TokyoTomo Travel Guide

On the occasion of their recent visit to Japan, , Vice President, Global Sales, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International Inc. and Hideki Yanaka, its Executive Director, Global Sales – Asia Pacific briefed the media on the current market situation, its management strategy with three brands and future business strategy. Fairmont Raffles presently manages three brands of hotels; Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Raffles Hotels & Resorts and Swissotel Hotels & Resorts.

Currently, with three brands of the hotels combined, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International operates 94 hotels in 29 countries worldwide with 25,800 guest rooms in total. While the global sales, project development and finance departments are shared with three brands of the hotels, the actual marketing activities are carried out by the respective brand with the respective sales strategy to differentiate itself. Sergot said that each brand has its own feature and positioning, thus offering customers a greater selection of hotel properties and added that its three brand-strategy helps respond favorably to the customers’ needs, indicating that it is the business merit that Fairmont Raffles enjoys.

In the future, within 2013, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International endeavors to increase the number of hotels up to 129 in 44 countries worldwide. Until now, it gives a strong impression that Fairmont focuses its market development on the Canadian market, Raffles on the Asian Market and Swissotel on the European market. According to the new market strategy, however, Fairmont aims to expand business mainly in the European, Asian and Middle East markets, Raffles in the North American and European markets and Swissotel in the North American market where the respective brand images are yet to be built. In this context, Sergot continued that Fairmont Raffles must address the challenge to let the Japanese market, which is one of their important markets, recognize the fact that the respective brand offers a greater selection of global destinations. Since the majority of hotel bookings from Japan come via travel agencies, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International intends to further enhance its relationship with Japanese travel agencies. The win-win situation is to be built between the two, added Yanaka of Fairmont Raffles.

Source: Travel Vision

Travel Vision Inc. provides information on the travel industry in Japan via "Daily Travel Vision", a Japanese-language e-mail newsletter, and the "Travel Vision" website. There are nearly 110,000 people working in the Japanese travel industry, and Travel Vision is proud to be bringing travel news to more than 30,000 people through Daily Travel Vision.