EDITOR'S COMMENT
• Brand recognition, and hopefully the brand loyalty that follows, are hugely important across many industries, but in hospitality the relationship between brand and consumer is very different from many other sectors.
The major hotel groups have a seemingly endless conveyor belt of brand launches, traditionally underpinned not by loyalty to those brands, but by the accruing of points and rewards.
In a largely commodified market, price rather than brand is often the main driver for transient hotel purchases, and I know several individuals who have a whole wallet full of hotel loyalty cards, which I find slightly ironic.
In the serviced apartment and extended stay sector the dynamic is slightly different. If a guest is staying for several weeks or months, the relationship between brand and consumer deepens and offers an incredible chance to earn loyalty. It's probably fair to say that extended stay customers - or the travel buyers/TMCs who book their accommodation - are more particular when researching a one month stay than they are a one night stay.
The velocity of new brand launches in the space is nowhere near that of hotels, but it is accelerating, and on Thursday our latest SAN webinar will feature three industry leaders who have taken the bold step of launching new brands during the pandemic.
Click
here to register for the session and hear how Oakwood's Dean Schreiber, Steven Haag of Cove, and The Other House founder Naomi Heaton, conceived and launched new brands in one of the most challenging periods the sector has ever experienced.
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