Hotels trade stays for stocks
— -- In a bid to turn financial lemons into umbrella drinks, eight upscale Caribbean resorts are pitching depressed investors to pay for vacations with depressed stocks.
The new Elite Island Resorts promotion lets customers purchase a stay of up to $5,000 with a choice of 100 S&P stocks, their share values rolled back to pre-collapse, July 1 levels. So, for example, instead of coughing up $3,750 for a week-long January stay for four at Antigua's all-inclusive St. James's Club, would-be vacationers could transfer 94 shares of their Aetna stock. Worth $40 a share on July 1, it closed at a measly $21.39 on Thursday — effectively giving guests a nearly 50% discount.
"In the old days, you could just lower your prices to bring people in," says company president Steve Heydt. "But there aren't enough consumers thinking about travel right now, so we needed to change the currency."
The stocks-for-sunshine deal, which Heydt says can be applied to the resorts' discounted rates and has generated more than $200,000 in new bookings since its launch last weekend, is the latest example of hotel marketing gimmicks that tackle the tanking economy head-on. Some others:
•"Hey Downturn, Up Yours" is one of the milder exhortations in a new campaign by the Morgans Hotel Group, whose edgy properties include Mondrian Hotels, New York's Hudson and Royalton and Miami's Delano and Shore Club. Hotel staffers sport black T-shirts emblazoned with an expletive directed at the recession, and a separate website, recessison.com (recess is on), posts YouTube videos and recession-themed packages. The profane pitches are designed to reflect "defiance and optimism … our core guests are not hiding their heads in the sand," says Morgans' Scott Williams.
•For stays through Dec. 19, Lake Placid's new High Peaks Resort is tying room rates and some menu items to the Dow Jones industrial average closing the previous Friday. Last week's Dow closed at 8635, so all rooms this week cost $86.35, vs. the usual best available rate of $200. The Dow is also key to a Bulls & Bears package at Boston's The Colonnade Hotel. Through March 31, weekday guests get 20% off if the market closes down that day and 10% if it's up. Packages start at $260 a night, including breakfast, Internet access and parking (worth about $66 a day).
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