It was recently reported that the top 20 hospitality companies in America generated approximately $215 billion in 2006.

To succeed in such a highly competitive industry a company must aggressively cultivate new customers and at the same time, maintain customer loyalty. There are two key factors that create customer preference over time:  differentiation and customer experience.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc., one of the world's top five travel and hospitality companies understands just that. With approximately 850 properties in more than 95 countries Starwood Hotels is a company that has its finger directly on the pulse of the world's most active travelers.

Starwood's nine different internationally renowned hotel and resort properties are some of the most recognizable and sought after brand names in the hotel industry, from the trendy W Hotels with cutting edge music and its signature WhateverWhenever service, or the luxurious St. Regis known for its flawless service for the high-end traveler, to the upscale European inspired Le Méridien, a brand known for its passion for food, art and style.

In 2006, Starwood decided to redefine the branding of three of its other popular hotels - the Westin, Sheraton, and Four Points by Sheraton. The impetus for the rebranding was the company's repositioning of its corporate profile, moving from being seen as a real estate holding firm to being thought of as a branding and lifestyle company.

The immense project of rolling out three completely revamped brands in less than a year was handed over to the Starwood's in-house marketing and design team. Senior Creative Director, Aimee Hoban, and Senior Director, Creative Services, Rick Lavoie managed the project.

"Starwood's main objective is to do everything we can to differentiate ourselves in the minds of travelers. Our hotels are about a lifestyle experience and about transcending that feeling back to home," says Hoban. 

"The vision of a lifestyle experience for the Starwood properties is clear and unchanged. It is carried throughout all of the hotels, yet each remains autonomous and very distinctly its own brand," said Senior Director, Rick Lavoie.

Although the team was redeveloping the identities of the three brands at the same time, they had to maintain the specific personality each is known for.

For instance, Sheraton, the company's largest brand found in major cities and luxurious water resorts worldwide, is an upscale property known for making its guests feel a sense of comfort and belonging by providing a warm welcoming connection to what matters most to travelers - home, the office, and the best spots in town. 

The Sheraton differs from the Four Points by Sheraton, which has an approachable style and spirited "can-do" service at an honest value for the self-sufficient traveler. Then there is the high-profile Westin brand, renowned not only for its comfortable beds but also for inspiring guests from the first impression with its sensory experiences of light, music, white tea scent and botanicals.

For the Starwood marketing team, the idea of brand impression is not left only to the hotel's amenities and services. A customer's experience carries through to all the printed collateral that is associated with the hotels, from notepads, key packets, TV channel cards, and check out receipts, to the doorknob hangers.

"Many of these items are high touch points for guests. They generally pick these things up and hold another piece of the experience in their hands," said Hoban.

Since this was to be such a large print production program with so many different items to be produced, each needing to fit a different persona, but each needing a distinct level of quality, the creative team considered another way to look at paper selection.

"In the past we had two shelves of paper sample books, we never knew if they were all current, and we would sometimes end up specifying papers that weren't available," said Hoban. "And, we worried that we would have to sacrifice quality for budgetary reasons since we needed to order so many different papers."

According to Hoban, the art directors got together and took a look at the big picture. "We needed to develop a portfolio of reliable papers. If we could get all the papers, for all the brands, from one mill, we would be able to get a higher quality paper for a better price," says Hoban.

Added to the challenge of developing the collateral for three brands at once in a short period of time, Hoban and her team were also looking for papers to comply with Starwood's sustainability initiative.

"The goal was to find one paper source that offered enough variation for all our needs, one which included environmental papers, and one that could see Starwood as a whole," said Hoban.

Starwood turned to the Sterling Group, a paper and sourcing consultant, who found that Mohawk met multiple criteria, such as variety of substrates available under one roof, speed to market, environmentally manufactured, level of quality, or best possible value.

As Starwood's Senior Creative Director, with a time-sensitive project in development, Hoban was very hands-on with the decision.

"The process took a couple of months but it was a valuable experience.  Mohawk paper is such great quality. Their selection holds something for all of our needs, and they lead in their environmental paper choices. As with any creative process, once it is done, it all makes sense," says Hoban.

The collective efforts of Starwood's marketing team and the Sterling Group to combine purchasing discipline with environmental focus meant that Starwood saved money and realized significant environmental benefits.

Because 100 percent of the electricity used by Mohawk is offset with certified windpower certificates, Starwood has shown an environmental savings of 1467.61 trees preserved, 420,800 lbs. of waterborne waste not created, 1,032,412,010 BTUs energy not consumed, and 134,881net greenhouse gases prevented.

And, Starwood continues its branding initiatives with the addition of new brands to the Starwood portfolio - Aloft and Element. Mohawk's brand portfolio continues to provide the teams the resources they need to distinguish the important touch points for each hotel's positioning of unique experience.

For more information on Mohawk Fine Papers, please visit www.mohawkpaper.com.

Captions for photos:
Photo 1 (Westin): From water tags to matchbooks and key cards, guests hold another piece of the Westin experience in their hands. Starwood uses the luxurious feel of Mohawk Superfine to add to the Westin experience.

Photo 2 (Sheraton): Mohawk Navajo and Strathmore Writing were the papers chosen for the Sheraton materials. 

Photo 3 (Four Points): Mohawk Options, Strathmore Writing and Mohawk Via are all used to represent the Four Points by Sheraton hotels. "Color is the most important part of Four Points. Each of these papers reproduces the color we want to perfection," says Hoban.

11/7/07