Bangkok--25 Apr--Delivering Asia Communications
The first industry-wide study on what makes Asia's best hotel brands tick - revealed exclusively at the China Hotel Investment Conference in Shanghai today - has found that the most important driver of success for hotel brands is the quality of their own people.
The Asian Hospitality Brand Survey 2012 : Leading Asian Brands and Drivers of Brand Success also ranks for the first time the top 30 hotel brands in the ASEAN region and greater China, and reveals that despite its economic powerhouse status, China is yet to produce a single world class home grown hospitality brand.
Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, The Peninsula Hotels and Mandarin Oriental Hotels were named the top three Asian hotel brands, while surprise inclusions in the top 10 were relative newcomers The Langham Hotels and Langham Place Hotels, placing eight and ninth respectively. Banyan Tree (4th), Raffles (5th), Aman (6th), Six Senses (7th) and Marco Polo (10th) were the other brands to achieve top 10 status.
Swire Hotels, another late arrival on the hospitality brand landscape, whose properties include The Opposite House in Beijing, and The Upper House and East in Hong Kong, did not make the overall top 10 but put in a strong showing, making the top 10 for four out of the five key success drivers the brands were rated on. The only home grown Chinese hotel brand to make the top 30 was the state-run Jin Jiang Hotels group, which came in at number 21.
The Brand Company surveyed 250 industry professionals across Asia to determine which brands born or headquartered in Asia or Greater China should be in the top 30 of the main survey for success in building and sustaining a great hospitality brand. Once the top 30 were agreed upon, a more detailed survey was sent to over 13,000 hospitality professionals using the Questex global database.
They were asked to grade Asia's 30 top hospitality brands against five different key drivers of brand success - People, Place (environment, interiors, architecture, art and sculpture, botanicals, aromas, music and other elements), Products & Services, Design & Communications, and Naming - and also to rate the five drivers of success against each other.
The visionary behind the study, James Stuart, Managing Partner of Hong Kong-based consultancy The Brand Company, said the findings highlight the need to change the way people think about branding in the hospitality industry, where marketing and design have traditionally led the hospitality brand approach.
"This study turns decades of conventional wisdom on its head," he said. "Marketing departments have been the traditional home of brand building. CEOs have not seen themselves as brand builders. Hotel brands have been seen as more 'packaging' than substance.
"The results of this survey point the way forward. Brands are more driven by customer experience and perceptions, not what you say in a slick ad campaign or costly brand image revamps. A fundamentally different approach - perhaps even a revolution - is needed if brands want to rise to the top, dramatically reduce their costs and maximize profits. Hotel brands have to be much smarter on hiring and retaining the right people and delivering on their promises to guests."
Mr. Stuart used his closed-session keynote address as a platform to announce another first: a comprehensive study solely focusing in on hospitality in China. "We need to understand more fully why no great hotel brands have yet arisen from the world's new economic powerhouse, and to identify the possible stars of tomorrow."
He said China was the world's most exciting open playing field for hospitality brands, with its cashed up and travel hungry middle class set to more than triple by 2030 to nearly one billion people. "That's a lot of hotel guests," Mr. Stuart said. "The brands that succeed are going to have to have a clear grasp of Chinese cultural drivers, but more importantly they will need a more adaptive, flexible and open-minded approach to branding.
"We hear a lot about 'brand standards' in the hotel industry but there has never been a time or a place where such notions have become so redundant. The opportunity exists in China to reinvent hospitality. Those that succeed will need a CEO who becomes a true brand leader, a great helmsman if you like, who is willing to tear up the rule book and ignore decades of western hospitality 'wisdom'.
"The world's next big hospitality brand success stories will come from China. And they will be what I call 'Navigator Brands'. Brands that have clear medium to long term goals but are smart enough to realize they can't just rigidly fix themselves on a single compass point, but must navigate their way through shifting sands and changing currents.
"They will recruit people based on attitude and mindset rather than skills and experience, ignore the obsession with rigid 'brand standards' and instead set about creating a brand that is, above all, unique."
Mr. Stuart said this was the approach he had adopted with key clients like Langham Place and Swire Hotels. "They are the only two 'new' hospitality brands, those operating for less than 10 years, to make the Top 10. We positioned Langham Place. We also positioned, named, developed 'people strategies', conceived products, services and processes and coordinated design and communications strategies for Swire Hotels, as well as The Opposite House, The Upper House and East.
"For The Opposite House, predominantly people with no previous hotel experience were hired. Rather, the recruitment process was geared to finding individuals who understood the brand and were the right fit. It was an approach that worked very well and is a key factor to that property's success today."
The Asian Hospitality Brand Survey showed clearly that people where at the heart of building and sustaining successful brands. "And if there's one thing China has lots of, it's people. So the future is exciting. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
For further information or high-resolution photography, please contact:
Mr. James Stuart
Managing Partner
E-mail:
[email protected]
Tel:+852 3568 5303
Mobile:+852 9024 3684
www.thebrandco.com
Mr. David Johnson
Delivering Asia Communications
E-mail:
[email protected]
Tel:+66(0) 2246 1159
Mobile:+66(0) 89 170 9866
www.deliveringcommunications.com