Brand Background Of Starwood And Marriott Marketing Essay

Brand Background Of Starwood And Marriott Marketing Essay A brand enables customers to remember the core information about a product, and prevents competitors from making imitation. (Aaker, 1991). Successful brand building helps profitability by adding value that entices customers to buy (De Chernatony and McDonald, 1994). It is also becoming clearer that companies creating strong brands can obtain important competitive advantage over those that do no (Kohli and Thakor, 1997). Whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo or symbol for a new product, he or she has created a brand (Keller, 2003). According to the American Marketing Association’s definition, brand is a â€Å"name, term, sign, symbol or design, or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those o f the competition†. Another definition given by Farquhar (Farquhar, 1989) is â€Å"a name, symbol, design or mark that enhances the value of product beyond its functional purposes†. The brand creates a more favorable view of the product, relative to others in the market. If successfully built, a brand will add value for customers, and is the underlying reason for purchase. This can bring profitability to the firm (Laforet, 1996). In this report, two hotel groups were chosen for analysis and comparison with the perspective of branding: Starwood and Marriott, both are the leader in lodging industry. Starwood Hotels & Worldwide, Inc is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 992 properties in approximately 97 countries and 145,000 employees at its owned and managed properties (Starwood). Starwood Hotels is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences. Starwood Hotels also owns Starwood Vacation ownership, Inc, one of the premier developers and operators of high quality vacation interval ownership resorts. As one of the largest operators of upper-upscale and luxury hotels, its global portfolio is unmatched. Starwood remains on track to increase its world-wide foot p rint by 20% over the next five years through smart, carefully targeted growth that will expand its presence in the upper upscale and luxury hotel categories, as well as in the vital limited service segment. Exhibit 1 shows all the brands of Starwood, including Luxury full-service hotels, Luxury and upscale full – service hotels, Select-service hotels, extended stay hotels. The company divides its nine brands into four levels: luxury full-service hotels, luxury and upscale full-service, select-service, extended stay. Judging from the room quantity of each brand, the most two popular brands are Sheraton with 392 properties and Westin with 165 properties. The brands with the least sites are St Regis with 19 properties and Element with only 6 properties. It means that there is much less guests knowing St Regis and Elements than the people knowing Sheraton and Westin. Compared with Starwood, Marriott has more than 3150 lodging properties located 69 countries and territories (Marri ott) with 20 brands, including the newest one – Autograph collection, which was announced on 25th January 2010 (hospitalitynet, 2010). Exhibit 2 showed Marriott’s brands, including luxury lodging, full-service lodging, select-service lodging, extended stay lodging and timeshare. Brand has specific purposes, and businesses should invest in it only with specific aims in mind. It is a form of information, and is most valuable where customers have the least specific information, the least ability to obtain information, the least clarity on evaluation criteria, and the least time or inclination to obtain product information (Keller, 2008). Among all the Marriott’s luxury brands, there is only one brand and logo telling people that it is belong to Marriott group. Ritz-Carlton is often thought as an independent company and has no relationship with Marriott. Bulgari is originally a jewelry company and nothing to do with hospitality. It is very creative that the two comp anies became partners and launched a new brand in lodging industry, but it is difficult for people to associate these two brands. And for Edition, it was planned to open the first property in 2010, but so far, the official website (http://www.editionhotels.com) has not launched any new information.

Internal Auditing - Al Ain Rotana Hotel Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Internal Auditing - Al Ain Rotana Hotel - Essay Example Rotana hotel has managed to counter this risk by putting in place a qualified doorman to receive guests. It has also trained its staff on good interpersonal skills and speed reception. To ensure effective management of addressing of guests feedback, the hotel has to deal with the risk of poor service delivery to impatient customers when handling a complaint as customers differ from each other. Rotana Hotel has formulated a policy on complaint handling that involves all employees receiving complaint handling training, complaints to be addressed by the first individual to handle it, the staff should have knowledge of how to satisfy a complaining guest, a complaint log to be maintained in the front office and the general manager to be informed of all complaints. In regards, to ensuring efficient recruitment, welfare, training and development process of the staff, the risks involved in check-in process without the staff taking proper identifications mostly due to negligence or poor skilled in the check-in process and revealing inside information to outsiders which is dangerous and caused by irresponsibility of the staff. The hospital has managed to sponsor programs of proper selection and recruitment process, staff orientation and performance management so as to have reliable working force to propel the scales of the hotel. The objective of maintaining adequate controls on room occupancy is affected by the risk of double checking in the check-in process where a guest checks in and is not recorded in the system due to default in management. The hospital introduced room control measures that will not enable checking in without full complete of the registration process, guests to be contacted prior to their departure and vacant room accounts to be closed. Discrepancies on rooms to be viewed twice a day and any differences between room occupancy and housekeeping to be addressed. Establishing proper handling of

History of online Vidoe Games Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

History of online Vidoe Games - Essay Example 1960s, extra computer games were developed for the public (frequently running on mainframe-computers), slowly rising in complexity and sophistication (Bellis, 2009) and (FreeBase, 2009). After this early games development period, video games deviated into diverse platforms and verities like: mainframe, arcade, personal computer, console and later handheld games. Online games  have been around for a while.   They started out years ago before the Internet on terminals, then over modems and now on the Web.   The explosion of online gaming is due to the growing amount of people who have access to the Internet.   Online games vary from basic text to 3d worlds that allow the ability to play other actual users who are connected to the game.   There are also many forums and social networking sites related to online gaming. In 1952, A.S. Douglas wrote his PhD degree at the University of Cambridge on Human-Computer interaction. Douglas created the first graphical computer game - a ve rsion of Tic-Tac-Toe. The game was programmed on an EDSAC vacuum-tube computer, which had a cathode ray tube display (Bellis, 2009) and (Celia Pearce, 2007). At its most basic level, an online game is the term used to represent games that are played over some form of computer network (in most cases, this means the Internet). One of the reasons for the expansion and growth of online gaming sites is the expansion of computer networks from small local networks to the Internet and beyond. Online games can come in a number of formats, ranging from simple text-based games to extremely complex games that include graphics and even virtual worlds. In regards to online gaming sites that allow you to win money, most sites require you to download their software. This is one of the distinguishing factors between TreasureOnNet.com and other similar gaming sites (Gupta, 2009). This era of video game history bears witness to the rise of the 32-bit, 64-bit, and 128-bit processor architecture in home console