PRICE VERSUS QUALITY

Studio M is actively aiming to give guests in this region a quality experience and to provide services that meet the needs of mid-market, according to Kassab. “So what we define as quality at Studio M is a comfortable bed, a good shower experience, all bathroom touch points must be very good and up-to-date technology like high-speed Wi-Fi – this is becoming the standard now.”

Kassab continues: “But the size of the room is not what the guest at Studio M is interested in. He or she is interest-ed in nice functionality, colouring, experience; the Studio M guest doesn’t define high quality by the size of the room, but by the quality of the experience. “So quality is not compromised in Studio M, we are directly addressing the quality requirements of this particular guest, it’s just a different requirement.”

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COMMUNICATION

The impact of the millennial traveller on the mid-market sector has led Kassab to develop a strategy of decentralisation that allows the entire Studio M team to communicate with their guests on a personal level. “Our product is designed to capture the needs of this customer segment. They are very social, so we developed our in-telligence on how to communicate with them in a tech-savvy way.”

He adds: “Social media is the key strategy to market [Studio M] to them – they like to speak about their stays when travelling and use technology to communicate this with their peers; it’s a very tech-driven generation. We are not only planning this, we see this happening in our other Studio M properties, like in Singapore – that has been opera-tional more than seven years now and is very successful.”

SOCIAL MEDIA

Speaking about the need for constant social media monitoring, as a method of analysing and charting the success of his online communication strategy, Kassab adds: “We have an internal team to take care of this, they are our social media ambassadors – they’re very young and very social and they can implement the strategy more effec-tively.”

However, he stresses that hotel general managers will continue to directly answer to their guests, whether on so-cial media or face-to-face, adding: “This is not centralised system; it’s coordinated by each hotel individually.”

He adds: “We would utilise video in social media, it’s absolutely part of it, not just YouTube, but Snapchat too. It is very much about using the right communication vehicle for the audience. That is not to say Facebook is used uni-versally across GCC, UAE, Oman and KSA, they actually require different social media strategies – we have devel-oped our communication strategy according the each individual country.”