Rosewood Case
Rosewood Hotels & Resorts: Branding to increase profitability and lifetime value
BACKGROUND
Rosewood Hotels and Resorts is a private hotel management company established in 1979 by the Caroline Rose Hunt Trust Estate. It is a well known company in the luxury hotels market which owns 17 iconic properties in 7 different countries (http://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/the_company/). The first hotel was The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas; afterwards the company expanded its “collection of unique properties” all over the world by converting and repositioning existing sites and by building up brand new luxury hotels. The distinctive feature of this collection is the so called “A sense of Place”. In fact in a Rosewood hotel every single service is conceived in order to adapt to the local culture and habits and capture the individuality of every location. Therefore each hotel is characterized by a strong individual image and brand while the Rosewood corporate brand usually stands on the background and mainly has a complementary function.
ANALYSIS
The problem the new president and CEO are facing is whether to switch to a corporate branding strategy or stick with the current individual property branding strategy. In fact the latter has been a very successful strategy for the company for the past 15 years. Nonetheless the top managers of Rosewood believe that as the luxury hotels market is becoming more and more crowded and competitive, the individual property branding strategy is actually limiting the potential number of customer the company can target since it doesn’t seem to be effective on the mass market. Therefore a change in the company strategy is required. In order to figure out which is the best solution for the company it is necessary to consider pros and cons of each choice through a qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Pros and Cons
The individual branding strategy guarantees a strong and personal reputation for each resort and a source of
BACKGROUND
Rosewood Hotels and Resorts is a private hotel management company established in 1979 by the Caroline Rose Hunt Trust Estate. It is a well known company in the luxury hotels market which owns 17 iconic properties in 7 different countries (http://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/the_company/). The first hotel was The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas; afterwards the company expanded its “collection of unique properties” all over the world by converting and repositioning existing sites and by building up brand new luxury hotels. The distinctive feature of this collection is the so called “A sense of Place”. In fact in a Rosewood hotel every single service is conceived in order to adapt to the local culture and habits and capture the individuality of every location. Therefore each hotel is characterized by a strong individual image and brand while the Rosewood corporate brand usually stands on the background and mainly has a complementary function.
ANALYSIS
The problem the new president and CEO are facing is whether to switch to a corporate branding strategy or stick with the current individual property branding strategy. In fact the latter has been a very successful strategy for the company for the past 15 years. Nonetheless the top managers of Rosewood believe that as the luxury hotels market is becoming more and more crowded and competitive, the individual property branding strategy is actually limiting the potential number of customer the company can target since it doesn’t seem to be effective on the mass market. Therefore a change in the company strategy is required. In order to figure out which is the best solution for the company it is necessary to consider pros and cons of each choice through a qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Pros and Cons
The individual branding strategy guarantees a strong and personal reputation for each resort and a source of