Pedro Colaco (pictured), CEO of Great Hotels of the World and GuestCentric gives us five reasons why he expects soft brands to rise significantly in popularity in 2021 and beyond.
- Travellers have changed. Irrespective of their age range, today’s travellers want to be able to enjoy a business trip by experiencing and connecting to the local culture. Big box branded hotels were created with the opposite intention in mind – providing the same seamless experience wherever you are in the world. Before the pandemic, the soft brand movement was already gaining traction with large global corporate brands creating sub-brands to grow collections of independent hotels in response to consumer demand.
- To stay competitive in a global market, independent hotels need to scale their resources and reach consumers on par with big brands without compromising on their unique vision. In the post-pandemic era, given the staff and financial limitations, independent and boutique hotels and groups face substantially bigger hurdles.
- A soft brand like Great Hotels of the World provides the global marketing, sales and technology infrastructure needed that many independent hotels simply can’t access effectively and quickly on their own. With far smaller infrastructures that value the individual circumstances of each independent hotel, soft brands offer the agility and capacity to adapt to global changes that standardised worldwide operations cannot.
- Soft brands are typically much more cost-effective than a franchise. They don’t require the hotel to undergo large-scale rebranding projects that effectively remove the local character of the hotel, the marketing or operations. They also offer short- term contracts which make more sense in today’s world which is why they are perfect for a hotel with a strong ethos like The Banyan Tree Phuket, which joined our growing portfolio of member hotels in January 2021.
- Finally, a soft brand representing a portfolio of hotels gives independent hotels better conditions and access to the same world-class business partners as big brands, in a format that allows each unit to pick and choose where they want to invest over time. For example, for most hoteliers right now technology is front and centre. The important lessons we are taking from 2020 into 2021 is that without the operational constraints of multinational, legacy corporations we were able to pivot our strategy swiftly to support our member hotels and partners around the world to navigate the ever changing business and leisure landscape.
