Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts in late August announced the launch of Hotel Jen, a new hotel brand inspired by the virtual persona Jen, “a professional hotelier who loves life, travel and the adventure of discovering new places.”
Shangri-La, Hong Kong, is rebranding its Traders Hotels brand as Hotel Jen, which Shangri-La said will bring an intuitive service attitude and relaxed, friendly style.
The new midscale brand plans to launch 10 Hotel Jens in major cities in Asia Pacific by March 2015. The first hotel, Hotel Jen Orchardgateway, opened in Singapore September 15.
HOTELS recently interviewed Lothar Nessmann, chief operations officer for Hotel Jen, about the brand’s essence and growth plans.
HOTELS: Is Hotel Jen a result of Shangri-La’s inability to develop Traders? If so, what went wrong with Traders? If not, why is Traders going away?
Lothar Nessman: Actually, the Traders brand has been successful over the past 25 years, generating very solid business results and gaining a highly loyal core group of guests. However, as customer needs and expectations have and continue to evolve, we recognize we need to adapt the brand accordingly to ensure continued success. The biggest change we’ve seen is that our core customers are becoming more and more young at heart and Millennial-minded, regardless of their actual age. They are digitally savvy, highly social and, most importantly, they want an effortless, fuss-free hotel experience. To steer the brand in this direction, we needed to make a fundamental change in the way we operate and communicate to the market.
HOTELS: What are your initial marching orders other than to convert the Traders to Jens?
Nessman: We will be looking to expand our portfolio and grow the brand through additional management contracts as well as partnership deals.
HOTELS: Will Shangri-La develop on its own, or look for strict management and let others develop?
Nessman: For the Hotel Jen brand, we will be actively seeking management contract opportunities to drive growth. As a firm commitment to this new brand, all of the Traders Hotels owned by the group will be converted to Hotel Jen. Going forward, we may also look at investment opportunities — either new-build or existing — on a selective basis. These investments will likely be limited to key gateway cities around the world.
HOTELS: Where are the best opportunities for development?
Nessman: Hotel Jen’s DNA can flexibly adapt to different facility programs, room sizes and building types. This makes the brand an ideal choice for building conversions as well as new-builds. Geographically, we are initially focusing on key Asian gateways, which include cities that currently feature Shangri-La branded hotels, from Jakarta and Bangkok all the way to Tokyo plus Korea and Kuala Lumpur.
HOTELS: What are the more medium- to long-term expectations for growth?
Nessman: In the next five years, we hope to grow to between 30 and 40 existing and pipeline hotels.
HOTELS: How would you describe the biggest opportunities for this brand, and how quickly do you think they will be realized?
Nessman: Hotel Jen is an attractive real-estate solution that offers good revenue potential and an efficient operating model. As such, we believe the biggest opportunity for this brand is global growth, primarily via management contracts. Since the Shangri-La group owns and develops the majority of its own hotels, we have always operated with a strong ownership mindset. Our management teams are fully aligned with the priorities of hotel owners and work hard to ensure solid return on investment.
HOTELS: What are the biggest challenges to meet goals and expectations?
Nessman: There is little doubt that the global economy will always play a role in the growth of our industry. We do have faith in the growth of the ever-expanding China market — both outbound and domestic — and we will tap into this.
Staffing and manpower is also going to be a hurdle that continues to confront us. Having said that, I believe that the style and DNA of our brand will be a major catch point in recruiting, which we are seeing with the launch of our LinkedIn corporate profile, and, more importantly, retaining the best-in-class employees. They will love working with Jen.
HOTELS: How is this brand being positioned, and what are the resulting expectations as far as rate goes?
Nessman: Hotel Jen will continue to offer competitive rates in the mid-range 4-star category. In the shift from Traders to Hotel Jen, the rate position remains unchanged.
HOTELS: Why the “professional hotelier” positioning?
Nessman: Competitive brands have explicitly built their value propositions around service offerings and design characteristics. We wanted to play a different game and create a clearly differentiated brand message. Therefore, we crafted “Jen” as an all-encompassing, virtual persona that stood for all the things that are important to the Millennial-minded guest: simple pleasures, easy efficiency and a sense of adventure. The friendly, informal voice of Jen is consistent throughout our brand communications, adding a unique personal touch to the guest experience.
HOTELS: How will this brand truly differentiate from other “lifestyle” brands?
Nessman: The true difference is that the virtual persona of Jen allows us to communicate with our guests in a fun, new way. This includes our broadcasts on various social media and digital platforms as well as in-hotel messages. With Jen as the consummate host for the young-at-heart and Millennial-minded traveler, we are delivering a highly personal response to an industry that is built upon people.
The Hotel Jen brand has social media platforms in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn and is launching Chinese platforms of WeChat and Weibo. For the launch of the brand consumers interacted with Jen in a highly engaged manner with a trending topic, “Jen sure knows how to party,” as a shared and retweeted comment during the night of the launch.