Hospitality legend Ian Schrager is selling his interests in Gramercy Park Hotel and launching SCHRAGER HOTELS, a new company that will focus on creating two new hotel brands. He will also continue his work on Marriott’s Edition brand. Schrager’s goal with his new venture is to upset the status quo and reinvent the hotel experience, once again. His two new hotel brands include one luxury lifestyle brand and another that is stylish, less expensive, and reasonably priced for both large major city center 1000-plus-room hotels and smaller outlets.
The first hotel under one of these new brands will open in Chicago in September 2011. It will be a rebirth of one of the city’s most famous cultural icons, the Ambassador East, a destination favored by rock legends such as Led Zeppelin, Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols, and David Bowie. Additionally, Schrager intends to roll out his two new brands in multiple 24-hour international gateway cities such as New York, Los Angeles and southern California, Miami and southern Florida, London, Paris, Barcelona, Istanbul, Mexico City, Rio De Janiero, and other cities in Europe, Asia, China, India, and South America.
