Raffles International - Master branding endorsement

In 1996, there was one hotel in the Raffles Group - the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore. In 2001 there are 38 hotels under Raffles management. The Raffles International brand started in 1989, built around a famous product associated with top service quality. The word "International" was introduced to add vision to the brand, and now the brand name stands for the promise of product and service excellence. Since then, Raffles has acquired other famous brand names, such as Brown's Hotel in London and Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Germany. Many other property acquisitions have followed, including the Swissotel chain. The aim is to have 12,000 rooms by the end of 2003.

But despite this rapid niche area growth, there has been a conscious effort to build a consistent and meaningful brand architecture. The focus of the business of the Raffles brand is lifestyle, not property, and the Raffles International master brand has a two-tier strategy. The Raffles-branded hotels and resorts target affluent leisure and business travelers, while the Swissotel and Merchant Court hotels aim to give quality and comfort to modern business travelers. The challenge to Raffles management was how to keep the brand equity of all the famous brand names in the portfolio, and yet build up the equity of the Raffles International master brand. The linking is accomplished by keeping the "Raffles International" name in taglines on all hotel corporate identity and communications materials. For example, for the prestigious brand hotel Brown's, the endorsement is "Brown's Hotel, a Raffles International Hotel," while for the Swissotel and Merchant Court hotels each name is signed off with a tagline, "Managed by Raffles International."

It will be interesting to see if consumers actually know the difference, and I am sure that, after considerable education through market communications, some research will take place to reveal what actual consumer perceptions are. There is a slight danger that the prestigious Raffles brand name might suffer some damage to its image when attached to properties of lesser stature.

Excerpted from Advanced Brand Management by Dr. Paul Temporal. You can purchase this book from Amazon by clicking on the cover.

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