Brand management strategy Choice Hotels International, ranked fifth among the top 300 hotel groups in the world in 200 1 year, is a typical hotel group that has grown rapidly mainly by relying on brand management strategy. In just over 20 years, it has achieved a rapid expansion of its global market scale and increasing brand value mainly through brand franchise, multi-product brand combination, brand marketing and other brand management strategies. By September 2004, Boutique International, with 8 brands, has opened more than 5,000 hotels in 43 countries around the world, with more than 440,000 rooms. The business scope ranges from economical consumption, medium consumption to high-end luxury consumption, and all kinds of services are all-inclusive; The clients include business tourists, holiday tourists, mass tourists, family tourists, freelancers and other people from all walks of life. Northwest Business Travelers Association of Canada awarded it the "Best Chain Hotel of the Year" for three years in a row, 1998 Consumer Report rated its brand Sleep Inn as the best budget joint number in the United States, and Success magazine listed the other two brands-Comfort and Quality-as one of the best brand operators. The great success of boutique international in brand management shows that brand management has become one of the important tools for hotel market competition. Brand is a kind of name, term, logo, design or their combined application. Its purpose is to identify a seller or seller's products or services and distinguish them from competitors' products and services. Brand management refers to the basic situation of market demand, taking enterprise concept as the core, taking brand as the means, and realizing the ultimate goal of maximizing enterprise interests through various management methods such as brand marketing, brand promotion and brand asset management. The advantages of brand management enhance customer loyalty and form differentiated competitive advantages. Hotel products are intangible services provided to guests with the help of certain facilities, which do not have the tangible characteristics of physical products, while the consumption of hotel products by guests is an experience of service process, which has diversified characteristics. Because of the characteristics of hotel products and the existence of market information asymmetry, customers choose hotel products at will, which is an unfavorable factor for hotels to occupy the target market and expand market share. The brand of hotel group can establish a good corporate and product image in consumers' minds, enhance their awareness of intangible products in hotels, and promote customers' preferential purchase; Once a customer approves a certain hotel product brand, the customer will choose the same hotel brand in order to reduce the purchase cost and risk when choosing a hotel product next time, and many consumption experiences will form habitual consumption, which will eventually become a loyal customer of this brand. The improvement of customer loyalty will help hotel groups attract returning customers and increase market share. Brands reflect the differences and characteristics of hotel service products. If the service personality value embodied by a brand is recognized by the customer groups that are consistent with its identity, feelings and preferences, its loyalty to this brand will be irreplaceable. Therefore, personalized brands will help hotel groups to form differentiated comparative competitive advantages, thus occupying different market segments more effectively. Accelerating the expansion of the hotel group and forming an industrial aggregation advantage brand management is one of the important and effective means to accelerate the expansion of the hotel group, which can make the hotel group get rid of geographical restrictions, expand the development space, expand the market scale and expand the market coverage with brands, thus promoting the hotel group to embark on the road of scale operation and rapid expansion. Its main form is franchising, and the hotel group rapidly expands through the transfer and franchise of intangible assets such as management mode, business philosophy and trademark brand. The expansion of the group's scale and strength will make it in an advantageous position in the market competition. On the one hand, it can accelerate the expansion of the group more quickly, on the other hand, it can attract more business partners to establish good cooperative relations with it and enhance its market anti-risk ability, thus embarking on a virtuous circle of development. Promote industrial extension and form diversified business advantages. Brand management has the advantage of deferred brand value. Hotel groups can borrow the image and reputation of successful brands in customers' minds, and use the original brand names in new product lines or enter new industrial fields. Consumers and the public will extend this brand loyalty to new products out of their trust and preference for successful brands, which will increase the chances for new products to achieve market success, thus promoting the hotel groups to quickly form a diversified product or industrial management pattern. For example, Accor Group faces different hotel market segments such as luxury, mid-range and economy, and extends many brands such as Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis under the ACCOR brand, thus achieving the goal of clearly defining product positioning and effectively occupying different market segments. The basic mode of brand management Single brand management mode Single brand management mode is that the hotel group uses the same brand name for all the hotel products it produces and operates. Its advantage lies in that it can concentrate the financial and material resources of the enterprise to create a single brand, which is conducive to accurately conveying the unified corporate philosophy and management concept of the enterprise; Its disadvantage is that it is not compatible with many kinds of hotel products, resulting in blurred product image. Foreign hotel groups mainly use the company brand when using the single brand business model, that is, directly use the company name of the hotel group as the product brand name. This method is mainly suitable for hotel groups that implement the target agglomeration strategy. For example, Four Seasons Hotel Group in Canada has positioned its target market as a global high-end hotel consumer group, so it clearly reflects the product positioning of luxury hotels by using the company brand strategy, thus gaining a high market share in the global luxury hotel market. Multi-brand combination management mode Multi-brand combination management mode is that under the guidance of the same company mission and management concept, the hotel group gives different brand names to the products in different market segments it produces and operates. It mainly has the following three types: 1. Independent product brand combination Independent product brand combination means that every hotel product operated by the hotel group is branded with its own independent brand, and each brand is "tailor-made" for the personality of a specific market segment, so as to clarify the differences in product grade and function; Its disadvantage lies in the lack of a unified corporate image, and too many brands can easily lead to the dispersion of marketing resources, which is not conducive to the formation of famous brands. In this respect, the leader of the global hotel group —— St. Datt Hotel Group is a successful model. It has launched independent product brands such as Howard Johnson brand, Knight Inn brand and Tiantian Inn brand for different levels of hotel market segments such as luxury, mid-range and economy, and its accurate product image positioning has maintained a high market share in all market segments. 2. Classification brand combination Classification brand combination refers to the hotel group's classification of various hotel products operated by it according to a certain standard, and each category of products is crowned with its own independent brand. The advantage of this combination method is that it not only overcomes the shortcomings of vague brand positioning caused by single brand combination business model, but also overcomes the shortcomings of high marketing cost and difficult management brought by independent brand combination. For example, Howard Johnson of St. Dart Hotel Group is composed of four different brands of the same type: Howard Johnson Express Inns, HowardJohnson Plaza-Hotels, Howard Johnson Hotels and Howard Johnson Inns. 3. Parent-child brand combination Parent-child brand combination refers to the hotel group's branding of its hotel products with two brands, namely "parent brand+sub-brand". parent brand represents the overall image of the group, conveys the company's business philosophy and provides credit guarantee for the sub-brands; Sub-brands can increase parent brand's personality and vitality, enrich its connotation and enhance its value support. Hyatt Regency Hotel Group is a typical representative of this brand combination. The parent brand Hyatt Hotel presents the high-quality overall image of the group's products to customers, while the sub-brands (such as GrandHotels, ParkHotels and RegencyHotels) provide customers with different personalized services and value experiences in terms of hotel grades and service features, enriching and enhancing the image of parent brand. Each of the above brand management modes has its own advantages and disadvantages. Hotel groups should choose a brand management mode that is in line with their own actual situation according to their respective corporate missions and business strategies. As a successful business model of foreign hotel industry, capital operation strategy has been introduced to China for more than 20 years, which has played a "catalyst" positive role in the rapid development of China's hotel industry. Although China's hotel industry has gone through the embryonic stage characterized by a single joint venture and the initial stage when a few hotel enterprises try to use various capital operation modes in a small scale, this business model has not been implemented on a large scale in the whole industry. Under the background of a series of challenges brought by the entry of international capital after China's entry into WTO and the fact that China's hotel industry as a whole is in a state of meager profit or even loss, it is of great significance to learn the successful mode of capital operation of foreign hotel groups for improving the overall operating performance and international competitiveness of China's hotel industry. With the strengthening of the trend of global economic integration, the new round of mergers and acquisitions of World Hotel Group, which focuses on the competition for the global market, is intensifying. Throughout the development process of world-famous hotel groups, they have generally realized the rapid cross-regional expansion of the group by means of capital operation such as merger, acquisition and reorganization. For example, in 1953, kemmons wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn Group, pioneered the franchise of the hotel group, and sold 18 franchises in 1957, realizing the initial success of franchise in the expansion of the hotel group. Since then, Hilton, Sheraton and others have introduced this method to quickly realize the low-cost and high-profit expansion of the group. In 1960s, Hilton Hotel Group initiated the "management contract" operation mode, and it was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1964, becoming the first listed group company in the world hotel industry. 1998 formally put forward in its annual financial report that "the company concentrates on operating the hotel industry and expands the number of hotels owned by the group through merger, purchase and chain operation"; In order to enter the world luxury hotel market, British Ford Hotel Group acquired Le Meridien in 1994, which quickly accelerated its global expansion. 1995 sold 490 hotels in the United States in order to concentrate on the meridian brand. The above example illustrates a fact: capital operation is one of the important management methods for hotel groups to optimize the allocation of enterprise resources in order to maximize enterprise profits or capital appreciation. Capital refers to the value that can be continuously increased in sports, and this value is manifested in the money paid in advance by the hotel to carry out service business activities. Hotel capital operation refers to the hotel's pursuit of maximum profit or capital appreciation, characterized by value management, taking all tangible and intangible social resources and production factors owned by the hotel as operational value capital, and saving expenses through economies of scale. In the past few years, hotel suppliers have an advantage in the relationship between supply and demand in luxury and high-end market segments. From this, Starwood Hotel has obtained a management mode of optimizing the allocation of hotel capital and production factors and dynamically adjusting the industrial structure in various ways, such as circulation, acquisition, merger, reorganization, equity participation, holding, transaction, transfer and leasing, so as to realize capital appreciation. The ultimate management goal of a hotel group is to maximize profits and cash flow. In order to achieve this goal, Starwood has taken the following measures: increasing the profits of existing hotels and casinos; Buy new hotels selectively; Increase the number of hotel management contracts and franchise agreements. In order to increase revenue, Starwood Group has expanded the tourist market and other resources by balancing and effectively allocating its global assets, and greatly increased the Average daily rate (ADR) through revenue, which is mainly achieved by replacing discounted products with high-priced products and selectively increasing the price. Here is a brief introduction to the specific management strategy of the Group. 1, internal development opportunity ITT, and the joining of Universal Capital and management mode to Starwood's traditional hotel business provide Starwood with great opportunities to improve the overall market share, reputation and scale of the merged company, thus enhancing the operating efficiency of the company's hotels and casinos. The following are internal development opportunities that can increase the operating efficiency and profitability of the Group. (1) Revise the market positioning of the group brand, so as to further enhance its brand awareness. By changing the brands of some hotels owned by the Group and placing them under Sheraton, Universal Ding, Four Points or the new St. The Regess, Starwood Hotel has further expanded its brand reputation and market share, thus increasing the average income of saleable rooms and improving operating efficiency. (2) Expand the scope of Starwood Hotel as the third-party manager of the hotel, which can expand the influence and market strength of Starwood Hotel brand, and get more cash with less investment. (3) Franchise the brands of Sheraton, Saint The Regess, Universal Ding and Four Points to selected third-party operators, so as to expand the market share of the hotel group, improve the popularity of its hotel brands, and the franchise fee also enables the company to obtain more income. (4) Integrate the hotels owned, managed and franchised by the Group into a single and multi-brand reservation system, coordinate the global sales departments, and increase the income and profit and improve the service quality by increasing the information release, influence and sales ability of the Group on the Internet. (5) Implementing the group's frequent visitor program, the group believes that this program will help the hotel to increase the room occupancy rate, and guests staying in the hotel and coming to the casino for entertainment will also benefit from it. 1February 3, 999, Starwood Hotels Group launched a group "Hotel Frequent Visitor Program" called "Starwood Preferred Guest". The frequent flyer program is nothing new in the tourism industry. About 20 years ago, the airline industry first launched the frequent flyer program to reward business travelers who are loyal to our company. However, Starwood's frequent guest program is put forward in a significantly different form from other hotel programs, and its slogan is "Frequent guest program with unparalleled competitive advantage", which is ambitious to compare with other frequent guest reward programs. Business travelers who participate in the program can earn points and cash rewards by staying at the group's 550 hotels and resorts in 60 countries. The existing "Hotel Frequent Visitor Program" is often too complicated, which turns off many guests' appetites. The new Starwood program draws lessons and simplifies it. Guests can win two points if they spend one dollar in the hotel. As for rewards, guests have two choices, one is free accommodation, and the other is converted into mileage-Starwood cooperates with 20 airlines, so two points can be converted into one mile. Hotel rewards also include staying at any time without any restrictions, including the peak season of the hotel. This scheme has been a great success since it was implemented. In April, the registration rate of Huanding and Sheraton Hotels increased by four times compared with the same period last year. In the first year of its launch, it won many awards and won five of the nine highest honors. It was rated as the best hotel frequent visitor program in 1999 by Freddie Awards, and was also awarded the honors of "best customer service", "best website", "best upper-level customer program" and "best realization of reward program". In addition, Starwood's "Starwood Guest" program has been praised as the best hotel reward program by USA Today. (6) By comprehensively sorting out the database of all the group's own guests, strengthen the marketing efforts, promote other products to existing customers, improve the room occupancy rate, and create a new market marketing opportunities. (7) Optimize the Group's use of its real estate ownership, so as to increase the subsidiary income, such as the income from operating restaurants, bars and parking lots in hotels and casinos of the Group. (8) Create a new brand of "W" hotel to meet the requirements of business guests with high-grade service level and other guests who need small hotels with full service in major tourist markets. The first W hotel was established in new york in 19981February, and more W hotels are planned to be built in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and New Orleans. 2. Seek external development opportunities. Starwood Hotels are constantly looking for opportunities to expand and diversify the group's hotel and casino portfolio. Its main way is to make small investments or selectively acquire properties in the United States and abroad that meet all or part of the requirements of the group. The standards set by Starwood Hotel are as follows: (1) A luxurious and upscale full-service hotel located in a major metropolis or business center. (2) Major tourist hotels, resorts or conference centers must also meet the following conditions: the tourist market is well developed, the local market has significant industry barriers, or it is located in areas with strong demand for rooms, such as office buildings or retail shopping malls, airports, tourist attractions or university areas. (3) Hotels whose potential has not been explored can be fully developed through the following ways: changing brands and being owned by the Group's own hotel brands; Introduce more professional and efficient management skills and methods; And (or) invest funds to innovate, expand or reposition the hotel. (4) Hotels or hotel groups that meet some or all of the above standards. The premise is that one-time purchase of several hotels can make Starwood Group get more favorable prices, or obtain attractive real estate that cannot be obtained by other means.

In addition, Starwood Group also expands its casino business by expanding Caesars brand all over the world, and selectively develops and builds valuable hotels and casinos to help the Group achieve its strategic goals. Starwood Hotels & Resorts International Group signed 1 12 management and authorization agreements in 1999, which has exceeded the planned target of 12 percentage points. Starwood won the fierce bidding, and then managed several hotels under construction in Boston Convention Center, including a Sheraton Hotel with 1 120 rooms; A newly-built W hotel is located in the GUARDIAN LIFE Building in Union Square, new york, and an international W hotel in Sydney, Australia. In addition, many of the world's top famous hotels have also joined the Starwood name, including the original ESSEX HOUSE Hotel in new york, which has now been renamed the Universal Ding Hotel; The former Wei Sen Presidential Hotel in Geneva has been renamed the Supreme Select Hotel. In addition to the new agreement of 1 12, there are 30 other management contracts, some of which have expired, some have been handed over to a third party, and Starwood Group has renewed them. In this way, Starwood has retained its three most representative hotels, namely Universal Century Plaza in Los Angeles; Sheraton Park Castle in London and Sheraton Frankfurt in Germany. Through the global expansion process of 1999, Starwood signed 53 new contracts in North America; 28 in Africa, India and the Middle East; Europe 13; Asia Pacific and Latin America 12. 3. Integration and innovation of hotel management mode. At present, the combination of the traditional management mode of the group and the mode of Huanding and ITT Group has created many opportunities for the group to save costs for a long time. For example, through economies of scale to support the expenditure on procurement and insurance, and eliminate unnecessary duplication in routine affairs and management. The integration of business methods has also created opportunities for the Group to adopt a comprehensive and comprehensive frequent visitor plan and reservation system, and to improve business efficiency by promoting the business methods of a certain brand hotel in all hotels, such as promoting the "best practices" of Universal Ding, Sheraton or other hotels in the Group to the whole group. At the same time, Starwood constantly adopts bold and innovative management concepts and dares to explore new markets. This is mainly manifested in the application of the Internet and the introduction of new management and service concepts in brand hotels. The commercial application of Internet started in 1995, and it has developed rapidly in recent years. The application of Internet in hotel industry is becoming more and more popular. However, for online retailers, the most common phenomenon is that their operations are still at a loss. But now many hotel groups have begun to profit from it, and Starwood is a representative. As early as1July, 1996, Starwood Group established its own website, which has entered the profit stage. 1 10 million in 1996, and 1 10 million in 1997, while110 million in 1997,110 million in 1998, and/kloc-25 million in 1998. Such a great success is mainly attributed to Starwood's constant adjustment of the website to adapt to the changes in the needs of reality and potential users, making it easier for users to make travel inquiries about their destinations when using the system. Users used to only need information about the hotel, but now they want to have a more real feeling about the hotel and its destination. There are many real-life pictures on Starwood's website, and it also provides visitors with a virtual reality tour of the hotel, so that users can have a more real experience. In order to better serve tourists who choose their destination as a prerequisite, Starwood has redesigned its homepage. As soon as users log on to the website, they will see a map of the world, and click on their favorite destination to find the Starwood Hotel built in this area. At the same time, in order to maintain the consistency with the standard brand strategy, there are obvious signs of Starwood hotel brands at the lower end of the homepage, which can be directly clicked to enter the query, which is convenient for the use of loyal rooms of brands keen to participate in the Brand Loyalty Program. Expanding the width of the network, sorting out and classifying videos of hotels and destinations, and providing ancillary services all involve an increase in costs, which is doubled every year. Therefore, in order to reduce costs, Starwood emphasizes the cooperation with professional network companies, and limits its work to areas that it is specialized in and must control. In this way, the cost of online booking is kept at the same level as other booking methods, and the cost of online booking is decreasing year by year. Sheraton Hotel's methods in hotel management and human resource management are constantly rated as the best practices by Cornell Hotel College. Sheraton Elk Grove Hotel implements a new practice every year to improve financial viability and customer and employee satisfaction. The hospitality committee of the hotel will look for, identify and implement a new and comprehensive business plan. Each member of the hospitality committee is responsible for implementing an important procedure in the scheme. Sheraton-Denver West's pioneering work in personnel management is that two sales managers hold the same full-time position. The advantage of this is to explore the management talents of two employees and make full use of their energy and skills at the cost of hiring one employee. The actual operation is to discover the management talents of employees and give them a 90-day probation period to show their talents. During this period, employees' wages are calculated by hours. Starwood also spared no expense in improving customer satisfaction. Entrusted by Huanding Hotel, Guideline Research conducted a research on 600 business tourists. The conclusion is that the best service a hotel can provide is a good night's sleep. According to this information, Starwood spent a year researching and designing a new bed. It will cost 30 million dollars to furnish all hotels with this new bed. The manager and supervisor of Starwood selected 50 kinds of beds from 35 hotel chains and put them in the lobby for a comparative test. As a result, the "heavenly bed" of Universal Ding Hotel was used. As of1August, 1999, Huanding Hotel has furnished 10000 beds in 7400 rooms of 20 hotels, so that its customers can enjoy a "paradise" sleep. Holiday Marketing At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the catering sales of major hotels have entered a golden age. Christmas, New Year, Spring Festival, Valentine's Day and other festivals have become the best time for consumers to concentrate on consumption. Major hotels have made various marketing plans and tried their best to attract customers, so as to take advantage of this year's last opportunity to improve efficiency and make the work in 2005 have a good start. Looking at the implementation of catering marketing over the years, we can find that the catering marketing planning now seems to have entered a misunderstanding, that is, holiday marketing is to engage in activities, and all families launch activities, and the prizes are getting more and more bizarre, even reaching tens of thousands of dollars in computers, tourism, etc. These activities will undoubtedly receive miraculous effects when held. The hotel is booming for a time and weddings, but after the activities, it will become deserted immediately, and similar situations are very common everywhere. Here, it is necessary to study the market rules, put forward a marketing plan that meets the market demand, and lay a solid foundation for the hotel's operation next year from the perspective of long-term development. The following six aspects to explore the main strategies of holiday catering marketing. First, according to the different composition of the tourist market, we should integrate products and launch a product mix catering marketing that meets the market demand. In the final analysis, what we are marketing is the main products of the hotel, that is, the hotel's dishes, drinks, services and intangible brands and culture. During the holidays, the main tourist sources of hotels, whether it is star-rated hotels or roadside restaurants, socialized mass consumption will become the mainstream, and family meals and gatherings of relatives and friends are the main tourist sources at this stage. Then the hotel's products should mainly meet the needs of such guests, and the dishes should be light in taste, suitable for all ages, with a large amount of dishes and moderate price, and banquets of various grades should be launched in time, with special dishes, signature dishes and new dishes interspersed here, so that consumers can fully understand the chef's level of the hotel and promote the establishment and promotion of the hotel image brand. This is the main purpose of festival marketing, and it is also the theme project in many catering activities. Second, it is required that the theme of marketing activities is prominent and the organization of marketing activities with distinctive cultural characteristics is the main performance of holiday marketing and the main way to create a holiday atmosphere. Due to the different backgrounds of these festivals, the characteristic differences between Chinese and western cultures should be revealed in the process of marketing activities. For example, the layout of the restaurant, the design of the dining table, the printing of the menu, the background music and lighting, and the content of activities should be different. In this regard, the practices of many hotels are worth promoting. During Christmas, including Christmas tree decoration, Santa Claus giving gifts, children's choir performance and other activities; In the New Year and the Spring Festival, activities such as hanging red lanterns, putting the word "Fu" upside down, counting down the clocks in the early morning, and distributing red envelopes for the benefit of the market are the main activities; On Valentine's Day, roses, chocolates, candlelight dinners and violin music are the main forms of marketing. In this series of activities, we must grasp the principles of "authentic" and "original flavor".