How Four Seasons Is Working To Stay A Leader In Luxury Hotels

we still serve more business Travelers

than we do Leisure Travelers um in 1990

we opened our first destination Resort

which was in Maui um and what we

realized is that our guests who were

staying with us in city hotels for

business um were vacationing and they

didn't have the availability of a Four

Season experience and they wanted it and

we saw it as a wonderful opportunity to

be able to line extend the Four Seasons

brand and we thought about the the Le or

the resort experience in the same way as

we thought about the business experience

which is how do we maximize people's

time how do we make the experience

everything that they wanted it to be how

does it represent great value for the

investment that they've made in their

stay and it's not just about the money

investment it's the investment in time

and so we thought about you know what

can happen around the pool how can we

enhance that experience how can we bring

service to the pool Beyond you know just

um laying out lounge chair towels for

the guest and so you know we started

doing sunglass cleaning and we Spritz

our gas with cool Evian spray because

you get very warm in the sun we pass

along um cold towels and that grew and

morphed into providing you know all

kinds of tasty morsels around the pool

as well so whether it's a frozen grape

um or it's a little bite of sandwich or

it's a popsicle um it's there for you so

that you don't have to leave where you

are the comfort of where you are um we

also recogn ognized that we were going

to be attracting um a couple um or

family um Travelers and so we thought

how do we change the experience so that

it's very positive for everybody um

whether it's the parents um the families

together or the children on their own

and we created the kids for All Seasons

program which is um today still

considered to be one of the finest kids

programs out there and we offered it

complimentary we saw it as something

that was a baseline amenity and service

that we were going to provide to our

guests what are you doing in terms of

your marketing strategy your your media

strategy how are you incorporating

digital social traditional media and

sort of what's your go-to strategy right

now um with regard to advertising um in

2008 and

2009 um we took a really hard look at

everything that we were doing we created

our our Twitter stream in uh the early

part of 2009 um we were um in Facebook

at the latter part of 2009 today we

spend about half of our entire marketing

programming budget um against digital

wow at the same time um the consumer um

is going to all channels for information

and so we do need to be represented not

just online not just in Social not just

in Mobile but we also need to be

represented um well in uh in some of the

traditional channels okay so are you

doing print are you doing TV are you

doing so we haven't gone back

um on the advertising FR but public

relations for example traditional public

relations is a complement as an

integrated in everything that we're

doing um around uh around the digital

and we have really been leaders in the

luxury space um in digital particularly

in the way that we think about user

generated content and user generated

reviews and for the first time and we're

the first luxury hotel company to do

this we um offered the user generated

reviews um

directly on our website absolutely and

it was it was the first step um really

for doing that and we have had um a

great reaction um from the people who

visit our website and what we find is

that the more of that kind of content

that we put um on our website um the

greater likelihood that we're going to

convert that customer so we we hear a

lot these days about authenticity and

transparency and how vital that is now

to Brands um it sounds like that's

exactly that the the path you're taking

you know why specifically for four

seasons was that so necessary you just

want to remain relevant and you wanted

to remain connected to that core

customer is that um absolutely all of

those things we also recognized that the

seismic shift that was happening was

that um the owners of Brands were losing

control um and were going to lose

control and that was a that was going to

be a forever thing um that it was really

in the future the consumer that was

going to define the brand

and the way that we could not only

participate but the way that we could

facilitate and also influence that was

by creating that kind of authentic

content and combining our content with

the content that was being generated by

other kinds of influencers by people who

were staying with us or our competitors

um and it provides A really lovely 3060

degree view um of the brand that doesn't

feel commercial I mean that really is is

the power of it um so we are part of

that conversation we are creating these

relationships I mean it's very important

for us to continue to build advocacy for

our brand and to position ourselves in

the in the way that we think is best but

we recognized that our voice is going to

be a minor one and that we need it to to

um amplify the voice of the cons or

anyway they might as well go to for

seasons.com absolutely