BRAND NAMING PRACTICES: AN ASSESSMENT OF HOTELS IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

A brand in general and brand name in particular form the perception or personality consumers attach a company. A brand name is a core indication of the brand. Therefore a careful selection of a brand name could communicate various product or service attributes desired by the producer/provider like ruggedness, sophistication, friendliness or sincerity. For the hotel industry in particular, the brand name is an integral component of all marketing efforts. Research also suggests that a hotel’s brand name should be intense and vibrant that is able to relate to multiple level of the senses while at the same time serve as a reminder of pleasant experience. Despite the rapid growth of the hotel industry in Addis Ababa, a peculiar observation suggests that a well thought of branding/brand naming practice is not in place. This research therefore tried to understand the brand naming practice of hotels in Addis Ababa with the aim of improving the practice. A questionnaire was used to gather information about the importance of brand names from owners/managers and the process they used to develop the brand names for their hotels. Another set of questionnaire was used to understand how the brand names of those hotels were perceived by their clients. The findings indicate that owners/managers associate a lot of importance to the brand name but do not actually think guests use it to choose hotels. It was also found that majority of them use no particular process to develop a brand name. On the other hand, guests indicated that brand name is very helpful for the selection of a hotel but is does not particularly apply to the hotels they selected implying that the names being developed by owners/management are not distinctive enough to assist in the selection of a hotel by guests.