After Le Meridien’s acquisition by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide in late 2005, Eva Zieglar, global brand leader of Le Meridien and W Hotels, has been spearheading the integration of this international brand with its distinctive European heritage into the Starwood family. This involves defining the vision and brand strategy across all disciplines and re-positioning Le Meridien as a cultural hub for the creative mind. In an interview with Rohit Nautiyal of FE, Zieglar tracks the evolution of the brand, its growth plans for India and the way forward. Edited excerpts.
What’s the main objective behind Le Meridien?s re-branding strategy?
Transforming a service culture does not come easy. I would like to call what we are doing with Le Meridien a re-launch. This ongoing exercise started with Starwood purchasing the brand in November 2005. We developed a vision of transforming 130 hotels worldwide into a contemporary, design-led lifestyle brand. The expertise of Starwood in hospitality has helped the hotel become a destination that caters to a very specific lifestyle. It really worked as Le Meridien achieved double-digit growth within the first year of its integration with Starwood. We live by the principle of ‘no product no brand’ and keeping this in mind, in the last five years, we did major product evaluation. So now we have exited 45 hotels and added 21. Next, we gave a wholly new brand direction to Le Meridien with three values ? Chic, Culture and Discovery ? at the core. We do quality assurance audits to see that all our hotels meet all the set criteria for the chain.
Our target group is defined as creative guests who are basically a set of attitudinal people. So we brought the right mix of art and cuisine to our hotels to arouse curiosity and trigger the thinking process of our customers. We achieved this by launching a marketing initiative called Le Meridien 100. It’s a group of cultural innovators and artists including photographers, painters, musicians, designers, chefs, etc., who define and enrich the guest experience at Le M?ridien. We are also under the process of adding Indian artists to this group.
What?s the significance of India as a market for Le Meridien?
We have seven operating hotels here and plan to launch three more. Our brand has been present in India since the eighties. After Delhi, we are upgrading our properties in Bangalore and Chennai. There is a huge push to upgrade the product and make it a part of our new direction. India is not only an important market for Le Meridien but for Starwood which is expanding big time here. By 2012, Starwood will have 50 operational hotels here, making India the third largest market for the chain after China.
Looking at what’s happening in the US and Europe, it’s hard to ignore the possibility of another economic slowdown. Is re-branding an attempt to keep your customers hooked to the brand?
Not really. We continued our re-branding exercise even during the recession in 2008 with cost-cutting wherever it was necessary. At Starwood, we do not mind investing 10 years in building a brand and our expansion plans were never shelved even during the recession. The main objective is to be ready with the finest portfolio once the market bounces back.
Hotel chains are often seen as sticking to a very mundane media plan. How do you plan to connect with your audience globally in a better way?
We don’t believe in engaging with our audience through traditional channels. Rather, our focus will be on the online platform, especially social media such as Facebook and Twitter, events and other PR activities.
What’s that one thing you would like to focus on to keep Le Meridien on top globally?
We are not new in India and the other markets where we operate. I think having the right workforce who knows the developers and investors well will go a long way in taking our brand places. Also, we embrace competition as it drives us to stay on top by maintaining a high level of innovation.