The Banyan Tree: Branding the Intangible

For instance, in the hospitality industry, the Hilton brand symbolises high-end properties, elevated quality of service and a unique guest experience. Brand name and brand image are essentially two factors that differentiate companies which operate in the same industry and market. Therefore, the brand name must be unique. Hotel companies like the Hilton have established strong national brands and seek to use them globally with an intention of increasing profits. Once its established as a global brand, the company has successfully created an international image that can lead to increased efficiency through branded marketing efforts and cost savings on a much larger scale. Nowadays with an increase in international travel, the competition among international hotel corporations is becoming a lot more competetive. Those tourists that travel to foreign countries tend to stay in one of the known hotel brands and their standardised quality of service. Hotel chains are motivated to maintain a high rate of global expansion as a key marketing strategy of creating brand loyalty (King,

Marriott is renowned for its elegant and comfortable hotels and resorts. The company caters to a targeted customer base, ranging from the frequent corporate business traveler to the family enjoying their occasional weekend get-away. Marriott has continued its rise in the lodging, contract services, and restaurant industries. The company continuously strives to meet the needs and wants of its customers while strategically maneuvering the rigors of today’s competitive and ever-evolving market of glamorous destinations and convenient services. In order to remain relevant in a highly-competitive environment, Marriott must strike that successful balance of minimizing costs, and gaining and effectively

The growth strategy of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Inc is multifaceted. Their growth strategy is driven by opening the finest hotel, in the right destination, which will lead to the right economics for the hotel owner. They not only discover destinations where their consumers want to go, but target those markets where they want to create their presence and to increase awareness for future Four Seasons’ travelers. But at the same time investigate opportunities to engrain their positions in those destinations, where they have already operated. According to Kathleen Taylor ‘Four Seasons has approximately 50 projects in various stages of design and construction. The vast majority will come outside the U.S., with a focus on China, India and Latin America. There are lots of cities in those areas where Four Seasons needs to

For my luxury brand marketing analysis I choosed the Four Season Hotels chain, as on my mind it is one of the most successful and well-known hotel chain, providing 5 star service all around the world.

The corporate branding strategy will create a sort of umbrella under which all the properties of the company will fall, thus sharing the same quality level in the customer’s perception. Moreover a strong corporate brand will ease the company identification and potentially increase the number of new guests through word of mouth, thus enabling the company to gain a bigger market share. Nevertheless the implementation of such a strategy will necessarily involve big costs and a structural change in the organization. Its culture, the way in which advertising is done, the facilities and supplies in each resorts, the way in which management operates will have to be adapted to the new branding strategy. Furthermore undertaking this action may let down some valuable customers who are particularly affectionate to a resort and may be afraid that it will lose its unique and individual features. Plus it might also disappoint some skilled hotel managers which may feel threatened in their autonomy and potentially leave the company. Retraining the whole body of employees to adapt to the new strategy may be expensive and time consuming as well.

The numbers don´t lie, the luxury hotels industry is growing fast. But, are they positioning themselves correctly in the consumer’s head? Are they targeting the right client segment? And what are the triggers they use to attract their consumers?

Within the luxury tier, many of the players do not actually own the hotels themselves, but instead manage the operation of the business, similar to that of FSH. In the luxury segment, competition for acquiring new management agreements becomes very high as hotel owners make their choices based on the quality and value of a company's management service and most importantly, its brand name. Moreover, guests who choose to stay in luxury hotels are commonly not very price sensitive, and thus it is essential that a hotel distinguish itself amongst its competition by providing value added services as well as maintaining an untarnished, reputable brand name and image.

In the current development situation, wellness and meditation tourism is that a traveler wants to maintain his/her health and then choose to live in a special hotel offering the sum of appropriate professional knowledge and personal care. Provide a comprehensive range of services for them, including physical fitness / beauty care, healthy nutrition / diet, relaxation / meditation and mental activity / education (Santana, 2004). Wellness and meditation tourism is become more and more popular around the world. Banyan Tree Gallery has developed plenty of products for this kind of tourism in current business. To further enhance the sensory experience of wellness, Banyan Tree provide tourism products such as spa meditation, music for meditation and yoga, and face mist after an engaging meditation or yoga session (Miller,

As mentioned earlier in Chapter 1, China Lodging Group is a multi-brand hotel group which as per now manages seven hotels with each having a specific target of customers. These Hotels are Hi Inn, Han Ting Hotel, Elan Hotel, Star-way Hotel, JI Hotel, Manxin Hotel, and Joya Hotel. Its mission statement is to create great brands of hotels that guests love. The group predicts to be owning over a quarter of the hotel market share in the next five years to come. The two major objectives that the company has set for the next five years to ensure that they attain their goal is to build one large five-star hotel in the heart of China Capital’s serene outskirts and to ensure that they hire enough

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company operates within the upscale & luxury hotel industry. While it could be argued that Ritz-Carlton operates in the more broad and inclusive lodging industry, they offer a highly differentiated product and service and therefore find themselves operating in an exclusive industry alongside very few direct competitors, such as Four Seasons Hotels, HongKong and Shanghai Hotels, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Therefore when analyzing this industry I will not be including cheap hotels, motels, lodges, or inns, unless to offer potential substitutes to luxury hotels. In order to assess the attractiveness of the upscale & luxury hotel industry, an analysis of the general environment surrounding the industry must be

Marriott is a multi brand company with a Global Portfolio that providing lodging that fit within many market segments. This report will discuss briefly Marriott’s Portfolio of hotels, what they do, briefly examine a number of their key marketing strategies and examine how they are implemented, measured and ask the question does this make them market leaders?

| Yes – The only resort targeting the luxury premium market then, its differentiating “Banyan Tree experience” leads consumers to choose BT over its rivals.

The organization has explicitly kept this advantageous environment over other organizations by improving its service capacity. Additionally, the organization ensures that it stays ahead of its rivals by engaging in research and development that focuses on luxury products and markets analysis. The Ritz-Carlton hotel uses data from its research to predict the future of the industry; therefore able to dictate what and how the market will trend in the foreseeable future. Another factor that keeps the organization’s advantage over its rivals is that while rivals tend to become a hotel brand in the industry, Ritz-Carlton has rather position itself to be a leader and lifestyle brand that constantly develop new properties and ensure that customers live the culture of the hotel. The final factor that has kept the advantage of the organization intact is the culture of trust that exists between the management and employees. The leadership of the hotel lives and communicates the organization’s value to its employees who in turn satisfy customers in a way that they often anticipate a return visit. These are some of the reasons that the Ritz-Carlton hotel continued advantageous environment over its rivals has persisted in the hotel and resort industry (Reiss,

Chan, ESW & Wong, SCK 2006, ‘Hotel selection: when price is not the issue’, Journal of Vacation Marketing, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 142-159, (Online Sage).

Be the first company to create and penetrate into high-end segment. Provide a unique of hotel & resort and spa that meets high-end customers need. Well-trained for staffs with five – star standard service and measure by efficiency and productivities. Launching new brand to meet a middle class, Angsana, on time and providing to market more product portfolio like Gallery and The Museum Shop. Smart in distribution products and services thru GDS. Success in building CSR and environmental conservation, Success in using local culture and heritage that will be served and satisfied their customer, these culture and heritage will be differentiated in each county. Bring benefits to local famer and traders by purchasing fresh product and traditional art, handicrafts. Information Technological System is available with latest updating about BTHR program. it is very convenient for customers.