Evaluating the brands of hospitality industry in the conditions of economy and image development in Ukraine as tourist country

Abstract

The international experience shows that development of hospitality industry promotes increase in budget revenues at all levels, creates new jobs and favorable tourist image of Ukraine. Branding of hotel business is a process of adding cost to a hotel product due to its advertising, sale, promotion and positioning of clients. It also defines a hotel product, the personality or the place, that should be improved in order to the buyer or the user feel the special, unique benefit which best of all satisfies their requirements. Though for domestic hotels rather effectively to use brands of the known hotel chains to increase the volume of sale of services and respectively to increase own profit, it is necessary to form individual image among consumers for such hotels in the competitive environment. So the article is devoted to specification of essence and justification of brand’s evaluation by the companies in the hospitality industry. It investigates the correct and wrong properties of hotel brands. The comparative analysis of the brands in the luxary market segment in Kyiv is executed. Calculation of the hotel brands’ market value is performed and their rank in the rating is determined. The subject of article’s research is the branding in the hospitality industry in the regional market. The purpose of the article is to investigate the peculiarities of hotel’s branding and to evaluate the hotel brands as a tool for improving hotel services in Kyiv market. General scientific methods are used, such as system analysis – to determine the peculiarities of the brands, expert method – to calculate the BrandBeta index that characterizes brand force, profit’s advantage and BrandFinance methods – to evaluate the main hotel brands in the luxary market segment in Kyiv. The following results were obtained: the hotel brands by the levels of their market value were ranked and the advantages of branding were defined, such as generating additional income; facilitating the choice of the hotel product by the consumer; promoting the launch of new products in adjacent markets; opening up the opportunities for investing in the future and others. Conclusions: the results of the evaluating the hotel brand in Kyiv market can be used in the hospitality industry as recommendations for justificating the strategy of sustainable development for tourism business.