All too often, when confronted with the prospect of developing a new hotel or resort, or repositioning an existing one, or devising a new business strategy, individuals and organisations tend to follow ‘conventional wisdom’ and attempt to replicate what has worked in the past elsewhere. This may actually work quite well in many instances, in particular for initiatives that, because of their intrinsic nature, physical location and market positioning do not require particularly creative thinking, innovative experiences or USPs to differentiate themselves within their competitive environment. In these situations, a ‘me too’ approach may very well do.
Then, there are those other hotel projects and strategic initiatives that, to be successful, critically necessitate a different approach, a special set of differentiating factors, clearly defined USPs and/or innovative guest experiences. Such projects and initiatives rarely can successfully be tackled with formulaic ‘recipes’ – they need ad-hoc visioning and thinking. A blank canvas, free of limiting preconceptions, is the best place to start to develop a successful project strategy in such instances. However, a blank canvas can easily become a daunting mine field, which exploration may be confusing, time-consuming, risky and costly – and eventually lead nowhere useful.
The Hotel 2030 Team has developed and successfully applied a framework for strategy development that provides a structure for organised thinking within such blank canvases. The framework is built with the knowledge and experience of all involved in the process, both internal stakeholders and external experts, and aided by stimuli generated by trend foresight, relevant insight and cross-sector references. The framework is then used to tease out ideas and reach team consensus on the critical success factors for the project. These become the objectives of the strategy, which is then sketched out into an action plan, with key deliverables, timelines and responsibilities agreed and accepted by all involved. Success-critical factors of the strategy implementation are discussed within the same framework. Equally, potential pitfalls are clearly identified from the onset and properly addressed.