OPINION

OK Corral shootout: brands slug it out but lack a compelling story

Every year we ask readers to sift through class and crass to tell us their favourite travel brands. But with the torrent of cheap clickbait offers how do you tell the difference between a one night stand and a feel-good long-term partner?

by Vijay Verghese/ Editor

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Post Covid, brand definition has continued to erode with overemphasis on instant cut-price sales rather than building on brand strength and personality. This leaves travellers confused and is why we return to readers each year to better understand their brand preferences / photo collage: Vijay Verghese

IF YOU haven’t already, we’d love for you to visit our 2025 Best in Travel Poll page to cast your vote. Base it on a stay or an impression gleaned from friends. We recognise brand appeal is based on a number of things including visibility and the feeling a name evokes. This is what drives aspiration, not discounts. Interestingly, when we first launched a 2005 Airline Poll, we had both a best and worst airline field, the former carried by Cathay Pacific (riding high on its lively ‘Born to Move’ campaign) with 26% of the reader vote, and the latter by Aeroflot (9%) on which the service button rang out like a jangling fire alarm.

This was in the days before the rush for pay-to-play schemes in which brands with the biggest spend — based on paid self-nominations — monopolised top results. This practice has become so prevalent that at the very mention of a poll today some travel folk throw up their hands. “We don’t have an award budget,” they apologise. Some have fled in terror when we knocked on their door to present a winner’s plaque. This is amusing, if frustrating, when the intention is to learn more about a high performing product.

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Vanity has played its part too in this charade. Many years back, Seoul’s Incheon International Airport huffily refused to receive its hefty Royal Selangor pewter award as it was not No.1 — but a lowly No.2. “The chairman is insulted,” a PR person informed us. Our arms were wrenched out of their sockets carting awards through typhoons around Asia until a more efficient and faster Internet allowed us to mail certificates directly to winners. Those Neanderthal journalists with knuckles grazing the floors all worked for us.

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Since 2005, our polls have been expanded to include airports, hotels and destinations with the intention of feeling the discerning traveller pulse. It was more important for us to determine the whys of a win rather than just the whos. Reader preferences have offered insights for editorial development on subjects as diverse as Macau, Asian golfing, pod hotels, Bali volcanic activity, and Papua New Guinea.

{The airport refused to receive its hefty Royal Selangor pewter award as it was not No.1 — but a lowly No.2. “The chairman is insulted,” the PR said...

We have kept our polls free, fair, and open for 20 years. Any reader may vote for any product he or she chooses. We do offer a limited drop-down menu as a spell check — for people who might key in just The Pen or JW Thailand, and clever sorts who put down Abcde — but this is neither a voting universe nor a nomination list. We do not stage gala dinners as all this is really a hidden charge for advertisers/winners. We prefer to meet as many winners personally to learn more about them. If our readers like them, we are interested too. That is our approach.

It is important therefore to vote and offer your opinion. It matters.

In these days of mergers and proliferating brands it is a head-scratching time for many travellers trying to work out who their host is and why their knees are getting bruised on boutique doll’s-house furniture. Brands have been gobbled up, processed, and turned into uniform products where website after website is much the same, with no real information on brand personality or any compelling reason to visit.

Room descriptions have become vanilla and soft focus to the point of being incomprehensible. Try these for size. “Infused with tranquillity”… “gender fluid décor”… “a focus on curated details”… “legendary service”… “designed to help you feel refreshed and fulfilled”… “to invigorate your spirit”… “unparalleled excellence”… “plush furnishings and signature comforts”… Gone are the days when my five-star hotel in Jakarta candidly listed ‘baby-sister’ on the service menu. I would swap a gender-fluid this or that for a baby sister any day. And no one mentions whether their electric plug points are three-pin international, deep round two-pin sockets as in Indonesia and parts of Europe, or three pin “crow’s feet” Kiwi style.

Covid is seen by many as a watershed that marked the decline of brands (and brand projection) as this was replaced by a surge in cheap click-and-book ads that dominate Google, Instagram and Facebook. It is worth remembering that people spend fortunes on Apple iPhones when a cheap Chinese phone can do much the same. That is the power of a brand. Strong brands command higher prices.

This brand value is what the travel industry has collectively lost over the past 10 years through pandemic disruption and the cosying up to cut-price sales at the expense of building image and yield. It is what happens when good hotels fall into the hands of bean-counter accountants, as is inevitable with the monstrous sums involves in the mergers and buyouts that commenced September 2016 with Marriott’s takeover of Starwood.

This is why a magazine like ours is keen to glean reader perceptions. When we first launched our reader poll we were averse to using the word BEST and thought about ‘Preferred’ choices but this could have been construed as a reference to an existing  hotel marketing association. So the Smart Travel Asia Best in Travel Poll it became. All your collective votes offer pointers as to the state of the travel industry and market directions, the move from hotels to private villas in Bali, say, the popularity of smaller intimate lodgings, the demand for classics with history, or the preference for hotels on the BTS train line in Bangkok. Yet for every mundane preference there are extraordinary standouts that buck the trends. We look out for these. Do help us find more. Your vote counts.

Do check out our 2024 winners and take a look at the pre-Covid results for 2018. Meanwhile, ponder these potential brand puzzles. Which hotel group does Alila belong to? What is KROMO and who owns it? Who runs Andaz? What’s the difference between Marriot’s EDITION and Autograph Collection? What on earth is VOCO? Is there any difference between InterContinental’s Indigo and Kimpton? Are Langham and Lanson related? Are Raffles and Fairmont under the same family umbrella? How is Hilton’s TRU budget brand different from Accor’s IBIS? And how do megabrand hotels compare with single-brand names like The Peninsula and Mandarin Oriental? Much food for thought. Have a glorious summer all and safe travels.