Hotel rebranding can be necessary for many reasons. Maybe you want to cultivate a fresh reputation. Maybe your brand is outdated, and you need something modern. Perhaps you’ve realized your current brand doesn’t speak as effectively to your current customer base as it should.
Just remember, if you do choose to rebrand, that doesn’t simply involve renovating your properties and changing their names. To ensure your new brand delivers results, keep the following points in mind.
Conduct Market Research Before Hotel Rebranding Starts
It’s crucial that you take this step before beginning the rebranding process. You need to make sure the ideas you have will resonate with your target audience.
Conducting market research can also yield more ideas for your new brand. For instance, perhaps you want to make your properties more attractive to Millennials. By researching Millennial consumer habits, you would potentially learn that younger consumers favor companies that prioritize sustainability. Knowing this, you could look for ways to incorporate relevant messaging into your branded identity.
Ensure Consistency
Rebranding typically involves changing your company’s branded imagery to some degree. You don’t want consumers associating your company with its old brand. Thus, you would change logos, font choices, color schemes, and other key visual brand elements, separating your new identity from your old one.
Just make sure you’re consistent with this. Identify all marketing content and channels that feature the old imagery (including your website, social media accounts, ads, and anything else currently promoting your hotels) and replace them with the updated imagery. This is key to maintaining brand consistency.
Tell a Story
It’s important for a brand to be honestly rooted in the company’s actual values. If a brand is to resonate with customers, its story needs to be real, for lack of a better word.
Consider an example outside the hospitality industry. Apple is one of the most recognized and effective brands on the planet. For decades, one of its chief values (as represented by the famous “Think Different” campaign) has been providing brilliant thinkers and artists with the tools they need to realize their goals. Customers responded to this branded story because it was an accurate reflection of the genuine values held by Steve Jobs and other key figures at Apple.
Your branding also needs to reflect what your company stands for. In the hospitality industry, that can take many forms.
For example, maybe your properties are popular with families. If so, your brand’s story might focus on how you offer families comfortable lodging, helping them make memories that will last a lifetime.
On the other hand, maybe your properties are spread across the world, and due to their relative proximity to airports and major cities, they’re often used by traveling professionals. In this case, your values might include helping ambitious people realize their goals and stay productive on the go. You would thus craft your new brand story accordingly.
No matter what story you choose, refer to it when developing marketing content. How can a marketing video highlight your values? What about your new slogan? Is there a way to celebrate these values on social media?
That brings us to a key point. Hotel rebranding is most effective when guests know about your new brand. Along with developing it, you also need a marketing plan to spread the word about your company’s new identity and values. Keep these points in mind when developing your strategy, and you’ll be much more likely to succeed.
