The document provides recommendations for two hotel brands - Oriental Express and Pan Pacific - to improve their digital marketing strategies and move up in brand rankings.
For Oriental Express, it recommends leveraging user reviews on TripAdvisor, developing a loyalty program, and allowing non-members to view experiences on its forum to better promote unique local experiences.
For Pan Pacific, it suggests repositioning the brand to target business travelers by focusing on relaxation, consolidating its digital presence on websites, social media, and YouTube, and establishing a presence on LinkedIn and Pinterest.
It also recommends both brands invest in digital marketing for the growing Chinese and Indian markets through platforms like Baidu, QZone, and search on Google
Regression analysis: Simple Linear Regression Multiple Linear Regression
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Hotel Brand Study: Strategic Recommendations for Unique Local Experiences
1. Hotel Brand Study
April 8, 2013
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Gaurav Venkateswar & Jeremy Berens
Photograph by Hotels Paris Rive Gauche
2. The Assignment
Choose two brands from L2 Think
Tankās Hotels Digital IQ Report: one
ranked as "Average" companies, and
another ranked as "Challenged".
Brieļ¬y describe the brand identity of
each brand.
Identify and describe the strategic
challenges that each brand faces.
Make recommendations for how each
brand can move up in the rankings
3. Brand Essence
Iconic, locally authentic,
unexpectedly unique luxury
experiences
Premium sensory experience
of the Paciļ¬c Rim
4. Brand Identity
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Brand identity is a unique set of brand associations that the
brand strategist aspires to create or maintain. These
associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a
promise to customers from the organization members.
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- David A. Aaker, Building Strong Brands.
ā
5. Brand Identity
ā
Brand identity is a unique set of brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to
create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a
promise to customers from the organization members.
ā
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- David A. Aaker, Building Strong Brands.
The Orient Express identiļ¬es its brand as a promise of unique experiences. It strives to present a memorable,
luxurious, and culturally authentic experience speciļ¬c to each hotelās location. These attributes are described
on their hotel web site as well as on their investor relations site. It prides itself on a diverse collection of location
āspanning land and water, adventure and relaxation, local individuality and iconic opulence.ā Thus, although it is
one brand, each location feels unique to its culture (e.g., its hotel in Cuzco, Peru has Incan/Spanish qualities,
while its hotel in New York has an upbeat urban feel).
The name Orient Express harkens back to the glamorous and romanticized journey across Europe from
London to Istanbul. It operates the Venice-Simplon Orient Express as a revived version of the original train.
Their video ads evoke a sense of the classic grandeur associated with the Orient Express as well as the
unique cultural experiences oļ¬ered at their hotels. Their videos communicate that a stay at one of their
properties is not merely a luxurious accommodation, but furthermore an immersion into the local culture that
surrounds it.
6. Brand Identity
ā
Brand identity is a unique set of brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to
create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a
promise to customers from the organization members.
ā
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- David A. Aaker, Building Strong Brands.
Pan Paciļ¬c brands itself as a premium hotel brand blending the unique culture and heritage of the Paciļ¬c Rim
with discreet elegance and personalized service. It also emphasizes the idea that its hotels provide experiences
that enliven the senses. It identiļ¬es with a unique Paciļ¬c culture but also talks to the uniqueness amongst the
various locations in the Paciļ¬c. The blend of Paciļ¬c culture and sensory enjoyments is oļ¬ered amongst other
things through fusion cuisine and unique spa treatments drawing upon elements of various Paciļ¬c cultures.
It also showcases that it has been voted as a top hotel for business travelers. There is no comprehensive
YouTube channel, but the Vancouver location has a channel where many videos talk about food creations
(e.g., making mooncakes, hard lemonade, soya and mirin sable ļ¬sh, etc.), showcasing the culinary sensory
enjoyment that Pan Paciļ¬c promises.
7. Strategic Challenges
Targeting Luxury Travelers Rather than Business Travelers
Dependent on seasonality of leisure travel
Limits locations for growth as only certain cities are poised for
luxury hotels
Emphasis on Unique Local and Cultural Experiences
Locations must be compelling enough for differentiated
experience
Limits locations for growth
Skilled Management
In 2011 General Manager of Orient-Express Sydney said in
Australia there is a shortage of skilled labor for operational
management
This hotel was eventually sold in 2012 to another hotel
group
Management Structure Hinders Change
Shareholder structure and Bermuda law allows for directors
to elect themselves
Shareholders have no real say in director election
Company has poor performance but directors hold power
and infusion of new talent is difļ¬cult
Directors rejected takeover bids from Jumeirah Group
and Indian Hotels Company. Both these companies
have been performing well (much better than Oriental
Express)
Impact of Recession
Travel patterns changed as people more controlled on how
disposable income is spent
Business Meeting Destination
With economic recession, discretionary spending by
companies impacts how much revenue is earned by businessrelated travel
Voted one of the Top 25 business hotels, but its branding
efforts do not aggressively position it toward this high-value
segment
Fragmented Marketing
Limited Digital Media Presence
Facebook page is the only social platform
Pan Paciļ¬c Seattle has a YouTube page, but there are no
uniļ¬ed page for all locations
No presence on other social platforms
Takes away from a uniļ¬ed brand experience
Takes many clicks to navigate between location sections on
web site
Difļ¬cult to asses brand identity
Storyline
There is no compelling promise or story to tell
Chain feels fragmented
Differentiation
Pan Paciļ¬c does not offer compelling differentiation in its
marketing
Special spa treatments and Fusion Pan-Paciļ¬c cuisine
are easily replicated and perhaps expected at any top
hotel in the Paciļ¬c rim
Personalized service is easily replicated at any top hotel
Impact of Recession
Travel patterns changed as people more controlled on how
disposable income is spent
8. Recommendations - Overall
In terms of the āClock Modelā, we recommend
that these ļ¬rms commit to an exceptionally
strong bias toward post-purchase activities.
The primary post-purchase vehicles available to
hotels are Blogs/Forums, User Reviews, Social
Networks, and Loyalty Programs. Therefore, it is
crucial that Oriental Express and Pan Paciļ¬c
develop strength in one or more of these tools.
However, it is equally important that eļ¬orts in
these arenas are consistent with the brandās
identity and increase its ability to clear the āthree
hurdlesā.
The āClock Modelā is a framework modeling a ļ¬rmās
investment in customer engagement prior to
interacting in a transaction with customers (starting
at 12 oāclock), during the transaction, and after the
transaction has completed (ending at 12 oāclock).
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9. Recommendations
Oriental Express should focus on leveraging digital tools to allow customers to share/
enhance their unique local experiences far better than any competitor.
BLOGS/FORUMS: Oriental Expressā website
presently has a Travellerās Lounge forum that
allows members to exchange details about their
experiences. However, membership requires a
previous Oriental Express stay, which makes info
about these experiences invisible to non-members
(SEE APPENDIX A). This limits the population of
travelers with which past customers can share. This
hurts Oriental Express in two ways:
Past customers are cheated of the self-expressive beneļ¬t
of bragging via experience-sharing, since fewer folks are
interacting with them or commenting about their
experiences.
Potential customers (who are not members) are not able to
learn about othersā experiences, which would potentially
entice them to stay at an Oriental Express property and
spend additional dollars on tours/adventures.
10. Recommendations
USER REVIEWS: Given that so much of Oriental Expressā brand identity is based on
unique experiences, user reviews lend credibility and authenticity to Oriental Expressā
marketed adventures. Thus, it is crucial that Oriental Express maintain its brand equity on
TripAdvisor, the king of travel user review sites.
Presently, Oriental Expressā ļ¬agship Venice
Simplon-Orient-Express train experience has
overwhelmingly positive TripAdvisor reviews.
However, it does still have six average ratings, six
poor ratings, and 1 terrible rating. Of these 13 lessthan-stellar reviews, Oriental Express only
responded to one. If it does such a poor job of
managing these negative reviews on its ļ¬agship
experiences, it likely does the same or worse on
less popular oļ¬erings. Thus, we recommend that
Oriental Express invest in an employee dedicated to
managing the brandās TripAdvisor image/presence.
Failing to do so, in a world where 63% of travelers
consult reviews before booking (SEE APPENDIX C),
is a signiļ¬cant misstep.
11. Recommendations
LOYALTY PROGRAM: At present, Oriental Express lacks a loyalty program, which puts them at a
disadvantage in terms of data capture and the associated leveraging of customer info/preferences
to increase ānumber of staysā or āspend per stayā (SEE APPENDIX C). Consistent with its identity, we
recommend that Oriental Express launch a loyalty program aimed at capturing customer info
regarding preferred types of experiences (adventure vs. leisure; on-resort vs. oļ¬-resort; etc.). This
loyalty program should establish switching costs by being linked to award experiences (i.e. X
amount of loyalty points can be redeemed for unique local experiences/tours OR purchase of these
experiences/tours translates to X amount of loyalty points). It should also tie-in with an investment in
customer relationship management software that automatically sends an e-mail to a member postexperience. The e-mail should contain a link to a survey speciļ¬c to the memberās recent Oriental
Express experiences/activities. It will solicit speciļ¬c experience feedback, which Oriental Express
can use to improve their experiences.
An email marketing strategy capitalizes on mobile/tablet users' tendency to open most e-mails (SEE
APPENDIX C). In addition, users survey responses will automatically update their proļ¬le, thereby
provided Oriental Express with a better picture of their interests. This will provide Oriental Express
more information that can be used to sell them future stays/experiences. This loyalty proļ¬le can also
capture customers' Twitter handles, which Oriental Express can use to follow up with customers
post-experience, or to proactively market to customers about future experiences. At a later time,
Oriental Express can send targeted tweets based upon customers' experience preferences. Oriental
Express presently uses its Twitter account to retweet customers' positive feedback or share
untargeted information about its properties, which are less powerful activities (SEE APPENDIX B).
12. Recommendations
The heart of Pan Pacific's branding problem stems from its unclear positioning. It stresses its
"sensory experiences" and good service, but so do many other brands, and Pan Pacificās
offerings do not appear adequately differentiated from other hotels' properties. Rather than
investing resources in trying to outdo competitors' whose sensory experiences are better
positioned, we recommend that Pan Pacific reposition its brand.
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BUSINESS TRAVELER: Given that Pan Paciļ¬c was voted
one of the Top 25 business hotels, we recommend that it
reposition its brand to aggressively target high-value
business travelers. Its brand essence should beāØ
ā
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complete relaxation for all of the business traveler's senses
This allows Pan Paciļ¬c to leverage the sensory-focused
assets that it has already acquired/developed in order to
pursue a new target segment with which it has already
developed signiļ¬cant traction.
13. Recommendations
CONSOLIDATED DIGITAL MARKETING: Consistent with this recommendation, we suggest that Pan
Paciļ¬c focus on clarifying their brand's position in the market by sharpening their website's messaging/
branding to clearly target business travelers. A brand's website is one of the core components of its image
and therefore should be Pan Paciļ¬cās primary area of concern near-term. All imagery and copy should convey
the message that Pan Paciļ¬c is the place where business travelers can relax after a long day of work.āØ
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Consistent with this eļ¬ort to clarify the brand's messaging, Pan Paciļ¬c should make some changes on the
Facebook platform, as well. More speciļ¬cally, Pan Paciļ¬c presently has a main Facebook page, as well as
site-speciļ¬c pages. This multitude of pages and page-owners makes it diļ¬cult to convey a consistent uniļ¬ed
message. Hence, we recommend that Pan Paciļ¬c eliminate the site pages, keep the main page, and clarify its
Facebook messaging just as we proposed for the website. āØ
āØ
The same is true of Pan Paciļ¬c Twitter handles. Each hotel has a separate handle but there is no consolidated
handle. It may be wise to maintain both individual handles and a consolidated one. The latter can serve to be
a main point of communication and can route tweets to individual handles as necessary. Twitter should
ultimately be used to engage users post-purchase and doing so from site-speciļ¬c handles might make more
sense in this case.āØ
āØ
Similarly, Pan Paciļ¬c Seattle has a YouTube channel, but other locations do not seem to have one. The brand
needs a consolidated YouTube page.āØ
āØ
This speaks to the need for Pan Paciļ¬c to maintain a master-brand architecture, rather than trying to support
site-speciļ¬c sub-brands.
14. Recommendations
OTHER DIGITAL MARKETING: Our ļ¬nal recommendation is for Pan Paciļ¬c to establish a
master-brand presence on other social sites. To cater to the business market, Pan Paciļ¬c
should post on LinkedIn by posting Pan Paciļ¬c articles about relaxation for the business
traveler. If resources allow, it should consider generating this content itself, in order to stress
the importance of sensory experiences and tightly control the message.āØ
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Pinterest is another potential option for posting visuals around relaxation for the business
travel and the sensory experience.
15. China
Recommendations
Many accounts and studies indicate the current trend for future
growth in high-end markets is catering to Chinese consumers. In
luxury and high-end fashion products, a large segment of mainland
Chinese are voraciously consuming goods, and even traveling to
Europe for shopping sprees to avoid value-added tax on imported
goods in China. The CEO of Pan Paciļ¬c and the General Manager
of Oriental Express Sydney have both indicated that In China is a
hot market for tourism. Domestic tourism is an important source of
consumer growth and tourism revenue has been growing for over a
decade. According to the China National Tourism Administration,
the number of domestic trips jumped 54 percent from 1996 to
2006. The government has helped to support this trend by easing
travel restrictions, and increasing the number of mandatory public
holidays in order to drive tourism demand. In particular Chinese
workers now have two āgolden weeksā as part of their mandatory
national holidays; during one of these weeks in 2009, tourism
generated nearly 7.7 billion renminbi in revenue. Chinese tourists
spent $102 billion on foreign trips last year, 41 per cent more than
Paid
Search
Result
Chinese
Sharing
Banner
Ad for
Starwood
the year before. Thus there is a strong domestic and international
market for Chinese travelers. As part of the Digital IQ methodology,
Chinese-speciļ¬c platforms should be factored in. Baidu is China's
largest search engine and according to a 2012 study commanded
78.3% market share with Google only at 16.7% share. Luxury
brands such as Prada, Burberry, HermĆØs, Chanel, Louis Vuitton,
and Ermenegildo Zegna already appear to have banner ads when
testing searches on Baidu.com. In contrast, when testing top 21
hotels from L2's report using Baidu, only Starwood Properties and
Intercontinental showed up with banner ads. For any Starwood
property, the ad that came up was not for the individual hotel (e.g.,
not for W Hotel, or Westin), but a generic Starwood Hotel banner
ad. If the Chinese market is a growth area then part of a strong
digital marketing strategy should include investment in paid search
on Baidu (as well as Google China). The strategy should also
include Chinese social network such as QZone, which has
approximately 712 million users today.
16. India
Recommendations
The CEO of Pan Paciļ¬c and the General Manager of Oriental Express Sydney have also both indicated that
India is another market to watch. āØ
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India seems to be getting popular among investors
particularly, Indian nationals who are residing in the
Europe or US and are returning to India to invest in their
home countries.
PATRICK IMBARDELLIāØ
ā
President and CEOāØ
Pan Paciļ¬c Hotels Group
There may be an opportunity to purchase keywords relating to travel to India (however at the moment neither
brands have locations in India). Furthermore, both brands can invest on keywords speciļ¬cally in Google India
as part of the pre-purchase cycle for Indian business and leisure travelers.
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