When the public speaks about luxurious hotel companies, they always consider Waldorf Astoria, or Aman Hotels, however, when they speak of W Hotels it is usually described as fun and a party hotel. This is the case because of the way W advertises its unique selling proposition (UPS). The way that Marriott, the parent company of W, describes their UPS is “W is where iconic design and cutting-edge lifestyle set the stage for exclusive and extraordinary experiences…. The beats per minute increase as the day transitions to night, amplifying the scene in every W Living Room for guests to socialize and see and be seen.” (Deanna Ting, 2016) This shows us that with W, Marriott focuses more on the experience the guests have by making the stay more eventful, rather than focusing on the customer service. This does not mean that W does not consider the customer service, but that it does come after the guest experience.
A perfect example of W’s positioning is when they created the “One of a kind experiences at Coachella.” The idea behind this campaign was to re-create the VIP camps to look exactly like a W room, this allowed the guests to connect having “the time of their life” at Coachella and staying in a W’s room there, we can also see that W targets millennials as mentioned in previous posts. However, for W to consistently succeed in creating a “one of a kind experiences” they are always looking for new events that they can sponsor, or events that are happening near them which they can take advantage of and attract their guests. For example, this weekend there is a festival in Verbier, Polaris Festival, on the W website it is at the top, which shows that they are using this event to attract guests. Furthermore, as they use this as their main USP W is known by most of the millennials as a hotel where you are able to party, and enjoy yourself, which as Marriott puts it “breaking the norms of traditional luxury” (Marriott, 2019) compared to other hotels which are more on the traditional side.
Positioning Maps
The map shows the demonstrative consumer’s perception of the different brands’ value and competitive importance on buying the product. We can see that W is amongst the top hotels, competing mostly with high-end brands. This is since W is a daughter company of Marriott, due to this Marriott is not afraid of investing in W to create a better experience overall for the guests.
W was born and raised among the chaos and culture of NYC. Today W takes that 24/7 energy worldwide, bringing the best of Music, Fashion, Design, and Fuel to coveted destinations around the globe.
Bibliography
Deanna Ting, G. O. (2016, September 21). Every One of Marriott’s 30 Hotel Brands, Explained. Retrieved from Skift.com: Every One of Marriott’s 30 Hotel Brands, Explained
Market segmentation divides a group of individuals into distinct groups of buyers who have
different needs, characteristics, or behaviours and how separate marketing
strategies may be required for this. Within segmentation there are four main
categories; geographic, psychographic, socio-demographic and behavioural. The
various segments can divide a target market making it easier to attract certain
customers.
The main segments of W hotels are:
1.Geographic segmentation
Geographic segmentation is the division of the market in terms of
geographical unit. There are several ways that a market can be geographically
segmented. You can divide your market by geographical areas, such as by nations, states,
regions, cities You can also divide the
market into rural, suburban, and urban market segments. And, you can segment a
market by climate or total population in each area. Geographic segmentation is an effective
approach for companies with large international markets such as W hotels
because different consumers in different regions have different needs, wants,
and cultural characteristics that can be specifically targeted.
Since W Hotels is a chain that
operates 55 hotels in 25 different countries we can somewhat come up with a general idea of
where they would like their clientele to come from and who they would target.
W Hotels like to place their properties in
big urban market segments like W London, Paris, New York, California to attract
mainly the city lifestyle and youngsters to enjoy their modern properties to
get away from the repetitive city life. Nevertheless, they do also have a
majority of hotels in developing cities such as Doha, Muscat and Amman.
Consumers in an urban environment often have different needs and wants than people in suburban and rural environments. There are even cultural differences between these three areas. Hence, it is important to do this segmentation.
2. Socio-demographic segmentation
Socio-demographic segmentation is a market segmentation taking variables such as age, race, religion,
gender, income, family size, ethnicity, education and occupation into
consideration. When analysing these factors in terms of W Hotels, each element
can be individually assessed. Demographics
can be segmented into several markets to help an organization such as W target
its consumers more accurately. With this type of segmentation, an organization
can categorize the needs of consumers.
W aims to target a younger generation compared to other Marriott brands. Their customers are mainly aged between 18-40years old. Being, a luxury chain, the hotels’ properties attract upper-middle class income to high income groups. When it comes to other socio-demographic factors, W hotel caters to all genders, races and religions. Although, a lot of young couples do seem to prefer to celebrate anniversaries and other occasions at W hotels, and even bring their children along
3.Psychographic Segmentation
In market segmentation, the psychographic segmentation refers to the market category, which is divided based on the lifestyle of its potential consumers as well as their personal lifestyle. People who relatively score higher on “Openness to Experience/Openness to Change” are more likely to be segmented in the market of W Hotels. This could be because they have a higher curiosity, more artistic interests and are more adventurous than others. W Hotels is a very unique concept of modern hotels and its clientele must be willing and open to try new things and experience something they have never experienced.
4.Behavioural Segmentation
Behavioural Segmentation could be defined as dividing a market into segments based on consumer knowledge, attitudes, and uses of a product. This could then be further divided into five sub-segments, including occasion, usage rate, the benefit sought, loyalty status, and user status.
MARKET STRATEGY
Pricing market strategy
In terms of geographical segmentation, W hotels would do adequately
market survey before they open in a new place. W hotels will measure their own
price strategy in different locations. They need to consider the local
realities and competitors. For example, there is a pricing difference between urban market segments and developing cities segments. It is ultimately
determined by the market.
Music market strategy
In terms of psychographic segmentation, the W
guest is looking for insider access to what’s new and next, from music to
fashion to design to “FUEL,” the brand’s unique take on fitness and wellness. Music
is a key touchpoint of all W Hotels’ public spaces and has been a defining characteristic of the brand
since its inception. The W was the first hotel brand to appoint a global music
director in 2009, which has since evolved into a global music collective,
comprised of one music director from each of our regional teams around the
world. By tapping into the universal language of music, W hotels are able to
provide unique experiences for members of their loyalty programs from hosting
on-property concerts at select properties around the globe to offering VIP
access to music festivals and concert tours. Music helps them to create strong
emotional connections with members and guests, ultimately inspiring them to
want to continue to stay with W hotels.
PERSONA
Maria is a generalised representation of W hotel’s ideal customer. She is a model. She is a happy, positive, cheerful, and friendly person. She enjoys making friends in different situations. She loves sharing her opinions about music and fashion with people. She travels to attend concerts and fashion exhibitions in different cities. Her goal is travelling to collect records around the world, attending fashion shows from different countries, exploring clubs and cocktails and making friends from different places. She is afraid of loneliness, boredom and cooking by herself. She likes YouTube and Instagram. She is influenced by many fashion brands and music brands such as Chanel and apple music.
On this week’s blog post we will be doing a SWOT analysis of W hotels as a brand. The information we collected is from our previous blog posts, as well as some extra research on certain aspects of W’s brand.
Strengths
The point which we thought was the most important in strength was that they are part of the Marriott brand, this means that as mentioned in the SWOT they have years of experience with customer service. In addition to that, they have the opportunity to obtain investments from Marriott in order to expand in foreign countries or innovate on already existing Hotels.
Furthermore, their client base is businessmen and women, a lot of their clients are companies which means that they have a very strong loyal client based as the corporate companies enjoy working with W hotels as it offers luxury service but also opportunities for their guests to relax during their time off. This allows them to differentiate from other brands as they’re able to offer a different service (parties, concerts, events etc…) and therefore they manage to strengthen their client base.
Weaknesses
What we believed to be W Hotels biggest weaknesses is that they have no proper advertising campaign, most of their advertising is done on their websites or their Instagram pages, even if these are very successful, their lack of advertising reduces the amount of exposure they can have for someone that is not aware that this brand exists. Furthermore, the issue with doing all of their advertising on social media creates a barrier for the ones that do not have a social media, even if it is very rare for their client base it is still possible.
We believed that another weakness they had was their niche target market, due to this it does push away some prospective clients as they are not the type to enjoy W hotels. Moreover, a lot of the older generation do not appreciate it because they believe it does not represent luxury as it seems more of a “fun” hotel than a luxurious one.
Opportunities
The fact that W hotels as no real competitors for this niche market means that they have the opportunity to obtain prospective guests without having to compete over them with other brands. This allows W Hotels to increase their customer base, as well as diversify their customer base. This being said, they do have non direct customers which will be analysed in the paragraph below.
As W Hotel is a hotel brand this means that they have lots of competition for this industry, especially in the locations they are situated in, however, as mentioned above they have the ability to differentiate themselves from the others by creating a diversity of services.
Short term travelling is a decreasing trend, therefore W Hotels may lose a few of their corporate clients which forms a big part of their customer base. In order to avoid that W could reduce the prices for their frequent clients which would in turn perhaps diminish the decreasing trend for them.
SMART Objectives
One smart objective that W Hotels could undertake is to establish an advertising campaign other than social media, in order to increase their client base by 5% in the next 6 months. This would allow W Hotels to have an advertising campaign and increase exposure to future guests that could be interested in staying in their hotels.
This week’s topic is regarding market research and the question we decided to focus on regards the geographical expansion of W Hotels. The question we intend to evaluate is: “How is W Hotel expanding its customers in developing countries?”.
W Hotels is an American hotel chain that first expanded in Europe and recent years have been expanding in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The question is relevant to our analysis because after searching on Google Trends for W Hotels, the results were very different from what we expected.
The main data we used on our research and analysis for the given question, was secondary and mainly quantitative data taken from Google Trends and other statistics websites. Google Trends provided us with valuable information which gave us an insight on the research quantity of W Hotels and by region giving different result from what could be expected, as a matter of fact, W Hotel is mostly researched in the Middle East (Oman, UAE and Qatar), followed by Asian and African countries. On the other side, however, Google Trends doesn’t offer the actual statistics on booking of W Hotels which could be much different than the only research on Google.
Secondary data can be defined as information that already exists somewhere and is collected for another purpose . It is either internal or external, which means the information is gathered by the company itself or gathered from external sources like other firms or the internet. Secondary data can be a good starting point for many firms since it’s not costly and it saves time, effort, and money for companies to collect themselves.
For W hotels, their internal secondary data can refer to its databases and also that of other Marriott hotels’. W records its customers’ characteristics, buying behaviors, experiences, and comments about their stay. This information would effectively allow hotels to learn customers’ habits according to their nationalities, race, or even religion and it will become a consideration if W hotels are trying to open a new property in some untouched market of developing countries. However, the internal data is still limited information as W does not have any records about the intended new Market. Hence, it is essential to look beyond what they already know from past information.
W hotels can also find external secondary data online through google search and google trends. These two online search engines are well structured and well-designed and can provide a massive amount of information. However, What W hotels need is not only the amount of information it has on google but also the quality of information. Aside from Google, W hotels should buy data from other hospitality companies that already exist in the market that they intend to invest in. Which is due to outside suppliers that would have higher quality data to suit a wide variety of marketing-oriented information which is more useful for W hotels.
The Definition of Primary data is when information collected for the specific purposes at hand. Collecting primary data requires the company to invest and find the answer themselves. Different approaches are usually implemented such as observational research; gathering information by observing relevant people, actions, and situations. Another example can be ethnographic research; sending trained observers to watch and interact with consumers in their “natural environments.”
We think that W hotels can gather marketing information through their social media accounts such as Instagram. By analyzing how customers behave on social media accounts allow us to understand a customer trend. So, it can be useful if W wants to utilize the same design for the trend in the new property. W hotels also can send surveys to customers after their stay. This method is very straight-forward and flexible in knowing their buying-Havier, knowledge, attitude.
A customer-centered perspective is an approach of doing and operating a business in a manner where the focus is on creating a positive experience for the clients. This is done by directing all available resources towards customer satisfaction.
W Hotels, operated under the leadership of the Ritz Carlton chain, are a trendy fashion boutique hotel. Being a part of the competitive hospitality industry, they must always innovate, in order to be unique and stand out. The hotel has a special modern touch and is always one step ahead of all the luxury brands in terms of technology.
W Hotels is targeted at both leisure and business customers who demand high-quality service, upscale enjoyment and chasse fashionable life. This is the reason why it is hard to accurately analyse and determine the company’s direct competition, if any.
The indirect competition of W Hotels consists of AirBnb and Vrbo(Vacation Rental by Owners), although not as well-known as AirBnb, it has over a million properties on their website and have been operating for 12 years longer.
Porter Five Forces Model
The Porter’s Five Forces are forces that identify and analyse five different competitive forces that help to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the industry. This analysis refers to the method to measure a company´s competitive environment in the study of marketing
It analyses the threat of new entrants; therivalry among existing competitors; the threat of substitute products; the bargaining power of suppliers and the bargaining power of buyers.
New entrants in an industry refers to any new possible competitors in the marker. The higher the barriers to entry, the smaller is the threat for existing players. Since W Hotels has a unique creative brand design, there are not any obvious threats to the industry in terms of new entrants. Furthermore, it can be considered that existing players have built up a large base of experience over the years to cut costs and hence the threat in this scenario is low.
The bargaining power of suppliers analyses how much power and control a company’s supplier has over the potential to raise its prices or to reduce the quality of purchased products. For example, “Booking.com” or “TripAdvisor” and other online travel agencies in the case of W Hotels. Although these suppliers do not have a large effect in the industry, many hotels including W, are dependent on their sales through online websites. They therefore have substantial bargaining power.
Threat of substitute products refers to the existence of products outside of the realm of the common product boundaries, which increases the propensity of customers to switch to alternatives. One must look further than the direct competition and towards every product that serves a similar need for customers should be taken into account.
Rivalry among existing competitors, the last force of the Porter’s Five Forces examines how intense the current competition is in the marketplace, which is determined by the number of existing competitors and what each competitor is capable of doing. Thomspon Hotels is one ofW’s rival in terms of infrastructure, contemporary decor, and grownbreaking design. Their modern luxury at the refined edge of travel
Competitive Advantage
Nowadays, the hospitality industry has become one of the most fast-growing and competitive industries. The number of hotel accommodation which include local and independent hotels is continually increasing. Therefore, it is important for W Hotels to develop and maintain its sustainable competitive advantages.
Porter’s analysis guides the company to pursue competitive advantage in the chosen market. W Hotels chooses differentiation among four generic strategies. With a differentiation strategy, a company is likely to be unique in its industry to achieve a competitive advantage. W hotels breaks the norms of traditional luxury with a distinctive concept, products and service in the luxury hotel chain. W Hotels bring the best of Fashion, Music, Design and Fuel in various ways to different destinations around the world, and people would like to pay for them with premium prices. For example, the long term competitive advantage of W hotels, WAKE UP CALL is their signature music festival series that combines the brand’s longstanding passion for music with its signature Whatever/Whenever® philosophy. WAKE UP CALL takes the festival experience off the field and onto fabulous hotel grounds. The trend toward lifestyle attributes such as music festivals helps W hotels to compete against small boutique hotels whose target market is more individualistic type of customers. As the target market of most of existing luxury hotels is not the young generation, it is difficult for them to launch music events in hotel ground because of noises and customer preference. In our opinion, this distinctive music festival is a sustainable competitive advantage in the hotel industry, and many young people would be well attracted.
In this week’s blog post we will be analysing how the macroenvironment has affected the W Hotels brand, and the consequences of these changes for the brand.
First and foremost, the first W Hotel opened in New York in 1988, it was created to be a more playful and fun luxurious hotel compared to its competitors with its living room styled lobby bars (Trejos, 2018). We can already see that the business plan of W Hotels was to stand out the crowd and appeal to millennial travellers which wanted to enjoy their stay all the while they were working. Hence, we can see that W hotels were already expecting the Macroenvironment changes to occur in their favour, as if they had expected these changes to take place.
The W hotels in Sentosa Cave, Singapore was ranked the most technological hotel in the world (Berman, 2017), at this W location they included underwater speakers at the pool so that the guest could listen to music while relaxing. Using this macroenvironmental change to their advantage W Hotels managed to keep their niche market of millennials as well as improve their visibility.
In today’s world it is all about efficiency and simplicity it is why W Hotels are trying to incorporate technology in their hotels, such as the mobile room key, now the guests don’t need to worry about having their bedroom key on them as it is on their phone, which is on them at all times. This is especially successful with millennials as they are able to save time which simplifies their stay at the hotel.
W hotels are one of the most present hotel brands on Instagram, as mentioned in our first blog post, they have almost an Instagram account for every location. They did this in order to “keep in contact” with their guests, updating them of events, new amenities, new menus… etc. This also allows W hotels to target the generation Z, meaning that using the technological changes they are attempting to broaden their market. Furthermore, W Hotels offer lots of events at all times which is what allows them to be so successful.
W Hotels has also created an app in order for guest to gain points every time they stay at a W hotel and earn rewards after certain amount of points gained.
W Hotels is owned by Marriott International, one of the biggest hospitality chains in the world by location and global reach(Rodriguez, 2015), in order for Starwood to broaden their customer base they opened the W Hotel in New York in 1988 as mentioned above, this allowed Marriott International to have a larger customer base, more precisely have a hotel which focuses solely on the millennials, and now on the generation Z demographic groups.
As mentioned multiple times in our blog posts, W Hotels target millennials, however as the millennials are getting older, W Hotels doesn’t change, meaning that more and more of their customers are complaining that W Hotels is too much of a party focused hotel, (Kelly, 2018), this is why they have started to attempt to attract the generation Z, they are doing this by using the Instagram accounts as mentioned above. As we live in the age of influencers and Instagram, W Hotels posts pictures with influencers or influencer-like photos onto their Instagram, in order to try and convince the generation Z that if they stay at a W hotel they’ll live like influencers.
Change in macroenvironmental factors
We believe that the most important change in macroenvironmental factors would be the cultural and demographic, this is due to the change in state of mind of the generation Z which prefer to now stay at rented apartments such as Airbnb’s as they have more freedom. In order to overcome these changes, W Hotels would need find a way to appeal to the generation Z in a way that their competitor Airbnb still has not found, such as the events that they do, for example they could link up with an NGO and create an event with said NGO in order to increase the awareness of both the companies.
To conclude, W Hotels is greatly affected by the macroenvironmental changes, but as a whole they managed to take advantage of these changes and as a result of this they succeeded in broadening their client base.
On this weeks’ blog, we’ll be mainly talking about the differences between products and services within our company, W Hotels; more specifically from a tangible and intangible point of view.
Although W Hotels is a more service orientated company, it can be debated that the rooms and what is served at the restaurants, are its products.
W Hotels are very particular in the styling and the design of the rooms, as we said in previous blog posts, W Hotels is Marriott’s’ branch for high spending millennials (Marriott, 2019), whom see luxury very differently compared to the traditional Palaces such as Hotel de Paris in Monaco or the Gstaad Palace. In fact, W Hotels tend to be very modern, such as the W New York or the W Barcelona.
W Hotels customers book in these hotels firstly for the tangible goods, such as the rooms, being that when a customer books, he is not experiencing any intangible services, so as a matter of fact the hotel gets picked from what the hotel offers from a tangible point of view; such as, the room design, the room features, the general design of the hotel or the view from the room; these are tangible products, this is concentrated especially for a customer who is looking at W Hotels for the first time. After the customer booked the room, and they arrive at the hotel, they start experiencing the intangible services, with the warm welcomed by the “Wheels” (valet) where they take care of the arrival or by the receptionists in the “Living room” (lobby) (Marriott , 2019). In our opinion, the hotels’ product (tangible) is what first attracts the customer to book at W Hotels, the services (intangible) is what makes their stay remarkable. W Hotels specifically aim at the services offered so that they can keep their reputation very high for being one of the best hotel chains of Marriott and in the world in general.
The challenges encountered by W Hotels are; first of all, its commonly known and it as seen on the photos, it is clearly aiming for younger customers. Most of their hotels are very modern and futuristic. A clear example of this more juvenile atmosphere is the W Hotel of Verbier, the exterior is a not so modern chalet, however, the interior is incredibly modern and at night pink lights outlines the whole structure. This very modern look, however, can result in limiting the range of customers aimed because millennials who can and are willing to spend these prices for a room in W Hotels are not that many. Secondly, W Hotels being that they aim at providing customers with the best experience, rather than concentrating on the product itself, it can be hard for them to attract many new customers. An example is comparing W Hotels with Four Seasons, both hotel chains are known to be some of the best in the world, however, the impression of Four Seasons is that the hotels and resorts are more balanced between product and service provided. (Dechow, 2019)
A way to overcome the first issue mentioned in the previous paragraph is to aim on increasing the reputation of the hotels as less of millennials “party” hotels and more as high-class luxury hotels (King, 2017 ). To overcome the second issue would probably be to create new hotels which are more balanced between product and service provided and maybe introduce a branch of W hotels that is not so extreme in modern design like Four Seasons Hotels. This way they would attract a larger customer variety such as families. (Kelly, 2018)
The company overall, we believe, is doing very well going towards a more neutral look while still keeping the brand recognition as a modern hotel chain for a juvenile audience. The latest project they’ve been working on seem to be coming out as more balanced, especially regarding the W Residencies, which have a modern look but something definitely more open to all range of customers.
In the real world, it is very common that companies usually employ Marketing Mix to achieve its company goals as well as a form of expressing its company values to the clients. In this blog, we will be focusing on how W hotels utilize the principals of 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) of the Marketing Mix to produce the response it wants among its target audiences.
Product:
The first and one the most important “P” is company product. The Product can be defined as the goods and services the customer receives in the first hand. This would leave a very important first impression and paves the way for customers’ future buying designs. W hotels’ main targets are young people especially millennials，it is very particular that W hotels offer a theme of escape that whenever a customer chooses to stay in a W hotel, he/she would be immersed in a new destination. As shown in W Bali, Seminyak, the hotel guides their guest to explore the heart of vibrant nightlife, fashion, and restaurants. W Bali also provides its guests the upmost experience through upscale woobar, a signature Balinese rice terrace inspired WET pool, and a magnificent Indian ocean view in their rooms. Not only this, W hotels also holds music festivals with famous DJs such as the wakeup call festival that is hosted in Dubai and Barcelona to entertain their clients. In order to attract more clients, W also offer discount as one Market tactic sometimes. (Marriott, 2019)
Secondly, pricing is also vital as it determines who are the company serving and how much money should be paid to consume the services. In the hospitality industry, prices are usually calculated according to the high and low seasons, the level of services as well as looking at their competitors. W hotels belong to the Starwood hotel group, which is bought over by Marriot later. Its pricing range is among the upscale 5-star hotels as it mainly focuses on people with high-incomes. According to research, Although W is a high-scale luxury hotel brand with high prices, W hotels follow the policy of Marriott that its rate should be relatively lower and offer more benefits than that of its’ competitors’. This is a way to attract consumers, and hopefully, more guests are going to come back. Additionally, guest can become a member of Bonvoy Marriot to gain points to redeem in the future. (MBASkool, 2019)
The place is the channel where customers can purchase a company’s product and services and also the locations. Guests can book W hotels from official Marriot websites and online bookings like bookings.com and Expedia. This makes the hotel’s product highly accessible for the public. When considering locations, W hotels are located in urban centers such as The Bund, Shanghai, where the booming economy is intertwined with massive tourism. This is very effective in expressing W’s fashion, fuel, music, and design characteristics while infusing into the local culture. Moreover, W resorts are also worth mentioning because it locates away from the busy urban centers that give their clients more space to enjoy the natural beauties. For example, W Sentosa sets on an island where instead of being busy and noisy as the rest of Singapore, it has a theme park, wildlife views, and more adventure. Guests can enjoy their parties, having a picnic near the beach or drinking a cocktail while chilling around the swimming pool with more privacy. (Marriott, 2019)
The last P stands for promotion. It can be defined as how a company chooses to communicate with its clients through sales promotion, advertising, special offers, and public relations. A good promotion can easily give people a reason to stick with the company. W hotels allow customers to access information online and especially through mobile apps. Clients have the freedom to give feedback, payments, and making reservations through easy clicks of their fingers. One of the most outstanding features is their virtual concierge, where clients can look up the upcoming events and even order a car for a pickup. W hotels also connect with clients on social media accounts such as Instagram and Facebook. Social media pages gather some highlights for the stay of the clients and present them to the public and people will like the post. Therefore, W effectively markets its product and services and generates empathy among its existing and future guests.
Despite the usefulness of the 4Ps, some critics argue that 4Ps merely focus on the company’s point of view but oblivious to customers’ standpoints. As 4Ps might be outdated, some arguments think that businesses should switch their approaches to a more customer-centered that is described as 4A’s. Each “A” would correspond to one “P”: Affordability to price, Acceptability to Product, Accessibility to Place, and Awareness to promotion. Affordability makes sure the customers are willing to pay for the product, Awareness then identifies whether the product exceeds the customers’ expectation, Accessibility embodies if the product is readily accessible, and Awareness shows how well the customers know the advantages of the company’s product. When comparing 4Ps and 4As, it is clear that 4As give more insight into the customers’ buying decision process, where 4Ps favor more of a company’s point of view to target audiences and position their product and services. Therefore, it is better to combine 4As and 4Ps because both viewpoints are as important for the company and its stakeholders. (Sheth, October )
Marketing Director – Sharanya Chandra, as she has the most experience in marketing in the company, therefore we believed she was the best candidate for the job.
Research Manager – Throughout the pas blog post it was Iris Ma that was responsible for the most accurate and best research done on the team, as well as having the most trustworthy sources, therefore we chose her.
Content Manager – Mason Zhang, because he has the best idea of W Hotels as he was the one that decided and pushed for W hotels.
Publishing/Designer Manager – Lucas Borrey, as he has been responsible for the blogs design and was usually the last one to reread and publish the blog after all the checks were done.
Sales Manager – Andrea Trevisole, as he has been the one to come up with the best elevator pitches ideas and suggestion for our group.
Workflow of the weekly blog posts –
Sharanya and Iris will be the ones in charge of the research done, as well as Lucas will be helping them, we decided this because as mentioned above Iris usually finds the most accurate sources, and Sharanya is really good at analyzing those sources and interpret them in our favour.
Lucas, Andrea and Mason will be the ones that focus on the written part of the blog as both Mason and Lucas have jobs that go “hand in hand” therefore Mason will usually write the first draft of the blog while Lucas will correct it and add or remove as necessary. This will then be communicated to Andrea so that he is able to plan the elevator pitch and decide who is the best suited to help him with those.
For nearly 20 years W hotels has been disrupting as well as redefining hospitality and the industry; risen from the 24/7 culture and bold attitude of New York City. W is defying expectations and breaking the norms of traditional luxury wherever the iconic W sign lands. W’s mission is to fuel guests’ lust for life and ignite an obsessive desire to soak it in, live it up and hit repeat.
W’s aims to innovate, inspire and infect with its super-charged energy, and celebrates guests’ endless appetite to discover what is new/next in each destination, to see more, feel more, go longer, stay later.
W hotel focuses on a product-oriented plan because of its Unique Selling Property.
Since W hotels follows a very trending concept plan and its main target market is millennials, they need to have a variety of different Strategic Business Units in order to attract their clients.
-Whatever/Whenever: To name one, the brand’s provocative design, iconic Whatever/Whenever service is W’s concierge. This creates an experience that is often copied but never matched. (Marriott, 2019)
-FUEL: This is W’s original health and fitness concept. They have FUEL Weekend packages around different W hotel destinations including world-class workouts with a team of expert trainers, healthy meals, cocktails, adrenaline rushing adventures, parties and a lot more. (Marriott, 2019)
-The “Wake up Call” Festival is a unique music festival organized by W hotels around the world. FUEL also provides the attendees with food, snacks and fitness trainings throughout the day apart from the fun filled festival.
The ANSOFF matrix was established by Igor Ansoff. He defined ANSOFF matrix as an important business strategy tool, which contains four strategies that help company’s growth and analysis of risk. Ansoff suggested that there were effectively only two approaches to developing a growth strategy; through varying what is sold (product growth) and who it is sold to (market growth). (Oxford College, 2018)
Market penetration is a considerable growth strategy for W hotels, which means increasing the sales of the original products to the current customer segment. Developing advertising, making promotions and offers, improving service.
For example, W hotels in the United States offer that guests can receive a $50 credit for weekends stay, which increases the room occupancy during the off-season and the revenues of the hotel. Nowadays, social media such as Instagram is very popular among the young generation. W hotels are sharing advertising articles on their official website. For example, “5 must take Instagram photos places” (Marriott, n.d.)such as W sign at W hotels in different branches. Encouraging guests to visit W hotels around the world and take beautiful pictures from both the official sharing and guests’ postings from Instagram.
The Ansoff Matrix for W Hotels
W hotels might consider market development. Market development could help company growth by exploring and targeting new markets for its existing products. New demographic markets and geographic markets can be explored and reviewed by W hotels’ management team. Generally, the main target market of W hotels towards the younger generation than other age groups, so providing discounts for seniors can attract the middle age group to understand luxury lifestyle brands and visit W hotels. Besides, W hotels have expended in the most exciting and energetic international cities. To pursue growth in 5 years, W hotels can consider expanding their hotels not only markets in modern cities but also resorts, as people who plan to spend their holidays in resorts normally need relaxation. W hotels infuse their passions around fashion, fuel, design, and music into guests’ W experience can fashion, fuel, design, and music are essential passions of W hotels, which can effectively entertain and relax people who are in holiday mode.
Product development is another strategy to develop W hotels in 5 years. The meaning of product development is that growing company by providing new or renewed products to the current market. For example, W hotels could introduce a new product named ice bath to their spa. This will give a relaxed and healthy experience to young people who needs to take a breath, calm inflammation, and speed up recovery.
Lastly, diversification can develop W hotels in different ways. This can be defined as a strategy that the company create or buy new businesses outside of their target markets and existing products. For example, W hotels can explore into music business market or electronic market by producing music speakers. They might also consider making and selling fashion jewellery to customers with W brand elements.
By following the ANSOFF matrix, the W hotels could apply four marketing strategies towards different situations, which could make achievements in five years.
W Hotels have managed to become proficient in the way they understand the principle of the Moment of Truth (MOT) for their branding. The moment of truth can be defined as “to the point in the buying cycle when the consumer researches a product” (Hannington, 2012). In this blog entry we will show you how the W Hotels have managed to be so successful in this domain.
It is clear that W Hotels is more societal oriented as the first thing that can be found on their website is a video, almost like a vlog made by an influencer, of guests enjoying their time at the various W locations, implying that W Hotels would like to attract their guests by making them feel as if they could be the ones living the life of an influencer if the go to the W hotels. The video can be found following this link;
In the rest of the article we will be analyzing the different Moments of Truths that occur when a guest goes to the W Hotels.
The Zero MOT can be defined as the time before the client has direct contact with the company, it is when they are researching about the brand of a company and are hesitant about buying the service of the brand. W hotel, the most digitally competent brand, utilizes different channels to successfully attracts guest’s attentions from exclusive events, industry news to social media and online advertising. W Hotels aim to succeed in this aspect of marketing by being very present on social media. In the world that we live in everything is defined by your popularity on social media, W Hotels have taken advantage of that majorly on Instagram, they have multiple accounts, one W Hotels worldwide, and one account of each city they are present in. This helps W Hotels have the edge over other brands for their market (millennials as stated in our previous article), by posting photos which show the clients living their best life, which will make the potential guests dream, they also use this platform to promote events happening in their hotels throughout the world.
The first MOT is defined as “is the 3-7 seconds after a client first encounters the services of the hotel, usually when entering in the Lobby” (Wirespring, 2012). W Hotels are famous for having a very trendy scene in the lobby of their hotels, as they are often referred by the guests as “hip, flirty, and romantic”. Which straight away shows the type of hotel that W hotels are, young, relaxed and energetic hotel which organizes a lot of events for locals and guests. By doing this W Hotels manages to create a stimulus for their guests, and therefore this creates the first moment of truth for the clients.
The second MOT refers tothe moment “when the consumer experiences a product or service following the purchase decision. The second MOT will determine the consumer’s brand perception and future buying decisions.” (Monash Education, 2019). At W Hotels this varies greatly, this is because of their target market, W Hotels aim more towards a young generation that likes to attend lots of events such as parties and concerts etc. After some research on the second MOT we clearly found that some guests were left unhappy with their experience due to the fact that “when I arrive at a hotel exhausted and jet-lagged, I just want to sleep. While I love a lively party, I’d rather grab an Uber to one if I’m feeling up to it than having one outside the door to my room.” (Kelly, 2018)From this we can see that the Generation X had a bad second MOT, as W Hotels uses their venue as some kind of club to make it easier for the guests to party, it is also cheaper for the guests this way, as there is less transportation. Furthermore, implying that W Hotels could be focusing more on their events by trying to create a culture within their hotels instead of taking into consideration the basic needs of a guest at a hotel which would be being able to sleep. This is enhanced by Brian Kelly talking about a stay at W Hotels If a hotel can’t promise you a decent night’s sleep, then what, are you even staying there for?” (Kelly, 2018)
Based on our research it was clear to us that the personality of W Hotels is a very easy-going, party goer, socialites, glamorous and provocative, this is highlighted in a video on the “About” page on the W Hotel website. Once again, we can see that this is indeed the case while browsing through the “Stay In The Loop” page of their website, which indicates all the different events that they have planned for the week, month. Most of the articles/events are about a famous DJ – “Martin Solveig doesn’t have a plan” (Marriott, 2019), this is just one of the examples of a party/ DJ attending a W Hotel event.
To conclude with W Hotels are very effective in setting out their personality through their website, which in turn allows the client to have the Zero Moment of truth, as the guest can straightaway see if this hotel is for them or not. Secondly, W hotels may not be so effective in taking the consideration of the guests as they don’t allow their guests to have a “decent night’s sleep” as mentioned in point 3, however this may be because in their personality W Hotels highlights that they’re partygoers.
W Hotels 
