Andrea Melotti likes to talk about Hard Rock Hotels DNA: its "substance," as he calls it. Melotti is the company's director of hotel operations, and he sprinkles his conversation with "substance this" and "substance that."

"The substance of our business," says Melotti, "defines the guest experience."

Substance is everything that shapes what guests feel, taste, encounter, go through, and—yes—put up with, everyt time they visit a Hard Rock hotel.

Substance is what differentiates Hard Rock Hotels from every other hotel on the planet: the distinctive emotional stimulation of the “rock star experience” (that’s Hard Rock’s catchphrase, not ours) that influences every component of what happens in its hotels. And this is what the company takes pains to refresh and reinvigorate periodically, not only because this thing called “substance” ultimately loses its spark, but because of the way the rock star movement with its countless permutations evolves and morphs. Implication: Unless Hard Rock watches closely what’s going on within the rock movement and within its various carnations, it risks losing the competitive edge it’s worked so hard to preserve.

As Melotti says, “If you lose substance, nothing you create lasts very long.” It’s the hotel’s technical base— service—that he insists is the underpinning of this “substance” thing. Once the service module is in place, functioning effectively and impeccably, everything else radiates from it. “Your service culture,” says Melotti, “lets your concept and products—your substance—stay fresh.”

With the exception of gold-standard perks (i.e., club-level amenities, etc.) reserved for special guests, what most hotel companies provide appeals to (and attracts) the common denominator of hotel guest. Admittedly, that’s a darn good way of running a business. Most hotel companies embrace that. Not so Hard Rock: their hotels are the antithesis of what’s considered good enough.

Cutting edge? Yes, but not insufferably so.

Trendy? Melotti doesn’t think so. He likes “stylish.”

What's Wrong With Trendy?
The problem with “trendy,” he believes, is that, by being so, you restrict the appeal of your product. Whatever craze it decides to espouse—trendy invariably intimidates and/or alienates some segments of the population. Think Studio 54, think the Atkins diet. Trends are short-term; they fade to black quickly.

There are a lot of companies, Melotti says, that exploit a trend, only to watch it collapse fast as its allure wilts. “If you don’t put a lot of work into making sure that technically—from a service standpoint—there is something of substance in place, you’ll find when the trend shifts or dies you are unable to retain customers. At the end of the day, the experience no longer exists because the trend no longer exists.”

Hard Rock watches trends, tries to keep up with them—another way of saying it tries to make sense of them. “Our trendsetting—if you want to call it that—at Hard Rock is the way we present ourselves, the way we market ourselves, the way we execute at the property level,” says Melotti. “That allows us to be masters of our own destiny, to become, as it were, trendsetters.”

Melotti believes no other hotel company can duplicate the Hard Rock experience because no other hotel company—no matter its roots—can lay claim to Hard Rock’s heritage: the Cafes, the brand that started it all. The Hard Rock Cafe, of which the hotel group is a subbrand, remains an American icon, despite its beginnings (London, England 1971) and the fact that many of its more than 120 cafes (some of which are in hotels) are in countries other than the United States.

According to Trevor Horwell, VP, “You have to remember that the two guys who brought the Hard Rock brand to life 35 years ago, Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett, have remained extraordinarily faithful to its original intentions. The hotel brand has remained, and will continue to remain, just as committed to those intentions. The integrity of the brand is what Hard Rock is all about. Andrea [Melotti] is right. Without that commitment to brand integrity, it’s impossible to create for the guest a unique and viable emotional experience.”

Lose sight of the heritage, disavow or challenge it, and Hard Rock loses the indispensable trait that distinguishes it from its competitors.

“It’s about the rock culture. It’s also about our service,” says Horwell. “That combination separates us from the competition. If we’ve covered the ground of service and sustain the ‘rock star experience,’ then I don’t see anybody out there being able to deliver the emotional experience we deliver.”

Hard Rock Hotels—the first of which (a resort/casino) opened in Las Vegas—has continued to expand the scope of the brand, in style and substance (there’s that word again) rooted in the company’s birthright, not too far removed from what the cafes launched 35 years ago.

Melotti explains: “When customers visit our hotel—either as a guest or someone off the street—they understand, even before walking through the door, that something unexpected, something unpredictable is going to happen. And, furthermore, if they visit more than once, they know they are not going to have the same experience.

Our service orientation is such that guests remember the experience or experiences long after they have forgotten the other hotels they went to before coming to ours.”

Here’s a fascinating exercise. Access any hotel’s website, and search for the “sell.” For the most part, here’s what you’ll find: “finest quality of service and amenities”; “all the comforts of home”; “truly personal service”; “unparalleled contemporary elegance”; “friendly and efficient service.” Nothing wrong with any of that: conventional wisdom from conventional hotels. You will find all of that, but none of that, at Hard Rock Hotels. Point? The base—that “personal” service hotel companies are fond of talking about—is a given. If that’s all you have to crow about, then what is it that sets you apart from the competition? Hard Rock crows about its culture.

If it does little else, Hard Rock Hotels protects, defends, illuminates, reinforces, refines, and informs the culture, keeping in mind (cautiously) that the cultures very nature is to be different, to deviate from the norm, and that it can change from day to day, year to year.

This is all about what goes on in the bars and lounges of Hard Rock Hotels, Resorts, and Casinos. It’s about how they’re supervised and staffed and what sorts of marketing plans massage and promote them.

On the surface, this may sound like pretty straightforward stuff—the basic yin and yang a food & beverage director uses to competitively position an F&B component. But, this is Hard Rock Hotels. There is nothing straightforward here, nothing, it would appear, that’s carboncopied from uninspired hotel management textbooks or plagiarized from the operations manuals of its competition.

Aware of the power of its brand and determined to protect it from compromise or adulteration, Hard Rock refuses to run its hotels that in any way reflect or replicate industry norms. That, thinks management, is a counterfeit way of doing business. They believe there is not much of anything noteworthy separating one hotel company from the next (except the segment it finds itself in), that [other companies] rooms and public spaces are somehow perceived by guests as interchangeable. Hard Rock, however, remains unpredictably original, a conspicuously unique product that challenges convention and not only gets away with it but has fun getting away with it. It does not make any sense, Melottisays, to cookie-cutter what’s already out there.

There are seven Hard Rock Hotels open: Bali, Chicago, Hollywood (Florida), Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, and Pattaya (Chonbori, Thailand). Five more Hard Rocks are soon to open or under development: Madrid (later this year), San Diego (a mixed use condo/hotel development), Biloxi, New York, and Summit County (Colorado) at the Copper Mountain Resort (also mixed-use). The mixed-use-condo-hotel development excites Horwell. “The Hard Rock brand has become so powerful that it is now being associated with major real-estate developments,” Horwell says.

After Midnight Collaboration
There are now 12 hotels, 3,200 rooms, and dozens of outstanding bars and lounges. The first group was conceived, designed, and executed from within, the rest—the five under development— is a collaborative effort between Hard Rock and After Midnight Co. (AMC).

Co-founder brothers Rande and Scott Gerber, recognized today as the country’s top designers of hotel bars and lounges, are involved in partnerships with Starwood Hotels, Station Casinos, Donald Trump, Sofitel, and Hard Rock Hotels. Currently, there are 22 AMC properties throughout the country under the name of the Whiskey, Whiskey Blue, Stone Rose, and Oasis. AMC currently is at work creating bars and lounges for Hard Rock in Madrid and San Diego.

“We do not have the arrogance to say, ‘we know it all.’ We know a lot about hospitality, but we are not specialists of the type of lounge that best complements what we do. So, we went looking for a company that shares our values, that can execute design and service that blend with our culture. After Midnight looks at the substance of the business,” Melotti says.

It is an ideal alliance, even though, in striking it, Hard Rock Hotels relinquishes control of darn near everything that affects day-to-day operations at all future properties and with those being developed in Madrid and San Diego. But, as Melotti likes to point out, regardless of whom Hard Rock partners with, the company must understand what Hard Rock epitomizes. “They must start living and breathing it.”

Scott Gerber understands, and in understanding knows AMC will create bars and lounges compatible with Hard Rock’s culture. Says Gerber, “We have a reputation for not doing ‘flash-in-the-pan bars.’ We have longevity in the bar business. We know hotels cannot survive solely on hotel guest revenue, so we create venues that cater to hotel guests and locals.”

There is no standard look to an AMC design. Just as no two Hard Rock Hotels are exactly alike, no two bars and lounges are exactly alike. Ditto AMC. It has yet to design any two bars that are the same. Which begs the question, because Hard Rock has neither the desire nor need to bother the image it’s taken so long to nurture, how can AMC maintain the continuity of that image from one hotel bar and lounge design to the next?

Says Gerber, “Continuity is in the preservation of the Hard Rock guest experience,” which brings us right back to Melotti’s assertion that substance—the foundation for which is service and making sure the guest is comfortable— is what matters.

“Flash-in-the-pan” design, as Gerber calls it, echoes Melotti’s take on trendiness. “We are into long-term design,” says Gerber. “But, more importantly, comfortable design: sexy, edgy, luxurious comfort. Timeless. Not that we won’t return to a place and renovate it to keep it fresh, but we are not into building something that will be trendy for two years, then get rid of it.”

Which brings us to the nature of Hard Rock’s collaboration with AMC. If, according to Melotti, Hard Rock Hotels “does not know it all” about bar and lounge design and their operation and hires a company that does, what about the bars and lounges Hard Rock created before AMC?

Good question.

“We are very particular about the kinds ofprojects we go into, says Gerber. “We believe Hard Rock has made a commitment to spend a lot of money to upgrade the brand. If it is interested in making a significant reinvestment in those properties, we might be interested in working with them. Right now [working on the Madrid and San Diego hotels], we are very pleased with the partnership.”

Design does not a bar and lounge make. Design is no guarantee to woo people off the streets or win hotel guest approval ratings or ramp up occupancy rates. What AMC and Hard Rock do design-wise would be little more than the equivalent of a flashy videogame.

No secret. Employees make the difference. They are the substance, providing the absolute component that converts the flash of the videogame to the inclusive intensity of the rock star experience.

Hard Rock does not fool around. The selection process is unique. Every prospect for employment at the hotel goes through an orientation that explains meticulously what Hard Rock is all about.

But, long before that, it is the image of Hard Rock that draws prospective employees to the company, many of whom would never dream of working in a hotel or its bar or restaurant. They know, instinctively (and this says more about the power of the Hard Rock brand and its history) that working in a Hard Rock hotel is going to be a different experience from working anywhere else in the hospitality industry.

“All I can tell you,” Melotti says, “is that we attract the kind of person no other company attracts. That’s the edge we have. Of the thousands of people who work for us, take the top 100 performers and ask them where they worked before and I venture to say that 90 percent of them will tell you they never worked in the hospitality industry before coming to us, and, before coming to us, wouldn’t want to.”

So, what’s the secret? The secret is in allowing employees—those who buy into the culture and immerse themselves into it while eschewing any hard-ass insinuation that would, ultimately, turn off, annoy, harass guests—to be themselves, presuming, of course, that human resources has not blundered in the selection process.

“This is a very risky business,” says Melotti. “When you tell your employees they can do more or less whatever they want to do out there within certain limits, you are taking a chance. The main point? Making sure from the outset that employees have been indoctrinated and educated about the culture so they understand almost automatically what the limits are. So, they know they cannot be disrespectful, but they know, as well, they can push the envelope a bit.”

The basis for permitting all of this unrestrained expression (within limits)—no matter how orchestrated it is—is in knowing precisely what a guest expects who walks through the door of a Hard Rock hotel and then decides to wander into one of its bars.

“The guest knows, for a fact, we are going to be a little nuts. He or she knows the bar’s going to be a little different—a little crazy—so he or she will be prepared, psychologically, to accept an interaction that is not the common interaction anywhere else.”

The drinks? Martinis, wines-by-the-glass, beers, shot-and-a-beer? Depends on the market.

“We don’t do cookie-cutter,” says Horwell, “which is one of the things that makes our jobs so interesting, but so challenging. We don’t have the perfect formula we can apply domestically or export internationally. The bar and lounge we include in the 100-year-old building we’re renovating in Madrid will be unique to the place and to the market. Chicago? A high percentage of martinis. Hard Rock Hollywood or Vegas? Depending on the outlet, you might have an almost exclusive martini bar or an almost exclusive beer bar. We look at each outlet individually to create the right vibe and energy; and, at the same time, to have the right mix of product.”

“We look at what sells,” says Melotti, “and we adapt our product mix to it. We look at the market as part of the experience, so if we are putting together a bar and lounge with a very sophisticated and sexy look, naturally, we are going to look at a mix of drinks to support that kind of atmosphere. Food, too. We want to make sure every single component of the experience interacts with the other: uniform design, design of the bar, food and drink menu, employee attitude and the relationship with guests, the kinds of glasses and stemware. But, I don’t want just the glass to look good. I want the drink in it to be so fantastic that you return again and again.”



Stephen Michaelides is president of Cleveland-based Words Ink.