Strategies and business models for the development and promotion of hotel brands in the modern space of hospitality

Abstract

In the modern world with its ever-accelerating pace of life, the preferences of consumers in the hospitality industry have significantly changed and continue to change. A modern person no longer needs just a safe roof over his head and elementary comfort; he wants some new emotions, new experiences, as a result of which his feelings of beauty, historical memory, awareness of himself as a member of a certain community, etc. are aggravated. Therefore, in the modern hospitality space, new strategies and business models for the development and promotion of hotel brands that meet the desires and interests of loyal consumers and contribute to attracting unreached segments of the hotel services market appear. The article clarifies the concepts of "boutique hotel", "lifestyle hotel", "trophy hotel", "soft brand", provides a comparative analysis of the development of hotel brands within the framework of these strategies. According to the authors, the soft brand strategy is the most interesting and promising model for the development of the hotel business in the context of globalization and the active expansion of international and national hotel chains. According to the authors, in Russia soft brands can also have a good future. The authors conclude that in conditions where guests become less loyal and more demanding, online travel agents (OTA) and aggregators are active, Airbnb and other manifestations of the sharing economy are growing in popularity, when technology giants such as Google also enter the market hospitality, hoteliers are forced to think in a new way, even if it means challenging the usual business model. The article claims that in the modern hotel services market there is an interpenetration of components of various business models. Each of the participants in this market today does not limit itself to the boundaries of the previously selected (traditional) format of the hotel business, using a mix of their own well-established strategies and successful strategies of competitors, flexibly reacting even to the unconscious expectations of consumers, living in an era of economics of impressions that exist in many life spaces and speakers of many communities.