The Hindu Business Line : Gateway to a new brand

Last September, a regular visitor to the Taj Garden Retreat hotel in the salubrious climes of Coonoor in the Nilgiri mountains would have been a bit nonplussed to find its name changed to The Gateway Hotel, Church Road! Similarly, other Garden Retreats in Chickmagalur and Madurai have also transformed, as have many other Taj properties around the country, to the Gateway brand.

Dispensing with the Taj brand, a powerful one in the world of hospitality, is not a cosmetic one, assures Ajoy Misra, Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing), Indian Hotels Company Ltd. The re-branding exercise that the Taj group has undertaken for the Gateway last September is creating a fundamental restructuring of its properties, the way they function, the target segment and the brand proposition, he says.

The entire re-branding exercise for the Gateway, its rationale and positioning was two years in the making. As Misra says, “We had a portfolio of hotels which we had to re-brand and in this segment, which is upscale, we studied hotels we will be competing with.” For the Gateway, the group benchmarked itself with hotel groups such as Aloft, promoted by Starwood Hotels, Club Med, Garden Inn, Courtyard by Marriot and Four Point Sheraton, all successful mid-market chains. “We had two kinds of options – launch a brand which could stand on its own feet with a distinctive personality and identity and is known for what the brand is, or you could be an endorsed brand. We looked at it hard and decided that the Gateway could stand on its own feet without carrying the baggage of the Taj,” explains Misra, baggage referring to expectations stemming from the Taj connection. .

Ajoy Misra, Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing), Indian Hotels Company

Having benchmarked and deciding to re-brand, the Gateway chain also had to have a definite positioning vis-À-vis the upper scale Taj brand. The brand, says Misra, is targeted at a segment he calls the “modern nomad”. This segment, he explains, travels a lot on work and holiday, has a global outlook, is health-conscious and fairly successful at a young age. The brand was launched with a portfolio of 26 hotels, which has expanded to 30 hotels (18 up and running, 12 new projects; currently 1,500 rooms, 2,000 more on way) and in the short term it will have 50 hotels, spanning a range from smaller cities to metros.

So, while the hardware is all being put into place, it’s the software which will get the brand proposition right. There are many, points out Jyoti Narang, COO, Gateway Hotels, who feel intimidated by the Taj brand; so to appeal to a more youthful audience, the Gateway had to get more informal while retaining the warmth of the Taj. “We have come a long way in becoming more informal; we are not completely there yet. One of the biggest issues was how to make the brand less hierarchical; the traditional Taj brand is more formal,” she says.

The starting point was how to make the staff more youthful in mindset, not necessarily in age, to take into account Gateway’s youthful brand value. “We had a training programme — electronic modules — we also did up cafeterias and locker rooms to make it youthful and redesigned uniforms to make it more trendy. A lot of work was done on motivation, to reinforce that we were still part of the Taj family and everything remained the same for them; there was a lot of reassurance and motivation done for the Gateway staff,” explains Narang. That apart, a lot of work went into the uniforms, the bath kits, the toiletries, coffee shop menu, signage to give the Gateway brand a new look and feel.

“Now, you will actually see a consistent uniform, consistent in-room amenities, room service menus, standardised coffee shop and breakfast menus, customised in-room yoga experience with a dedicated channel made specially for us. One of our brand values is flexibility so we have this 24/7 service centre – for laundry, fitness centres …” elaborates Narang. To reinforce its positioning Gateway’s ad campaign featured actors such as Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan and designer Manish Arora. The brand personality was embodied in the kind of people Gateway had in its campaign.

But Misra does say that the transition period for a re-branding exercise is long and could create some confusion. “There could be some confusion in the mind that one was going to visit the Taj and therefore arrived with certain expectations but perhaps that would not be met. There could be a gap. We want to be in a situation where we create the right expectations from the brand, match or exceed that, and thereby leading to greater satisfaction,” he elaborates. He says it could take a while longer but adds that the group’s experience of managing 18 running hotels under the new brand indicates a sense of something refreshing happening and the staff have been imbued with new levels of energy. Other chains domestically have done it too, he says: The Trident doesn’t say it’s part of the Oberoi, nor does Fortune Park have ITC tag along. So, it’s a matter of time before the Gateway brand settles down.

According to R. Pashupathy, General Manager of the Gateway, Coonoor, re-branding the hotel from Taj Garden Retreat has helped as it has ensured a level of standardisation across the property in terms of the kinds of cuisine offered as well as the services offered. “We have made it a business class hotel and more because of the ambience we offer,” he says. An over-150-year-old property with around 30 rooms, the hotel is in for a renovation of its bathrooms and other facilities while retaining its old-world character. “We are retaining the old with the new,” adds Pashupathy.

On the re-branding effort, he says that having the Taj brand raised levels of expectations between what a top-end Taj brand would offer and, say, a mid-market hotel sporting the Taj brand would. “The levels are totally different, but a Gateway hotels chain can create its own identity.” From an earlier segmentation of business class hotels, luxury hotels and palaces, the Taj hotels are today segmented as brands: luxury, upscale and upper scale.

While the Gateway would be an upscale chain, Narang says Taj guests could be flitting between brands – a Taj customer could stay in a Gateway in a city which doesn’t have a Taj property. Cross-promotions would be done by Taj Holidays while the loyalty programme could also push custom either way between brands.

A senior executive of a Chennai-based hotel chain and a former Taj employee himself, commenting on Gateway’s branding, says the fact that most of the chain’s properties could have other owners could put a spoke in the plans as property owners may be chary of investing during this slowdown, which has impacted the hotel industry. The existing properties too, he says, are such a wide mix that the Gateway chain may have trouble standardising the whole offering.

As there is a mix of ownership models, such as owned properties, joint ventures and management contracts, Narang refrains from giving an investment figure for Gateway’s expansion. The slowdown has impacted the Gateway less than it has the higher-priced chains, she avers. “In many cities we are 50 per cent ahead of the competition; our guest referral index too is the highest within the Taj group.” Now that is some goodwill that’s bound to come in handy!

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