Spotlight

A parallel life

Hotel chains are stepping into the virtual world as a part of their development strategy. Is it for real? By Neeti Mehra

Brick and mortar hotels cannot get more tangible than this. They have already gone beyond merely being accommodation providers with a singular purpose of bed nights. Today, they are creative, thriving entities with a life of their own - a life given by the people who inhabit them.

How then does a hotel brand reach out to its potential customers, en masse, to understand what each one demands from the property? What is trendy today? How will it differentiate its brand from countless others? Most brand developers would give an arm and a leg to unlock the secret of a perfect hotel.

The solution to this dilemma today is simple. To understand the mind of the traveller, all a hotelier needs to do is log on, and do away with reams of CRM programmes and feedback forms. It is time to confront the guest, one-on-one. With the click of the mouse, millions of travellers worldwide clock hours in cyberspace. Leading a dual life in many instances, blogs, gaming sites, forums and user groups, and instant messaging services are the usual haunts. These alternate existences are not isolated from real life; they have a direct and real impact on it, and vice versa. In this very metaverse, or a virtual universe, companies have realised the importance of the usage of interactive, social and emerging media to maximise business opportunities. This is the attempt of the shrewd marketer to sell a product to a wired customer. At the end of it all, these efforts boil down to cranking up sales.

How would they get the message across in a medium that works on bits and bytes? Intrinsically, online marketing is not very different from its offline sibling, except things move at the speed of light, be it the message or the attention span. If the product were a generic, off-the-shelf product, then any listing would do. But given the limitation of the one-dimensional online models, there is nothing that can simulate an experience like a holiday or a hotel. But perhaps there is a possibility - a prototype - that could be developed online for people to see, feel and experience.

There are two interesting case studies. One is Starwood's yet-to-be-launched brand aloft Hotels and the second is The InterContinental Hotels group's Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts. Their coquetry with a virtual universe - Second Life - is far ahead of the times. The modus operandi: adopting Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory to the T by tapping the first category of adopters - the innovators or the early adopters - and then having the rest of the herd follow these technophiles down the road of innovation, right into their real-life hotels.

First mover advantage

aloft Hotels In September 2006, Starwood's aloft Hotels made a virtual debut with its doppelganger on Second Life. While this might mean very little to very many people, in the bigger scheme of things, it is a set of firsts in many categories.

But what is the need of a hotel in a virtual world? Described as a 'Vision of W Hotels', aloft's USP goes beyond the cookie-cutter approach to its urban design, accessible technology, stylishness and social ambience. The first property will open in the first quarter of 2008 and by 2012, there will be 500 properties globally. All will be similar and developed through a prototype throughout the world. Says Brian McGuiness, vice president of aloft Hotels, "aloft is next-generation thinking. We are really about tomorrow, today. That said, we liked the concept of the virtual world and our target audience included early adopter, tech-savvy individuals who are always looking for what is next." The brand finally withdrew from Second Life earlier this year. "Our initiatives were met and we achieved our goals. We launched the brand, we gained great customer insight, we generated significant brand awareness and now it was time to focus on opening real hotels," says McGuinness of the aloft experiment.

aloft was the first hotel brand that placed a three dimensional version of its prototype on Second Life, where it acquired an island to develop a prototype. Inhabitants of this parallel universe could enter the hotel and entertain guests, get a peek into the vibrancy of the hotel, its landscaped outdoor space and loft-like guestrooms. aloft simultaneously launched a blog (www.virtualaloft.com), which was a log to record the entire development process from start to finish - something which would make visitors feel involved.

The primary aim was to reach out to thousands of potential customers. The development was parallel to its physical prototype; it received and ingested feedback from residents through its virtual kin. It carefully noted each visitor to the property, how they interacted with the space, what areas and what furniture they preferred, and what they overlooked. Based on these responses, the company altered the design in the work-in-progress prototype. Says McGuinness of the result, "Our key learnings were around design and concept. Having future customers tour an aloft hotel before it is built allowed us to gain insight into their requirements. This allowed us to refine the design and concept before we actually opened the hotel."

With aloft, Starwood hopes to reinvent the travel experience, flouting set norms and bringing in innovation. The hotel uses natural materials such as cork and has nine feet of space between its floor and ceiling to create a 'lofty' feeling. The hotel will also be fitted with state-of-the-art amenities. Interestingly, the company pointed out that with such a dual model, avoiding development costs in the real world saved money. "What the virtual world allows one to do is introduce a new concept without having to physically build the plant. We can tour developers and share our insights with consumers without having to incur the expense of building a model hotel," he explains. The very fact that a certain colour or certain design could be avoided in the physical world because it repelled a significant number of guests in the virtual world was reason compelling enough. Speaking on customer feedback, McGuinness says, "It was very helpful. Whether it is used for the actual development of the product or validation of what you are delivering, it is critical data that any brand should be reviewing on an on-going basis." What's next? He feels that the virtual world will continue to remain a very valid and a relevant marketing tool. "Hotels should only enter the virtual world as a sales tool, market introduction or awareness and to provide the consumer with a sense of the culture of the hotel," he says.

The Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts

Let's suppose that the members of an environmental group registered on Second Life are concerned about the quality of life in this virtual world and decide to have a closed-door discussion. Given the physical distance, they log on to the Crowne Plaza Second Life website and choose between meeting facilities that include a lounge, an executive room and a large theater that can accommodate up to 30 people.

A press note sent by the InterContinental Hotel Group earlier this year cited the group's 'responsibility to explore emerging media and stay ahead of the innovation curve and to understand what Second Life and other emerging platforms mean for its guests and its business. With the brand's philosophy dedicated to becoming an upscale hotel of choice for small and mid-sized business meetings, it saw that companies were interested in utilising virtual spaces to meet business needs. Thus, it created a private, independent, purpose-built meeting space in Second Life - this brand's forte.

With the hotel's The Place to Meet Island in Second Life, organisations can experiment without having to commit a significant amount of their own resources. With this, the company was tapping a need for organised meeting space in the virtual world. A meeting can be scheduled or reserved online and is secure and private. Streaming videos and presentations too are possible to upload. In fact, the company has a dedicated in-world Crowne Meetings Director for its virtual meeting place, whose avatar is modeled after Maggie Browning, the meeting's director at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Airport hotel. Moreover, the use of meeting facilities will be free of charge and can be rented for up to eight hours. To promote this concept, the Crowne Plaza held a roundtable discussion about how interactive, social and emerging media is changing the way companies do business in there virtual meeting room. The speakers? Experts in new media and marketing from top consumer brands.

Steve McGookin of Forbes.com, the moderator, pointed out that metaverses such as Second Life had economic indicators that replicated real life countries. Metaverses were indicators of customer behaviour and spending activity. In fact, he points out that US$ 1.5 billion of real money was spent in all virtual worlds last year. The key for success of a real product in this world is brand building and extending the product to attract niche audiences.

One of the speakers at this discussion was Del Ross, vice president (Distribution Marketing) at InterContinental Hotels Group. Ross pointed out that this model gave them an insight on how customers use the product. It gave perspective into how prospective customers would use it. The crux of a brick-and-mortar company plunging into these worlds was summed up succinctly by a speaker who said, "The ground reality is, this is where the audience is, thus this is where the marketers need to be."

The wired world tomorrow

How will this phenomenon evolve eventually? Traditionally, a virtual world is said to be an alternate reality, perhaps a euphemism for escapists. It is within these fantasy worlds created by the online customer that companies want to thrust in a piece of tangible reality. As marketing tools, organisations think it fit to break through the clutter of conventional advertising, because the advertising marketplace is saturated and there needs to be something different to remember a brand by.