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Branding, as far as the hospitality business is concerned, is
now no longer just about brand standards, logos on everything which can be
monogrammed or even service excellence. In a business characterized by visual
and tactile experiences, comes a sensory experience which looks to be the next
big thing with hotels looking to imprint their individual brand of hospitality
on to their guests.
Equal Strategy scientifically delivers to the hotel and
hospitality industry a combination of music styling, fragrance and telephone
music and messaging, enhancing the overall customer experience of a hotel’s or
hotel chain’s brand and stimulating pleasing guest experience of interacting
with that brand.
Decades of behavioral research into the habits of consumers
has found that “consumer arousal” can be either stimulated or suppressed through
the use of mood settings like music and fragrance. Equal Strategy applies this
technology and thinking to hotel guests by delivering sounds and smell stimuli
directly to the memory centres of the brain, influencing behavior and creating
suggestions at both the conscious and unconscious levels. This can support and
extend the brands of hotels and hotel chains and indeed any business (retail,
consumer, etc.) which communicates to audiences in private or public space.
Equal Strategy delivers behavioral
influences through the most sophisticated technologies available today. The
company also provides a full spectrum of customer consultation and support
services to maximize the effectiveness of its visionary environmental branding
solutions for the hospitality industry. Equal Strategy is the only company in
Asia
to consult and advise hotel clients on the deployment of integrated sensory
branding solutions.
The fragrancing portion of its business
was based on the fact that around 80 percent of the brand decisions humans make
are based on smell. This is because the sense of smell is the only sense
directly connected to the brain’s centres for memory and emotions. The use of
fragrancing in hospitality environments is starting to gain more traction in
Asia
in recent years and hoteliers are beginning to harness the power of smell.
For example, Starwood’s Westin Hotel brand uses a white tea
fragrance in all its lobbies worldwide. Another chain which uses its own
exclusive ‘signature’ fragrance is the Shangri-La. These ‘signature’ fragrances
have been developed specially for the brand, are use exclusively by those
clients, and are intended to be associated with the hotel brand over the long
term - months or years.
Other, smaller, hoteliers the company works with – often
boutique properties - do not always require a ‘signature’ fragrance, but even so
Equal Strategy tries to ensure that other properties are not using the exact
same scent so as to preserve some sense of exclusivity.
Explains Equal Strategy Chief
Executive Officer Simon Faure-Field,” We partner with Brandaroma™
- the world’s leading provider of aroma marketing solutions - in order to
substantially enhance the quality and effectiveness of our client’s environments
using fragrances which engage customers, evoking the most appropriate memories
and mood. By selecting the right fragrances, we can create a relaxed
environment, reducing stress and anxiety levels in customers, increase sales and
build guest loyalty.”
Tuned In, Turned On
Businesses place great emphasis on the look of their customer
environments, and often overlook the ambience and mood created by music and this
affects their customers. Music styling is so flexible that it can be used to
support strategic positioning of a brand, tactical requirements and motivate
customer behavior.
Studies show that using the right music increased supermarket
sales by 38.3 percent. What’s more, other research indicates that 40 percent of
shoppers made an unplanned purchase after hearing an effective audio message.
Says Faure-Field,” Our licensed libraries have over two
million tracks covering all major genres. Interlacing audio messages helps
retailers inform and entertain shoppers helping them make the right buying
decision. Daily updates and scheduling keep content fresh and relevant to suit
time, and day of week. Multi-suite retailers keep sites consistent using our
industry leading remote updating technology,”
“The beauty of the service for hoteliers is that they are able
to use our suit of music styling tools to control mood, theme and ambience
throughout the public areas of their hotels such as lobbies, restaurants, spas
and corridors. Music played in hotel corridors can also be used to effectively
mask noises from inside guest rooms, thus ensuring a measure of guest privacy.
Music is a truly versatile sensory tool with a range of useful applications.”
Equal Strategy is involved intimately in the music selection
process. As with fragrance selection, music selection involved with management
and staff at all levels and takes a focus group approach to determining what is
considered the best mix of genre and playlists. “From this client consultation,
we revert back with a specific recommendation on the kind of music to be played
within the property, and how that music selection is varied at different time
during the day, or depending on how a specific hotel space is being used,”
explains the dynamic sensory guru.
Calling The Shots
The telephone is the most frequently used and most important
touch point. Do callers to hotels have an experience that is as impressive as
the brand’s advertising? For instance, guests with a phone enquiry are often
left hanging on a silent line for ages. If they have to be put on hold, this is
a great opportunity to inform guests about a property. Equal Strategy helps
convert a potential source of guest frustration into an entertaining and
informative experience.
Enhancer, Equal Strategy’s end-to-end telephone messaging
consulting service, provides callers with music and messages on hold, converting
a source of frustration into an informative, brand-aligned, and even enjoyable
experience. The company works with some of the best Asian and international
voice over talent to select the best image for their hotel client’s brands.
Take Two
Meanwhile,
Singapore’s
M hotel has become the latest boutique property in
Asia to adopt 360
degree sensory branding solutions created by Equal Strategy. The hotel brought
in Equal Strategy to devise a sophisticated brand atmosphere in the property’s
public spaces which would create a pleasing environment and promote guest
loyalty.
For M Hotel, Faure-Field has installed a combination of
fragrance and music in the property’s lobby and ‘music styling’ in the hotel’s
Café 2000 and buffet area, whilst separate playlists for the hotel’s spa, pool
and business centre are also in the works. The lobby is permeated by a signature
ginger and lily fragrance which adds a subtle but pleasing Asian flavor to this
Asian hotel property.
For the hotel’s Café 2000, Faure-Field was given free reign by
Mark Gailey, Director of Food & Beverage at the hotel, to go to town in
developing playlists which would correspond with the feeling of various times of
the day. Working closely together and reviewing every single track in a playlist
comprising literally hundreds of songs, Gailey and Faure-Field created mood
settings for breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon and dinner ranging from Latin,
Cuban and bossanova to a light sprinkling of jazz with a European and South
American undertone.
Says Faure-Field, “Music, tempo and genre were all critical in
creating the appropriate mood and momentum to the time of day, corresponding to
how diners would be feeling and their state of alertness and arousal at
different periods of the day.”
Developing Markets Equal-ly
Raffles Dubai is the latest 5-star luxury hotel brand to
enhance and extend their unique brand experience through the use of “music
styling”, thanks to sensory brand consultant Equal Strategy.
Occupying a pre-eminent position at
Wafi
City,
Dubai’s
ultra exclusive lifestyle complex, the 248-room Raffles Dubai is part of the
Raffles international group which is present in 19 locations worldwide including
Paris,
Macau and Beverly Hills.
The property epitomizes the Raffles brand, recognized worldwide as “a promise to
provide the very best”.
Raffle
Dubai’s
design and décor pays homage to its Middle Eastern location and heritage and
offers guests an oasis of Arabian service and hospitality in the midst of a
bustling desert metropolosis.
Raffles Dubai sought a comprehensive music styling
solution from Singapore-based sensory brand consultant Equal Strategy, one which
would project their brand through music which reflected the qualities and values
of the hotel chain.
Equal Strategy’s CEO Simon Faure-Field devised a music
programming, management and updating plan which draws upon the company’s
extensive repertoire of over five million musical works. Four keys guest
environment were analyzed and consulted on the hotel lobby, Fire and Ice
American Grill, Azur All Day Dining Café and Crossroads.
Using techniques of behavioral science as
applied to music and auditory input, Faure-Field devised a series of musical
programs for each of these environments based on the anticipated activities
within each area combined with the likely state of guest “arousal” (for instance
relaxed or vigorous activity). A music environment was then devised, varying in
style and genre at different times of the day, with unique playlists complied
for each outlet. These playlists drew heavily upon the theme of each area and
overall served to reflect the hotel’s flagship presence in the
Middle East.
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