Relais & Châteaux ‘in talks’ to expand into NYC hotel scene: ‘We’re on the hunt’
Relais & Châteaux, the association behind some of the most luxurious hotels and restaurants around the world, is looking to add some New York City hotels to its portfolio, The Post can reveal.
With high-end city dining staples like 11 Madison Park, SAGA, Daniel, Gabriel Kreuther, Per Se and Jean-Georges firmly under its belt, Relais & Châteaux is looking to expand its hotel offering in the Big Apple imminently.
“We don’t have a single hotel in Manhattan — but we have a lot of restaurants,” Laurent Gardinier, president of the association told The Post. “It doesn’t mean we don’t have any hotels in the city, because we have a lot of them in Paris, London, Rome, and in many cities.”
Indeed, Relais & Châteaux boasts a slew of famous luxe stays in Europe, including the Parisian castle Saint James Paris, the Bellevue Syrene 1820 located in close proximity to Mount Vesuvius — and Cliveden House, the sprawling mansion in England revered by royals.
“Having said that, New York is obviously a target, because Manhattan is among the richest cities not only in the US, but in the world… and we don’t have any properties there. We’re now on the search.”
The organization, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, has an arduous process when it comes to signing a hotel to its association.
Gardinier reveals that there is a 500-point checklist hotels must pass before they are eligible to become an esteemed member of the Relais & Châteaux family.
“We are an affiliate, so we don’t own and we can’t decide, we just affiliate,” he said. “So in NYC, we need to find a hotel that fits with our DNA. The added value of the affiliation has to be demonstrated to those potential hotels.”
“Is it a current des trous dans la raquette (hole in the racket) I would say,” Gardinier said of the lack of NYC hotels under its belt. “But we’re having discussions with some of them at the moment. We’re on the hunt, and on the lookout to correct this.”
And while R&C is typically only affiliated with luxury boutique hotels that often boast a minimal number of rooms, Gardinier says when it comes to the Big Apple, the organization has “no limits” in size when it comes to finding the perfect property.
“If we want to enter big cities, we need to have a large minimum number of rooms that would be above our average amount of 35,” he said.
“We want to provide a good level of service in a city like New York, so we need to find a hotel with at least 80 or 100 rooms, otherwise we won’t have the means to provide it.”
The organization has outlined its plans to expand into the hotel arena in Manhattan at a time when, for certain visitors, rooms are harder to come by.
Roughly 135 of the city’s estimated 680 hotels have been involved in a shelter program, meaning they house migrants in the Big Apple amid the ongoing crisis, the New York Times previously reported.
The vast majority of these hotels are located in Midtown Manhattan, including the four-star Row NYC Hotel and and the century-old Roosevelt Hotel. Tourists now have to fork out a record sum to spend a night in the Big Apple.
According to data published by CoStar, a real estate analytics provider, the average rate for a hotel room in NYC is a staggering $301 per night, meaning a shortage of lodgers who are willing to spend that sum of money. The eye-popping $301 price tag is an 8.5% increase from 2022.
Overall, the city has lost 16,532 hotel rooms to the migrant crisis, leaving just 121,677 hotel rooms for tourists, making Relais & Châteaux’s plans to expand even more challenging.
What’s more, the city has indicated it is seeking 14,000 hotel rooms to shelter migrants through 2025 — as housing costs for the asylum-seekers for the past three years is set to surpass $2.3 billion.
As for the company’s checklist when signing a new property, Gardinier says the hotel that’s lucky enough to be selected to join the R&C family as a member will “display the character of an East Coast property.”
“The hotel’s design has to reflect the local architecture,” he said, adding that “it also has to fit perfectly with the gastronomy scene in NYC. It’s important to have the DNA of the location displayed at the property.”
The organization is setting its sights on an existing luxury hotel in Manhattan and the surrounding areas.
While the association doesn’t boast any NYC hotels currently, it does have a couple of luxe hotels elsewhere in the state.
Among those is the Bedford Post Inn — a luxury haven co-owned by Hollywood actor Richard Gere and real estate developer Russell Hernandez.
The duo’s charming farmhouse, which they snapped up in 2007, became a firm member of Relais & Châteaux in 2011.
Other New York state properties include the Glenmere Mansion in Chester, as well as Lake Placid Lodge in Lake Placid — a resort city in the Adirondacks.
“And now we have The Modern, who have just joined Relais & Châteaux a few weeks ago,” he said, referencing the two Michelin-starred NYC restaurant in the Museum of Modern Art that became the latest to join R&C’s glittering list.
With a collection of about 80 restaurants across 64 countries, the association is considered to have the world’s largest network of Michelin-starred eateries in the world.
Last year, two Relais & Châteaux restaurants were awarded Michelin Green Stars for their sustainability efforts, which served as a springboard to the its partnership with UNESCO, announced this month.
