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Tiffany Cooper on Mandarin Oriental's Plans for the Americas

• Jeff Borman and Matt Brown

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How has Tiffany Cooper been so successful for so long? By bringing mind, soul, and spirit to the hotel industry. She's Head of Development, Americas for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, which for 5 decades has been owner and operator of some of the world's most luxurious hotels, resorts and residences.

We talk about MO's ambitious global expansion plans, how the brand sets itself apart in the ultra-luxury category, the increasing importance of branded residences, wellness and spas as amenities and revenue drivers, and the iconic "I'm a Fan" campaign.


Matt Brown:

Hi everybody. It's no Show with Matt Brown and Jeff Gorman. How has Tiffany Cooper been so successful for so long? By bringing mind, soul and spirit to the hotel industry, and a little bit of tenacity too. She's the head of development Americas for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, which for five decades has been owner and operator of some of the world's most luxurious hotels, resorts and residences. Before that she had tours of duty at Ambridge, kempton, starwood and Marriott International.

Matt Brown:

She's a yoga nista, a meditation guru, a Long Island transplant to the American West I should say Strong Island speaker and mentor, mba graduate, while working full-time and raising kids. Working moms can have it all. But those are mere facts, and Tiffany's life has been about more than that. It's been about the beauty and strength inside all of us. She understands that luxury as a concept, as a goal, as a treat, is at once constant, but always in a state of evolution, as are we. We're humans, we want an experience with a capital E, and we can't think of anybody better to bring that experience today than Tiffany Cooper. Welcome to no Show.

Tiffany Cooper:

Wow, I mean, what an introduction I may have to bring you with me to all my pitches, if you can. If you could do that when I bring you, to bring you with me to all my pitches, if you can. If you could do that when I bring you to a client meetings. That was incredible. It almost feels like an episode of this is your life.

Matt Brown:

We charge very reasonable rates for for that service, so so please, we'll exchange information after the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Tiffany Cooper:

Thank you. Thank you, honored to be here, excited.

Jeff Borman:

The most pressing thing I must know, having spent much of my life working for the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. It is never to be referred to as Ritz or the Ritz and nothing about it. Ritzy. Are we allowed to say M-O or must?

Tiffany Cooper:

it be.

Jeff Borman:

Mandarin Oriental.

Tiffany Cooper:

No, look, mandarin Oriental, m-o Mandarin. We are not a stuffy brand, so MO is perfectly fine. In fact, that's how we refer to ourselves internally. So MO is perfect.

Jeff Borman:

Well, in that case, over the last few years, mo has outlined a very ambitious set of goals for North American expansion. What's fueling the appetite? After so many years being Asia-centric, what makes you think that now is the right moment to make a big splash in the Americas?

Tiffany Cooper:

Well, there's a few things, so I guess we'll start at the very top with our CEO. His name is Laurent Kleiman and he's been with us now for about two years. He comes to us from LVMH, worked at Dior, so he's a luxury goods brand executive and he has really laid out a very ambitious but super achievable plan to double our portfolio within the next decade, and we're already well on our way. So, globally, we're on this transformative era of growth. Today we have 44 hotels, because we've just added three this year we added the Laetitia in Paris, the Conservatorium in Amsterdam and we just added one about two weeks ago in Venice, and then we're going to be adding another four by the end of the year and already have 27 in our pipeline. So we're already well on our way. But at the end of the day, we're focused on very smart, strategic growth. We want it to be in the right locations, right sponsorship, absolutely the right products.

Jeff Borman:

It's funny. You said that your CEO came from LVMH. I think it was. The LVMH CEO just came from Ritz-Carlton and Marriott Luxury Brands, so I wonder if there's something to that.

Tiffany Cooper:

I think that's just the evolution of how the hotel industry is viewing brands and how brands are viewing hospitality, because all of this is lifestyle. When I was with Starwood, I remember early on Weston and aligning with Nordstrom and selling the Heavenly Bed. So you know, there's just this interconnectivity that I think happens and it's happening more and more and there's really no you know no line of demarcation.

Matt Brown:

I blame Apple I say blame, that's not the right word. I think Apple had a lot to do with this of like, oh, are you a technology company? Well, we're a design company, and I think there's been an expansion, a flattening, an embrace of different ways that brands look at themselves over the last 20 years, hotel brand first. But I wonder, do you have conversations within your kind of peer group there? Of like, oh well, we're also the one B to. One A to that is that we're a luxury brand and we need to be approaching this with that kind of dual pronged approach.

Tiffany Cooper:

Yeah, I mean we always look at everything through the lens of luxury, for certain. But also you know what I love about the hotel industry and this sector, this real estate sector in particular. When you're looking at all of the various sectors, whether it's multifamily or industrial or retail, the hospitality sector is the most dynamic. It touches everything, it's live work, you know, and you kind of pull that through and you identify, not only like a demographic but a psychographic, the best brands, luxury or non-luxury, really look at that and examine that and identify that and then speak to that.

Jeff Borman:

Matt, when you were talking about Apple, I was thinking more about just the digitization of our entire world over the last couple of decades. More in that way, I think, have luxury hospitality companies become entwined with luxury packaged goods, because we're all trying to sell things, be it experiences or product, through a digital marketplace. That is actually. That's now quite similar for all of us, right? You used to have to go stay in a hotel, which was wildly different than walking into a luxury retail shop, regardless of what you're actually trying to sell, what your business is. You're trying to do it through a flat screen, and there's a lot of similarity may not have existed 20 years ago.

Jeff Borman:

We talk often on this show about the saturation of the luxury tier, specifically overuse of the word luxury. How does Mandarin Oriental separate itself, then, from Four Seasons, ritz-carlton, waldorf, astoria and not to mention your regional champion brands like Shangri-La and Taj and Oberoi? How do you distance yourself? What is the difference? And we have a mostly American audience here, a little bit of global audience, but mostly American. What do they need to know about? Why Mandarin Oriental is something different than the brands that would roll off the tongue, naturally, to them?

Tiffany Cooper:

Look, it's a great question. Calling upon my previous experience at some of the larger hotel companies, I do think that there is a distinction to be made between the luxury brands that fall under the master brands and then the ultra luxury brands that are truly independent in nature and who specialize only within that ultra luxury space. As hoteliers, they have one brand that they're focused on, such as Mandarin Oriental, you know, Rosewood, Amman. They're all very hyper-focused on operating at that highest luxury level and they're, you know, not as spread out. I think that really is a super important distinction. I never really understood, I guess before I got to MO, the real differentiation between that ultra luxury and luxury category, but I do think it's kind of you could kind of tie it to specialization.

Jeff Borman:

The reason I mentioned those brands and I may be way off here, correct me if I am that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel is more like the size and I was just thinking capacity, you know room count, function space, more like the brands that I mentioned than the ultra luxury space that you mentioned. You know, amman, it's hard, rosewood, right, it's hard to be better than those brands in quality. Mandarin Oriental tends to be more in the larger building experience and maybe a more diverse kind of segmentation of customers than the very narrow ultra lux that you were bringing up.

Tiffany Cooper:

I think it's reverse and as I'm, you know, working the America's market, you know the way I identify opportunities and the way I'm, the lens that I'm looking at us through is really boutique luxury. So so we actually don't want to be those massive resorts. We don't want to be a convention or conference or meeting space. You know meetings driven mice property space. You know meetings driven mice property. We, you know if we're going to compress. You know rates well over. You know $1,500 a night. It's hard to do that when you have, you know, so many rooms and you're catering to a group traveler. So you know where we find ourselves is actually right alongside, I'd say, you know, a Rosewood, a Peninsula, kind of again that kind of boutique luxury as opposed to kind of the big giant conference luxury hotels.

Matt Brown:

But one of the things that has been making a little bit of press recently is the ambitions of the brand to get further into the branded residence space. Branded residences are hot. Get further into the branded residence space. Branded residences are hot, you know. They're offering pretty high margins and brand stickiness for a lot of hotel companies. I think the big story that's kind of come out of the last year is that Men in Oriental is sort of reshaping a property in Miami that will open in 2030, I think, and it will be a mix of hotel rooms and private residences. When you came on board, what were your discussions like around the future of residential? Was that part of the interview process? Like, hey, this is, this is very much what we see the plan of the brand being over the next decade?

Tiffany Cooper:

Yeah, I mean there's absolutely a strategic focus. I mean the luxury segment in particular. I think there's two sectors right now that can thrive amid high interest rates. It's either the economy space, where you can build them less expensive, or the luxury space, where you have a branded residential product that you can help the capital stack and subsidize the project with, based upon your sales. I have some good stats from Seville's that I think it's really interesting which the branded residential segment has grown 180% over the last decade and the sector is expected to increase on average about 12% each year, with North America accounting for 40% of all the pipeline projects. I also oversee the Americas, and so the three hottest branded residential markets are New York, Miami and Sao Paulo and Brazil. We've proven that we can go into a market and we can win the top of the market, which is essentially what's happening in Miami and Brickell. We've sold a billion in real estate, which we have another billion to go, but our velocity is there and it's going to be an incredible project when it opens in 2030.

Jeff Borman:

It's a long way from the Mandarin in Hong Kong and the Oriental Hotel Bangkok.

Tiffany Cooper:

Yeah, still great hotels, still great properties.

Jeff Borman:

Yeah, both are gorgeous hotels. Actually, have you recently changed from the original Mandarin Hong Kong? Is that a new building now?

Tiffany Cooper:

No, I was actually in it a month ago. It's still the same tower and they're going to be undergoing a big renovation. And then there's an additional new tower that was built and that one has been closed and is under a property improvement plan currently and they're going to be opening again shortly. But it's you know. I walk into a room. I can't tell you how many people talk about the original Hong Kong hotel, just as beloved.

Jeff Borman:

It is rightly so, and I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but when I was living in Hong Kong, the Chinese restaurant I'm not sure if there's an Italian also, but the Chinese restaurant there is one of the best restaurants, one of the best dining experiences period in Hong Kong, which is not lacking in great dining experiences.

Tiffany Cooper:

That's true.

Jeff Borman:

So you talked a little bit about the pipeline, but are you looking at new hotels or conversions as a real driver? The marketplace today is more about conversions than new builds. Price of construction, interest rates you mentioned a few of those things. It just limits the appetite to go build something. Mandarin's had kind of a tough time with conversions. There used to be a Mandarin Oriental in Atlanta, there was one in Las Vegas, and those are both Waldorf Astorias now. So are there conversions in your future? Is that a major part of the plan?

Tiffany Cooper:

Yeah, I mean, I guess, look, brands evolve at the end of the day and so you know a project maybe you know that we had or placement we had in the market previously may not be a fit for us today. We're trying to take a real holistic approach in terms of how we look at markets where we really feel like we flex. We do have a pipeline in the US. We've recently announced our project in Grand Cayman. We have something that's going to be opening or under construction in Puerto Rico, riviera Maya, in Mexico. So, really leaning into our resort portfolio, which is really new for us because I think everyone associates Mandarin as an urban brand for the longest time, but we're having a lot of success with our resort portfolio. We're going to be opening in Mallorca and we have Bali and the Maldives and also emerging markets.

Tiffany Cooper:

I mean, you know, part of the strategy sometimes is to take a contrarian approach and maybe not go where everyone else goes. So I've been having a lot of fun pushing the boundaries of you know if everyone else is there. You know how are we going to differentiate ourselves? What could we do to differentiate ourselves? But then also, yeah, this is an emerging market. No one's there. That's the opportunity to really kind of create something really interesting and be first. So it's, you know, I think it's a combination of the two.

Jeff Borman:

So this is an AI set of facts, because I looked this up. I had the question, but I'm looking to you to fact check AI. I was curious about what the ownership structure is, and so I'm told by my co-pilot that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is the parent company of Mandarin Oriental, the brand, which is a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson out of Bermuda, and of the 43 properties globally, 20 are partially owned by the company. First, is that true?

Tiffany Cooper:

That is true, those are all true things, good job co-pilot.

Jeff Borman:

I assume, then, that that's going to change with the great work that you're about to unleash, meaning that you're going to be looking for a lot of ownership dollars in these buildings rather than straight cash to develop by Mandarin Oriental itself.

Tiffany Cooper:

Yeah, I mean I think you know, similar to all the other brands, you know we want to be asset light. We do have ownership stakes in many of our properties Going forward. I don't know that you know we're going to do that and well, I know that we're not going to do that in every market. But there are some markets where if we need to use our balance sheet, we can that if there it's a critical market. But ideally we would. We have enough of a strong network with our owners and we have enough performance, data and interest in the brand where we can come in as the brand and the operator without investment. It's just striking a balance between all of that. But I think, as we continue to grow, it's going to be less our ownership and more an asset light model.

Jeff Borman:

Mandarin is a leader in the spa field, particularly with the signature time ritual which, very interestingly, encourages guests to book time rather than a specific treatment so that the service can be tailor-made, which I find fascinating and somehow not copied, at least not that I've ever heard. Your brands have won five-star spa awards to 16 hotels last year, more than any other group in the world. As the developer, are you finding that lenders are turned on or off by the massive expense of building spas?

Tiffany Cooper:

It's a great question and when I got to Mandarin I actually looked at that pretty closely Because you know you don't make money on spas it's an amenity, right. But you know I should say we're super proud that we are the most beloved hotel spa and wellness brand and if you look at the trends in terms of what's the most important to guests in general not just our guests, but all guests Wellness is more important than ever and you know it's not about going and getting a steam and a facial massage. You know we have the ability to not only let our guests experience something, but also learn something in their visit and kind of return home with perhaps even a new lifestyle to try on, which is revolutionary, because there's so much new methodology and technology around longevity and wellness that we are embracing and we're rolling out to our guests. So it's just changed so much, which is why we really aren't calling it spa as much as wellness.

Tiffany Cooper:

But then, from a profitability perspective putting my development hat back on we do have strong data points that support our spa business, even in urban locations, because we found that our guests spend four times as much than a non-spa guests. It's an important revenue stream for our hotels, in addition to it being an amenity. So, whether the gas is seeking it out because we have a spa in an urban location, or when they get there, they decide hey, I have some time. I don't feel great, I'm jet lagged, which is kind of how I feel when I travel. I need to go down and make myself feel better so I can handle the week ahead.

Jeff Borman:

Did you think that maybe the reason the spa guest folio is four times higher is because your spa is so high priced?

Tiffany Cooper:

Well, I mean, I think there I would say, there's value.

Matt Brown:

Jeff, how can you put a price on happiness, exactly?

Tiffany Cooper:

It's the price-value conversation, right? Can you put a price on feeling good for a week when you feel terrible and jet-lagged?

Matt Brown:

I don't know you can. You can put a price on both those things. It turns out it's time for the lightning round. It's time for the lightning round what's been? I know you haven't visited all of them, and all Mandarin Oriental properties are, of course, your children now, so they're all beautiful in their own ways.

Tiffany Cooper:

Sure.

Matt Brown:

What's been your favorite property to visit, or most interesting, or most unexpected? And I'm going to let you off the hook it can't be one of the Americas.

Tiffany Cooper:

When I started part of my homework, my onboarding was I had to go, had to.

Tiffany Cooper:

I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong and visit the corporate office and visit that property, but as part of it I also got to fly to Bangkok and visit the Bangkok property, which is, I think it's, one of the top hotels in the world.

Tiffany Cooper:

Year after year and I don't know what I was expecting, but I will say that it was, you know, exceeded expectations, not as much from just a product perspective, because I've seen some beautiful hotels, like I feel very blessed that I've been able to really see some incredible properties. But I think what Bangkok does and many of our properties, most of our properties do, is that there's just such like an emphasis on service and it's next level and it's that Asian hospitality, of course, that Thai hospitality. But just from the moment that I stepped foot on that property, it just everything just worked really well and everyone is just so sincere in their wanting to be hospitable. And you know, I'm not sure if you've ever been to that property in Bangkok, but there's this lovely boat that can take you across the way and the spas across the river and little markets and you can have dinner over there and it's just a very kind of magical place. I just feel like the whole place in general smells like incense, but it just is a very it was a very lovely experience.

Matt Brown:

Give us a hot take on where the luxury market is going over the next five to 10 years, either existentially or physically. Give us like, maybe even sort of an under-the-radar trend that luxury brands of any stripe should be paying attention to.

Tiffany Cooper:

So I mean, we've heard for so long it's you know, it's about the experience, but you know, I think, also generationally, I think there's some you know, key trends that are happening. You know less about opulence, you know more about, you know, immersive experiences where you can feel like you're actually in the location, everything being personalized and this, you know, conscious connection with the location, even from a philanthropic perspective. So if you're staying, you know, in a resort location, do you, can you plant trees in the mangroves? I mean, people want to feel like they are connected and they're contributing something. And you know we all of are tied to kind of, I guess, emotional intelligence, being able to read what the guest needs and wants in that moment. It's not prescribed, it's not scripted, and that's tricky, but that's really what has made these experiences more meaningful.

Tiffany Cooper:

I also think you know I'm a Gen Xer. You know the way we used to go on vacation is we'd go and get a cabana and have cocktails and sit on the beach and listen to music, and I think that's changed. And also, you know even the older generation. You know the men would go play golf and the women would go to the spa. Right, I think the younger generations have a very different view of how they vacation. Like there's not that kind of separation. You know it's not as much about drinking. There's, like these, you know, this whole sober social trend where maybe it's not as much about the bar A lot of good data points around multi-generational trips.

Tiffany Cooper:

A lot of good data points around multi-generational trips. So you know, you have, you know, three generations traveling together and I think that's really important to pay attention to, because how you design the hotels having communal spaces, having, you know, villas that can have three, four, five bedrooms so everyone can stay together is really important. So you know, those are some interesting trends. And then I will also say sustainability. I mean it's something that it's not a nice to have anymore. You know this younger generation, it's really important. And Mandarin it's one of our, you know, besides wellness and food and beverage, it's probably our third most important pillar for our company just making sure we're good stewards of the land.

Jeff Borman:

One of the all-time best marketing campaigns in all of travel, in my opinion, is Mandarin's. I'm a fan. My question to you, last question Of the 28 fans since the campaign launched in 1999, who is your favorite fan?

Tiffany Cooper:

Well, look, I just mentioned I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm a child of the 70s and I grew up with the Electric Company. Do you remember the Electric Company? The Electric Company was the best Came on after Sesame Street, and so Morgan Freeman is my favorite. I mean that voice, the whole thing, like he is. I would love to have the chance to meet him, but we also are going to be announcing a new one by the end of the year, so I'm not allowed to tell you who it is, but it's great.

Matt Brown:

And you can't give us a clue.

Tiffany Cooper:

I'm a good Italian girl. I know how to keep my secrets.

Matt Brown:

Sure sure.

Jeff Borman:

What are her initials? I thought I could get you to at least nod that it was her. Fun fact for you. Matt Mary McCartney, sir Paul's daughter, taking after her mother, Linda, is the official photographer of the I'm a Fan campaign.

Matt Brown:

Oh, I didn't know that Really, wow.

Tiffany Cooper:

Fun.

Matt Brown:

Huh.

Tiffany Cooper:

So you're saying it could be Paul McCartney.

Matt Brown:

It could be Paul McCartney.

Tiffany Cooper:

I'm not saying a word.

Matt Brown:

Oh man, Tiffany, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for taking time to be with us.

Tiffany Cooper:

This was so fun. You both are great, and I feel genuinely so honored and grateful to be at Mandarin, because I feel like it's just. We have so much. We keep saying the future is unfolding. Like the fan right, the future is unfolding, we're unfolding possibilities, and so I'm so excited to talk to everyone about it and to be here with you guys talking today.