Why is Rosewood considering a new brand strategy?

Rosewood Hotel & Resorts is considering a new brand strategy mainly because of the following reasons: -Poor brand awareness due to individually branded hotels -Difficulty competing with other luxury hotel chains that used a consistent brand among all their offerings -Increasing competition in the luxury hotel segment was complicating the positioning of Rosewood hotel collection -The individual brand strategy they used failed to create customers th at seek the Rosewood properties in more than one location (only 5% of guests had stayed in more than one rosewood property vs 10% in corporate branded luxury chains) -They theorized that the customer lifetime value using their current strategy (individual brand) was lower than if they used a corporate branding strategy Even though there was some reasons to keep their current branding strategy such as the fact that under the collection branding each hotel has its own brand equity and in the case of problems in one of the hotels this wouldnt harm the reputation of the others, the prospect of growing their average number of visits per guest per year from 1.2 to 1.3 through the use of a corporate branding strategy was appealing enough to seriously consider changing. What are the pros and cons of moving from individual brands to a corporate brand? The pros and cons of moving from individual brands to a corporate brand are: Pros: -Significantly increases the brand awareness of the Rosewood Hotel & Resorts brand, since the majority of consumers currently dont even know the brand -Enables the use of more uniform marketing and consumer satisfaction strategies through the whole chain of hotels -Allows Rosewood to deliver a consistent brand promise and thus create valuable brand equity. -Enables Rosewood to catch up with its competitors by increasing the percentage of customers that go to more than one of the properties from 5% to 10% -Offers the prospect of increasing the average number of visits per guest per year from 1.2 to 1.3, thus significantly increasing the customer lifetime value. Cons: -Creating a monolithic Rosewood brand might alienate some of the customers loyal to the individual hotels such as The Carlyle in New York City.

-Exposes you to the risk of being unable to deliver a consistent brand promise, since variations in level of service through the hotels would cause the erosion of the brand. -Increased costs due to the marketing efforts needed to create the desired brand awareness and to deliver the general strategy. -Resistance by employees (specially hotel managers) that are used to handling their individual hotels with great independence. Its my opinion that in this case the pros outweigh the cons, because the potential increase in guest visits per year would represent significant revenues. Though I would recommend going for a linked brand strategy with a strong endorsement basically keeping the name of the hotels but following them with a strong endorsement such as The Carlyle Hotel by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in order to avoid losing the brand equity of the already established individual hotels.