an equinox jacket or carrying equinox bag and just a cool brand. So yeah, I think so. It's really interesting. And sometimes sometimes I scratch my head because in brands, you know, in some ways, in some ways have become less, maybe, important to us, in other ways, people embrace brands like they never have before, including branded residences and condos and homes and become a seal of approval in many ways and people know what they get. So you were talking about branded residences. Do you think that would ever be in the future? Every hotel that we're building, every resort we're building has a branded residence compared to it. Yeah, for sure. And in our case part, I think half of them are actually luxury condos for rent. So if you think a younger clientele that might not necessarily want to, you know, bound a few million bucks to buy the condo, you know, they're certainly willing to pay a good rent if they could, you know, live in a tower that would offer an entire lifestyle. So imagine, you know, you're some young kid in Atlanta and you work for a company and you can rent a great apartment at downstairs, you have some cool restaurant bars, two pools, big gym. It'd be pretty amazing. So Chris, my final question is the luxury item question, which I ask all my guests. So if you were stranded on a deserted island and you can only have one single luxury item with you, what would that luxury item be? It can't be any form of air or water transportation to get you off that island or anything that requires mobile service so you can call somebody to get you off that island. It's just you on this lonely island, but you have one single luxury item with you. What would that be? Oh, you know, a really good medical cabinet. I would want, I would want like to pay for those. I would want antibiotics. I would want like good dental stuff. Yeah. That's what I would want to really highlight. I would really like to be a good pharma kid. Chris Norton CEO of Equinox Hotels, thank you so much for joining me on the luxury item. Thank you Scott. That's it for this episode of the luxury item podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this useful and entertaining, I would be really grateful if you can share it with a friend or colleague. I would love it if you subscribe so you never miss an episode. And while you're there, be sure to rate and review us on Apple podcasts. It really helps other listeners find us. The luxury item podcast is a production of Silver Tone Consulting. I'm your host Scott Kerr. Until next time.