Opening a hotel in the middle of a pandemic might seem like a daring business strategy. And Randy Salvatore, president and CEO of RMS Cos., acknowledges that Stamford’s newest lodging establishment, The Lloyd, is arriving at a challenging time.
“I think it’s going to be a long time before hotels get back to where they were pre-Covid,” Salvatore said. “I think business travel will be slower to return. So right now, our focus is more on leisure travel. As business travel comes back, we expect and hope to be the preferred choice.”
The Lloyd is on target for an Aug. 5 debut at the 909 Washington Blvd. site that was formerly occupied by the Hotel Zero Degrees, which opened in November 2009 and closed last December. Salvatore, whose company operated the predecessor hotel and still runs the Zero Degrees establishments in Danbury and Norwalk, stated The Lloyd “isn’t a rebranded or repurposed hotel,” but rather a fully renovated and thoroughly different entity with “completely new offerings, new service levels, new amenities for the guests.”
Named in honor of John Lloyd, an 18th-century shipping magnate and general store retailer, the 94-room establishment is being marketed as a boutique hotel within the Tapestry Collection by Hilton. According to Salvatore, “all the amenities that the modern business and leisure traveler would want, coupled with the service levels that will make us the preferred choice.”
Unlike other hotels in downtown Stamford, The Lloyd is absent of conference rooms for business meetings and conventions. Yet Salvatore did not see that as a deficit.
“I think it’s a differentiating factor in that we want to be a true boutique hotel,” he said. “We don’t want to be a conference center. When you do have large conference facilities, it changes the look and the feel of the hotel from a guest perspective. What we’ve always thought is that the guests and businesses can host their conferences, whether it’s at their own offices or at a number of venues around the area that we have partnerships with, and then when they come back to the hotel they are in a boutique-type of a type of inexperience where they’re not surrounded by meeting space but a more warm, cozy environment.”
One aspect of the new hotel that is distinctive is the shared space with the Stamford YMCA.
“The building is structured as a two-unit condominium, so the YMCA actually owns their space on the second floor and the rear of the first floor and we own the front of the first floor, which is where our lobby is, and then the floors through eight,” Salvatore said.
The YMCA had previously occupied the site before it became a hotel. “It wasn’t really something that we had an option to change, nor did we really want to because the Y is an amenity to guests. If a guest wants to swim in an Olympic-sized pool, it is there for them — we have a relationship with the Y to allow our guests to be able to use their facilities as well.”
Exercise-focused guests can also use The Lloyd’s 24-hour fitness center, which includes a Peloton bike and The Mirror for on-demand personal training. Other amenities included a bar and café, a breakfast with seasonal menus, a 24-hour marketplace for snacks and soft drinks and accommodations for pets.
Salvatore is tapping into The Lloyd’s Hilton network to help spread the word on the hotel, and he is also utilizing a digital marketing campaign to raise awareness. The Lloyd is already taking reservations into the late summer and autumn, with Salvatore expressing satisfaction at what he viewed as an initial positive response.
“Our goal is to get individuals and companies to experience what we have,” he said. “And then, it’s our job to give them a great experience and to make it so that we become their choice in the future.”
