white paper Understanding — and profiting from — the emotional and functional factors that drive hotel brand loyalty
Oඞඍකඞඑඍඟ Thanks to the work of behavioral economists and neuroscientists we now know a lot more about how and why people choose stuff. Including brands
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eople are loyal to great brands without thinking about them – their relationship with the brand is based on a deep, unconscious, sense that this brand can be trusted to fulfill their needs. People don’t think about the beer brand they choose; they don’t think about the washing powder they use and in a few cases they don’t think about the hotel they prefer to stay in (Four Seasons, for example). This deep emotional engagement is not coincidental, and can be earned by any hotel or hotel chain, operating anywhere at any level. This article explains how unconscious branding works and offers six intriguing ways to start on the path to unconscious engagement. In the past 5 or 10 years we have, thanks to the work of neuroscientists, neuro marketers and behavioural economics, learned a lot about why people demonstrate "loyalty" to a brand or a specific product, and it's complicated. I will not even attempt to explain it, but suggest, if you are really interested, you read Douglas van Praet's brilliant book, "Unconscious Branding"1. Van Praet highlights the fact that brand attachment, which results in customer loyalty, is based on deeply ingrained needs controlled by primal needs for survival, operating from the deepest, darkest parts of our brains. "Brands are learned behaviours: unconscious automatic intelli-
gence acquired through experience", and brand simplify our lives "by generating choices and action without requiring us to think." In a way the idea that our hotel brand is successful because it enables customers to avoid thinking, might be anathema to many hoteliers. After all, with all the time, money and energy we devote to building brands, the least we can expect is our customers have to think about us. But the fact is, the stronger the brand, the less they think about it. The most loyal customers to the strongest brands simply don't think about it: buying the brand (or, in our case, staying in our hotel) is simply what they do. I can recall a number
Excerpted from the article by Protean Managing Partner Laurence Bernstein first published in Hotelexecutive.com (http://hotelexecutive.com)
There was a time when Americans travelling in Europe would say: "If there's a Hilton in the city, that's where I'll stay,"
of years ago, doing extensive brand work for General Motors: at that time, there was a sizeable part of the population that bought GM cars because...well, because they bought GM cars. Always had. Their parents always had. There was no reason to think about this. It just was (of course, the behaviour of that brand subsequently broke that deeply engrained bond and we all know what happened to them). We see this happening in our industry, but not very often. There was a time when Americans travelling in Europe would say: "If there's a Hilton in the city, that's where I'll stay," without questioning the decision. But, as with General Motors, that deep relationship changed as more hotels came into the market and the primal safety and security that Hilton once uniquely promised, became the norm. The primal allegiance moved from the specific brand (Hilton) to a broader category (“American Style Hotels”). Other broader categories have emerged (such as lifestyle hotels that emerged from W). Perhaps the only hotel brand that has maintained the “without thinking about” position is Four Seasons, which has a large customer base that will stay at the Four Seasons if there is one in the market. Neither Hilton in the 50s and 60s, nor Four Seasons today, had or have loyalty programs. By focusing on a functional benefit (points, rewards, etc.) loyalty programs take people out of their deep, inner reverie and make them think about the choice. They are forced to evaluate options; and the very act of thinking about the choice, negates the depth of brand engagement (not thinking about it!). This may be why in a recent study of hotel loyalty programs we found that only 1 in five business travelers could correctly identify which hotel brand were affiliated with which hotel brand loyalty programs – and, even more disturbing, less than 1 in three people could correctly identify which ho-
tel brands were associated with the loyalty program that they themselves were members of (e.g. only 32% of members of Starwood’s SPG program knew that Westin Hotels was part of the program).
Emotional Engagement Starts With Knowing What You Stand For
There are many things small, medium, and large hotel operators can do to build real, deep and effective brand engagement; and no matter what size the business, it all starts at the same place: “what do you stand for?” Before working on any programs directed toward building true, primal brand loyalty, you need to establish a difference, and that difference must stem from what you stand for. It is seriously worth taking the time to think this through, either on your own, with your partners or with the help of a professional. The greatest brands in every category, but in the hotel category specifically, are built on a set of immutable values that hold that brand apart from all the others (think of Four Seasons, Joie de Vivre, Morgans, Marriott, W originally, etc.). And chances are that if your business is successful, you have a set of values, even if it is not articulated. These values, what you stand for, need to be woven into the tapestry of your business, which means everybody in the organization must know what they are, understand how they impact themselves and their job functions, and understand why they are important to customers, coworkers and stakeholders. If you do nothing else, this exercise will start you on the way to codifying the relationships you have with your guests and ensuring that these relationships drill down deeper and deeper into the emotional psyche of the customers. However, there are other things you can do that will result in deeper Page 2
brand engagement.
Six Steps to Real Emotional Engagement If you do not play and win in the emotional arena, you are left competing on functional factors...and competing based on pricing is a race to the bottom.
The six emotional factors that are most directly linked to whether or not a guest chooses to stay in your hotel are (in order): whether you make them feel you are interested in them; they want to feel a sense of “pleasure” and warmth; they want to feel deeply satisfied and they want to feel liked and to like you. Finally, they want to feel excited by their interaction with your hotel. If your hotel excels at these fundamental relationship spikes, you will be well on your way to the unconscious brand strength that will set you apart from your competitors and allow you to charge what your experience is worth for the simple, but profound reason, that your guests are staying in your hotel because they want to experience what you offer. Even if they don’t know why (at a conscious level).
Why Is This So Important?
Quite simply, if you do not play and win in the emotional arena, you are left competing on functional factors. And here is the ranked list of the top attributes that drive hotel choice from a functional point of view: price; recommendation by family and friends; location; offers discounts; is unique; and, “pleasant room design.” Face it, other than pricing and discounts, there are not many of these factors that you can actually control, and competing based on pricing is a race to the bottom.
Six Approaches You Can Employ Starting Today
So, you’re left with the emotional engagement attributes, and here are some thoughts as to how to go about getting an edge in some of these areas. Basically, here are six questions to ask yourself and to think about: 1. What do you and your associates
do to make your guests feel you are sincerely interested in them as people? Other than saying hello and asking where they are from do you try to engage in a discussion? Find out why they are in your city? Ask how you can help them make their trip more successful? Just be interested in who they are, why they are in your hotel and how you can help them. To put this in perspective, making your guests feel you are interested in them has more than twice the amount of impact on whether they choose your hotel than how attractive the design of your rooms are! 2.Do your guests feel “pleasure” when they enter your hotel and are in their rooms, or are they subjected to so many new experiences that they are overstimulating and, frankly, slightly anxious? What do you do to make the check in process enjoyable? This may sound like a tall order, but I bet that you can make the entire arrival and check in process less stressful, which will go a long way to delivering the feeling of pleasure right from the get go. 3.Are your associates sincerely friendly – do they exude a sense of warm, comforting, niceness? In order to do this, your associates need to feel the same sense of good will toward you, the business and their fellow employees. What team building exercises do you provide, and are they designed to make the people work better together (simple) or designed to make everybody in the business enjoy working better together? 4.Are you guests consistently satisfied? This does not mean do they check off “Satisfactory” or “Extremely satisfied” on a guestsurvey card. This means are they really, deeply satisfied with the experience such that they would believe in the depth of their souls that no other hotel could make Page 3
many little irritants do you provide that make your guests feel like felons (who cannot be trusted not to steal the towels, the robes, the TV remotes, etc.)
them feel this comfortable, this warm and fuzzy and this satisfied?
Being liked by your associates implies respect and loyalty and, importantly, trust. If you don’t trust the people who work for you, and they don’t
5.If we were to ask your guests whether they feel the people in the hotel like them as people, what would they say? For that matter, if we were to ask the men and women who work in the hotel whether they thought the management liked them, what would they say? And if we were to ask you whether you thought the employees liked you, what would you say? We’re not saying you need to be everybody’s friend (except for the customers – you need to friend), but being liked by your associates implies respect and loyalty and, importantly, trust. Finally, if you don’t trust the people who work for you, and they don’t trust you or each other, I can assure you the guests will not trust the hotel. And, while we’re on the subject, guests want to feel you trust them – how
6.Finally, do you make your guests feel excited? We said earlier that over stimulating guests will have negative results (you’ll just stress people out). But excitement is a different measure: it is the internal feeling that makes us want to continue the experience, or enhance the experience. It is the emotion that cuts through the unconscious mind and implants memories. As with anything in the hotel business, this is a lot easier said than done. I have simplified the process in order to offer some directional guidance, but each step is a serious undertaking in and of itself. But even if you do not have the time or re1.
Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) MarkeƟng, Douglas Van Praet,
trust you your guests will not trust the hotel.
Protean Hospitality is a boutique brand strategy advisory firm focused on helping our hospitality clients drive growth. We combine our business/category expertise with tenacity, balancing rigor and creativity, to uncover new opportunities for hotels, resorts and hospitality brands. For further information on this and other Protean Hospitality studies contact: Laurence Bernstein, Managing Partner, 416 967-3337 x 101; Bernstein@proteanstrategies.com Www.proteanhospitality.com Page 4