Dorothy Dowling
Best Western International this year is completing the launch of its descriptor program, a move that separates Best Western's North American properties into three distinctive tiers: the midprice Best Western, the upper midprice Best Western Plus and the upscale Best Western Premier. Best Western senior vice president of marketing and sales Dorothy Dowling said the program stemmed largely from discussions with large corporate travel buyers who wanted more clarity on the variety of hotel types in Best Western's system. Though active for barely a week, Dowling told Management.travelthat the program already has produced tangible results.
What's the latest status of the descriptor program?
We launched officially on Feb. 1 across North America. Our customers had told us that while they really have a great deal of respect and trust for Best Western and we're a very likable brand, the challenge always was what they were going to get when they arrived, because we straddled $60 to $300 price points. As of Feb. 1, we'll have about 800 Plus hotels. By the end of 2011, we'll have about a dozen Premier hotels in North America. We expect that we'll get to about 100 Premiers over the next couple of years. Best Western will be the largest part of the family, around 1,300. Two weeks ago, we adopted the Plus descriptor globally. Our first hotel opened in Bangkok last week, and we have several in Europe that will come to market this year. It will be a 2012 sign change, but we want to get out in front of the request-for-proposal season again this year. [Our international owners have] had Premier for almost 10 years, and we have 120 Premier globally, but they wanted the Plus, too. With the proliferation of brand growth in both Europe and Asia, it has a very meaningful position for them. France will probably be next out of the gate. They'll have several Plus properties they'll be rolling out very quickly.
How have corporate buyers responded?
We grew our RFPs [with a double-digit percentage increase in the number received]. Our research showed we would have more than 40 percent of customer consideration in the general consumer space that we weren't getting prior. The managed buyers told us that, because we were going to have these three types of hotels, it would expand the utilization within their companies; they could see some of their more senior executives adopting the Best Western Premier, they clearly saw where their mid-level executives would fit with Best Western Plus and a lot of the commercial business really lines up strategically with Best Western. We've layered on Best Western Rewards to encourage that adoption, and we've had exponential growth there both in actual membership and in activation. In the managed space, the buyers always tell us that getting into the RFP is step one, but the second step is you have to get the travelers to choose Best Western. We'll do another advisory board this year because we want to stay close to those major buyers and make sure we're staying on track.
Was your growth in RFPs solely because of the descriptor program?
It's a combination. I don't know that we could isolate factors. The descriptor naming, in terms of providing that clarity, has been extremely advantageous. Buyers did trade down in the recession in 2009, and travelers experiencing the quality of the product and the level of value that was being offered really encouraged them to stay with us. We've added sales resources. We've brought in some incredible talent that is working the accounts in a different way, and we've also got a very strategic approach to how we're working in the business travel center business, the chain and consortia business and the key account relationships, so we're managing those accounts and looking at how we can really penetrate some of those accounts on a different levels. All of those things in concert have allowed us to grow our RFPs. We had a good year last year, and next year--it may not be a hockey stick, but we want an impressive climb.
In what way have you added sales resources?
We've added more people, and we've added different types of people. Our commercial people, we call our windshield warriors, are a very important constituent for us. We do a lot of business in the crew space because we have the distribution that they need, and we've also grown our key account focus with our corporate sales folks. There was a lot of good talent that was displaced over the last couple of years that's been to our benefit, because we upped our marketing spend over the last couple of years, which we also then translated into our business-to-business activities. So, we were able to pick up some incredible individuals.
Part of your strategy has been to eliminate hotels that did not meet brand standards. Is that largely complete?
Yes. We separated from about 600 hotels. This is the journey we started about four years ago when we brought in Boston Consulting. They told us to be relevant in the midmarket, we had to start making some decisions. We had a strong position, but that could be eroded over time, and that product was the most important thing we had to make a commitment to. That empowered our board members, who are elected from the membership, to make those difficult decisions. We had to deal with product consistency issues first and foremost. We still have a couple of hearings [to determine whether a property stays with Best Western] every month, but that is typical at any point in time. At the time, when we were doing this major commitment to product, we had 24 to 25 hearings every month.