Zenrooms
How Hoteliers Get More Done
Improving standards for Southeast Asia’s hospitality industry.
Timeline: February 2022 - August 2022
Client: Zen Eservices Pte. Ltd.
Industry: Hospitality & Technology
Funding Stage: Acquired by Yanolja Group
Location: South East Asia (Singapore)
Project
Zenrooms, a Rocket Internet founded startup in 2015 approached Gohan Strategy to reposition and redesign the brand from a franchising and budget hotel listing platform to a leading travel and hospitality technology platform in Southeast Asia. This shift followed Zenrooms management's decision to boost company growth with a greater impact to better serve their clients and the entire hospitality industry in South East Asia and beyond. Although the Zenrooms that most of you know as a great platform for budget friendly trips to various destinations will not disappear, but rather gains a strong B2B component to provide Asia’s hoteliers with simpler, more reliable cutting edge technology solutions to manage their properties.
Summary
Many of Zenrooms’ talents started as hoteliers themselves. They understand first-hand the many pain points and complexities faced by hotel owners in daily operations. They made it their mission to help every hotel get the tools they need to succeed. Their platform provides a comprehensive range of products to help accommodation providers improve efficiency, automate operations, grow sales through new markets, and help provide memorable guest experiences.
Zenrooms was founded in 2015 in Singapore, with Rocket Internet among its early investors. They are now proudly part of the Yanolja Group, Korea's leading travel company, backed by Booking Holdings, Softbank and GIC.
Together with Yanolja and its subsidiaries and partners, Zenrooms is building technologies of the future and leading the digital transformation of Southeast Asian travel and hospitality.
Services Provided
Strategy Deliverables
- Market Research
- Positioning
- Strategy Workshops
- Tagline & Keywords
- Customer Segmentation Strategy
- Brand Strategy Summary
- Team Training Sessions
Design Deliverables
- Brand Identity Redesign
- Brand Architecture
- Logo & Identity Redesign
- Pattern & Iconography
- Brand Guidelines
- Team Training Sessions
- Design Strategy
Challenge
With Zenrooms being in the business for about 8 years, many potential customers for our new technology solutions had a brand perception based on previous Zenrooms activities, such as budget hotel listings, booking trips and others. Especially for any hotel owners in the luxury or hotel chain segments, in choosing Zenrooms as their hotel management partner, this lingering brand perception had to be overcome. To sum it up: How do we get people to understand that Zenrooms is no longer just a booking platform for B2C but has now also an amazing SAAS solution to manage, grow and market their properties?
Research
By interviewing numerous hotel owners from boutique to medium and large chains in South East Asia, our team was able to confirm the challenges that occurred in our strategy workshops with the Zenrooms team, which is the massively pre-existing perception of the brand that is attached to the name. A related visual fact was that a majority of the audience connected the majority “red” branded Zenrooms to the “fast” and “budget” brand associations that had served the company well in the past, but further fueling emotions and an outdated perception of the brand for the future.
Solution
After an important voting session that Gohan Strategy conducted internally to stick with the name “Zenrooms” (because it’s an amazing and memorable name that still fits to all the goals and values of our future B2B efforts), we had to change the messaging and brand accordingly. Every key role of the Zenrooms team loves travel and all aspects of it. That has not changed in any way but with the bigger impact in mind we developed a strategy that incorporates and segments a clear usage of the B2C and B2B components.
B2C = We continue to provide you with safe and reliable options to stay in all your favorite places.
B2B = We help you automate your operations and grow revenue, allowing you to focus on what you do best.
Taking this as the outline and foundation to create the actual verbal and visual strategy, we guided the Zenrooms to a successful and strong brand launch with consistent messaging.
Outcome
The redesigned and heart-like shaped Zenrooms logo has created instant appreciation and brand love internally for the team to start this new year more confidently and with fresh inspiration of the purpose. In addition, the Zenrooms team has already implemented the new strategy and brand identity to launch their “Zenrooms Solution” entity, focusing on their B2B and technology services. The team started with multiple brand launch events in Indonesia for hospitality and technology communities, receiving exceptional feedback on their new brand. More news to follow while the brand is growing!
#Startup #Hospitality #Zenrooms
