Hospitality giants

This year's top Hospitality Giants earned $194,962,385. This was only 3 percent below the previous year despite an uncomfortably soft economy during the study period, October 1, 2000, through September 30, 2001. Of these 50 Giants, 10 earned all their fees from hospitality design, with another six earning 90 percent or more; only two of the top 10 earned less than half their fees from hospitality. On average, hospitality accounted for an average of 61.5 percent of all design fees earned by these Giants; the next closest project type was contract, at a distant 13.3 percent.

The fees reported for the current study period cover 74,288,466 square feet installed, up 2 percent from the previous year. The total value of fixtures, furnishings, and construction was $7,249,160,000, up 15.7 percent, beating the Top 100 Giants by 3.3 percent. (As usual, installation costs for hospitality were significantly higher than those for other types of design except residential.) New construction and renovations were almost equal, separated by only 1.4 percentage points in favor of new construction. Overseas work accounted for 13.8 percent of installations, compared to 7.5 percent for the Top 100 Giants, however the recent widespread reluctance to travel is likely to encourage an even greater emphasis on close-to-home hospitality projects over the next few years.

Hotel work continued to garner the largest portion of fees for Hospitality Giants, followed by restaurants, resorts and spas, country clubs, casinos, and cruise ships. However, the gaps both between hotels and restaurants and between country clubs and casinos had begun to narrow even before September 11. The largest number of restaurants designed by a single Hospitality Giant shot up 65 percent, and the number of seats per project rose from an average of 152 to an average of 163. The number of country-club projects almost quadrupled, and 18 percent of the Hospitality Giants moved into this arena.

Like last year, one Hospitality Giant billed every single hour—if the firm that billed every single hour last year had bothered to report this year, we might have had a 100 percent increase. The average was 81.4 hours, compared to 84 hours for the Top 100 Giants, and the minimum was seven, up from five last year.

During the study period, $340,000 was the highest annual Hospitality Giant fee earnings per employee; the average was $147,929, up a hair's breadth from the previous year.