What is really a Luxury Villa Brand? by Samui Marketing Agency

A unique brand for a luxury holiday villa - sounds great, but how does it work? Which place does it have on the market? Let's have a deeper look at a luxury villa brand.

At FAMEsolutely we specialize in luxury villa marketing. We create tailor-made solutions for each of our clients. We promote each villa as a unique brand and help properties and their staff team reach hospitality standards.

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What is a brand?

Let's start with the essential part, which often gets confused with the logotype or simply with the villa name.

A brand is an intangible marketing or business concept that helps people identifying a company, or product. People often confuse brands with things like logos, slogans, or other recognizable marks, which are just marketing tools that help to promote goods and services.

You can consider a brand as the idea or image people have in mind when thinking about specific products, services, and activities of a company. Thinking both in a practical (e.g. “this jacket is light-weight”) and emotional way (e.g. “this jacket makes me feel powerful”). It is therefore not just the physical features that create a brand but also the feelings that consumers develop.

What is a Luxury brand?

The key identifiers of luxury brands are high-quality, expensive, and non-essential products and services that appear to be rare, exclusive, prestigious, and authentic and offer high levels of symbolic and emotional/hedonic values through customer experiences.

In general, in terms of digital marketing, the difference of luxury brands is in the focus on high-quality visual media and storytelling content. Whereas with mass-market brands, the content pieces are more general. The tone of voice and copy for a mass-market website or social media are much simpler, more basic, and attractive by the masses.

Mass-market villa brands will be different from luxury villa brands. In fact, a luxury villa brand will be much more detailed and sophisticated, it will be using a different strategy, different tools, a different tone of voice, etc. In addition, a luxury villa brand should have a very strong brand identity, to resonate with the right customers.

What is a Luxury Villa brand?

A luxury brand is not something that will work for any villa. It includes additional launching investment and constant support.

Sadly, the word "Luxury" has lost its meaning over time, especially in the tourism industry. But a truly luxury villa brand will work only for high-end properties. Which are managed as a business, with all the necessary licenses and an official company. With a team of staff to support the brand' standards.

A luxury villa brand will consists of different strategies, tools, and techniques. The brand strategy will guide the right customers to become guests and satisfy their needs.

The brand guidelines will include rules for the brand logo, part of the brand identity. The logo usually will be present across:

The communications with guests (Website, emails, in-villa messages)
Inside the villa
On staff uniforms
Amenities, towels, bathrobes, caps, breakfast floating trays, gifts, etc.

In the same way, as it's in use for a 4*-5* hotel.

The tone of voice will be an important part of the brand guidelines. The branded tone of voice will be used across all communication channels, like:

The villa website
Social media
OTAs
Communication with rental agencies
In-villa communications (printed and interaction between staff and guests)
Email, messenger communication, etc

The brand identity and its guidelines should be followed on a daily basis until the next re-branding. This is one of the reasons why the villa needs to have a permanent service team and constant marketing support.

A red flag for a luxury segment customer will be a different or inappropriate tone of voice, no visual branding, or different information across different communication channels.

In general, the brand strategy will include visual guidelines, rates & discounts or price strategy, social media strategy, OTA strategy, agencies collaboration strategy etc.

In other word, launching a luxury villa as a unique brand is equivalent of launching a boutique hotel or a luxury product. It covers all the activities linked with service, sales, communications, and marketing of the property.

How does a luxury villa with a brand gets bookings?

Just in the same way, as are getting bookings property management companies, hotels, or holiday rental agencies.

The main sources of bookings will be:

Website
Social media
OTA (Booking websites like Airbnb & Booking.com)
Collaboration with holiday rental & travel agencies
Returning guests & their friends and/or family
Advertisements

Let's compare a no-brand villa that works with a property management company VS a villa with a unique brand and in-house staff team

To illustrate the differences between this two ways of managing a property we unifided the main point of difference and similarity in the table below:

	No-brand luxury villa working with a managing company	Branded luxury villa with in-house staff team
Name	- Sea view villa - Villa 001D (Any random numbers or letters) - Villa Thai word or Flower name etc	- An easy-to-remember name that reflects the brand + a story and meaning behind
Logo	- Can have a logo or use the logo of the managing company	- Have a logo with brand visual guidelines, part of the brand identity. - Logo with different variations: Primary, secondary, watermark, favicon, etc
Service Staff (like a butler, maids, chef, gardener, etc) & villa maintenance	- Provided by the managing company directly (or through a 3rd party company)	- Are employed by the villa-owning company The service team is managed by a villa manager or villa director
Sales and marketing team	- In-house or a 3rd party company like FAMEsolutely	- In-house or a 3rd party company like FAMEsolutely
B2C	- Branding - Social media - OTAs - Advertisements - Website	- Branding - Social media - OTAs - Advertisements - Website
B2B	-Take a fixed % commission from the villa and then share its commission with other holiday rental agencies - In general, the managing company will work with other holiday rental agencies and share the % (For example with 25% from the villa, it can share it with agencies that work with 15% and 10%; Sometimes the 15% agency will work with another 10% agency and share its commission too)	- Have a choice to work with all kinds of holiday rental agencies - The branded villa, can take "shortcuts" and work directly with agencies who are ready to work for 15%& 10%, and continue working with 20-25+% agencies for the guests that came from their B2C channels
When the guest is just requesting	- In-house booking manager - The guest can receive offers of similar villas	- In-house booking manager or outsourced with FAMEsolutely - Handled by a manager who represents ONLY the interests of the villa brand
When the guest is at the villa	- Service and brand policies of the property managing company/ holiday rental agency	- Reinforcing the trust in the villa brand & creating a connection with the guest
Communication with the guest after the check-out	- Offers with all the property collection of the managing company/ holiday rental agency	- Offers with ONLY the branded villa and branded greeting cards (or any other signs of attention) to straighten the villa brand image

Disclaimer: This table describes the function of a major part of companies on the market, but different companies and agencies can use different methods. The % commissions can be different. This table does not describe any rules, but tendencies we had noticed in the past years.

What are the 8 main benefits of managing a property as an independent business with a luxury brand VS working with a property management company?

In general, a managing company will work better for a major part of the villa market. A full-scale luxury brand will give a return on the investment and additional revenues only if the property is in the high-end segment by its facilities, size, format, etc.

Let's name the 8 main benefits a high-end property can get from operating as an independent luxury villa brand:

Firstly: Status, this is no anymore a property with facilities, but a hospitality brand that offers a specific experience. For guests, it means more trust, and security, as well as a reason to "show off" when they're back home (Human nature...)
Control over the service provided, from the first contact with the customer to the check-out of the guest, and after-checkout support
Control over the brand image and tone of voice
Fewer % commissions to share with 3rd party holiday rental agencies. Because when we talk high-luxury market a 5% over a year of bookings, can become a major amount of money
Control over holiday rental agencies and how they present the luxury villa brand
Control that any customer who wishes to book the villa, will not get other villa options (unless they find out about the villa through a rental agency)
Control over staff salaries, and the selection and qualification of staff
And last, but not least: Additional value for the property sale

Want to know more about property branding?

Check our case studies:

The stunning Kerem Villas, located beachfront, for who we did a launching: How long does it take to launch a luxury villas?

The huge Baan View Talay, with a golf putter course, which was successfully sold with the help of brand marketing: Luxury villa branding: Baan View Talay

And the elegant and spacious Turquoise Villas, for which we did the full cycle of service: from launching it just after it was built, then full marketing support for a few years, and finally selling it in less than 3 months: Luxury villa branding: Samui Turquoise Villas

Or just check our Holiday villas and hotel marketing page, to discover about our services, and to see all the related blog posts.

Ready to take your property to a new level? Don't hesitate to contact us. Let's talk about how we can make your property Absolutely Famous!