A private hotel management company, Rosewood Hotels Resorts with iconic luxury hotels such as The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and The Carlyle in New York was a muted brand, not into advertising and known mainly to hotel professionals. John Scott, the company’s new president and CEO, & Robert Boulogne, vice-president of sales and marketing were considering a new brand strategy in order to establish ‘Rosewood’ as a true brand and to encourage guests who stayed at one of their hotels to stay at some of their others too. With around 12 hotels worldwide, each of their hotels provided a unique experience in terms of the culture of the place they were located in. Although some of their properties enjoyed return visits of up to 40% guests, only 5% of the guests had stayed in more than one of Rosewood properties.
The tasks to be accomplished are:
1. To encourage guests to use more than one Rosewood hotels, that is increase cross-property usage.
2. To establish ‘Rosewood’ as a true brand incorporated into the name of each Hotel and its services.
The problems faced are:
1. Hotel Managers not in favour:The hotel managers are not in favour of spreading the Rosewood corporate brand in their properties as they feel threatened of losing their autonomy to manage the properties. This is also because with increased brand standards, there would be branding of other programs and services too.
2. Resistance from guests:Being less aware of the brand ‘Rosewood’, and having an emotional bond with the individual hotel’s branded products, the move is not favoured by guests.
3. Huge Investment:It has been calculated and found that in order to implement the corporate branding strategy, a marketing and operations investment of $1million per year would be necessary.
4. Maintaining brand standards:With corporate branding strategy being implemented and the ‘Rosewood’ name being established, brand standards would increase and