Immersing yourself in the culture: How Joie de Vivre creates hotel personalities from magazines
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In my experience, hotels that have a great culture are usually led by someone completely immersed in the lifestyle. This is where you have people like Tuncel Toprak, Mariquel Waingarten, and Alex the singing waiter at the Egerton House Hotel. If these types of people direct online communications – like they do at the Roger Smith Hotel – the brand becomes even more remarkable.
But this becomes exponentially more difficult when managing a diverse group of hotels. In this article on eHotelier, Kathryn shares some of the secrets behind Joie de Vivre — one of the hotel brands I respect the most. It turns out, each of their properties is themed around a niche audience magazine:
The “personality” of each hotel draws from the style of a niche-oriented magazine that represents a target market. Examples include the Phoenix (Rolling Stone magazine), the Rex (The New Yorker), Nob Hill Lambourne (Men’s Health), Hotel Avante (Wired), Wild Palms Hotel (Fast Company), Hotel Los Gatos (Town and Country), and the Water’s Edge (Yachting). Some of the company’s hotels are inspired by imaginative magazine hybrids. For instance, the Costanoa Coastal Lodge & Camp combines the grit of Outside magazine and the refinement of Vanity Fair. The Hotel Del Sol mixes the homeward focus of Martha Stewart Living with the adventure-laden Islands magazine. The Moorpark Hotel is a blend of style and savvy from Esquire and Forbes.
Chip Conley, founder and CEO, puts it this way:
“We create an ‘identity refreshment’ where guests will find their own personalities echoed in the style and service at the properties… the words they would use to describe their favorite hotel are the same words they’d use to describe themselves.”
I manage marketing for a few very diverse hotel groups, so this is a concept I’m still trying to wrap my head around.
Let me ask you this: how do you immerse yourself in the culture of your brand?
More importantly, how do you do this while running a diverse portfolio with multiple brand concepts?
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Josiah, I think the best way to immerse yourself in the culture of your brand is to write a mission statement and actually follow it in your day to day life…
For my Goa Hotel, I wrote a mission statement titled iLuxury (http://mitaroygoahotel.wordpress.com/iluxury/)
While I am not quite there yet, I do hope to embody the iLuxury lifestyle and thus become the face of my brand, in the same way that Dr Vijay Mallya (Force India F1) or Sir Richard Branson has done…
iLuxury is not the masthead on the writing paper or a logo on the linen. I don’t want to stay in a room with a corporate “feel” to it but somewhere that reflects the local culture and is rich in what I like to call a ‘sense of place’. What I am looking for is, in essence, local distinctiveness and flair.
I am not interested in cuisine nouvelle. Instead, what appeals to me far more is locally produced food cooked simply and with love.
Yes, in the past I wanted, I dare say needed a 24 hour reception & Wifi connectivity 24/7. But surely iLuxury goes much deeper than that.
Now I am wiser. I have travelled and indeed I have moved on…
I care about the effect my choice of accommodation has on the local environment; whether it enriches the community, the lives of those who work there & the future of the area where it stands. I want to stay somewhere that does good not harm, or worse, is indifferent to the place where it is located.
I want to be more than a number on a room. iLuxury means service that is bespoke, smiles that are genuine, staff that are local and sounds that are natural. I place great value on local colour and flavour, space to imbibe the soul of the place and time to comprehend its many hues and characters.
That for me is True Luxury. iLuxury!