From "waiting for guests to come" to attracting and retaining guests, the logic of the hotel business has completely changed.
For most travelers who are on the go, it is their core appeal to have a good night's sleep in the hotel, with clean rooms, comfortable bedding, quiet and undisturbed, and delicious and full breakfast.
It sounds like these are already the standard configuration of every hotel at the moment, but when consumers with limited standards and choices hope that no matter where they go, they can choose the right hotel "without stepping on thunder", which is a bit difficult.
And this is the fundamental reason why everyone prefers brand chain hotels, if nothing else, the environment and service of brand hotels have basic guarantees.
Young people, in particular, pay more attention to personalized and high-quality consumption, pursue unique accommodation experiences, and are more willing to "pay" for emotional value, go to their passions, and achieve self-definition.
This seems to be an opportunity for more hotels, and many cutting-edge brands can get in front of consumers, but from a business perspective, it poses a greater challenge to operators.
Because the sense of experience is a very subjective judgment, it is a test of the hotel's comprehensive service ability, living well, eating well, the environment is good, and the service attitude is good.
From the perspective of the supply side, even if there is a price level as a separation, consumers still have a lot of hotel brands to choose from. Running a hotel is no longer a "lie down and win" business that opens the door and waits to make money.
As Wang Wei, CEO of Jin Jiang Hotels (China), mentioned at the 2024 Jin Jiang Hotel Partner Success Conference held recently, the era of incremental profits based on scale growth has passed, and hotels also need to empathize with consumers' needs to continuously improve products and services, and also need to market themselves and pay more attention to the operation and maintenance of old customers.
Combined with a series of blockbuster measures taken by Jin Jiang Hotel this year, it is not difficult to see that this leading enterprise has changed due to the situation and has a forward-looking layout.
01.
A brand is an image and a label
The key is to identify the advantages and highlight the differences
Brand is not only a logo or symbol of an enterprise or product, it also contains a wealth of culture, personality and service commitment, is the image representative of the enterprise in the market, and is also a collection of consumers' perception and association of the brand. When consumers buy products or services, they tend to choose those brands they trust for better quality and service experience.
Hotel brands need to establish a deeper emotional connection with consumers, so as to form a broader brand consensus on the market side, and ultimately turn into a steady stream of good business for hotels. Recently, Jin Jiang Hotels' brand proposition - "Peace of Heart, Jin Jiang Hotel" was relaunched, which has attracted wide attention in the industry.
Looking at the current hotel market, most of the hotel groups that want to strengthen brand awareness and build deeper connections with consumers are "shouting" to the market based on their own growth characteristics and differentiation. However, there are probably not many that focus on "belonging" and can deeply connect with consumers.
One of the reasons is that corporate brands that give people a sense of "belonging" need to be accompanied for a long time, and some have even become part of consumers' life memories. For example, the "Jin Jiang" brand originated in 1935 and has a history of nearly 90 years. From witnessing the beginning of the hotel industry in China to the multi-brand matrix all over the world, from raising industry standards to assuming social responsibility, Jin Jiang Hotels has always been the epitome of the vigorous development of China's hotel industry, and has also accompanied the growth of generations, and is known as the "cradle of Chinese hotels". It accompanies the beautiful memories precipitated by consumers and the emotional bonds generated, which is a unique advantage.
Another major support for the "sense of belonging" lies in the scale effect that has been formed so far. According to the data, as of the end of December 2023, Jin Jiang Hotels has more than 16,600 contracted hotels with more than 1.58 million rooms, distributed in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government in Chinese mainland and 58 countries or regions outside Chinese mainland.
From companionship to ubiquity, this is one of the keys to building trust and brand identity between Jin Jiang Hotels and consumers.
02.
Products and services are the only carrier of the brand
It is necessary to build the ability to serve consumers well
For more small and medium-sized hotel companies, the difficulty and time and cost of obtaining similar brand trust and recognition can be imagined. This has also made the hotel brand chain rate in mainland China grow by leaps and bounds in recent years, and continue to move towards the development situation of "the strong are stronger".
According to the "2024 China Hotel Industry Development Report", the hotel chaining rate in mainland China has increased to 40.95% in terms of the number of chain rooms, compared with only 26% in 2019. By the end of 2023, there will be about 90,600 chain hotels in mainland China, and Jin Jiang Hotels ranks first with more than 12% of the total.
The higher the chain rate, the greater the competitive pressure on the brand, how to maintain the scale increment is on the one hand, and more importantly, the brand identity and quality control of the franchised stores, it is particularly important to maintain the same pace, the same goal, and efficient collaboration.
If the management is not good enough, consumers will first "vote with their feet", and those investors who have already "gotten on the bus" will also "get off" at any time because the rate of return is not good enough. According to data from the "China Hotel Market Brand Change Insight Report" from Houhai Data Platform, the number of hotels with high-star hotel brand changes (brand change, crown brand, and delisting) will nearly double year-on-year in 2023, of which about 42% of brand changes are delisting, and the flop account is about 33%.
This also shows that the market has entered the era of stock, and the hotel enterprise pattern may usher in a major reshuffle, and it is particularly important and timely to strengthen brand advantages, enhance brand awareness and penetration, and maintain competitiveness.
"With the continuous emergence of new formats and new products, competing for boundaries based on capabilities is the way of the future." At the conference, Wang Wei took the service profit chain of Harvard Business School as an example, and called on the majority of hotel franchise partners to build the ability to serve consumers well and continue to bring them a better experience with better products and services.
Wang Wei said that since March this year, Jin Jiang Hotels (China) has implemented the "Old Friends Program" and "Fitness Program" in its hotels across the country, all of which are focused on helping hotels create excellent services. The former focuses on the dual upgrade of products and services, emphasizing that the hotel should welcome every guest like an old friend, so that every "old friend" can always feel the quality of facilities and services, and comprehensively improve the consumer experience; The latter focuses on establishing a good reputation in the living circle, and establishes a good image of the hotel in the living circle by taking actions such as neighborhood cooperation, public welfare activities, community building, deep linking, and mutual support.
At the same time, Jinjiang's continuous investment in platform system optimization, member rights and interests, and AI intelligent numerical control is also based on the core competitiveness of building "the ability to serve consumers well".
03.
Technology drives efficiency
A win-win situation with the same cognition and goal is the future
For large hotel groups, the advantages in the face of market competition have been analyzed a lot. However, it is also necessary to see that the challenge of large scale lies in the difficulty of management, and the challenge of many brands lies in how to balance and control.
Not long ago, Jin Jiang Hotels (China) analyzed its new "12+3+1" brand strategic plan for the first time, proposing to build 12 thousand-store brands in 2028 (including Vienna International, Lavande, Vienna, Jinjiang Inn, 7 Days 5 brands, as well as 7 high-growth potential brands such as Xi'an, Zhe Coffee, Kyriad, Country Inn & Suites, Campanile, Magnolia, IU), and 3 core mid-to-high-end brands with high market competitiveness. And explore 1 resort track. The layout focus is drawn from the perspective of the brand.
Not only that, in terms of organizational structure, Jin Jiang Hotels (China) has also truly achieved "three-in-one" this year: the management level has been merged into one headquarters, and 11 regions + 7 centers have been established, forming a management level of "stores-provinces-regions-headquarters", and continuing to promote the localization of development and operation. The purpose of streamlining communication is to respond to the problems of investors and operating stores in a timely and efficient manner.
In addition, it is more important to improve operational efficiency with technology, which is not only a hotel management system and hotel robots, but also an insight into digital trends and an advanced layout of AI models. At the Partner Success Conference, Jin Jiang officially released the industry's first AI super employee JINTELL, which can not only realize intelligent recognition and automatic processing of work orders, but also continuously optimize the service process through deep learning and comprehensive perception, and continuously obtain positive feedback driven by AI in scenarios such as intelligent room management, personalized customer service, virtual concierge service, and intelligent security monitoring, so as to realize the intelligence of the whole service process.
These are all the active changes made by Jin Jiang Hotels (China) in the face of the new market environment and new trends in hotel management. Just as some industry insiders interpret Jin Jiang's series of actions, established hotel companies are not synonymous with "conservative", but should become the backbone and pioneer of leading the development and innovation of the industry based on their capabilities and experience.
According to the official data disclosed by Jin Jiang Hotels (China), its reinvestment rate in the first half of this year increased by 38% year-on-year, and the proportion of investor-owned properties also increased by 10% year-on-year. This is undoubtedly the best proof of this.
Wang Wei has mentioned many times that consumers will "vote with their feet", and when they are not satisfied with the products and services, they will not subdivide whether it is the fault of the wine management company or the fault of a certain hotel, which requires hotel investors and brands to have the same goals, work together, and continuously optimize products and services with the changes of the times and the competitive environment.
As Zhang Lei of Hillhouse Capital said in the book "Value", "where the prosperity and decline are in the pattern, the pattern is far away, and the pattern is small, even if it is close and resistant", the consistency of values and goals is the premise for both parties to move forward stably and seek good results. The essence of the hotel is service, whether it is the brand or the investor, only by working together to do a good job in the service, can we truly achieve "let the customer win", consumers can gain a very cost-effective experience, and investors and managers can also reap the due profit returns.
Author | Guo Hongyun
Edit | Li Yi
Picture | Photo.com