Rosewood hotels and Resorts- Branding to Increase Customer Profitability and Lifetime Value

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