rosewood hotels and resorts- branding to increase customer profitability and lifetime value
TRANSCRIPT
ROSEWOOD is a private 5 Star hotel management company with luxury iconic hotels Headquartered in Dallas, Texas .
Operated as a “collection” of individually branded unique hotels & resorts.
Has global reputation with iconic luxury hotels.John Scott - CEO & President
Robert Boulogne - Vice president of sales and marketing It has 12 hotels worldwide with capacity of 1513 rooms . Room tariffs rate ranging from $120 to $9000
ROSEWOOD is a private 5 Star hotel management company with luxury iconic hotels Headquartered in Dallas, Texas .
Operated as a “collection” of individually branded unique hotels & resorts.
Robert Boulogne - Vice president of sales and marketing
It has 12 hotels worldwide with capacity of 1513 rooms.
Has global reputation with iconic luxury hotels John Scott - CEO & President
Room tariffs rate ranging from $120 to $9000
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts: Branding to Increase Customer Profitability and Lifetime Value
Harvard Business Review Case Analysis
What makes Rosewood different?
Factors:
Affecting the brand
Competition
Competing with known chains and individually branded properties like :
ØFour season with 58 properties .
ØRitz-Carlton -52 properties .
ØFairmont -48 properties .
ØOrient express .
ØRocco forte .
ØAuberge .
ØDorchester .
Agent’s perception
o Rosewood is a collection of brands. It is not a brand.o Guests book the hotel and not the brand.o Brand is not as important as the hotels & resorts. o The brand is not as strong as it was in its past.o Known only by individual hotels & resorts. o Clients don’t come asking for Rosewood as a Brand.o Clients know Rosewood only because we educate them
on it. o We have to drive understanding of Rosewood. Once
they understand what Rosewood is, it does mean something.
Guest’s perception
• The Brand Rosewood doesn’t signify anything. • Guests have used various properties but couldn’t realise that all of them were a part of the same group.• Even after staying at the property, guests don’t tend to know the name Rosewood • Rosewood as a brand doesn’t encourage them to try different properties. • No one knows about it until their travel agent mentions it.
Employee’s perception
• It’s a brand of dilemma – there are only few business opportunities.
• No great opportunities to attract employees.
• Secret club is only known to a few guests who have been its loyal members and who are a part of the industry.
• Very low awareness about the brand Rosewood. Only past guests know about its existence.
ConcernsThe company, which had been manually collecting guest data from its 12
separate hotel management systems, had just switched to automated data-
gathering through its central reservation system (CRS) and was faced with the
following shortcomings :
Preliminary results from an analysis of consolidated guest data revealed that, although some properties enjoyed return visits of up to 40% of guests, only 5% of Rosewood guests had stayed in more than one of Rosewood’s properties.
While the proportion of repeat guests at a single property could reach 40%,
the individual brand or collection hotel brands typically had 5% to 10% multi-property cross-selling rates while corporate-branded hotels enjoyed 10% to 15% cross- property usage rates.
Rosewood was at the low end of the scale and management felt there was an opportunity for increasing cross-property usage.
To encourage guests to use more than one Rosewood hotel, two possible approaches were considered :
Frequent-stay program Corporate branding approach
Solutions
This type of program had been successful only for large multi segment operators with broad geographic distribution, where guests could easily redeem their
reward, however few luxury hotels had adopted them.
Loyalty through these type of program was fostered by offerings such as—flexible check in, check out time personalised services, freedom to request a
specific room and capacity of employees to solve the most unusual problems.
Frequent Stay program issue
Increasing Cross Properties Usage from 5% to 10%
Increasing Connection between Rosewood properties
Creating Brand Equity and Create Rosewood Junkies
Summarising And
Concluding
• Customers are unaware of the Rosewood brand• Lack of focus on attracting new customers• Individualised hotel properties, not connected through the brand• Company has 12 hotel properties from just 1. However,• Brand has not been advertised• Rosewood brand is not advertised with the hotel properties• Need to market the brand in such as way that distinctiveness of the
individual property is not lost• Rosewood branding, take it from the Phone Greeting to the logo on the
amenities, is hidden under the unique theme of the individual hotel. Due to which, guests are not able to connect hotels to the Rosewood brand. In fact, for customers Rosewood brand does not exist.
• Only customers are those who value the uniqueness of the luxury hotels. There is a huge untapped customer market. Hence, repeat customers are also a few, 5%.
Major Issues
Adopt Corporate Branding Don’t dilute individual brand persona Subtly add Rosewood to it Strengthen Rosewood’s Brand Equity Get internal teams confidence Show them a bigger picture Incentivise trade and ask them to push a brand PR can do wonders Build a Rosewood membership plan Tie up with travel agencies and tour operators As per the CLTV calculations, NPV with new brand strategy is higher than the one
with the current approach. It also results in increase in CLTV per customer, profit and overall revenue. Hence, the new brand strategy should be implemented immediately.
Rosewood name should be attached to every property in the front.
Recommendations
Thank You!!
–Simran Jha