Fairmont Revamps the Luxury Hotel Brand's Strategy for New Era

25.08.2023 - 13:42 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Mark Willis / Jean-Jacques Morin / Brand Marketing

For a brand around since 1907, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts has suddenly had a lot of activity. In January, parent company Accor installed new Fairmont CEO Mark Willis, who has been leading a rethink of the brand’s strategy. Some of the details about strategy changes will be revealed later this month at a conference with the general managers at the brand’s 86 hotels.

The Fairmont changes are part of a broader reorganization at Accor, giving each of its luxury and lifestyle brands dedicated full-time management.

“We’ve realized that managing them by geography doesn’t work,” Jean-Jacques Morin, Accor’s group deputy CEO, said last month at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum in London. Morin said the new model is based on how luxury behemoth LVMH lets each of its brands run semi-independent fiefdoms, or maisons.

The new Fairmont CEO said he already sees a shift.

“We’ve been very surprised how the market has taken that [October reorganization] announcement from the perspective of the real-estate owner who has a current asset and is looking for an operator,” Willis said. “If you’re active in the field [of branded hotel development], it’s not often that you get surprised. But I’ve got to say, we’ve had a lot of people reach out to us interested in becoming acquainted with Fairmont.”

Fairmont already has a strong pipeline heading into the shift. It has about 30 properties worldwide under development, with most expected to open in the next three years. The new locations are in popular spots, such as Orlando, Phoenix, and San Diego in the U.S.; Dubai in the UAE; and in Hanoi, Vietnam; Bangkok, Thailand, and Agra, India.

But gaps remain on the map.

“We’re looking for partners in key destinations and cities,” Willis said. “We don’t have a hotel in Paris. We’re not present in Berlin or Jeddah. Miami would be key for us, and so would Las Vegas, as examples. We’re wrapping up an analysis globally of where our competitors sit, where we are, and where we need to be.”

Updating the century-old, U.S.-born brand’s positioning to adapt to the current era is key task for the management team, which is now split between a headquarters in Dubai and a large office in Toronto — with input from Paris.

“Our most recent marketing was on the emotional side and inspirational side rather than the old-school way of doing campaigns, which would be going and directly showcasing the product,” said Yigit Sezgin, chief commercial officer of Fairmont, supporting an emerging idea of emotion being a new brand standard.

On the theory that “communities are the future of brands,” Fairmont tapped Codec, a brand consultancy, to research the tribes of travelers that like Fairmont. It’s also been doing “awareness and engagement benchmarking” with BVA