Brand management strategy 20065438+0 Choice Hotels International, which ranks fifth among the top 300 hotel groups in the world, is a typical hotel group that has grown rapidly mainly by relying on brand management strategy. In just over 20 years, it has achieved the rapid expansion of global market scale and the continuous improvement of brand value mainly through brand franchise, multi-product brand combination, brand marketing and other brand management strategies. By September, 2004, Boutique International had owned 8 brands, opened more than 5,000 hotels in 43 countries around the world, and had more than 440,000 rooms. The business scope ranges from economical consumption, mid-range consumption to high-end luxury consumption, and all kinds of services are all-inclusive; Customers include business tourists, holiday tourists, mass tourists, family tourists, freelancers and other people from all walks of life. Northwest Business Travelers Association of Canada awarded it the "Best Hotel Chain of the Year" for three consecutive years. 1998 Consumer Report rated its brand Sleep Inn as the best budget joint name in the United States, and Success magazine listed the other two brands-comfort and quality-as one of the best brand operators. The great success of boutique international in brand management shows that brand management has become one of the important tools for hotel market competition. Brand is a kind of name, term, logo, design or their combined application. Its purpose is to identify a seller or seller's products or services and distinguish them from competitors' products and services. Brand management refers to the market demand as the basic situation, the enterprise concept as the core, the brand as the means, and the ultimate goal of maximizing the interests of enterprises through various management means such as brand marketing, brand promotion and brand asset management. The advantages of brand management enhance customer loyalty and form differentiated competitive advantages. Hotel products are intangible services provided to guests with certain facilities, which do not have the tangible characteristics of physical products, while the consumption of hotel products by guests is a service process experience with diversified characteristics. Because of the characteristics of hotel products and the asymmetry of market information, customers choose hotel products at will, which is an unfavorable factor for hotels to occupy the target market and expand market share. The brand of hotel group can establish a good corporate and product image in the eyes of consumers, enhance consumers' awareness of hotel intangible products, and promote customers' priority purchase; Once a customer recognizes a certain hotel product brand, the customer will choose the same hotel brand in order to reduce the purchase cost and risk next time. Many consumption experiences will form habitual consumption and eventually become loyal customers of this brand. The improvement of customer loyalty will help hotel groups attract repeat customers and increase market share. Brand reflects the differences and characteristics of hotel service products. If the service individuality value embodied by a brand is recognized by the customer groups consistent with its identity, feelings and preferences, then its loyalty to this brand will be irreplaceable. Therefore, personalized brands will help hotel groups to form differentiated comparative competitive advantages, thus occupying different market segments more effectively. Speeding up the expansion of hotel groups and forming industrial cluster advantage brand management is one of the important effective means to speed up the expansion of hotel groups, which can make hotel groups get rid of geographical restrictions, expand development space, expand market scale and expand market coverage with brands, thus promoting hotel groups to embark on the road of scale operation and rapid expansion. Its main form is franchising, and hotel groups have expanded rapidly through the transfer of intangible assets such as management mode, business philosophy, trademark brand and franchising. The expansion of the group's scale and strength will put it in a favorable position in the market competition. On the one hand, it can accelerate the expansion of the group more quickly, on the other hand, it can attract more business partners to establish good cooperative relations with them and enhance their market risk resistance, thus embarking on a virtuous circle of development. Promote industrial extension and form diversified business advantages. Brand management has the advantage of deferred brand value. Hotel groups can borrow the image and reputation of successful brands in the eyes of customers, use the original brand names in new product lines or enter new industrial fields. Consumers and the public will extend this brand loyalty to new products out of their trust and preference for successful brands, which will increase the chances of new products gaining market success, thus promoting the hotel group to quickly form a diversified product or industrial management pattern. For example, Accor Group has extended several brands such as Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis, etc. under Accor brand in the face of different hotel market segments such as luxury, mid-range and economy, thus achieving the goal of defining product positioning and effectively occupying different market segments. The basic mode of brand management Single brand management mode Single brand management mode is that hotel groups use the same brand name for all hotel products they produce and operate. Its advantage lies in that it can concentrate the financial and material resources of enterprises to build a single brand, which is conducive to accurately conveying the unified enterprise concept and management concept of enterprises; Its disadvantage is that it is not compatible with many hotel products, which leads to blurred product image. Foreign hotel groups mainly use the company brand when using the single brand business model, that is, directly use the company name of the hotel group as the product brand name. This method is mainly suitable for hotel groups that implement the target agglomeration strategy. For example, Four Seasons Hotel Group of Canada has positioned its target market as a global high-end hotel consumer group, so it clearly reflects the product positioning of luxury hotels by using the company's brand strategy, thus gaining a high market share in the global luxury hotel market. Multi-brand portfolio management mode Multi-brand portfolio management mode is that hotel groups give different brand names to products in different market segments under the guidance of the same company mission and management concept. There are three main types: 1. Independent product brand combination Independent product brand combination means that every hotel product operated by the hotel group is branded with its own independent brand, and each brand is "tailored" for the personality of a specific market segment to clarify the differences in product grades and functions; Its disadvantage lies in the lack of a unified corporate image, and too many brands can easily lead to the dispersion of marketing resources, which is not conducive to the formation of famous brands. In this regard, the leader of the global hotel group-St. Dart Hotel Group is a successful model. Independent product brands such as Howard Johnson brand, Knight Inn brand and Tian Tian Inn brand have been launched for different levels of hotel market segments such as luxury, mid-range and economy, and their accurate product image positioning has maintained a high market share in all market segments. 2. Classification brand combination Classification brand combination refers to the hotel group's classification of all kinds of hotel products it operates according to certain standards, and each type of product is branded with its own independent brand. The advantage of this combination is that it not only overcomes the shortcomings of vague brand positioning brought by the single brand combination business model, but also overcomes the shortcomings of high marketing cost and difficult management brought by independent brand combination. For example, Howard Johnson of Shengda Hotel Group is composed of four different brands of the same type: Howard Johnson Express Hotel, Howard Johnson Plaza-Hotel, Howard Johnson Hotel and Howard Johnson Express Hotel. 3. Parent-child brand combination Parent-child brand combination refers to the hotel group branding its hotel products with two brands, namely "parent brand+sub-brand". Parent brand represents the overall image of the group, conveys the company's business philosophy and provides credit guarantee for sub-brands; Sub-brands can increase parent brand's personality and vitality, enrich parent brand's connotation and strengthen parent brand's value support. Hyatt Regency Hotel Group is a typical representative of this brand combination. Hyatt Regency parent brand presents the high-quality overall image of the group's products to customers, while sub-brands (such as GrandHotels, ParkHotels and RegencyHotels) provide customers with different personalized services and value experiences in terms of hotel grades and service features, enriching and enhancing the image of parent brand. Each of the above brand management modes has its own advantages and disadvantages. Hotel groups should choose their own brand management mode according to their respective corporate missions and business strategies. As a successful business model of foreign hotel industry, capital operation strategy has been introduced to China for more than 20 years, which has played a positive role in the rapid development of hotel industry in China. Although the hotel industry in China has gone through the embryonic stage characterized by a single joint venture and the initial stage when a few hotel enterprises try to use various capital operation modes on a small scale, this business model has not been implemented on a large scale in the whole industry. After China's entry into WTO, the entry of international capital has brought a series of challenges, and China hotel industry as a whole is in a state of meager profit or even loss. It is of great significance to learn the successful mode of capital operation of foreign hotel groups for improving the overall operating performance and international competitiveness of China hotel industry. With the strengthening of the trend of global economic integration, a new round of mergers and acquisitions of world hotel groups with the core of competing for the global market is intensifying. Throughout the development process of world-famous hotel groups, the rapid cross-regional expansion of the group is generally achieved through capital operation methods such as merger, acquisition and reorganization. For example, in 1953, kemmons wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn Group, pioneered the franchise of the hotel group, and sold the franchise of 18 in 1957, realizing the initial success of the franchise in the expansion of the hotel group. Since then, Hilton and Sheraton have introduced this method to rapidly realize the low-cost and high-profit expansion of the Group. In 1960s, Hilton Hotels Group initiated the "management contract" operation mode, and successfully listed on new york Stock Exchange on 1964, becoming the first listed hotel group company in the world. 1998 formally put forward in its annual financial report that "the company concentrates on the hotel industry and expands the number of hotels owned by the group through mergers, acquisitions and chain operations". In order to enter the world luxury hotel market, the British Ford Hotel Group acquired Le Meridien Hotel on 1994, which quickly accelerated its global expansion. 1995, in order to concentrate on developing meridian brand, it sold 490 hotels in America. The above example illustrates the fact that capital operation is one of the important management means for hotel groups to optimize enterprise resource allocation in order to maximize enterprise profits or capital appreciation. Capital refers to the value that can be continuously increased in sports, and this value is manifested in the currency paid in advance by hotels to carry out service business activities. Hotel capital operation refers to the hotel's pursuit of profit maximization or capital appreciation, characterized by value management, taking all tangible and intangible social resources and production factors owned by the hotel as operational value capital, and saving expenses through economies of scale. In the past few years, hotel suppliers have dominated the supply and demand relationship between luxury goods and high-end market segments. From this, Starwood Hotel has obtained a management mode of optimizing hotel capital and production factors allocation, dynamically adjusting industrial structure and realizing capital appreciation through circulation, acquisition, merger, reorganization, equity participation, holding, transaction, transfer and leasing. The ultimate management goal of hotel group is to maximize profits and cash flow. In order to achieve this goal, Starwood has taken the following measures: increasing the profits of existing hotels and casinos; Selective purchase of new hotels; Increase the number of hotel management contracts and franchise agreements. In order to increase revenue, Starwood Group expands the tourist market and other resources by balancing and effectively allocating its global assets, and greatly increases the daily average rate (ADR) through revenue, which is mainly achieved by replacing discounted products with high-priced products and selectively raising prices. Here is a brief introduction to the specific management strategy of the Group. 1, internal development opportunity ITT, global capital and management mode, joining Starwood's traditional hotel business, provides Starwood with a huge opportunity to enhance the overall market share, reputation and scale of the merged company, thus improving the operating efficiency of the company's hotels and casinos. The following are internal development opportunities that can improve the Group's operational efficiency and profitability. (1) Modify the market positioning of the group brand to further improve its brand awareness. By changing the brands of some hotels under the Group and placing them under Sheraton, Universal Ding, Four Points or New Saint The Regess, Starwood Hotels further expanded their brand reputation and market share, thus improving the average revenue and operating efficiency of saleable rooms. (2) Expanding the scope of Starwood Hotels as the third-party manager of hotels can expand the influence and market strength of Starwood Hotels and get more cash with less investment. (3) Franchise brands such as Sheraton, Shengding, Universal Ding and Four Points to selected third-party operators, so as to expand the market share of the hotel group and improve the popularity of its hotel brands. Franchise fees also enable the company to obtain more income. (4) Integrate the hotels owned, managed and franchised by the Group into a single and multi-brand reservation system, coordinate the global sales departments, and increase revenue and profits and improve service quality by increasing the information release, influence and sales ability of the Group on the Internet. (5) Implement the group's frequent visitor plan, which the group believes will help the hotel to increase the room occupancy rate, and the guests staying in the hotel and coming to the casino for entertainment will also benefit from it. On February 3rd, 1999, Starwood Hotels Group launched the group "Hotel Frequent Visitor Program" named "Starwood Preferred Guest". Frequent flyer program is not new in tourism. About 20 years ago, the airline industry first launched the frequent flyer program to reward business travelers who are loyal to our company. However, Starwood's frequent guest program is put forward in a form obviously different from other hotel programs, and its slogan is "Frequent guest program with unparalleled competitive advantage", which is ambitious compared with other frequent guest reward programs. Business travelers who participate in the program can get points and cash rewards by staying at 550 hotels and resorts in 60 countries. The existing "hotel frequent visitor plan" is often too complicated, which makes many guests turn off their appetite. The new Starwood plan has learned the lesson and simplified it. Guests can win two points for spending one yuan in the hotel. As for the reward, guests have two choices, one is free accommodation, and the other is to convert it into miles-Starwood cooperates with 20 airlines, so two points can be converted into one mile. Hotel rewards also include staying at any time without any restrictions, including the peak season of the hotel. This plan has achieved great success since its implementation. In April, the registration rate of Huanding and Sheraton hotels increased by four times compared with the same period of last year. In the first year of its launch, it won many awards and five of the nine highest honors. It was awarded the 1999 Best Hotel Frequent Visitor Program by Freddie Award, and was also awarded the honors of "Best Customer Service", "Best Website", "Best Top Customer Program" and "Best Realization of Reward Program". In addition, Starwood's "Starwood Guest" program was praised as the best hotel reward program in USA-Today. (6) By comprehensively sorting out the database of all the Group's own guests, we will strengthen marketing efforts, promote other products to existing customers, improve the room occupancy rate and create a new market marketing opportunities. (7) Optimize the Group's use of its real estate ownership to increase ancillary income, such as the income from operating restaurants, bars and parking lots of the Group's hotels and casinos. (8) Create a new brand of "W" hotel to meet the requirements of business guests with high-grade service level and guests of other small hotels that need to provide all-round services in major tourism markets. The first W hotel was established in new york in February, 1998. More W hotels are planned to open in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and New Orleans. 2. Seek external development opportunities. Starwood Hotels has been looking for opportunities to expand and diversify the hotel and casino portfolio of the Group. Its main way is to make small investments in the United States and abroad or selectively acquire properties that meet all or part of the requirements of the Group. The standards set by starwood hotels are as follows: (1) luxury high-end full-service hotels located in major metropolises or commercial centers. (2) Major tourist hotels, resorts or conference centers must also meet the following conditions: the tourism market is developed, the local market has obvious industry barriers, or it is located in areas with strong demand for rooms, such as office buildings or retail malls, airports, tourist attractions or university areas. (3) Hotels with untapped potential can be fully developed in the following ways: changing brands and owning them by the Group's own hotel brands; Introduce more professional and efficient management skills and methods; And/or invest funds to innovate, expand or reposition the hotel. (4) Hotels or hotel groups that meet some or all of the above standards. The premise is that buying several hotels at one time can make Starwood Group get more favorable prices, or get attractive real estate that cannot be obtained by other means.
In addition, Starwood Group has also expanded its casino business by expanding Caesar brand around the world, and selectively developed and built valuable hotels and casinos to help the Group achieve its strategic goals. Starwood Hotels & Resorts International Group signed 1 12 management and authorization agreement in 1999, exceeding the planned target by 12 percentage points. Starwood won the fierce bidding, and then managed several hotels under construction in Boston Convention Center, including a Sheraton Hotel with 1 120 rooms. A new W hotel is located in Guardian Life Building in Union Square, new york, an international W hotel in Sydney, Australia. In addition, many world-class famous hotels have also joined Starwood's name, including the original Essex House Hotel in new york, which has now been renamed Universal Ding Hotel; The former President Hotel in Wei Sen has been renamed the Supreme Select Hotel. Except for the new agreement of 1 12, the other 30 management contracts have expired or been handed over to a third party, and Starwood Group has renewed them. In this way, Starwood has retained its three most representative hotels, namely Global Century Plaza in Los Angeles; Sheraton Park Castle in London and Sheraton Frankfurt in Germany. Through the global expansion process of 1999, Starwood signed 53 new contracts in North America; 28 in Africa, India and the Middle East; Europe13; 12 in Asia Pacific and Latin America. 3. Integration and innovation of hotel management mode. At present, the combination of the group's traditional management mode with the modes of Huanding and ITT Group has created many long-term cost-saving opportunities for the group. For example, through economies of scale to support procurement and insurance expenditures, and eliminate unnecessary duplication in daily affairs and management. The integration of business methods has also created opportunities for the Group to adopt a comprehensive and comprehensive frequent visitor planning and booking system, and improve business efficiency by promoting the business methods of a certain brand hotel in all hotels, such as promoting the "best practices" of Universal Ding, Sheraton or other hotels in the Group to the whole group. At the same time, Starwood constantly adopts bold and innovative management concepts and dares to explore new markets. This is mainly manifested in the application of the Internet and the introduction of new management and service concepts of brand hotels. The commercial application of the Internet began with 1995 and has developed rapidly in recent years. The application of Internet in the hotel industry is becoming more and more common. However, for online retailers, the most common phenomenon is that their operations are still at a loss. But now many hotel groups have begun to profit from it, and Starwood is a representative. As early as1July, 1996, Starwood Group established its own website, which has now entered the profit stage. 1996, the online room booking amount was 1 10,000 USD, 1997, and the industry kept rising: 1 10,000, 1998 was 25 million USD,/kloc-0. Such a great success is mainly attributed to Starwood's constant adjustment of the website to adapt to the changes in reality and the needs of potential users, making it easier for users to make travel inquiries when using the system. Users used to only need information about hotels, but now they want to have a more authentic feeling about hotels and destinations. There are many real pictures on Starwood's website, and it also provides tourists with a virtual reality tour of the hotel, so that users can have a more real experience. In order to better serve tourists who choose their destinations, Starwood redesigned its homepage. As soon as users log on to the website, they will see a map of the world, and click on their favorite destination to find the Starwood Hotel built in this area. At the same time, in order to maintain the consistency with the standard brand strategy, there is an obvious Starwood hotel brand logo at the bottom of the homepage, which can be directly clicked to enter the query, which is convenient for the loyalty room of brands keen to participate in brand loyalty programs. Expanding the width of the network, sorting and classifying videos of hotels and destinations, and providing auxiliary services all involve the increase of costs, which is doubling every year. Therefore, in order to reduce costs, Starwood emphasizes cooperation with professional network companies and limits its work to areas that it is good at and must control. In this way, the cost of online booking is kept at the same level as other booking methods, and the cost of online booking is decreasing year by year. Sheraton Hotel's methods in hotel management and human resource management are constantly rated as best practices by Cornell Hotel College. Sheraton Elk Forest Hotel implements a new measure every year to improve financial viability and customer and employee satisfaction. The reception committee of the hotel will look for, determine and implement a new comprehensive business plan. Every member of the reception Committee is responsible for implementing an important procedure in the plan. Sheraton Denver West Hotel's pioneering work in personnel management is that two sales managers hold the same full-time position. The advantage of this is to explore the management talents of two employees and make full use of their energy and skills at the expense of hiring one employee. The actual operation is to discover the management ability of employees and give them a 90-day probation period to show their talents. During this period, employees' wages are calculated by the hour. Starwood also spares no effort to improve customer satisfaction. Entrusted by Huanding Hotel, Guideline Research conducted a survey on 600 business tourists. The conclusion is that the best service a hotel can provide is a good sleep. Based on this information, Starwood spent a year researching and designing a new bed. It will cost 30 million dollars to equip all hotels with this new bed. The manager and supervisor of Starwood selected 50 kinds of beds from 35 hotel chains and put them in the lobby for comparative test. As a result, the "heavenly bed" of the Universal Ding Hotel was used. By the end of August, Huanding Hotel has equipped 10000 beds in 7400 rooms in 20 hotels, so that customers can enjoy a "paradise-like" sleep. At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the catering sales of major hotels entered a golden age. Christmas, New Year, Spring Festival, Valentine's Day and other festivals have become the best time for consumers to concentrate on consumption. Major hotels have made various marketing plans and tried their best to attract customers, so as to take advantage of this year's last opportunity to improve efficiency and make a good start in 2005. Looking at the implementation of catering marketing over the years, we can find that the current catering marketing planning seems to have entered a misunderstanding, that is, holiday marketing is to engage in activities, and every family has launched activities, and the prizes are becoming more and more bizarre, even reaching tens of thousands of dollars for computers and tourism. These activities will undoubtedly receive miraculous results. Hotel business was booming for a while, and so was the wedding, but as soon as the event was over, it was cold and cheerless, and similar situations were common everywhere. Here we need to study the market rules, put forward a marketing plan that meets the market demand, and lay a good foundation for the hotel's operation next year from the perspective of long-term development. The following six aspects to explore the main strategies of holiday catering marketing. First of all, according to the different composition of the tourism market, we should integrate products and launch a product mix catering marketing that meets the market demand. In the final analysis, we are marketing the hotel's main products, that is, the hotel's dishes, drinks, services and intangible brands and culture. During the holidays, the main tourist sources of hotels, whether star-rated hotels or roadside restaurants, social mass consumption will become the mainstream, and family dinners and gatherings of relatives and friends are the main tourist sources at this stage. Then the hotel's products should mainly meet the needs of such guests. The dishes should be light in taste, suitable for all ages, large in quantity and moderate in price. Banquets of various grades should be launched in time, with special dishes, signature dishes and new dishes interspersed here, so that consumers can fully understand the chef's level of the hotel and promote the establishment and promotion of the hotel image brand. This is the main purpose of festival marketing, and it is also the theme project in many catering activities. Second, it is required that the theme of marketing activities be prominent and marketing activities with distinctive cultural characteristics be organized, which is the main performance of holiday marketing and the main way to create a holiday atmosphere. Because of the different backgrounds of these festivals, the differences between Chinese and western cultures should be revealed in the process of marketing activities. For example, the layout of the restaurant, the design of the dining table, the printing of the menu, the background music and lighting, and the content of the activities should be different. In this regard, the practices of many hotels are worth promoting. During Christmas, including Christmas tree decoration, Santa Claus giving gifts, children's choir performances and other activities; In the New Year and Spring Festival, activities such as hanging red lanterns, putting the word "Fu" upside down, counting down the clock in the early morning, and giving out red envelopes to benefit the market are the main activities. On Valentine's Day, roses, chocolates, candlelight dinners and violin music are the main marketing forms. In this series of activities, we must grasp the principles of "authenticity" and "original flavor".