Marriott International has sued the owner of the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach for trying to kick out Marriott-owned Renaissance as the management company early Sunday morning.
Renaissance, which is also a plaintiff in the suit filed Monday in New York, is contracted to manage the 631-room hotel at 4525 Collins Ave. through 2030. The company was still operating the hotel Tuesday afternoon.
The suit says the takeover failed “due in part to timely police intervention,” however adds that the landlord has stated it is going to try once more and that individuals of the transition staff checked into the resort after their first attempt was thwarted.
Marriott and the Eden Roc’s ownership, described in court documents as Eden Roc, LLLP, have been battling in court since the spring, when the owner sued the hotel company for breach of contract for failing to maximize profits at the historic and recently renovated hotel.
Miami-based real estate investment and development company Key International, which owns the Eden Roc as well as the Marriott South Beach, says it spent $220 million on an expansion and renovation of the property that wrapped up in 2008.
Sunday’s attempted ouster “included storming the hotel with uniformed security guards while there were guests present, threatening to fire hotel employees if they did not cooperate with the hostile takeover, and changing the locks on hotel offices,” Marriott’s complaint says.
In an it appears premature information release that went out Sunday, the owner of the lodge stated that a new management workforce was in position and a new website and reservations number had been introduced. The website online used to be no longer operating Tuesday.
The owner said in the statement that the management agreement with Marriott International and Renaissance Hotels & Resorts had been terminated on March 30 “following years of mismanagement of the property and a failure to maximize the Eden Roc brand.”
“Our exhaustive efforts to encourage Marriott to proper its a lot of control defaults, and to preserve our partnership, proved fruitless, leaving us without a option but regain regulate and to position this property at the path to success,” stated Diego Arid, a vp at Key global, in the statement released Sunday.
Neither an lawyer representing the homeowners nor media contacts indexed on that commentary might be reached early Tuesday.
Such early-morning takeovers have been making news lately. In early April, the owner of the luxury Setai in Miami Beach forced out Singapore-based General Hotel Management in a similar early-morning move and installed a new operator.