Joining Network Brands: Should You Make Money? Why there are countless hotels that don't do well

Original: Li Sheng

Less than a year after opening, Lao Wang Hotel has closed

Remembering this time a year ago, he had just bought this hotel and was full of ambition, thinking that he would be able to show his talents in hospitality industry

However, due to depressing results, he was constantly rubbing against ground, and after half a year of struggle, he did not see a fracture in himself

He could only sadly leave stage. Lao Wang is not resigned to losing, where does he lose?

If location is wrong

But there is a franchise store of same brand 800 meters away, and occupancy reaches 110%

The brand is also very hardcore - I didn't make my own brand, but hugged my hip

Joined with one of best hotel chains in country through brand endorsement and member traffic import

I'm willing to invest in product polish and I've hired a store manager with a high salary. In addition, I am diligent and hardworking, and I do everything myself

Why did you see right time, place and people and good cards to play this ending? It's also a torture to soul that many franchise hotel owners often ask: why do they also join a certain brand?

For example, if you join for whole season, others can make a lot of money every day, and I can't even reach 60% occupancy, so I pay for every day

What do successful hotels do right?

Compare Lao Wang with his competing products (hereinafter B-shop)

Look at their differences

These two hotels are 800 meters apart and share same ancillary facilities as franchised brands (Lao Wang decided to join because of money he made)

At first glance, two stores look like twins

Getting clients in a small puddle is a zero-sum game. But in fact, clients they serve are completely different people

Most Pharaoh clients come via OTA

The main group is family clients; while Store B's customers mostly come from private domains, over 50% are conferencing and business customers

Why is there such a big gap in customer base? For store B, this is result of his "active choice": at beginning of planning

Store B has "blocked" Business and Conferencing customer groups as separate customer groups. The reason I can be so sure

Because as a result of design of B-type store space, creating atmosphere of working area, and encouraging investment in auxiliary premises, everything is obviously based on needs of business customer group.< /p>

The little label that store B permanently sticks to itself is best meeting hotel.

For this reason, a very powerful conference package has been created, divided into almost ten conference rooms, up to a multifunctional conference room with a capacity of almost one hundred people, and up to a micro conference room forten people

Customizing software and hardware based on meeting scenarios and needs of different meeting customers has directly raised local conference room standard to a new level

Positioned in minds of corporate customers: Find Store B to meet and stay

Even in this conference customer group, it has been further divided: focus is on bidding meetings

By relying on demand for smaller meetings such as audit meetings, relying on such precise subdivision and positioning, he will be able to handle sudden decline in large meetings after epidemic

Still maintaining high occupancy, and then overlaying catering and leisure business formats, firmly capturing surrounding corporate and business customers, and becoming your own sticky private domain customers. On other hand, Lao Wang's shop

Why does his product look like this? Because his previous boss designed hotel that way. When decorating, Lao Wang starts by "saving money" and keeps original structure as much as possible

Try renovating based on hotel's original room layout to save on decorating. In order to have more rooms, he demolished original meeting rooms and converted them into guest rooms. This is biggest gap between Pharaoh and Store B

One with segment targeting

Design product design, functional support and marketing methods based on needs of segmented customer groups; create products with needs of hospitality investors in mind, without dividing positioning into parts

Finally, "four you can't rely on" product was created: corporate customers thought it didn't have a conference room, business customers thought it was big and expensive, family customers thought it wasn't good enough for breakfast , and shareholders thought that he did not earn

Species that cannot find their ecological niche in jungle end up being lost to evolution

Speaking of this, you might be confused: I know positioning is very important, but haven't I already chosen a franchise brand?

Isn't this already positioning? Why would you do positioning again? Those branded hotels that we have joined

This in itself already constitutes positioning. For example, cognitive labels of all seasons are medium business, orange art, IP Atour, etc. We can call it “big positioning”

Great positioning is very important. This is an absolute condition for brand group to delimit territory. In fact, it is precisely because of this excellent positioning that we have a reason to make choice to join it or not. and provides priority choice

Because I want to be a medium business hotelclass

That's why I chose All Seasons; I chose Tangerine because I wanted to be a mid-range sentimental and artistic hotel

However, big positioning is not enough: big positioning satisfies brand group's need for land allocation as a franchisee, hotel owner, investor, CEO, store manager

We take into account competition of micro-environment and profit of our own store

Then we should establish our clear “small positioning” in regional competition: how does my Jiji store differ from one across street and from one two streets away

Just like classmates in same class wearing same blue and white striped school uniform and standard yellow cap, you can recognize him as "Third Grade" from a distance, but if you stay away impression of this large group

Clients cannot quickly find you in this large group of "similar" classmates, you must provide clients with another "reason to choose you" in order to stand out from "group experience"

He becomes "unique", for example: "representative of third grade of language department", "the most beautiful boy in third grade", "the one who played drums in third grade and went to a TV party"... This requires from us to join hotel. We must continue to dig deeper into our own differences and characteristics of tall, short, fat, thin, black and white

To have your own "difference" while standardizing same school uniform, and then use that "difference" to attract "like-minded" buyers

As a hospitality owner, how to put a small mark on yourself under big label of franchise brand positioning

The 3C strategic triangle model can be used to analyze this problem. 3C: me, client and competitor

Example:

Look at yourself first and explore yourself

What do I have? What's there?

Is there anyone better than me

Take another look at competition

How competitive is hotel market in region? Who are direct competitors, alternative competitors and disruptive competitors?

What labels do competing products have in minds of customers? (Just like serving Haidilao, Banu mushroom soup, Red Bull functional drink, big bottle of Dongpeng functional drink)

See what other labels customers need. Competing products have not yet been able to occupy niches. Can we take lead?

Look at customers three times

What is composition of clients? Who is the main customer group? Draw portraits of users in detail: age, gender, city of residence, education, occupation, social role

Stages of life, behavioral habits, psychological characteristics, hobbies, character traits, lifestyle, three views on life

Example:

We can only clearly describe user profile

The client is standing in front of you like a big living person, so we rather switch to his point of view and really want to understand

What life scene should help him complete our hotel?

What worries him most about this scene? (Pain points and needs) Do you have medication? (Can you solve this pain point?)

If so, how do you organize your solution around this pain point? Does this decision really make him feel good? Is he willing to pay for it? Would you recommend a friend for this?

The era of food explosion

It's getting harder and harder to choose. Trout once mentioned in "What is Strategy": "You want to buy a car

If it was in 1950s, just pick one from GM, Ford and Chrysler

Today you have to choose from over 300 models of Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Volvo...

In hospitality industry, we also face similar "violence of choice". As of 2021, only mid-range hotels.

There are more than 20 brands with 100 stores, and number of mono-brand stores has already exceeded 1000. In dazzling competition if you do not have a strategic understanding of positioning

How to win first choice in competition

How to attract customers without this priority? Without clients, how can we talk about survival, how can we talk about development

You think that if you decide to join a brand, you will just wrap your arms around your hip, but in fact it is only 1% of a big brand

The reality is that in regional market where your hotel is located, in a small competitive market with a radius of 1 kilometer, only if you are only one, users can choose without hesitation

You can never be "the best", then you can be "different". Is hotel like life?