Antony Lawrence has been the director of marketing and innovation at Jumeirah Group since 2005. Founded in 1997, Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts is considered as one of the most innovative and luxurious hospitality providers worldwide. With the company’s rich portfolio, it continues to be a hospitality industry leader in the MENA region.
E What is your marketing strategy at Jumeirah Group and how has it changed since the financial crisis began?
Our marketing strategy has changed slightly. What we are trying to do is create not just brand campaign, since that is what we were traditionally doing, but also to do tactical advertising. ‘Tactical advertising’ means that you get a response rather than just telling people about yourself and how wonderful you are. The other big change is, instead of press advertisement, which was traditionally one of our ways of getting across, we try to use the web more to be able to track where our customers come from as well as their habits, so it is more sophisticated. We just finished an 8 million Dhs ($2.17 million) campaign only on the web. We will be promoting the brand on the web, as our cost of sale, which has become much lower on the web since we adopted direct booking, can offer our customers better deals.
E How exactly do you implement the two-way communication between you and your client?
We have a matrix solution involved in the web booking so we can actually track our customers and see where they are coming from and what the trends are, what they are booking in terms of length of stay and which media is most successful. So since the campaign started running we have seen successful results on BBC for instance, where we have been doing a lot of work. We have also been working with few of our partners like the Emirates Holidays and Emirates Airlines to make sure that we leverage our media dollars and to generate joint initiatives.
E How are you being affected by developers delaying projects?
It is just frustrating what is happening, six months before the opening of a hotel in the region we try to push some activity into that area and we would promote that space. But until we have got the opening date in place there is no point in starting to do that. So we have to slow down a little bit. Certainly the momentum is already there, because the sort of signings that were already made are from more than two to three years ago and are due to open, so it is not like they are not happening; it is only the ones that have not come out to the ground yet. I think that we will have to wait and see what happens. The other thing that I think is being big for us is that the Dubai brand is really spread around the world and that has been really helpful for us. In America three years ago we only had two percent brand awareness and now it is 10 percent awareness, so it is a huge and incredible change.
E What are your expectations for advertising in the hotel industry?
I am the judge and on the jury of advertising creativity and what was interesting to me was that the creative standards were very high in certain categories. We knew who the winners were; there was a lot of average [advertisements] and some where very good. The challenge now for advertising in the region is to raise the bar, try to be resourceful and not just do the creative work but really use media more creatively as well. As a client our demands are going to be very high and we need to work together [with agencies] to try create something that is going to hit the target that we are looking for. We need to do something that will track and measure our customers, and we are going to need to put more matrix solutions in so that we can see what is delivering and what is not delivering, as well as be more flexible. Every penny has to count. I think we have to be wiser and work a bit harder and possibly to take risks and deliver results at the same time. Within the hotel industry as well, we are being very tactical. Anybody can come up with a campaign saying ‘2 nights for the price of one’ — it is like a supermarket and there is nothing clever about that. Then again if everyone is doing it anyways it does not make any difference. It’s about creating some sort of difference and producing some new offerings. My view is to continue to build the brand message, both globally and locally, and really try to create a unique space.
