NEW YORK — Representatives from dozens of Belmond hotels gathered Thursday to say good riddance to the Orient-Express brand.
Orient-Express Hotels rebranded last month under the name Belmond. The company will spend $15 million marketing its new name over the next four years with its first large-scale advertising campaign since it was founded in 1976.
So far, the company has launched the Belmond.com website and has rebranded all its products, including hotels, trains and cruises. (Belmond will retain the Orient-Express licensing agreement only for the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train.)
Regional managers and general managers from Belmond properties around the world, all distributing new business cards with the orange Belmond logo, said the name change would finally give the company’s 45 properties and products a common link.
Hotels in attendance included the Mount Nelson in Cape Town, South Africa; Charleston Place in South Carolina; La Residencia in Mallorca; Hotel Monasterio in Cuzco, Peru; and La Residence D’Angkor in Cambodia.
Belmond properties look forward to benefiting from the ad campaign.
“Now we are a sales force,” said Laurent Carrasset, Belmond’s regional managing director of Peru, where Belmond has five products. “Instead of 45 individual business units, we are now Belmond, spending $15 million for the brand name.”
Several representatives noted the same, and said that under Orient-Express, there had been very little cross-selling among properties.
Belmond CEO John Scott, in an interview with Travel Weekly, estimated that 2% to 3% of the company’s guests have visited more than one Belmond property, and that the company is looking to double that crossover-visitation rate with the help of the new identity.
The Orient-Express brand came at the end of the hotel name, as in Hotel Monasterio by Orient-Express. Belmond is a more prominent brand — the property is now the Belmond Hotel Monasterio.
“We are part of a collection of great hotels,” Carrasset said.
Not a single Belmond representative lamented the loss of the Orient-Express name, saying their properties have always been known individually. As a result, they were not concerned about losing any guest loyalty along with the name.
“The hotels will still have the same people and be the same company, and they have always been individually known,” said Xavier Lablaude of the Belmond Mount Nelson. “With the new name we are hoping for growth.”
Carrasset predicted that the rebranding and marketing push would attract independent hotels to join Belmond.
Ralph Aruzza, Belmond’s chief sales and marketing officer, said that reaction from travel agents about the change had been overwhelmingly positive, with many asking why a rebranding took so long.
“It’s hard to resell a product and sell a brand if we didn’t invest in it and provide the right information,” he said. “We weren’t telling you what the experience was like in other destinations. There was little, if any, cross-marketing of products.”
Aruzza said a new travel agent-focused website is going up later this year. It will include information on each destination and ways to sell the Belmond brand.
The Belmond name is derived from “beautiful world” in French (“belle” is beautiful, while “monde” means world).