Sheraton Product Launch Plan: The Sheraton Hotel

Sheraton

Product Launch Plan: The Sheraton Hotel

Sheraton Hotels have always dedicated themselves to expanding opportunities for businesses to congregate, operate and interact in key urban centers throughout the world. And with the expansion of the global economy, Sheraton's efforts at inserting itself into key business convention and conference markets continue to play an important part in the company's growth. This is demonstrated in the discussion hereafter, which evaluates the product positioning challenges facing important Sheraton locations in San Diego and Singapore.

Product Description:

Sheraton is one of the most recognized, reputable and widespread of global hotel chains. Its importance as a destination for business travel is especially significant to the chain's ongoing expansion and success. In particular, locations such as the San Diego Sheraton & Marina and the Sheraton Singapore simultaneously demonstrate the hospitality firm's importance for regional and global business conferences, meetings or lodging while simultaneously exemplifying the negative impact of the global recession on the hospitality industry as a whole.

Product Positioning:

In both contexts, Product Positioning will center on the need to help the economies of these respective contexts rebound through effectively priced courtship of business visitors. This is because the recessionary trends of the last several years have impacted the amount of business travel which is pursued and the number of meetings, conventions and conferences which are held on a regular basis. For instance, the Sheraton Singapore must contend with considerable market retraction after a generation of unfettered growth. According to the reported by CBRE (2010), the Sheraton must position itself to capitalize on projected influxes of business visitors by providing economic premiums for lodging there. This is because, CBRE denotes, "following 15 months of consecutive negative growth in visitor arrivals (year on year) in Singapore, visitor arrivals now appear to be on the upward trend. September was the first month to show positive growth in arrivals at an encouraging 7.1%, boosted by the Formula One Grand Prix, Hari Raya holidays and the Silver Week holidays in Japan." (CBRE, p. 3)

This return to growth indicates that economic improvements have emerged in Singapore but it also suggests something of a fragile pattern. Therefore, it is essential for the Sheraton to position itself simultaneously as a higher-tiered business lodging and event destination while offering effectively deep discounts for visiting firms. By working to court business visitors as a chief market demographic, the Sheraton Singapore may significantly improve the prospects of weathering the global recession until such time as visitor patterns return to previous levels of growth.

A similar dynamic must be considered in positioning San Diego's Marina accommodations. In fact, the city of San Diego has placed some pressure on hotels specializing in business conferences to assist in courting greater lodging demands. Most specifically, hotels such as the Sheraton are being asked to help finance some civic projects in San Diego that can help to reinvigorate business travel influx. According to the text by Weisbeg & Showley (2011), "San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders called on the city's hoteliers Thursday to contribute up to $30 million a year through a hotel room surcharge to help finance an expansion of the downtown convention center, a project now estimated to cost 24% less than the original $711 million price tag." (p. 1)