Arthur Kiong, senior vice president and managing director of sales and marketing of Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts, has a prescription for these uncertain times of mixed market sentiment and uneven patches of recovery.
One, stop the promotional steroids. “The patient is beginning to recover, I don’t think we should carry on the steroids and just focus on the price.”
Two, recognise that value is still important and “take the straight and trusted path and deliver a better product and experience”.
Three, revisit the fundamentals of what makes the brand great in the first place. ”We have to re-establish our relationship with the customer. Who we think is our customer may not be our customer and what we think our customer wants two years ago may not be valid today.”
And four, challenge the conventional wisdom of distribution. (More on that later.)
Kiong was reflecting on current market conditions which he described as “uneven”. “There is a difference between hope and reality and depending on your view, you can always find someone to agree with you.
“The fundamentals of what caused the global financial crisis have not been resolved – it’s like a cancer victim who’s been given a nice dose of morphine and he’s feeling better but they haven’t treated the cancer. Yes, sentiment has improved but the underlying situation has not.”
Europe remains mired with issues, travel demand from North America continues to be sluggish as Banyan Tree, with its two properties in Mexico, is seeing and while Asia is seeing signs of pick-up, Kiong wonders if it can be sustained or is it due to pent-up demand?
“The conundrum is, we would all like to believe markets are indeed recovering, that people are back travelling and so we can put up our rates. But it’s a harder decision to make this year than last when the picture was clearer.”
Which is why this year, Kiong’s decided to challenge the conventional wisdom on distribution and has launched the Banyan Tree XTC programme aimed at arming its top travel consultants with the knowledge to sell its product.
“Everyone wants to get to the customer directly and social media is all the rage among travellers but I believe there is still a very significant role for the travel consultant and we have to embrace professionals in our industry who are continually marginalised by the circumstances.
“With a product like ours, we believe the endorsement of a well-informed travel agent means the world and can make or break our sale.”
Hence, Banyan Tree has spent the best part of last year identifying the travel agent influencers, and finding an efficient way to solicit, educate, motivate, recognize and incentivise them, he said.
“It is a very complex process and takes time, but it is an important strategy. It’s not a quick fix and it is a bit contrarian because I don’t see everybody embracing the middle man right now but we have decided to invest resources in it.” (See related article)
The next question was, how to differentiate the communication for Banyan Tree. “Everybody is selling the same way and saying the same thing and there is a sea of sameness out there, so we wanted to find a way to stand out,” said Kiong.
To this end, the group’s developed a new thematic advertising campaign and re-architected its global public relations network “to focus on where we see the new markets coming from – China and Middle East and within Europe, a stronger focus on Italy.”
Featured image credit (man pointing microphone) : iStock
