Article from wall street journal Hotel Developers get into school- When guests c

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Article from wall street journal

Hotel Developers get into school-

When guests check into The Abernathy hotel in Clemson, S.C., they receive an orange poker

chip.

The chips aren’t for gambling. Rather, they are room keys—and a reference to a Clemson

University football tradition. Head coach Dabo Swinney hands similar chips to his players and

asks them to throw the chips in a bucket before games, symbolizing their commitment to go “all

in.”

The chip-key is one of several Clemson-specific touches at The Abernathy and reflects one of

the latest boomlets in the lodging industry: investing in hotels on or near college campuses. The

trend has expanded to encompass a wide range of schools, from large state schools such as

Clemson and the University of Michigan, to smaller liberal-arts colleges such as Smith and

Swarthmore.

In the past decade, developers around the country have added more than two dozen such hotels

that maintain close ties to colleges and universities, according to market analysts.

“It used to be universities sending out customer proposals, but that’s almost disappeared as a

phenomenon. Now it’s real-estate developers and hotel brands seeking out universities,” said

Bjorn Hanson, an adjunct professor at New York University’s hospitality and tourism center.

Meanwhile, new hotel companies are emerging that are investing in properties near or on

campuses. Competitors that have launched operations in the past decade include Charlestowne

Hotels, Graduate Hotels and Smart Hotels LLC.

Boutique hotel companies are particularly active in these markets because the markets have

limited growth potential, discouraging some of the bigger competitors, said Sean Hennessey,

chief executive of New York hospitality consulting firm Lodging Advisors LLC.

Still, branded select-service hotels also are getting into the college segment, Mr. Hanson said.

These hotels include some of the amenities universities seek, such as public meeting space. There are a lot of branded hotels in many of these markets, said Ben Weprin, founder and chief executive of investment group AJ Capital Partners, the group behind Graduate Hotels. But, he added: “Those assets don’t have the level of bespoke humanity we bring, and the focus on how university markets work.” College hotels now target prospective students and returning alumni as well as visiting professors, research-symposium attendees and leisure travelers, developers said. This also helps smooth demand, which is often tied to the academic calendar, Mr. Hennessey said.

College hotels typically schedule conferences or offer wedding packages to alumni during the

summer, when business is slower, and raise prices for big events such as football games or

homecoming weekend.

Graduate Hotels is perhaps the fastest-growing college-hotel developer. Founded in 2014, the

Chicago-based group has raised $1.5 billion in two rounds of fundraising, according to the

company. The brand currently runs 12 hotels around the country and says it will have eight

more properties open by the summer of 2020. It aims to be in 100 markets in the next 10 years.

The college-hotel market appealed to Charlestowne Hotels because it isn’t as vulnerable to

fluctuations in the economy, said Michael Tall, president and chief operating officer of the

Charleston, S.C., company. Charlestowne’s portfolio includes eight college hotels; two of those

—the Colgate Inn of Hamilton, N.Y., and the Sewanee Inn at the University of the South in

Tennessee—are owned by the universities themselves. The Inn at Elon, scheduled to open at

Elon University in North Carolina in fall 2019, will become the portfolio’s third university owned

hotel. The Abernathy is also a Charlestowne hotel.

“There’s always going to be visitation to the markets,” Mr. Tall said. “You might as well even

use [a stay at a hotel] as a sales pitch for the university.”

Smart Hotels, founded in 2009, takes a slightly different approach to the nine hotels it develops,

owns or manages—with its partners—on eight campuses.

It is less focused on the visual tie-ins, such as mascots and school colors, and more on creating a

site that can serve both campus and local community needs, President Ed Small said. Smart

Hotels’ preferred sites are generally top-ranked universities, either public or private, that have

healthy graduate schools and centralized campuses, Mr. Small said.

“We were looking at a niche in the market, as these places really did not have hotels that were

representative of the institutions they were serving,” he said.

Answer the following question from above article

Discuss the college hotel market. What are this market segment's order qualifiers and winners? What characteristics must a business possess to be considered? What characteristics tend to set a particular business apart?

Pls provide you own answer.

Explanation / Answer

Answer: Order qualifiers are the standards that can help the organization’s product or service appear fit for purchase by the customers. The order qualifiers in this segment are the location of the hotel, services it offers, marketing and sales pitch that can attract the customers to the hotel. Order winners are those standards that set the products and services of a firm apart from the other firms. In this case these include the rates of the hotel rooms, benefits in the package and the latest boomlets. Therefore the characteristics that the business should possess for being considered are the location of the hotel, services it offers, marketing and sales pitch. Similarly the characteristics that will set a business apart will be rates of the hotel rooms, benefits in the package and the latest boomlets used.

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