Know your limits

A leading industry professional has suggested smaller regional brands must know their limits and form alliances with similar properties if they are to successfully compete with big-name hotel chains.

Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) chief executive Christopher Hartley explained: "The key thing we all have to recognise is that we're not global players - we're not Hiltons, we're not Hyatts, we're not Marriotts - and that the consumer as yet may not have heard of our brands in some of the markets where we want to do business. That means getting them to choose us is difficult, because consumers still look for security and reliability, and that's why these big brands do so well".

GHA, which enables the sharing of sales, marketing and distribution information between hotels via common technology partner Micros Fidelio, was originally founded in 2004 by four small independent regional brands looking to compete more effectively with major chains.

Today GHA comprises Omni, Kempinski, Pan Pacific, Dusit Thani, Marco Polo and Landis and Leela Group, as well as new additions Anantara Hotels in Asia and Cham Hotels in Syria, Jordan and soon Algeria.

Hartley said that GHA's success proved the way to compete most effectively was for small local brands to band together and present a united front to the consumer.

Hartley admitted there was a dichotomy between the assets of certain groups in the alliance, such as Kempinski with 57 properties currently in operation and Cham Group, with just 11, but said they still shared common ground.

"Although within the [regional] industry people may know Kempinski or Dusit, the individual members all have the problem that within certain markets they're totally unheard of. Omni, for example, is a very significant company in the United States, with 40 very large centrally-located hotels in major cities, and generally pretty well known as a brand, but in the Middle East they may not have been heard of.

The reverse is true if you ask about Kempinski in the United States - no one's heard of them," he explained.

Hartley also suggested that the popularity of big-name hotels in the Middle East was due at least in part to the novelty of such brands in the region.

"The difficulty in the Middle East region - and it's unique in this respect - is that the Middle East customer is still absorbing the excitement of these big brands, to a certain extent," he commented.

"Even if the western traveller is slightly more jaded about the big brands, in the Middle East they still represent something exciting. Whereas the typical Sheraton or Hilton may be a 20-year-old product in Europe and has lost some of its glamour, the brand's using the Middle East to re-invent itself.

But Hartley said he believed the "excitement" regarding such properties was tapering off. "The idea that you could have five or six Le Meridiens in Dubai and not be saturating the market is almost ridiculous," he said. "Consumers will eventually start saying ‘I'd like to try something different'.

Hartley added that this diversification was leading to a growing demand for independent, local brands.

"Overall the consumer of today is looking for this individual experience, and the idea that some mega-brand that has some identical experience wherever you go can somehow respond to your individual needs is almost a contradiction in terms," he said.

"I think that's the opportunity for us: to move away from the sort of whitewash brand experience."