Hotel Rebranding: Now Where am I Sleeping Again?

March 15, 2013 in Journal, Market Research by Hotel Compete

It may not happen often, but when a hotel changes brand names, the consumer is the one left surprised.  A process known as re-branding (or reflagging), can help hotels gain new potential customers, via something as simple as changing their name or brand.  I, very recently, discovered the impact of a hotel re-branding after my stay at the Richmond Magnuson Grand Plaza Hotel.

After an impromptu decision to visit some friends in Richmond, I researched the hotels in the surrounding area.  Through all the information I discovered on the internet and OTAs such as Expedia, Orbitz, I came to the swift decision of booking the Crowne Plaza Richmond West.  It was the right hotel for me because I have Priority Club Status with IHG hotels and the location worked with my travel destination needs.

The time for my arrival in Richmond was upon me.  I had my friend drop me off at the address I had written down earlier for the Crowne Plaza and his GPS confirmed my hotel of choice (an entirely different blog could be posted on that subject).  However, as we pulled up the location housed the Magnuson Grand Plaza, rather than the Crowne Plaza that I had booked.  After double checking the address, I cautiously walked in and asked the front desk if I had arrived at the right hotel.  The very friendly girl behind the counter had explained to me that the hotel had undergone a recent re-brand, same staff and overall appearance, but the name and brand had changed.  Immediately, I was shocked and a little surprised.  I was a regular to Crowne Plaza and IHG hotels.  I worried about my status and the various rewards I was supposed to receive.  However, it was too late to change hotels to just accommodate my Priority Club Status and I only had two days in Richmond, so I was willing to give it a shot.

As a person with access to the single best hotel database on the planet (blatant Hotel Compete plug), I went upstairs to settle in and conduct a little further research on this, so called, “re-branding” concept.  The results were shocking.  In North America, there are over 63,000 hotels, 40% of which are independently owned and not affiliated with any brand.  However, every month as much as 3% of ALL HOTELS change names or brand flags.  This means that if you, as a consumer, book any of the close to 2,100 hotels that fall in to the small percentage, you run the risk of having the same surprising experience that I endured.  The hotel appeared the same as the pictures from the Crowne Plaza that I had initially found; the only real difference was the Magnuson brand name in various spots of the building.

Recent Trends In Hotel Rebranding

Although, initially I was surprised at the change from the Crowne Plaza to the Magnuson Grand Plaza, I was not affected much.  The staff was very accommodating and sympathetic to my concerns and assured me I would not notice a difference.  They were right, I may not have noticed a difference from the re-brand but the hotel employees did.  By simply changing their name and branding, the new Richmond Magnuson Grand Plaza Hotel was positioning itself to have a successful 2013 year and was cause for much excitement amongst the staff.

My stay was uneventful, but as I had first-hand knowledge about how the re-branding affected the consumer I wondered what it meant for the hotel. Re-branding allows hotels that may be struggling to create new marketing techniques which counter the struggles. Hotels can fall into new searches, gain new loyal customers that attach themselves to the new name rather than the old, or simply appear as a new hotel that customers are more willing to stay at. It does create some issues with search engines because the old name is more recognizable and not likely to have changed on the hundreds of sites listing the outdated information; however, if a hotel successfully informs past customers, and carefully implements the new name with online searches, a re-brand can drive business to the hotel and bring it back to life. However, it may take months before the new branding efforts are live on the OTAs, in search engines and in local directories.  Expediting the data flow can make or break the re-brand effort.

In follow-up articles, we will take a look at how the online presence of individual hotels, the perception of guests, and, ultimately, the market position of individual hotels are impacted; most importantly, we will look at what you can do to minimize the impact of re-branding on the property, and how to maximize the profit from it.

For more information contact Kendall Rozell, Industry Analyst, Hotel Compete

Guest Review Rankings Report – Focus City: Denver CO

June 19, 2012 in Market Research by Hotel Compete

Following on from our report on Atlanta GA two weeks ago, our focus now moves to Denver CO.  You can access detailed information about Denver review scores by visiting the Online Guest Review Rakings Report. In the meantime, here are a few things that we noticed from the previous week’s guest review activity for Denver Hotels…..

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Hotel Comp Set Selection: What The Statistics Tell Us

June 13, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

Hotels don’t always get their comp sets right.  It’s a fact.  Think about it: comp sets are the lens through which hotels see competitive performance.  Pick the wrong competitors, and the lens gets blurred.  That can have serious consequences for hotel performance analysis.  This week we publish more research on the comp sets that hotels are currently using for competitive analysis.

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Guest Review Rankings Report – Focus City: Atlanta GA

June 6, 2012 in Market Research by Hotel Compete

Since Hotel Compete launched the Guest Review Rankings Report a few weeks ago, we have already seen things beginning to change in the 25 markets that the report covers.  To bring these changes to life, and to show you what’s going on in the markets, we will be publishing regular updates that focus on one city – we begin this week with Atlanta, GA. 

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Hotel Reviews: The Lesson of Classless Imitation

June 6, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A few weeks ago, Hotel Compete launched the Guest Review Rankings Report. This report was conceived following the huge response  to two previous articles about the analytical use of Hotel Guest Reviews. Right now the industry is – rightly – pre-occupied with “Reputation Management”.  But – as we argued in previous articles – the reviews themselves present an analytical opportunity that remains largely untapped.

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Hotel Reviews: Introducing the Guest Review Rankings Report

May 7, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

The hotel industry is currently obsessed with social media.  It is particularly obsessed with guest reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and the major Online Travel Agency (OTA) sites.  Review scores and volumes affect a hotel’s business, and – increasingly – executive compensation, as more and more hotel companies link general managers’ bonuses to their hotels’ performance on review sites.  This week we are delighted to launch a brand new regular report that provides hotels, analysts and other interested parties a brand new perspective on review scores across major lodging markets.

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Hotel Revenue Management: What You Probably Don’t Know About Rate Changes

April 18, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

Revenue Management (RM) and Pricing have been around now for decades.  Since US Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act back in 1978 RM has moved from airlines, to hotels and on to other industries.  34 years later hotels have RM and pricing systems, channel management tools and supporting data that make it easy to keep prices right where they need to be.

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Hotel Classification and Hotel Performance Analysis

March 19, 2012 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A few months ago we published an article about the way that the industry categorizes hotels for the purpose of hotel performance analysis.  In it we argued that our industry depends too heavily on “top-down” forms of classification, like chain scale.  Specifically, broad categorizations like “Upscale” and “Mid-Market” fail to account for inconsistency within brands; and fail to provide useful insight into the choices that bookers are faced with in a competitive and diverse hotel marketplace.

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Digging Deeper: Hotel Review Scores, Hotel Class, and Hotel Performance

October 31, 2011 in Journal by Hotel Compete

A couple of months ago we published an article: Hotel Reviews – The Hotel Industry Must Learn from the Wisdom of Crowds, which discussed the relevancy of user review scores.  The article highlighted a fallacy in current industry commentary: that review scores are too biased or unreliable to be used for analytical purposes.  In this post we dig deeper into the insight that you can get when you really understand hotel review scores.

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The Rearview Mirror, and Why it’s Hurting the Hotel Industry

October 5, 2011 in Journal by Hotel Compete

It’s always encouraging to find kindred spirits.  This is particularly true when industry commentators swim against the tide with controversial opinions that you also hold.  Last week we were delighted to read an excellent account of this year’s Lodging Industry Conference, provided by the hotel industry’s “Dr Doom”, Joel Ross, founder of Citadel Realty Advisors. 

The article, which can be accessed here, is a must-read for anybody who follows hotel industry performance.  It voices a mixture of skepticism and amazement at the forecasts provided by various industry “data people” at the event.  The presentations apparently found consensus on the following view: because July has been so wonderful for the industry, the outlook for 2012 looks rosy.

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