Rosewood Hotels

Understanding a Rosewood Customer

Rosewood’s current customer segments can be characterized by the below bases –

1. Nature of Experience – Preferably unique, exclusive

2. Availability – Geographic presence

The Descriptors are:

1. People who like ultra luxury experiences and are connoisseurs of collection hotels

2. Psychographic profile - people who love to vacation in various destinations across geographies

Customers of Rosewood hotels derive significant value from making Rosewood their preferred choice of hotel. As listed in Table 1, the psychological values include the knowledge that properties such as The Mansion on Turtle Creek that are owned by Rosewood are ancient and have been preserved/protected to reflect a legacy. The functional value of Rosewood’s properties arose from the service philosophy of “Sense of Place”. Services such as Guest Recognition by gifting a pillow gave customers a unique experience while they availed of Rosewood’s services. Rosewood properties also provided economic value to its customers by offering a wide range of nightly rates such as $120 in Saudi Arabia to $9000 in Canada.

Under a corporate brand strategy, the customer mix of Rosewood properties changes from the small subset of the customer base who valued distinctive collection hotels to the large section of customers who valued the corporate-branded version of luxury. As seen in Table 1, customers would choose Rosewood owing to greater standardization of services, more ‘templatization’, a sense of uniformity and brand recall in each of their associations with the brand of Rosewood properties. Corporate branding, however, involved the risk of losing Rosewood’s loyal customers at some of their well-established properties such as The Carlyle or The Mansion on Turtle Creek.

Market Assessment (Competition)

Rosewood’s competitive advantage is in its approach of creating unique one-of-a-kind properties that are customized and different from the “canned and cookie cutter” approach of the luxury chain hotels. By bringing a definitive ‘Sense of Place’ philosophy into each of their properties, Rosewood carved a niche competitive advantage for itself in the marketplace. Rosewood’s weaknesses lay in low brand recall among customers, lack of knowledge among travel agents, customers and employees and under utilization of the brand-wide cross selling of guests.

By adopting a corporate brand strategy, Rosewood’s positioning in the market would shift from