HOSPITALITY BRAND

If every encounter a customer has with the brand either helps or hurts the brand value, then everything in a business comes back to brand management. And if the goal is to maximize revenues, then brand management is revenue management. This is why these two roles should be moved into the same department to enhance collaboration. As the recent HotelNewsNow.com article, Reputation management is Revenue management , hotel industry is starting to see the power of this relationship between Branding and Revenue Mgt... just starting. But even five years ago the people in charge of brand management (at the corporate or property level rarely ever talked to the Revenue managers. They were secluded to opposite sides of the building, the brand and marketing people seen as 'those people who have their heads in the clouds while everyone else does the work' and the revenue folks on the other side were 'those people who crunch the numbers while everyone else does the work'. Unf...

I never thought it would happen, but it did.  United and Continental Airlines have officially completed their merger, in twitter at least.  Merging airline systems is a complicated, long, and tactical task.  According to a recent New York Times article , Delta and Northwest had to swiftly integrate 1,200 separate systems while going through their own merger. One would think that, at the very least, merging twitter accounts would be one easy integration to get right.  But it didn't turn out that way for Continental/United.  In the process of merging handles they have lost the over 337 thousand followers the old individual accounts had.  The new account @united only had around 6,000 followers today.  Starting from scratch on twitter would seem like the right thing to do if they were trying to set up a new brand identity, but that can't be the case when you keep the United name and the Continental livery. The photograph after the jump ...

Following the notion that a business’ marketing strategy is only what the customer sees, I decided to find different airlines’ positioning based on the one thing every airline customer inevitably has to see: that napkin they give you along with your in-flight beverage service. Here’s what I’ve found so far in terms of napkins and other communications a traveler might see: United: Napkin A: Front: United. Thank you for flying United. We’re glad you’re here. Back: Low Fare Guarantee. Find the lowest United fares at http://www.united.com/ , plus no booking fees. Napkin B: Front: United. Thank you for flying United. We’re glad you’re here. Back: More legroom than any other U.S. airline. United Economy Plus. The front always seems to be a thank you message. Very nice of them; however, I don’t believe this is communicating their positioning to me at all. On the back, they try to sell you a somewhat unique benefit, either a better product (Economy plus, which you pay extra for, or ...