Recently, Licheng Group and Fuji Riya Hotel Group jointly developed a new brand Licheng Flower Sheng, planning to land 100 benchmark projects in the world, Licheng’s brand team further “expand”. However, it is interesting that the head hotel groups seem to be tightening the brand matrix, concentrating superior resources to accurately support mature and high-potential brands. Is multi-brand the only way to scale up? How many brands does a hotel group need?
Recently, according to the release of Licheng wechat public account, Licheng Group and strategic partner Fuji Liya Hotel Group jointly released its high-end luxury business travel brand “Licheng Flower Sheng”. As a new high-end luxury business travel hotel brand, “Licheng Huasheng” will focus on multi-dimensional services such as vacation, third space of life, and business travel, and will choose core location projects and plan to land 100 benchmark projects in the world. These projects will not only drive the development of local business, culture, tourism and other related industries, but also further support the rapid development and strategic layout of Fuji Riya Hotel Group in the high-end hotel market.
The two sides announced the joint launch of a new high-end luxury business travel brand “Li Chenghua Sheng”, which is a further deepening of the layout after the strategic cooperation between the two sides in 2023. In February 2023, Licheng Group reached a strategic cooperation with Beijing Fujifilya Hotel Group, and Fujifilya’s “Jifeng” and “Fuji” brands joined Licheng Group alliance, becoming a new force in Licheng brand matrix. On July 10, 2024, Fuji Riya Hotel (Kashgar Ancient City People’s Square branch) officially opened, and the first Fuji Riya brand of high-end product line cooperation between the two sides successfully landed.
“Licheng Huasheng” will focus on multi-dimensional services such as vacation, third space of life, and business travel, and will choose core location projects and plan to land 100 benchmark projects in the world.
Fuji Riya Hotel is developing towards the customer experience and functional support of full-service hotels. It will focus on multi-dimensional services such as vacation, third living space, and business travel, and will prioritize projects in core locations to create more intelligent and personalized experiences in terms of facilities, services, and details.
Coincidentally, in July, Licheng Group and Wuhan Xinchengda Technology Group held a signing ceremony in Shanghai, the two sides reached a strategic cooperation to establish a joint brand “Licheng River tide”, the first hotel will be opened in Yangzhou in October this year, the two sides will actively play their resource advantages, in the next three years in the country to open 30 Licheng river tide hotels.
In March, Licheng Group and Henan Juzuo Hotel Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement at Ctrip Shanghai headquarters to jointly establish the joint brand Licheng Wenlan. The two sides will carry out all-round cooperation in business development, operation management, brand promotion, channel drainage and other links, and plan to open 50 Licheng Wenlan hotels nationwide in the next three years.
According to the brand matrix of Licheng Group’s official website, there are currently 21 ultra-high-end, high-end and mid-high-end hotel brands. Under the continuous launch of new brands, Licheng Hotel Group’s brands opened and signed a rapid number of contracts. Since its establishment in October 2018, Licheng Group has opened more than 600 hotels with more than 65,000 rooms. This is also shown from the number of hotel openings in Licheng every month, according to incomplete statistics, in the first 8 months of this year, Licheng Group opened a total of 142, with an average of 2 days to open a hotel to welcome guests.
Among so many hotels opened, most of the brands do not belong to the brand matrix of Licheng Group, which mainly relies on the advantages of Ctrip’s OTA platform, with many small and medium-sized hotel management companies as the main partners, through licensing and authorization, to achieve rapid development. In addition, based on the advantages of digital management systems, partner hotels can choose to use only Licheng’s systems, rather than the Licheng brand. This model is more flexible, and more small and medium-sized wine management companies may consider joining the Licheng system, and the “new” speed of Licheng Group is further accelerated.
Hotel groups are “slimming down” brands
In the era of internal volume, consumers and investors have higher requirements for brands, and the head hotel group grasps market changes and adjusts its hotel brand structure. Unlike Licheng, which is constantly “on the new”, the head hotel Group is tightening the brand matrix and “streamlining” the hotel brand.
Space secret agent noted that Jinjiang Hotel (China) has been combing its own brand in the past two years. Recently released the new “12+3+1” brand strategy: Before 2028, fully tap the growth momentum of scale, to create 12 thousand store brands; Create 3 (Jinjiang Capital City, Lirui, Libo) very competitive market core high-end brands; Explore a resort track, focus on the resort route, replace the traditional hotel brand thinking with innovative product thinking, and create the characteristic advantages of Jinjiang. These hotel brands focus on the current demand pain points, based on the new anchor point of the market, through the strong brand out of the circle, driving the brand matrix of other brands upward development, and actually find new growth momentum.
From the brand matrix of Huazhu Group’s official website, it has 32 brands. According to its financial report, as of the second quarter of this year, the proportion of Huazhu economy and mid-range brand hotels in the camp and hotels to be opened has reached 90% and more than 80% respectively. It can be seen that Huazhu has always taken economy and mid-range hotels as the core, and its overall strategy is: to take economy and mid-range hotels as the core (economy hotels, including Hanting, Haiyou and Hello), mid-range hotels (Quanji, Orange) to serve the just-needed market for travel.
