New hotel opening during tough economic time

By JOHN MARSHALL

Lumiere, a luxury boutique hotel, won’t be ffering cut-rate deals when it opens its doors.

A weak economy has ski resorts slashing prices, dusting off package deals that haven’t been available for years, offering discounts to cover the cost of airline baggage fees — anything to get skiers to the mountain.

There’s one place that’s bucking the trend: lumiere.

The luxury boutique hotel near Telluride, Colo., faces the daunting task of opening its doors during a downswing in the economy but has decided to do it without offering any cut-rate deals.

“We’d be naive to say that we’re not paying attention to the economy,” lumiere president Matthew Nuss said. “It’s a concern, but it’s not something that’s waving a red flag at us right now. We’ve had to come off our prices a little bit, but not to the point that we’re not a good value for the service we’re providing.”

Set to open Thanksgiving week, lumiere is in a unique position.

The 30-room hotel is on one of the last remaining pieces of good ski-in, ski-out real estate in Mountain Village and will be one of the few high-end serviced hotels in the Telluride area.

And, because of Telluride’s mostly-affluent clientele, lumiere is opening in an area that won’t be hit nearly as hard by the weak economy as other ski areas.

It’s still a difficult time to open a hotel, though.

The owners of lumiere are carefully mapping out their marketing plan, tracking how people book into Telluride, making sure potential guests understand that breakfast, ski valet and wireless Internet service — usually add-ons at other hotels — are included in the price.

They’re also working with a search engine optimization partner to make sure their hotel gets top listings on all the Web’s major search engines.

“There really aren’t a lot of high-end serviced hotels in Telluride and we saw an opening for our concept to really fill a void in the market that we feel is going to be a profitable one,” Nuss said. “But we do have to be a little more active when it comes to marketing than if the economy were a little more sounder.”

XLUMIERE: 1330 Orange Ave., Suite 317, Coronado, Calif.; lumierehotels.com/telluride or (866) 530-9466. Nightly winter rates start at $289.