A Conversation with Four Seasons Hotels’ Susan Helstab 

When we interviewed Susan Helstab, senior vice president-marketing for Four Seasons Hotels for our Luxury Brands Put Kibosh on Luxury in Advertising, she shared insights about the legendary Four Seasons meticulous approach to marketing – up to and including its tagline, “Where Life Feels Perfect.”
 

• On that tagline: It’s the product of relentless consumer research and every word has been weighed.   Helstab says customers “want their lives to be as good as they can be; there’s where the idea of perfect come from.” She adds  that “While delivering on perfection is impossible, it may be  possible to feel that way for a half hour – having the emotion that this is as good as it gets. That emotion might be happiness, excitement, and contentment – whatever that individual defines as wonderful.” Helstab says FS tested the line extensively and was told by guests that “yes, that is how they would want to define their lives and they believe FS is the place where they can feel that way more than at other hotels” – and that “an emotion around an experience is very important.”
• Four Seasons began to define luxury 30 years ago – and it has evolved  just as guests have.  First and foremost, luxury is about delivering a consistent and personal level of service to guests. But Helstab says Four seasons has been using the word luxury less and less in recent years as it has become ‘devalued.

• Four Seasons breaks luxury down into four ideas:

1. Service: impeccable, personal, consistent
2. Beauty: design, quality, flowers, pristine, fresh, colorful.
3. Comfort: beds and sleeping experience, technology that works, a spa, relations, no worries, things being generously sized so they’re never constraining -  always very liberating.
4. Welcome: The hotel is expecting me. They’re happy that I’m here; everything I need is already in readiness.

• Of course, guests change and FS “always tries to respond to guests in the way they want to be responded to so that the hotels are a direct reflection of the guest’s needs and desires.” And, yes,  they will even let a guest take suitcases to their room if they so desire – “but we will always make the offer. And if we take it we make sure it gets there really fast.”
• On change: Helstab says that when she came to FS, technology and spas weren’t even an issue. Using e-mail research (done thru e-mail that guests can open or not), Four Seasons found the highest response from guests   always relates to technology. Says Helstab, “We start by asking what technology they have in their homes. If you know what they have in their homes you can start to know what they want – the number and nature of the devices they carry, etc. Most guests carry four devices – Blackberry/phone, computer, iPod, Bluetooth, etc. Have to make sure devices are easy to use.”
• On copycats: Helstab says it doesn’t take long for competitors to copy FS – whether it be a design item or those very ad copy words. “When we redesign our website, many competitors reflect similar designs.” But FS says it simply changes when guests’ expectations change – and tries not to change for the sake of it. And even though competitors might use similar approaches, the difference comes in the delivery – which, says Helstab, “is the only way to show the message is believable and credible.  We get ownership of those words because we do deliver.”
• On the size of the luxury market:  Helstab was quite specific. Four Seasons looks at people who travel 5 times a year and spend a minimum of $300 a night on a room. Simple as that.  Their average household income is $525,000 – net worth $5 million
• FS looks at its demo group, and they do it country by country, they can figure out how many people fit that demo. In North America, it’s about the top 1%, a very narrow target (that’s for overnight guests, not meetings, weddings, etc.) In fact, most of their research is done for overnight guests because the others tend to be much less frequent customers.