Cornell: Hotel Brands’ Competitive Performance Mapping: A New Way to Identify Strong, Troubled and Weak Brands | By Chekitan S. Dev

Developing tools with which to assess brand performance is key to gaining an understanding of how a hospitality brand is performing in comparison with its competitive set. This article introduces a new method of competitive performance mapping, which ranks hotel brands’ performance based on the following four measures: revenue per available room, cumulative average growth rate, guest satisfaction, and franchise-fee data. Based on these measures, brands are mapped as leaders or laggards in their brand tier and classified brands as Strong Brands, Troubled Brands, or Weak Brands. This analysis covers a complex period during which the U.S. hotel industry continued its recovery from the Covid-19 interruptions of 2019–2020. It also documents a steep decline in post-Covid guest-satisfaction scores for every brand analyzed in this report, without exception. We suggest that the first step in successfully managing an existing is mapping the brand against its competitive set, using key metrics in order to responsibly steward the brand’s future. Beyond the highly valuable results reported here, the study’s chief value lies in the methodology developed to facilitate comparative analysis of hotel brand performance that could benefit brand managers, owners, asset managers, lenders, and consultants.