Prologue: The Role and Future of Branding for Hospitality

With 10 years of experience in senior agency and client-side roles leading complex end-to-end innovation projects articulating strategy planning, experience design, operations design and scaling, LABBRAND’s Managing Partner, Kevin Gentle, spent nearly 3 years with Jin Jiang International Hotels in China as Vice President Brand R&D – Global Innovation Center.

His background from this role has lined him up as one of LABBRAND’s resident expert in the Hospitality and Real Estate industries. In this dialogue, we chat with Kevin to hear his experience, passion and perspectives on the role and future of Branding for Hospitality.

The Dialogue with Kevin Gentle

1. Tell us more about your role and achievements at Jin Jiang International Hotels.

As Vice President for Brand R&D, my key focus was on new brand development, brand upgrade along with supporting other group-level strategic innovation projects. I was extremely fortunate to be part of a talented team composed of exceptional individuals from different functional backgrounds from branding to engineering and interior design.  A key part of our success also lies in the unwavering support we had from our group leadership which was key to unlocking resources and internal backing for our initiatives.

Our achievements can be measured in terms of pure project output, contribution to the group’s business growth and culture change.

• New brand development – We created and launched 9 new hotel brands, each with its own innovation focus and each of them supporting the group’s development in high potential new markets such as leisure travel or serviced apartments. Beyond the pure conceptual brand work, each brand was also an opportunity to experiment with new design, engineering or technology solutions with potential applications across the group
• Brand upgrade – We developed our team into more than a brand incubator but an open service center that any BU could use to carry out branding work. This approach allowed us to lead the upgrade of some of the group’s most important and iconic brands such as 7 Days or Jinjiang Inn. I would say this is the achievement I am the proudest of as it demonstrates how we managed to organically build collaborations within the group and create an approach to branding and innovation that operations and business teams found valuable
• Modular experience innovation – Beyond new brand development, we also designed a modular approach to experience innovation through plug and play experience modules. These modules included themed rooms (Ex – fitness rooms) and special service packages (Ex – family, pets) and were executed across hundreds of hotels during my time at Jinjiang
• Brand and innovation culture building – We used innovation as a catalyst for internal collaboration through events such as insights summits, design-thinking workshops along with the sharing of quarterly insights reports

2. What challenges did you encounter in this position? How did you evolve and adapt your approach to branding in response?

The switch to a client-side role was a humbling and formative experience that pushed me rethink assumptions and adopt new ways of working. These new ways of working stayed true to my core principles and belief about the importance and value of branding while allowing for more flexibility and accountability for execution. These are ways of working that I have brought back to LABBRAND and make us a preferred partner for hotel brands.

• Hotel specific branding framework – The value of any branding framework is to provide practical guidance for the work of different stakeholders, from interior designers to hotel managers and BD people. Traditional branding frameworks tend to not perform well on this front. In response we developed a new framework that clearly outlines how the brand impacts each key aspect of hotel execution from including interior design style, service culture and guest experience
• Integrated strategy and product approach – The hotel industry is highly product and experience driven, we thus avoid the traditional waterfall approach in favor of integrated concept development which includes brand positioning, product design directions and signature experiences. Being able to demonstrate upfront how branding informs elements such as material selection, furniture, check in area layout, uniforms, signature F&B offerings etc… is critical to get buy in from decision makers. I believe that the most impactful brand practitioners in the hospitality industry are humble and intensely curious. They know about service, interior design, engineering etc… and can talk about branding in these terms
• Consideration for 2B audiences and eco-system – While hospitality is traditionally understood as a 2C business, the 2B component is hugely important and often overlooked. A strong hotel brand creates desirability not just for guests but for also for investors.  Any branding deliverable must thus integrate a 2B vision, mission and related truths which must in turn be internalized by BD teams through structured internal training. A strong hotel brand creates desirability not just for consumers but for investors
• Flexible VI identity –  Visual identity design for hospitality brands, especially mid-scale and economy chain brands, is judged first and foremost by its capacity to be applied across a high variety of environments, most of which nonstandard and impossible to precisely foresee. A good hotel VI is one that can be easily used by non-designers on a wide variety of applications from posters to key cards and restaurant menus. This entails special care to the flexibility of brand supergraphics and complete guidelines that cover the use cases that match hotel operators’ everyday needs

The above are only some of the ways I have evolved my approach to brand development in response to the hotel industry’s unique needs. They all revolve around common principles – matching branding output to operational needs, speaking the language of key stakeholders and being accountable for long term quality execution. One way I would sum it up would be to go from a brand strategy and design vision to one of brand growth and management.

3. Why do you think branding is so important for Hospitality brands?

On a most basic level, what hotels brands do is provide lodging to people away from home. They are in charge of people’s comfort, safety and well-being in unfamiliar environments. This highly intimate experience calls for the sort of trust that can only be built through careful brand building.

Then if we drill down to the different performance metrics that hoteliers care most about, each one of them can be supported by a strong brand.

• Customer acquisition – OTAs are the number one channel for hotel booking. This is a highly undifferentiated environment where customers search, and filter based on location and price. A distinctive brand name, strong imagery, compelling content are all critical to building a marginal edge on these platforms. Looking beyond, a strong brand is the key to bypassing OTAs entirely, having customers search the brand by name and book through direct channels (ex – website, app)
• Loyalty – maximizing guest return rate is critical to maintaining a healthy business, this is achieved through customer loyalty which can only be achieved through a relevant, differentiated brand and a top of the line CRM experience
• New hotel opening – a strong brand is a brand that adds value to an investors’ project, it is a brand that investors trust will add prestige to their development, bring quality traffic and be a long-term partner for shared success
• Operational efficiency – the brand is what ties together and guides all aspects of hotel operations. Interior design is informed by brand positioning and design. Staff training is informed by brand personality and culture. Business development is supported by the brand’s vision and mission. Marketing is informed by brand story and messaging. A strong strategy, identity and experience system means increased efficiency and quality across the entire operations value change.

4. How can branding and marketing agencies / consultancies do better to support the branding efforts of Hospitality clients?

The most important is to develop a strong understanding of product and operations, that is the environments in which the brand lives. The hotel industry is unique in its culture, most top managers started from the frontlines, have worked in hotels and managed properties. It is one of the reasons why I have a special fondness for this industry. However, it also gives us a responsibility to go the extra mile in understanding the product that they are entrusting to us, to know how branding will feed into operations, how it will be delivered on the ground.

This doesn’t require to have spent years client side or to intern as a hotel GM. It can mean more on-site work, greater attention given to property and local area visits, more dialogues with different operations teams (Ex – rooms, F&B, interior design…) baked into the project process etc…

5. Can you give us a summary on what you think is the Future of Branding for Hospitality?

There are probably as many scenarios are there are brands, and we reject the idea of a standardized playbook for brand development. It is not so much about a deterministic path but about key trends and opportunities that we believe brands should pay attention to

• Segmentation – the past few years have seen increasing segmentation of the hotel market along demographic and lifestyle lines. Fitness hotels, e-sports hotels, new generation youth hostels etc… all represent this trend. We believe that there are still opportunities to open up new segments based on emerging customer groups or behaviors. This calls for careful prior analysis though as not every trend is large and sustainable enough to sustain a new hotel brand
• Openness – the traditional idea of a hotel as a closed space fully owned and operated by the brand is giving way to that of a more open platform that can integrate non-hotel brands within their space. This trend started with F&B offering such as branded coffee corners but is continuing to extend to other experiences such as new retail, wellness, entertainment… hotel brands should consider how they can create spaces and mechanisms for collaboration with the brands that their guests most love
• Culture – hotels are increasingly taking on a role as guardians and re-interpreters of local culture. From design inspirations to collaboration with local IP or artists, we see the cultural component of hotel experiences become increasingly important
• Basics – ‘More than a hotel’ is one of the past 10 years’ most oft-repeated buzzword. While hotels become more than places to sleep is an undeniable trend, we believe certain segments have strayed too far away from core customer needs and foresee a return to basic hotel attributes (comfort, sleep, safety…) in brand communication over the next years
• Local – hotels present the strange paradox of being local businesses who most often don’t serve the local community. We believe opening hotel spaces and services to local area inhabitants is a key lever for brand and business growth. How to turn a hotel into a daily coffee place, dry-cleaner, gym or workspace will be a key question for certain brands.
• Scarcity – in a world of infinite free content and direct access to any good or service, hotels are one of the few spaces where guests can enjoy truly rare and exclusive experiences that articulate space and service. Especially in the luxury and leisure markets, this promise of rare experiences will become increasingly important to building brand leadership.

6. Lastly, what is one bold future trend prediction you have for the Hospitality industry?   

I believe that we will witness Chinese economy and mid-scale brands accelerate their development abroad, especially in developing markets. From a brand perspective, Chinese brands such as Atour or Ji Hotel propose a vision of affordable hospitality blending affordability with tasteful design that closely matches the sensibilities of young travelers.

From a product and experience perspective, Chinese brands benefit from robust standards implemented across thousands of properties in their domestic market. They can also leverage their supply chain and sourcing advantage along with their access to the most advanced smart technology solutions such as delivery robots.

Stay tuned for future updates and insights from LABBRAND Internal Experts.

About LABBRAND

LABBRAND, is a leading independent global brand consultancy founded in Shanghai in 2005 with offices in Paris, New York, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. Through seamless coordination of our expertise in Insights, Strategy, Naming and Design, we translate brand ideas into impactful identities and experiences that strengthen brand equity. Bringing strategy, creative experience and culture altogether into comprehensive brand systems to create and develop successful brands. Guiding clients through every stage of the brand development journey – from inception and execution to management. LABBRAND has been recognized by the world’s most influential award organizations, earning over 70 prestigious accolades including iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award, London International Awards (LIA), Transform Awards in Asia, North America and Europe.