Hi all,

Our group has decided to work on the Adler Hostel for our group project.

Brief Overview of Adler Hostel

Adler Hostel, established in 2012, is Singapore’s first luxury hostel and is a rising young brand. The Adler brand is about providing quality products and services with an affordable price tag, and it seeks to complete every backpacker’s experience in Singapore with comfort and style. Its unique positioning as a ‘Poshtel’, or luxury hostel, is its key differentiating point amongst a sea of common backpackers’ inns and hostels in the scene.

Background

With backpacker tourism on the rise, and Singapore enjoying a unique geographical advantage of being surrounded by various Southeast Asian cities – collectively dubbed Backpackers Cities – such as Hanoi, Bangkok and Jakarta, there is much potential waiting to be tapped on by Adler. Additionally, as a young brand, the group recognizes the vast untapped potential Adler enjoys in the industry and believes that through social media, Adler can build strong lasting relationships with their customers and stakeholders of complementary services and products in the backpacking industry.

Rationale for Choice of Organization

Adler’s primary target audience would be foreign travelers and backpackers, and their secondary target audience would be locals. Since one of the key influencing factors of success for services that are experiential in nature depends on reviews and recommendations, Singaporeans should not be neglected since they could act as brand “ambassadors” for Adler and spread positive word-of-mouth to their foreign friends. In addition, the “Adler Experience” that Adler Hostel promised is currently not well-defined through its social media content. As such, our group project aims to bring across what the “Adler Experience” is to the intended audience through a more consolidated social media approach. This leads us to our research question: How can Adler Hostel make use of social media to increase its customer engagement, and ultimately drive demand in hostel bookings?

Adler’s Competitors

As a unique one-of-its kind business model of “Poshtel”, the group has identified Adler’s industry competitors to be boutique hotels as well as other backpackers’ hostels in Singapore. Across the industry, all three share similar operations, services as well as marketing and communication channels. Both boutique hotels and backpackers’ hostels also target a similar spectrum of consumers, and competes with Adler on the basis of both price and service differentiation.

Project Goals

Our group will be identifying and analyzing the key issues within Adler’s social media channels management and the subsequent implications to their business and reputation.

Key Goals:

1. Identify Adler’s current marketing and communication strategies and their effects
2. Identify and segment Adler’s target consumers, and develop strategies specifically tailored to their behaviours, demographics, geographies etc.
3. Observe and measure the growth of Adler’s consumer awareness, influence, engagement and ultimately conversion (to their services).

Research Methodology

To seek answers to our research question, our group will conduct social media tracking of Adler’s existing social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and various review platforms, and compare the results to that of its notable competitors from the same industry, such as other backpackers’ hostels and boutique hotels. We also intend to carry out surveys to gauge sentiments and perceptions of “Poshtels” amongst our target audiences, which are travelers and backpackers aged 18 to 30. Using the data collected, we aim to propose creative solutions and strategies that Adler can adopt to communicate brand awareness and ultimately achieve greater take-up rate in their bookings.

Value of the Study

As a pioneer of the ‘Poshtel’ concept – our group believes that by working on the Adler brand, the social media strategies crafted can provide as a template for young and emerging brands of similar nature who are interested to break into the lucrative “Poshtel” market.

Cheers,

Audrey, Mindy, Robynne