The Essex House on Central Park Is Again a Marriott Hotel When the Essex House, the Art Deco hotel on Manhattan's Central Park South, changed hands last month, it was a homecoming for two major players in the hotel industry. The buyer, Strategic Hotels and Resorts, a real estate investment trust based in Chicago that owns 18 high-end hotels, bought back the 44-story hotel from the same company to which it had sold the Essex House seven years ago - Dubai Group. And Marriott International, which is now operating the hotel, also has a history there; the Marriott Corporation, from which it was spun off, owned the hotel from 1969 to 1985. The sale of this prized asset is part of an attempt by the royal family of Dubai to retrench and reorganize its real estate holdings. Dubai Investment Group, as the company was then known, and its sister companies had made a heavy bet during the boom years on trophy properties in the United States, only to have their ambitions curtailed by the recession. Last year, Dubai Group transferred control of its United States properties to Silverpeak Real Estate Partners, a company created by Mark A. Walsh, who headed Lehman Brothers" real estate operations. Dubai Group was recently sued by three banks after failing to reach an agreement on restructuring its debt. As it turned out, the sour economy was not the only problem to plague the Essex House. After Dubai Investment Group bought it in 2005 for $423.9 million, it brought in Jumeirah Group, the royal family's five-star hotel management company, to run the hotel. Jumeirah sought to create a flagship that would make its brand as well known in North America as it is in the Middle East and Europe. The new owner emblazoned the Jumeirah name on the hotel marquee in letters that dwarfed the words Essex House, and poured $91 million into the property, updating the bathrooms, refurbishing the rooms with period furniture and creating the glamorous South Gate restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Cafe Botanica. But despite these efforts, the Essex House did poorly, hotel specialists said. Last month, Dubai Group defaulted on $303 million in loans and then sold the hotel to Strategic for $362.3 million, with KSL Capital Partners of Denver joining Strategic as a minority partner. At 509 rooms, the Essex House is smaller than it was when Strategic last owned it because 90 rooms have since been converted into condos. Even so, Strategic got the hotel back for $685,000 a unit, $45,000 less per unit than the 2005 selling price. Nine unsold condos also came with the deal, but those without views of the park will probably revert to hotel rooms, said Laurence S. Geller, the chief executive of Strategic. The hotel was a poor fit for the Jumeirah brand, said Arthur Adler, chief executive of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels Americas, who represented the sellers in the recent sale. This was a six-star location with a four-and-a-half-star hotel. It didn't really fit with their strategy," he said. When travelers came from overseas, this wasn't the Jumeirah experience they were looking for. Most of the bathrooms, for example, are smaller than what five-star customers expect. Silverpeak declined to comment. Mr. Geller said foreign companies and smaller brands do not have the marketing muscle, including brand recognition and rewards programs, needed to make a large New York hotel successful. Mr. Geller signed a 50-year operating contract with Marriott International, which he said was underrepresented in New York compared to its peers. A decade ago, Strategic sued Marriott, accusing the management company of deceptive business practices, but the two parties eventually reconciled, and Marriott now manages one-third of Strategic's properties. Several hotel specialists said they expected the newly renamed J. W. Marriott Essex House to do well. "Marriott is a very powerful marketing organization," said John A. Fox, a senior vice president at PKF Consulting U.S.A. "They put heads in beds. They fill up rooms. Arne Sorenson, Marriott's chief executive, said that in the hotel's first two weeks under the Marriott flag, 40 percent of the customers were members of the Marriott rewards program. He described the J. W. Marriott brand as "approachable" or "casual" luxury and said that room rates were likely to be at least $150 less than those at the Ritz-Carlton a block to the east on Central Park South. At present, rates at the Essex House start at $549 a night, compared with $895 a night for the Ritz-Carlton, according to their respective Web sites. Mr. Sorenson acknowledged that Marriott had bid on the hotel after it went on the market in March. "We love this hotel," he said. In some respects, we've been trying to get it back ever since we sold it.