Marriott’s Lifestyle brand leader, Toni Stoeckl, on brand identities

Lifestyle hotels are soaring in popularity around the world. Was this expected or foreseen at any point?

We did a lot of consumer research on general consumer behaviour. We’re looking at why people travel and what they’re looking out of travel and increasing the belief that consumers want to not necessarily own material things, but actually connect experiences in life. Travel takes such an important role in that collection of experiences is what people are looking for. And so, making an emotional connection while a traveller is staying with you has become an increasing focus area for us because people look for that emotional connection.

We built lifestyle based on different psychographic behaviours of different consumers, because of the research we do. We’re understanding what their behaviours, attitudes and passions are and trying to build an experience beyond a clean shower and a comfortable bed.

Is there much of a gap between lifestyle and boutique in terms of the general theme of a hotel, the message it’s sending or what it’s trying to achieve?

I would say that when we think of lifestyle hotels – they have a more distinctive point of view on travel and we often call them more experiential hotels. The question is, how do you define lifestyle? From our perspective it is being everything to someone, not something to everyone. It’s about really understanding that unique customer and then building the public space experience, building the design, building the staffing levels and understanding who you actually hire to deliver a more emotional connection in terms of service.