Sol Meliá and LRA Worldwide Partner on Hotel Brand Equity Initiative

Hotel chain Sol Meliá has selected LRA Worldwide to assist with elements of its Strategic Plan presented to investors in Madrid last year. LRA, a pioneer in the consulting discipline of Customer Experience Management is working with Sol Meliá on the "brand equity" pillar of the plan, helping the company further define each brand offering and how that offering is delivered at the property level.

Sol Meliá currently operates a variety of hotel and resort brands including Gran Meliá, Meliá, ME, Innside, Tryp, Sol and Paradisus, as well as its vacation ownership offering, Sol Meliá Vacation Club. As part of Sol Melia's plan for "enhancing the value of the brands [and] repositioning the brands on a higher level," LRA has facilitated "brand standards boot camps" for corporate and property-level representatives of each brand. 

The boot camps are designed to: identify the core elements of the guest experience expected of a hotel of that service sector; identify and define the "differentiators" that enhance the guest experience delivered by each Sol Melia brand; and craft the service and operational standards that enable each hotel to "operationalize" the desired brand experience.

"This is an extremely important initiative for our company," explained André Gerondeau, executive vice president of hotels for Sol Meliá.  "Each of our brands has something unique and special to offer the guest; our ability to both articulate and deliver that distinct brand experience is crucial to our strategic plan. The LRA team brings a unique mix of skills to the project that will help us both creatively and operationally."

The year-long project kicked off in March of 2008 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with the first "boot camp" for Gran Meliá and was subsequently followed by sessions for each of the other brands.  In 2009, the program will transition into a measurement and compliance phase, ensuring that the proper brand experience is being delivered consistently across the global portfolio.

For more information, visit www.solmelia.com.