Why are there so many Bristol hotels around the world? It’s not a single cohesive brand, so why the name “Bristol”?
Let’s look at a slice of hotel history that seldom gets mentioned nowadays yet has a worldwide imprint and a lesson even today for ROI growth.
At first glance, you’d think these 200+ hotels across the globe are named after the midsized English port city. Not so!
It harks back to the era of the “Grand Tour” – with its heydays in and around the 1700s – where Northern European aristocrats embarked on a yearlong road trip and/or sent their adolescent offspring to get cultured by visiting the great cities of the continent (Paris, Venice, etc).
Within this landscape, one such traveler was Frederick Hervey, the 4th Earl of Bristol, who was quite the gourmand and a rather picky hotel ‘influencer’ of the late 18th century. As his reputation grew, the name became synonymous with luxury establishments with verifiable service.
Obvious to everyone, the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s disrupted the Grant Tour with dwindling occupancies at all inns and lodges along the beaten path.
After the war ended, Parisians hoped to restart the Grand Tour by opening a property with a name that wealthy English travelers could trust. And thus, Le Bristol (now a Rosewood hotel) opened in 1816, signaling in name alone a sense of luxury as well as safety.
Flash forward a century and there are hotels carrying the name Bristol in Vienna, Geneva, Warsaw, Oslo and others, with yet more to come in places like Berlin, Beirut and Buenos Aires in the years after World War Two.
So, what’s in a name?
While only a few hotel nerds nowadays have heard of Frederick Hervey, the name Bristol still invokes a grand, urban setting. One imagines a palatial lobby with swift, precise and anticipatory service from impeccably dressed doormen, bellhops and lobby clerks. There’s a sense of abject delight, spectacle, sophistication and history in the making at the next table over.
The name carries weight. The name implies trust and a place that’s in constant demand. But the brand equity behind “Hotel Bristol” was two centuries in the making.
With the hemorrhaging of new brands nowadays, there’s an assumption that guests will automatically understand the meaning behind all these hotel names. In reality, developing a great ROI from brand equity takes far more time than you think.
Bristol demonstrates that even in a nascent market such as the hotel industry in the 1800s and early 1900s, you still can’t assume your customers know who you are.
Therein, some questions that your hotel must contend with are:
- What core feeling and imagery does your hotel name evoke?
- How are you reinforcing this feeling each and every day?
- How are you delighting your guests beyond what the hotel across the street is doing?
- In today’s uber-competitive world, how is your hotel a beacon of commerce and a place where ‘deals get done’?
- What’s your brand equity strategy for staying true to your name over the next 12 years, not just the next 12 months?
While there’s definitely a place today for the select service and ever-efficient-opex hotels, Bristol is felt as equivalent of luxury. Words and names matter more than you think, but they are also like gardens, requiring constant maintenance in order to see them flourish.
