The Suzhou W Hotel Opened. What Happened at the Opening Party It Called a "Premiere"?

"W isn't for everyone. What we offer is a place where adults want to be children and children want to be adults."

"Can I get a glass of champagne?"

"Sorry, can I get a glass of champagne?"

"What?"

"A glass of champagne, thanks."

Not far off, on a second-floor platform, a DJ was spinning. To be precise, a half-Chinese, half-British male model/actor/DJ, and he was good — but inevitably, people had to raise their voices to be heard.

Men and women in evening gowns and smart casual stood around or leaned on the sofas, glasses in hand, talking in threes and fives; waitstaff in uniform threaded through them with trays, clearing away the wreckage.

It was like a party, except no one had started dancing yet, and it was happening in the lobby and lobby bar of the Suzhou W Hotel — the "Trend Hall," or Woobar — rather than beside a pool. It was part of the "premiere" the hotel had staged for its official opening.

The performances were over by then. According to the hotel's press release, this "party for a thousand guests" had used "the stunning 'Walk on the Lake' and the dazzling, high-energy 'Frenzied Water Drum Show'" to "interpret the 'floating garden' design and the beauty of Jinji Lake and the 'Venice of the East,' pushing the premiere party to its climax and lighting up the city of Suzhou."

At the reception desk by the door, the computer showed nearly 700 people invited and around 400 who came. That is still a crowd: a staff member from the hotel restaurant said the small beef portions prepared for the next day had all been brought out that night, more than 600 servings in all. The guests included "companies and people with all sorts of partnerships with the hotel, some Marriott and SPG members, and some regulars at Suzhou W," a Marriott public relations staffer said.

Nearby, people were queuing to take selfies — if selfie is the word. There was a small step; once you stood on it, a small camera made a 360-degree turn around you, and most people turned with it. This was probably the least strenuous and most complicated kind of selfie there is.

"They made it like the opening of a high-end fashion boutique, or an event during fashion week." That is how K.C. Kavanagh, Starwood's former global public relations director, remembered the opening of the world's first W Hotel, in New York, in 1998.

On that count, W may not have changed much in 20 years.

"Tonight's premiere at Suzhou W overturns the formality of suits and ties and invites guests into a party of pure abandon. Several spaces in the hotel reinvent their design highlights, blending classic local elements with the W brand's trend-forward attitude," said Ugur Lee Kanbur, general manager of the Suzhou W Hotel.

Suzhou W began a soft opening last September, barely a month after the W at Shanghai's North Bund officially opened. It is the first W outside Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and the sixth in Greater China; starting in the third quarter of this year, W hotels in Xi'an, Changsha, Chengdu and Shenyang will open one after another. A search of Starwood's website turns up 23 W hotels open or planned across Asia-Pacific, 10 of them on the Chinese mainland, or 12 counting Hong Kong and Taipei — more than half of the fast-expanding brand's Asia-Pacific map.

Outside Greater China, W seems to prefer islands — Koh Samui, the Maldives, Bali — or port cities such as Singapore, Sydney and Brisbane. That fondness for the sea has turned into an obsession with outdoor pools, in Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai alike. In Suzhou the pool is enclosed, though there is a terrace that looks like an outdoor pool, and, as at other W hotels, it carries a W logo, "so guests can easily get their photo," said the staff member leading the tour.

Suzhou W sits in the Huxi Central Business District of Suzhou Industrial Park, beside Jinji Lake, as part of Suzhou Center, the city's newest large mixed-use complex. Gate of the Orient, the well-known new Suzhou landmark nicknamed "the Big Long Johns" for its shape, stands not far away. The hotel connects directly to the Suzhou Center mall.

"Suzhou has two personalities. On weekdays it is an industrial and high-tech area; on holidays it becomes a weekend escape — people from nearby cities like Shanghai and Nanjing come here to enjoy the lights and the setting, especially guests from Shanghai. Individuals, couples, families, they all see Suzhou as a place to relax," Kanbur explained.

By his account, on Fridays and Saturdays 60% of the hotel's guests come from Shanghai and the rest from Hangzhou, Nanjing and other cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang; from Sunday to Thursday, 70% to 80% are Chinese employees of multinational companies, and the rest are staff from East Asia — Korea and Japan — and the United States. Suzhou Industrial Park has plenty of high-tech companies and their downstream suppliers, and their employees are the hotel's main source of business. Companies in traditional manufacturing, he added, of which Suzhou also has many, still tend to prefer traditional hotels.

"W feels like it is set up mostly for young people, but a lot of the weekend-escape guests arrive with the whole family. How does W handle those two groups?" a reporter asked.

"Many people think W is only for the young, but W is 20 years old now, and a lot of those young people have children of their own. Young families from nearby cities come to Suzhou too, and W has plenty of facilities and activities for them," said Carol Zhou, senior brand director for Marriott International's Asia-Pacific region, who attended the "premiere" for the newly merged Marriott.

This Suzhou property was a long time coming. "Probably the area around it wasn't finished, which is why it took so long," said a translator helping the Korean media at the "premiere." Most of the "needs improvement" reviews on Trip.com Group also date from last year, several of them noting that the surrounding infrastructure was not ready.

Once open, W became one of the most expensive hotels in Suzhou. "It's even more expensive than the W in Bangkok — much more expensive. Does that make sense?" a reporter asked. "Suzhou is much better than Bangkok. Our owner, Suzhou Hengtai, expects Suzhou to be an international city, and we have to be sure we can throw a party at international level. Sometimes you have to pay an international price," Kanbur said.

W, and Marriott International, prepared heavily for the publicity. They invited more than 60 media outlets, among them two Korean journalists and two Japanese ones. Most came from Shanghai, some from Beijing and Xi'an. From the airport pickup on, the hotel tried to give the press the best time it could: local restaurants for "Suzhou-style cuisine," a woodblock printing session with a local Suzhou printmaker, a tour of Jinji Lake and its water shows.

The hotel poured people and money into this, well beyond what it runs on day to day — though that may be normal for some hotel openings. QDaily met plenty of W staff on site who had come from Shanghai and Guangzhou to help. The driver who picked us up said, "I've never seen an event this big in Suzhou." The well-equipped BMW 5 Series he drove was his own; eight to 10 other cars had been hired the same way, half 5 Series and half E-Class, each stocked with sandwiches, water and W's own cocktails. Several Mercedes-Benz Viano vans for ferrying guests stood outside the hotel, though they carried the Garden Hotel's markings. The local restaurant sent out so much food it was nearly impossible to finish. The Japanese and Korean reporters photographed the dishes at length. As guests left, restaurant staff handed out souvenirs at the door.

Design, music, fashion and energy are the W brand's "passion points." Kanbur and Zhou both returned to them repeatedly. Judging by the lighting, music and performances at the "premiere," the last three were not in short supply.

People kept running into each other on different floors, because parties were going on at the same time in several restaurants upstairs.

The performers in outlandish costumes were a spectacle in themselves: one covered head to toe in silver sequins, with laser lights built into the clothes; one on stilts with a pair of huge wings, from a distance a flamingo in a dress; another in enormously baggy trousers — not ill-fitting, deliberately, exaggeratedly baggy — a tall hat and black-and-white face paint. Under saturated, bright blue and red light, the hotel had arranged a flamenco performance, though it was a long way from the flamenco you see in Andalusia, and no one in the audience shouted "¡Olé!" The "dancers" from Russia did work well together, breaking into their own dancing between numbers to keep the mood up. Above the restaurant was another bar, where some people went out onto the terrace to smoke and merged with the smog over Jinji Lake.

There were local elements too. Beside these performers, people had Kunqu opera makeup painted on and posed for photos in headdresses. In the hotel gym, one wall is printed with a woman in workout gear wearing a rhinestone headpiece of the kind used in Peking opera or Kunqu; that too, hotel staff said, is a popular backdrop for social-media photos.

More local elements show up in the design. "Above there is heaven, below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou" — Kanbur traces the hotel's design concept to that saying. "From the fountain around the round metal sculpture at the front entrance to the crystals hanging from the lobby ceiling and the light they throw off, the whole lobby bar tells you that Suzhou is heaven on earth."

Similar touches are everywhere: the Suzhou-embroidery motif at the entrance to the Chinese restaurant, the hairy-crab ornaments set straight into its walls (the Chinese restaurant, Su Yan, was designed by AB Concept); the decorations in the elevator lobbies drawn from Suzhou pastries; and the round design elements in the guest rooms, said to come from the moon gates of Suzhou's gardens.

The beds carry pipa-shaped cushions. The W on Shanghai's Bund does something similar, except its cushions are shaped like xiaolongbao and a pair of chopsticks. The rooms use bold, vivid colors, and the bathroom fittings are glossy PVC. The round "moon light" over the bed is a signature: it comes on by default the moment the room has power, cycling endlessly through suggestive colors.

The rooms are well equipped with technology and, naturally, with chargers of every kind. The minibar sits where you can't miss it, a selfie kit on the counter holding a selfie stick and a fill light. The minibar list is blunt about what it offers, including a Love Kit and a pair of pink "handcuffs."

A bathroom with mirrors on three sides — every side but the door — drew a good deal of press attention. "Over the top" was the comment you heard most.

"Honestly, unless you're a W fan, a family with kids probably wouldn't come to a W. Does the hotel have anything for them?" a reporter asked.

"Straight for the pain point," joked the Marriott staffer running public relations for the event.

"Family can be defined many ways. A family can be small or large; it can be a husband and a wife, or a husband and husband, or a wife and wife," Kanbur said. "Activities don't have to be indoors. We have plenty of space, at Suzhou Center, at Jinji Lake." Zhou added: "W isn't for everyone. What we offer is a place where adults want to be children and children want to be adults."

After SPG merged with Marriott, W was folded into Marriott's "Distinctive Luxury" brand program, though not every corner goes all out on luxury: the living room of the 200-square-meter suite has a Samsung television with B&O speakers, while the bedroom and the 400-square-meter suite use B&O throughout. Some choices ignore the usual upgrade logic — the air purifier in the 400-square-meter suite is not a step up within the same brand but a Lexy K9, made by a company headquartered in Suzhou.

The rooms are generous: even the most basic Wonderful Room is 47 square meters, and each comes with a Blueair 270E air purifier. The centerpiece of the daytime program on opening day was a tour of the 200- and 400-square-meter Wow Suites, Suzhou W's two top room types. The 400-square-meter suite has two floors, more space and correspondingly larger zones; beyond that, its purpose is plain — parties. The bar counter, the spiral staircase, the matching B&O audio-visual gear, the wide living room, and the irregular shape of the room, whose curved edges and huge floor-to-ceiling windows open up a fairly broad view of Jinji Lake, all say this is a place to throw a party. Whether enough people will come to throw one is another matter; the smell of fresh renovation had not yet faded.

There is, though, a tension between Suzhou and the club style W is known for. "Compared with Shanghai, people here in Suzhou eat earlier, usually around 5 p.m., so our happy hour and our party times move earlier too," Kanbur told QDaily.

The cover image and any images in the article without a credited source are courtesy of Suzhou W; the banner image is from W Amsterdam & Mr.Porter.