Mr. Holthouser

Sales & Marketing

Five Top Secrets for Successful Hotel Branding

By Jim Holthouser, Senior Vice President Brand Management, Embassy Suites Hotels

Co-authored by John Lee, Vice President, Brand Marketing, Embassy Suites Hotels, Hilton Worldwide

Creating and sustaining a brand is integral to successful marketing for all companies. Branding allows companies to establish a unique, differentiated identity for their products, while making them relevant to the desired consumer. Successful branding contributes to awareness, loyalty, affinity and in turn, a company’s bottom line.

While creating a brand is a challenging process for all industries, in the hotel industry, branding presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. Taking a brand identity from written text on a piece of paper and bringing it to life for consumers every day is even more complex when the offering is located in cities all over the country, a region or even the world, each with their own local cultures and personalities and many with different owners and management companies.

The sheer size of the domestic hotel industry – over two hundred brands boasting 51,000+ properties and over 4.8 million rooms (according to STR’s census and chain-scale segments listing) – makes it even more important for hoteliers to find ways to make their offering stand out among the competition.

At Embassy Suites Hotels we developed a clear identity for the brand early on, and we bring it to life in every one of our 200+ properties located throughout the United States, Canada and Latin America. We recognize that a strong brand doesn’t exist only in a marketing presentation or at company’s headquarters, but rather lives and breathes in our properties, employees and guests. On the road to developing and sustaining our brand, we’ve learned a few things along the way.

1. Know who your brand is and be comfortable with who your brand is not
   
   An excellent exercise for any brand is to establish who they are NOT. At Embassy Suites Hotels, we embrace that we are a full-service brand and do not try to be a luxury or lifestyle brand, but instead strive to own the full-service sector. To do this we’ve established brand pillars that differentiate us from our competition. Embassy Suites is the nation’s largest brand of upscale, all-suite hotels. We require all of our properties to have at least 80% two-room suites (as of recently, owners can choose to develop 20% of their guest rooms as one-room suites).
   
   All Embassy Suites properties adhere to several other pillars that provide consistency for the brand identity, including a free cooked-to-order breakfast, nightly Manager’s Receptions serving complimentary beverages and snacks, and an atrium that provides a sense of space, light and nature.
   
   Consistent execution of these pillars across our locations allows us to be confident that every property will pass our litmus test: if all branded signage and collateral was removed from the property, would guests still be able to identify the property as an Embassy Suites hotel? When a guest walks in the door, do they hear the running water, see natural light and greenery and feel the sense of space? We take pride in knowing that our hotels pass this test.
2. Don’t be afraid to say no
   
   The brand pillars serve as an excellent guide to much of the decision making at our company, which leads us to: Don’t be afraid to say no. While we’re always striving to expand and grow the brand, we don’t accept franchise deals that can’t deliver our brand promise. We’ve turned down the seemingly sweetest of offers because a potential partner wanted to charge for breakfast or couldn’t commit to the nightly Manager’s Reception.
   
   We believe in our brand pillars and embrace that they’re what differentiate us from other brands. Consistency helps drive our brand strength.
3. Stick to your guns, but know when to be flexible
   
   And on the heels of #2, we acknowledge that we’ve learned to appreciate some creativity in interpreting the brand pillars. For instance, if you walk into our Fort Worth – Downtown location the atrium is actually located outside, between the hotel’s two rooms towers.
   To ensure each new location is incorporating the brand pillars while making the most of the land or building space available, our internal architecture and design team works with developers and their teams to create the best design possible, whether they are working with a new build property, an existing hotel that is converting to our brand, or a building that was used for a completely different purpose, like the one currently being built in downtown St. Louis which was once a department store. Our team will help create the right layout and design for the hotel while staying true to the brand.
   
   Flexibility also comes in the form of allowing each hotel to develop a distinct personality and embrace the local culture of its market, as long as it always ladders up to the overall brand vision.
4. Empower employees at all levels to bring the brand to life
   
   The brand doesn’t reside in our HQ in McLean, VA and we’re not just branding bricks and mortar. In the hotel industry, you’re branding much more than that – you’re creating an experience. We recognize that all of our team members, front-of-the-house, back-of-the-house and corporate, bring the Embassy Suites Hotels essence to life each and every day. Without our team members, the brand merely lives on a piece of paper.
   
   To ensure everyone representing the Embassy Suites brand has the tools to carry out the brand vision in a clear and consistent manner, we developed the “Make a Difference” culture. This consists of daily team huddles to talk about key opportunities or challenges of the day, providing ongoing training and growth opportunities, and continuously rewarding and recognizing our team members to motivate them to do their best. By providing them with tools and resources to carry out the brand vision, we are essentially empowering each and every one of our 25,000+ team members to be brand ambassadors.
5. Don’t try to sell insurance at a dinner party
   
   Successful branding relies on knowing your target market, both brand loyalists and competitive set loyalists. We keep our ears to the ground to stay in touch with our target. Where do our Embassy Suites Hotels consumers live, work and play? What are their media habits?
   
   Once you know where your target is “hanging out” whether it be on social networking sites or Monday night football, it’s important that you go where they are and understand why they are there. Our longstanding joke is that no one likes that guy who tries to sell you insurance at a dinner party. In other words, if we’re going to be on Facebook and Twitter, we’re going to interact and engage with our users and solicit opinions – not just push out our own marketing messages and latest hotel promotions.

Strong, relevant brands can’t play catch up when it comes to their consumers – they have to be where their customers are and create conversations, rather than simply push messages.

With more than 200 thriving properties across the Americas and over 30 in the pipeline, Embassy Suites Hotels is uniquely positioned among the Hilton Worldwide portfolio of brands. Clarity of vision, consistency and caring – about our team members, guests and hotels – are the keys to success for us and all hotel marketers.

This article was co-authored by John Lee. With more than twenty years of hotel sales and marketing experience, Mr. Lee began his career at Embassy Suites Hotels as Director of Sales and Marketing for several California properties. Mr. Lee is currently Vice President – Brand Marketing for Embassy Suites Hotels, and is responsible for all advertising, public relations, direct marketing and promotions. Mr. Lee’s chief goal is to expand brand relevance and brand resonance through powerfully built media and creative strategies that ultimately propel deeper relationships with Embassy’s key customer groups.

As the global head of brand management for Embassy Suites Hotels since 2006, Jim Holthouser leads marketing, sales, revenue management, research and development and franchise owner relations efforts for the $1.8B annual revenues brand. Mr. Holthouser also serves as global head of full service brands (Hilton, Doubletree and Embassy Suites) for Hilton Worldwide. Under Mr. Holthouser’s leadership over the last three and a half years, the Embassy Suites brand has won numerous awards for product and service quality. Mr. Holthouser can be contacted at 703-883-1000 or Maggie.Giddens@hilton.com Extended Bio...

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