The owner of the first Edition hotel has filed a lawsuit against Marriott International and Ian Schrager – joint venture partners for the Edition brand – citing “gross mismanagement” and the “inability to successfully launch the Edition brand”.
Marriott and Schrager opened the first Edition hotel in Waikiki last year (see First Edition), followed by an Istanbul property earlier this year, and forthcoming hotels in cities including Barcelona, Mexico City and Bangkok.
The brand is also due to debut in London following Marriott’s purchase of the historic Berner’s Hotel in Fitzrovia (see online news November 12, 2010).
But the owner of the Waikiki property, M Waikiki LLC, has filed a lawsuit against Marriott and Ian Schrager, claiming that the hotel has been a failure due to “gross mismanagement and Marriott's inability to successfully launch the Edition brand”.
The lawsuit says that what Marriott and Schrager “represented would be a fully supported new lifestyle hotel brand in the Marriott family of brands has turned out to be a nonexistent hotel chain”.
It adds that “Despite Marriott's representation in 2007 that it had agreements in place to open nine hotels in major cities worldwide within the year, with up to 100 more coming soon thereafter, there are only two Edition Hotels today – the Owner's Waikiki Hotel and a 77-room Istanbul property that opened just last month”.
M Waikiki LLC is seeking “tens of millions of dollars in damages”, along with the right to terminate the agreement with Marriott, and says that the defendant’s “failure to perform their obligations” has resulted in “outrageously-low occupancy levels and average daily room rates”.
In addition the lawsuit claims that hotelier Ian Schrager has “abandoned Edition (and Owner) to create his own lifestyle hotel brands, one or more of which is expected to compete directly with Edition Hotels”. This claim refers to the recent announcement that Schrager is to launch a new hotel brand under the name Public Hotels (see online news May 25).
For more information visit editionhotels.com, marriott.com, ianschragercompany.com.
Report by Mark Caswell
