The author | Zhang Ruya
Orange Crystal, once known nationally for its personalized designs, is undergoing another big change.
On February 27, 2017, Huazhu Group wholly acquired a 100% stake in Orange Hotel Group for RMB3.65 billion. Before being acquired, the Orange Crystal Hotel swept the industry because of its sense of design, and its personality was rebellious and distinctive, and the "one store, one design" of Orange Crystal was different even in the same city.
However, more than 4 years later, the new version of the Orange Crystal Hotel has set off again, the lobby is equipped with a "whisky lounge", and the room decoration no longer pays attention to the so-called "personalization", but fully takes the high-end business travel route...
From the ultimate personalization to high-end business style, why has orange crystal changed?
On June 29th, Blowfish Culture & Tourism held a dialogue with Cao Juan, CEO of Orange Crystal, and Zhou Guangming, founder of Zhuzhou Space Design (Shanghai), at the new orange crystal hotel in Shanghai's Changfeng business district.
Why rebrand "Orange Crystal"? The new wave of consumption is coming, what are hotel consumers, operators, franchisees, thinking?
01 First impression of "premium sense": whisky lounge, hand-brewed coffee...
The Whisky Lounge is the most eye-catching setting in the lobby of this Orange Crystal Hotel.
Unlike many star hotels, the new version of Orange Crystal does not configure a swimming pool and business meeting places, but divides the public space of the lobby into small rooms, which can be used for talks during the day and become a whisky lounge at night under the glow of whisky pillars. A glass of whiskey has become the most prominent emotional point of the new version of orange crystal.
Cao Juan often chatted with guests in the shop, "What are your needs in the hotel?" "Guests would tell him he wanted to find a closed place to chat. How to do a closed chat scenario? Cao Juan thought of the reception room.
One of the opportunities for the idea of a "whisky lounge" was that Cao Juan noticed that 70% of the hotel's customers were men, who went on business trips, and were bored at night after busy work during the day, trying to find a place to relax. It is certainly not appropriate to do a casual scene of reading books, and whiskey is a very good choice.
This is the first attempt at orange crystal. They first tested the waters at the Orange Crystal Hotel in Shenzhen and told them that the whisky lounge was right. "I'm right." Cao Juan and her team immediately decided to launch version 2.0. After officially using the Orange Crystal Hotel in Shanghai's Changfeng Business District, "246 rooms, full rooms in the month, RevPAR over 600". (RevPAR refers to the average actual operating income generated per room available for rent))
Before the acquisition of Orange Crystal's customers are personalized customers, mainly private trips, couples short-distance tourists, and after merging into China, there will be more business guests, and it is necessary to adjust the products accordingly. The new version of the orange crystal, there are more configurations that highlight the "sense of premium".
There are no fancy decorations in the guest rooms, the hanging on the walls symbolizes "total solar eclipse", the soft decoration design caters to the style of the traveling crowd, and the short fleece material of the bathrobe increases the comfort of the stay, including hand-brewed coffee, essential oil aromatherapy, whisky special experience suit... Robot delivery and "30 seconds to check in, 0 seconds to check out", etc., the efficiency of business travel life has increased the sense of science and technology.
"We don't want to use any IP and gimmicks to create a topic and generate a brand premium." Zhou Guangming said. A series of designs are designed to target the post-75s to post-90s business travelers, who are the mainstay of the future society and the future of orange crystals.
02 Say goodbye to personalized personnel and start again with the image of business travel
Cao Juan spent 16 years at Huazhu Group, during which time she spent 10 years in charge of the Hanting hotel brand, managing up to 1,000 hotels at most. In February 2017, after Huazhu Group spent 3.65 billion yuan to acquire Orange Hotel Group, Cao Juan took over Orange Crystal in 2018.
Just after taking over the orange crystal, Cao Juan often communicated with Wu Hai, the founder of the orange crystal, privately, "Why the later development of the orange crystal will slow down and be eliminated by the market, there must be some aspect of the problem." ”
Orange Hotel Group's brands, including Orange Crystal Hotel, Orange Hotel and other brands, are inherently personalized and reflected in the market level, first of all, the property site selection is harsh and harsh, "one store, one design" Cost is very high, coupled with the small number of customers, resulting in Orange Crystal is difficult to expand on a large scale. "It turns out that when personalization moves towards scale, it will encounter bottlenecks." Cao Juan said.
In fact, at least 5 years ago, this kind of personalization in the eyes of consumers is a sense of design that is gradually outdated in aesthetics, and it has become an indisputable fact that it is left behind. Compared with the newly emerging mid-to-high-end hotels such as Atour, the orange crystal at that time had almost no chance to play cards.
On March 1, 2018, Cao Juan took over the Orange Crystal Hotel. At that time, orange crystal only had a net profit of 80 million yuan per year, and by 2018 and 2019, it had achieved a net profit of nearly 400 million.
Recalling the process of acquiring orange crystal, which is a very personalized target and reshaping, designer Zhou Guangming still has endless memories. "Blending personalization with scale is like melting oil. To dissolve the oil with a dissolving agent, it is equivalent to breaking and reattaching, which is very difficult. ”
How can we control the cost and replicate it as soon as possible to achieve scale? Cao Juan usually talks to many guests, trying to think of the most suitable design solution from their needs. No matter what style people like, they will eventually like the sense of luxury, "spend the least amount of money, buy the most advanced, the richest things" .
At that time, the founder of Orange Crystal made Orange Crystal according to personal preferences, "This is not the market demand, I want franchisees and customers to pay the bill, and I must investigate the market." "Here we need to take into account the cost of the hotel, the cost performance, and how well it fits into the market popularity."
Orange Crystal is mainly developed in first- and second-tier cities, and she is also responsible for managing another brand of Huazhu, "Manxin Hotel". Speaking of the latter, Cao Juan said that the data performance of Manxin Hotel in third-tier cities is very good, and young men and women will go to bars at night to listen to songs and chat.
"Manxin has a location in every city in Shanxi, especially in Yuncheng, where the Manxin Hotel has been open for three years, and even during the epidemic, the average RevPAR has reached more than 300." Cao Juan said. Combined with the orange crystal, it can be found that, unlike the small customer base in the past, this kind of hotel does not have a very focused user portrait, which is the focus of scale.
03 Make the most of idle space and do useful things
"Five-star experience, four-star price, three-star cost," Zhou Guangming said. In order to achieve this goal, they retained the intelligent equipment of the original guest room and upgraded the room amenities, such as stereos, aromatherapy, bathrobes, toiletries and so on.
Cao Juan and designer Zhou Guangming mentioned "quality" many times. The word is large and broad, how to understand? "It's about using all the space that's saved and useless." For example, the lobby has no other use than check-in, check-out, and guests sitting in the sofa area for a while, but the cost remains the same.
They turned the lobby into a lot of cubicles where guests could negotiate or deal with business, and at night it became a whisky salon, with casual lighting, adding a lot of pleasant colors to a glass of whiskey. This is the "quality of giving" that we have always wanted to maintain. ”
This logical manifestation of "idle" value also includes that Chinese consumers rarely use bathtubs in hotels, "this is a typical waste of resources", but consumers will drink tea in the room, so Huazhu has tea sets and snacks in the rooms of many of its brands, "there will be no useless facilities, such as gyms, swimming pools, business centers..."
The new Orange Crystal Hotel is priced between 600 yuan and 1200 yuan. When pricing, Cao Juan took into account the pricing of high-end hotels and even five-star hotels in the same file, and set the price of orange crystal according to their business and consumer acceptance.
From 120 stores to 510, they have done a series of combing and integration, "the expired Orange Crystal Hotel franchisees will require them to rectify, rectify and then go online", and Huazhu Group also gave support to the official website, members and so on.
Even if many elements are added that are suitable for large-scale replication, there will be differences in the chain replication process. For example, in the "whisky lounge", the sinking market may not be able to find a professional bartender, and there is no guarantee that every hotel has a bar. But there are other versions of the new crystal that can be adapted to different market and property conditions.
Zhou Guangming also mentioned that the Orange Crystal Hotel on the North Bund, which has been well received by consumers just after completion, compared with the Changfeng Business District store and the North Bund store, "The design version has certain differences, but the spiritual perception is still the same."
04 Three years of pure increment of 400 stores, redefining the hotel grading system
Franchisees are an important group of people that the hotel industry needs to face.
When Orange Crystal signs a contract with the franchisee, it requires that all hardware comes from the procurement system of Huazhu Group, in addition to cement, soil, including tables, furniture, chairs, etc. are customized by designated merchants. "Only in this way can we achieve quality, time, price, and cost control." They guarantee that the price is open, "you can check the cost performance of The Chinese residence at will, and do not earn a penny from the buyer."
Compared with the early years, the current orange crystal shows a completely different development path. They scale everything as much as possible, and this extreme replicability undoubtedly extends the overall business path of Orange Crystal.
"Orange Crystal will open 400 stores in the next three years. Mainly first-tier, one-point-five-tier, second-tier cities, if the franchisees in the third-tier particularly good locations have their own buildings, or the government, developers' own real estate, we will help each other open stores. Cao Juan said.
The number of stores that Cao Juan talked about is the data after the pure increment of the Orange Crystal 2.0 version. On the whole, the new Orange Hotel cost 120,000 yuan per room, the Manxin Hotel 140,000 yuan, and the new Orange Crystal Hotel cost 160,000 yuan.
Before Ji Qi founded home and Hanting Hotel, there was no budget hotel, only a guest house. Huazhu is trying to redefine the hotel's classification system.
Huazhu's brands of different grades will have price protection, and the price difference between mid-range and mid-to-high-end is 150 to 200 yuan. And the same grade of brands will also have customer differentiation, like crystal will use whisky to do consumer identity docking, Cao Juan said that consumer preferences are not the same, can not use the same things to occupy most of the market.
The current Orange Crystal has made good achievements, but recalling when he first took over the Orange Crystal, "at that time, our biggest pressure was Atour. Cao Juan said.
In recent years, atour Hotels, represented by mid-range hotels, has risen rapidly by IP, with both personalized IP hotels and large-scale standard products. "Atour's reputation, performance, development speed and number of stores in the market have grown rapidly, and Huazhu Group at that time did not have the same level of products and Atour to benchmark." Cao Juan said.
Today, Cao Juan is quite confident in the brand performance of Orange Crystal: "The economic type has Hanting, the mid-range has a full season, and the future crystal is the representative of the middle and high-end, which I have." ”