The consumer’s awareness and associations lead to perceived quality, inferred attributes, and eventually brand loyalty. This perspective is labelled as customer-based brand equity. A strong brand provides a series of benefits to a service firm, such as greater customer loyalty and higher resiliency to endure crisis situations, higher profit margins, more favourable customer response to price change, and licensing and brand extension opportunities.
Successful brands provide consumers with a variety of functional and emotional benefits that positively influence their perceptions and subsequent behaviour related to that brand. It has been shown that such brands can be important intangible company assets with a demonstrable financial value.
A distinctive brand personality can create a set of unique and favourable associations in consumer memory and thus enhance brand equity. Coca-Cola calculates that only about 4 per cent of its value can be attributed to its plants, machinery and locations. The real value is in its intangible assets, and first among these is its brand.
Hilton Hotels have used branding to widen their market share by introducing new brands, such as Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn and Conrad when existing markets have become saturated. This has allowed each different brand to establish its own position within the market. The endorsed brand strategy puts a well-established name on a cluster of products or services. By endorsing a range of products, the lead brand can lend its good name and image to the entire brand family. Marriott estimated that adding the Marriott name to Fairfield nn increased occupancy rates by 15 percent.
Hotel organizations have successfully franchised their brands, whereby the owning company allows others to sell the product using their model and specifications in exchange for royalties. Intercontinental Hotels group has successfully franchised Crowne Plaza Hotels, which enabled the rapid expansion of the brand.
There are some doubters as to the effectiveness of hotel branding. It has