Hotel d’Angleterre Geneva (Hôtel d’Angleterre Genève) is one of the most luxurious and top-ranking five-star hotels in Europe. This boutique hotel was established in 1872 and still remains a family-run business, which provides all the modern amenities, including a cigar lounge. Located on Quai du Mont Blanc, the building boasts exceptional views of the largest water fountain in Switzerland, Jet d’Eau, Mont Blanc, and Lake Geneva, which can be observed from the hotel’s Window restaurant.
The award-winning Leopard Room Bar is the centerpiece of the hotel, which offers a wide variety of both rare and popular wines and whiskies. While the interior design of the hotel’s lobby features marble floors, exquisite chandeliers, and artworks, every room’s décor is different from another, which maintains the sense of exclusiveness. The hotel provides high-quality services which are in accord with the centuries-old traditions of Swiss and British hospitality.
Visual Representations of Brand Identity
There are two primary forms of visual representation of the brand’s identity, these are the logo and photos of the hotel’s interior. The brand’s logo features the names of the hotel, written in an elegant cursive, and the city of its location, written in a classic serif font. The logo perfectly reflects the brand’s philosophy and values since it helps build an aura of grandeur around the hotel. The photos featured on the hotel’s website channel an atmosphere of wealth and comfort, which matches the expectations of potential clients.
The Promise and Persona of Hotel d’Angleterre
The brand’s promise and persona are essential to every business because they allow to market products to the appropriate audience. Promise is a set of functional features such as quality and emotional ones, for example, a lifestyle a particular product offers to the buyer (Jin & Cedrola, 2017). While persona, or personality, constitutes a variety of human characteristics, a brand espouses encapsulated in a person or a character (Scussel & Demo, 2019).
Hotel d’Angleterre promises to its clients that they will be treated to the finest quality of services and can avoid compromising on the comfort even while traveling. The role of this promise is to demonstrate the benefits of the brand and attract new customers, making them eager to use its services. It is conveyed through both the visual elements discussed earlier and texts which describe experiences a client will receive if they choose to stay at the hotel.
For instance, the website has a segment dedicated to the photos of clients pictured in the hotel’s spaces taken directly from their Instagram accounts (Hotel d’Angleterre, n.d.). This allows potential customers to better relate to real individuals and understand that they also can have similar experiences provided by a five-star hotel. Since Hotel d’Angleterre’s is a luxury brand, the role of its persona is to facilitate the consumer-brand relationship (Tong et al., 2017).
The upper-class family of Jannet and Harrold are the ultimate Hotel d’Angleterre’s persona since they represent key traits which are promoted by the brand, these are affluence, competence, and prestigiousness. Staying at Hotel d’Angleterre means paying extra for a roof over one’s head, and the couple can afford it since they prioritize coziness and convenience over money. A good example of a premium service is the hotel’s cigar lounge, which Jannet and Harrold can use to satisfy their expensive needs (Hotel d’Angleterre, n.d.).
The couple is also competent because Harrold occupies a higher position in Bentley while Jannet is knowledgeable about art, which highlights their professionalism. Finally, the couple is prestigious since they value classicism, traditionalism, and spending time at restaurants with exquisite cuisine.
The Customer Reflected Image and Customer Self-Image
Every hotel has to carefully design its customer reflected image and be able to determine the customer self-image of their audience to better adjust their services and thus maximize their profits. The customer reflected image constitutes the image of the brand’s typical consumer who serves as the standard for developing a business strategy (Berrozpe et al., 2017). The customer-self image is the image built by consumers themselves while or after using the services of a particular brand (Berrozpe et al., 2017).
The Hotel d’Angleterre customer reflected image can be expressed in the essential qualities of their usual clients, which are elitism, orientation towards satisfaction, and penchant for traditionalism but with a modern twist. A relatively high price tag for spending a night at the hotel automatically filters the audience and guarantees that only people with at least an upper-middle-class income stay there. Such people tend to have necessities which cannot be satisfied with cheap hotels, and thus they require a certain level of quality of services, which indicates their elitism. Thus, it is an obligation on the part of the hotel to match the expectations of such a demanding audience which has prior experience with luxury brands.
Hotel d’Angleterre understands that its customers look for complete satisfaction in exchange for a large sum they pay for the services. The clients also like to be surrounded by traditional décor but without compromising on the modern amenities, which is skillfully managed by Hotel d’Angleterre. The architectural components of the hotel, including marble floors, expensive wallpaper, and vintage furniture, befit the tastes of customers. The customer-self image of the Hotel d’Angleterre typical clients can be described in three elements, these are luxuriousness, elegance, and self-importance.
People who choose Hotel d’Angleterre do it not only because of the comfort it provides but also because of the value of the brand itself. Thus, clients of Hotel d’Angleterre tend to be concerned about their social status and position in the eyes of their peers and business partners. Some individuals may instantly start trusting those who stay at this hotel because this fact guarantees that these people are wealthy.
Moreover, the typical clients often have refined art tastes, and they need their environment to inspire them and be a place where they can enjoy observing their surroundings, and Hotel d’Angleterre can provide it. They think of themselves as elegant since they wear fashionable clothing, drive expensive cars, and consequently want hotels they stay at to be a continuation of their sumptuous lifestyle. Finally, people who are clients of Hotel d’Angleterre feel that they are more important than others since they are among those few who can enjoy excellent views of Geneva, living in the city’s center.
The Dream of Hotel d’Angleterre
The dream which Hotel d’Angleterre offers is the feeling of temporarily becoming a person who lives near Lake Geneve and Mont Blanc and owning a space in a grand-looking building at the heart of Europe. This dream is easily maintained since many people want to realize it, but access to it is limited due to a high price of staying at the hotel. This helps ensure the balance between awareness and the rate of purchasers, which is vital for businesses selling luxury goods and services and trying to stay relevant (Bastien & Kapferer, 2009).
Hotel d’Angleterre manifests an example of an ideal place for many individuals who wish to spend their time in one of the greatest cities on the planet and enjoy the local scenery. Moreover, it provides an environment of comfort and coziness, which is unattainable for the majority of people in their daily lives, which adds the qualities of uniqueness and rarity to the hotel’s offer. The dream is further reinforced by the myth and story the hotel sells to its potential clients, which is its heritage of a family-run business.
The elements which reference traditions and classicism are also part of this narrative about a century-old hotel surrounded by breathtaking views and superb quality of services tested by time. Moreover, the hotel, its location, and the interior design of rooms contribute to maintaining the dream, especially in pictures posted on the website or in different magazines. When a person sees such photos, they instantly become attracted to the idea of visiting this place and hopefully spending some time there. While the elite, which can actually afford it, can choose to stay at the hotel in order to demonstrate to others their success and the ability to partake in a dream.
Marketing Channels
Hotel d’Angleterre uses a variety of marketing channels to communicate its promise of excellent services and exceptional comfort is but the primary ones are its website and pages at different booking websites. The hotel’s persona of the family of Jannet and Harrold are well-acquainted with new technologies and, as the majority of people nowadays, spend a lot of time online. This makes it perfect for the hotel to promote its promise over its website, a marketing channel which, according to studies, is an effective tool for increasing hotel clients’ satisfaction (Ali, 2016).
The Hotel d’Angleterre’s website looks clean, modern, has easily identifiable navigation, and is responsive and convenient since it allows to book a room without any additional procedures. The visual elements in the form of photos of the hotel’s building, rooms, and Windows restaurant match the promise conveyed by the brand. It is a communication channel which fits the hectic schedule of the aforementioned persona since Jannet and Harrold are busy people, and they expect their time and efforts to be respected.
Another important communication channel used by Hotel d’Angleterre is its page on booking.com, a platform for booking hotels which is popular in Europe and particularly in the UK, the persona’s home country (Martin-Fuentes & Mellinas, 2018). The hotel’s page features the same elements found on the official website, including photos and texts. Booking.com also has an app for Android phones and iPhones, which is extremely convenient for modern users who tend to use their devices for performing the majority of their activity on the internet.
Jannet and Harrold are the primary target audience of booking.com, people who want to see all available choices and be aware of all the advantages and disadvantages of hotels. Thus, the decision of Hotel d’Angleterre to promote its brand on the aforementioned platform is reasonable and ideal for attracting customers such as Jannet and Harrold. 309
Dream Equation Management
The problem of the dream equation for luxury brands is that they have to be concerned about increasing their awareness among the public and simultaneously restrict access to its products (Bastien & Kapferer, 2009). Making their goods or services affordable for the majority of people eradicates the dream promoted by the company and kills its exclusiveness, which makes it no longer a luxury brand. Relying on the 7P model, Hotel d’Angleterre manages to maintain this balance by employing the elements of product, place, and price (Blythe, 2009). It offers a product which is targeted at a specific group of people, namely, the upper-class individuals who are willing to spend more than usual for a hotel room.
The high price charged for staying at the hotel reflects this intention of the brand to provide services to a particular type of individuals and thus poses an obstacle for those who cannot afford it. Yet, at the same time, the brand is widely present on the internet, which is available to a large number of people with different levels of income, which boosts brand awareness. This ensures the balance between availability and unavailability and works to maintain the dream equation, which is essential for keeping the brand relevant and in demand.
According to Bastien and Kapferer (2013), luxury brands should not utilize classical strategies of marketing and instead focus on the so-called “anti-laws,” which stress the importance of not only the tangible but also intangible value. Hotel d’Angleterre adheres to several of them, but the main two are highlighting the brand’s heritage and not trying to be fashionable (Bastien & Kapferer, 2013). The first one is expressed through the hotel’s description on the official website, which states that it has a long history and was established in 1872, which makes customers value and trust the brand more. The second anti-law used by the brand manifests itself in the hotel’s design, which does not feature any trendy elements which are currently popular and instead opts for a traditional style yet with modern amenities.
Recommendations on Marketing Strategy
The current marketing strategy of Hotel d’Angleterre is reliable, and it demonstrates positive results, yet there are some areas which need improvement. One of them is the hotel’s presence and outreach on popular social media platforms, primarily Instagram. The hotel has a page on this website, yet its audience is rather small in number compared to what potentially can be achieved with the brand’s resources. The first step would be to add more people and emotions to the photos posted on the platform since they will contribute to the brand’s dream value by making viewers want to have similar experiences.
By expanding its audience online, the brand will simultaneously increase the demand for its services, which in turn will provide an opportunity to raise prices. This will compensate for the newly generated awareness and help keep the hotel in the luxury segment, making it even harder to access. Secondly, the brand has to start working with influencers of different scope, for example, the brand can ask a YouTube blogger to stay at the hotel and make a video about their experience. This will also stimulate brand awareness and allow the brand to charge its clients larger sums of money.
Lastly, the hotel can personalize the experience of its customers by adding a feature which would allow clients to register on the official website. This would considerably save customers’ time spent on the process of booking and grant the hotel personal information of its clients. Such information will help the brand create individual offers tailored to the needs of a particular person based on their previous experience at the hotel. This will also create an emotional bond between the hotel and its customers, thus ensuring long-lasting relationships and trust. Moreover, such a client-oriented approach will attract new customers since the previous ones will recommend the hotel to their friends and colleagues.
References
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Bastien, V., & Kapferer, J. N. (2009). The luxury strategy: Break the rules of marketing to build luxury brands. Kogan Page.
Bastien V., & Kapferer, J. N. (2013). More on luxury anti-laws of marketing. In: Wiedmann K. P., Hennigs N. (eds), Luxury marketing. Gabler Verlag.
Berrozpe, A., Campo, S., & Yagüe, M. J. (2017). Understanding the identity of Ibiza, Spain. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 34(8), 1033–1046.
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