Comment: Is your brand bland?

As a general rule, at least in branded hotels, the more you pay for your room, the nicer the little things you find in it. From fancy soaps and shampoos to desirable gadgets like coffee machines, DVD players and iPod alarm clocks, the colour of your money is reflected in the thread count of your sheets and the cuddliness of your terry bathrobe.

Move down a few star ratings, and you may still find some solace in the power of your shower, the comfort of your mattress and the pleasant perfume of your liquid soap. But generally, the thinner your budget, the more Spartan will be your lodging experience. This will be reflected in more workaday materials in the public areas — ceramic tiles in place of marble, chrome fittings instead of brass, fabric seating in lieu of leather, brash primary colours instead of the more sophisticated hues required by more refined sensibilities.

I am talking — let’s be clear — about chain hotels. This differentiation between levels of quality is of course part and parcel of their branding policies. Brands are linked to spending power, which ties them to star ratings. In tandem, brands are created with ‘personalities’ that are supposed to make them easily recognisable and also appealing to a different demographic strata. The character of a hotel brand is reflected in many ways, perhaps starting with guests receiving a ‘signature’ warm cookie on check-in, and then pieced together into a total impression created from such details as logos, tag lines, fonts, colour schemes, uniforms, greetings, degrees of spontaneity, job title nomenclatures, types of furniture, ‘themed’ F&B outlets, etcetera.

Bearing in mind that most branded hotels are in fact designed according to the taste of their owners, the creation of a brand ‘impression’ is in fact quite a complex and, some would say, insidious process. I say that, because one is not aware that one is being subtly manipulated into responding to these small brand stimulae, nor that one has been coldly analysed and pigeon-holed into a specific socio-economic bracket. In that sense, it is comforting that the so-called ‘millennials’ have been singled out so overtly as a target market for some of the new mid-market and designer brands, and their contrasting traits so plainly identified and appealed to by the brands — worldly, impatient, connected, sociable, private, demanding. At least everyone knows where they stand.

I compare this with the kind of impression one gets from a humble bed & breakfast or guest house. This type of lodging is typically made available when a couple decide they want to earn some extra income, or even their livelihood, by opening up some rooms in their homes to paying guests. It actually means turning over not only some bedrooms, but typically also a breakfast room and a lounge for their guests. When it comes to furnishing a B&B, there is of course no overriding brand ethos or specific target market that must be complied with or courted. Mr and Mrs just put some nice little things on the mantel piece or sideboard that they think will make their guests’ stay a happier one. And it’s true, a nice old clock or a vase full of flowers, together with the landlady’s breakfast banter, make all the difference.

The challenge for those responsible for operating chain hotels is to recreate some of this homely warmth and idiosyncrasy, so that guests don’t drown in the slickness of the branding. Hearteningly, I have come across several chain hotels recently that have humans at the helm, who have got away with surreptitious and, for me, most appealing personal touches. It’s like putting a drop of food colouring into the cake mix — the entire thing brightens up. Two hotels I visited recently had bookshelves in their lobby seating areas containing interesting titles. One of them runs a kind of honour lending library, whereby guests can borrow well-thumbed paper backs and either return them or replace them with a different book. That same property uses the walls of its meeting rooms as an art gallery with regularly changing exhibits from local artists. For me, these things transform a bland branded hotel into a beast with a beating heart.