Reimagining Luxury Hotel Chains

To get the necessary edge in the highly competitive hospitality space, besides their other strategies, luxury hotel chains could also consider evolving to ‘lifestyle service providers’.

Some of the action plans could include:
 
a) Creating a 'lifestyle ecosystem', by exploring strategic alliances with leading brands across both related and unrelated categories. Such as: reputed international airlines, multiplexes, apparels and other top-end fashion related players, premium car manufacturers, healthcare providers, beauty and other top-end grooming products/services etc. Besides cross-promotions on a quid-pro-quo basis, key objective should be to synergize their respective learnings and competencies, to better understand and collectively create that 'WOW' factor for their respective target audiences,
 
b) Enriching their rewards program by exploring participation with such partner brands, to delight their esteemed clientele,
 
c)  Reimagining guest relationships, by organizing orientation sessions both online and offline, based on the guest feedbacks from various channels, and providing updates on the latest offerings across service offerings and properties. This could be a further booster for ‘value for money’ feature for such hotel chains, thereby furthering the loyalty factor,
   
d) Conceptualizing gift cards, positioned as ‘unique stress busters', which can be redeemed at any of the properties of such hotel chains, and for any service with special top-ups to live up to such positioning. Top-ups could also include some special offerings from the participating brands of the lifestyle ecosystem. Assuming an attractive lifestyle ecosystem is place on a quid-pro-quo principle, every individual patron of such gift cards, would have additional attraction of special offers extended by participating brands in the ecosystem,
 
e)  Monitoring the usage of such gift cards, and providing feedback to the respective organizations which patronize such cards for their employees/business partners etc, regarding usage patterns, to enable them better target such gift cards to the intended beneficiaries. . Also eliciting feedbacks from such patron organizations, regarding the utility of such gift cards as perceived by their beneficiaries. Such two-way feedbacks can serve as a win-win-win proposition  for such hotel chains, participating brands, and for patron organizations, and
                                     
f)  Last but not the least, driving cost-efficiencies across the value chain, and enhancing value for the stakeholders, through a unified digital tool for such luxury hotel chains, on the lines of ERP/CRM/SCM. and with predictive analytics features built in. End objective should be enablement of necessary economies and efficiencies in the entire hotel chain, besides facilitating better understanding of both expressed and latent needs/desires of their esteemed clientele,

And so on....

FTX Implosion and Future of Crypto Currencies

Does FTX implosion imply obituaries for all crypto currencies? No, rather it implies the need for strict regulations of crypto exchanges. The key reason behind this implosion appears to be using client funds kept with this exchange, to shore up the balance sheets of a promoter owned trading firm "Alameda Research".

If this is indeed the reason, then no way does it reflect even remotely in the crypto currencies per se. Rather, it calls for strict regulations of the crypto exchanges to ensure investors' interests.

The sovereign currencies world over have taken a hit in varying proportions, vis-a-vs the US dollar due to liquidity tightening by the US Fed, and followed by other central banks, The crypto currencies have taken much higher hit due to the same reason, and more so as they are still a nascent asset class.

FTX saga has been a wake-up call for all the regulators. And going ahead, such crypto exchanges would be subjected to strict regulations and checks. Secondly, with the inflation expected to stabilize in the medium term, and the central banks expected to take a breather on rate hikes, investor confidence is likely to return, and the crypto currencies a would certainly find their own level akin to stock markets.

Yes, coming to million dollar question of what would be the status of such crypto currencies vis-a-vis sovereign currencies? No way can the monetary authorities anywhere, would allow them to pose a threat to their respective sovereign currencies. At best crypto currencies would be an asset class akin to gold, and perhaps used as a medium of exchange in the emerging meta verse world.

Layoffs at Twitter Inc

If Elon Musk could afford to pay $44 billion for Twitter, could he not have afforded to hold on for a while, and give some time to the employees to turn around the company as per his vision? After all, they were working as per the vision of the previous Bosses, to keep their 'kitchen fires burning'.

Alternatively, if Elon Musk was convinced at the time of acquisition process, that he will have to get into such mass layoffs, he could have negotiated hard to pay only $44 billion-X amount, while announcing that the rest amount, would be spent on grand severance packages, for all those who had to be retrenched.

This way, he would have set a new benchmark in ESG, and would have heightened his personal brand equity astronomically, resulting in much greater loyalty from Twitter's external stakeholders like advertisers etc.

It remains to be seen how the external stakeholders now view Twitter Inc.

Reimagining luxury car makers

Luxury car makers aiming to dominate the top-end segment of the market, need to reimagine themselves as lifestyle services providers, to differentiate themselves from other players in the auto sector.
 
Some key strategies could be as follows:
 
a) Empowering their premium customers to feel special, by enabling them to select special appearances (both external and internal) of their cars, via various feasible options on their apps or website,
 
b) Rewarding their premium customers via rewards program on every transaction – from buying a car to getting it serviced, and from buying accessories to even referrals,  
 
c) Enriching the rewards program by exploring opportunities for cross-promotions with some leading brands, which cater to the aspirations of same premium customers. Such a strategy would enable better fulfilment of overall aspirations of such premium customers,  
 
d) Initiating “Customer as a co-worker” step, to elicit feedbacks as well as suggestions from their premium customers via an app or website. Valuable suggestions could be implemented and duly appreciated. This should enable further strengthening of the brand value of such luxury car makers,
 
e) Individuals/families/establishments/corporates owning more than one model of such car brand, could be categorized under special categories, say for example - “Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum” etc depending on the value/number of cars they own, and privileges under each category be worked out accordingly, and
 
f) Re-imagining customer relationship, by organizing orientation sessions both online and offline, based on the feedbacks from company authorized workshops. Besides #wewantyousafe campaign, focusing on the critical importance of safe driving practices, simple precautions to address common defects/problems found in cars which come for servicing/repairs etc could be key topics for such orientation sessions. This would be a further booster for ‘value for money’ feature for such car brands, and which in turn would enhance the loyalty factor via ‘word-of-mouth’ publicity.  
  
And so on....