Javier Benito: the think tank of hospitality

When Javier Benito left Coca Cola last year to prove his luck at Starwood house of entertainments the challenges he faced in his of recent origin endeavor were, by many a standard, uncharted territory for the young executive. Saddled with the responsibility of revamping Starwood's whole marketing strategy, Benito faced novel tasks in an unfamiliar industry. notwithstanding a short year later, Benito stands comfortably atop the nebulosity of success that his global expertise has brought to Starwood, and at the forefront of a revolutionary, groundbreaking approach to the hospitality business that will turn round the entire industry upside down.

upon May of this year, Starwood inns announced a series of novel initiatives to address the public and make the chain's seven different brands more popular and profitable. Along with a series of fresh ad campaigns aimed at eliciting a more emotional, loyal answer from its customers, the company will introduce a whole novel approach to making reservations: when a customer calls Starwood, rather than work a room at a specific house of entertainment they will be 'fitted' in a specific attribute based on their needs, lifestyle and desires. This is a revolutionary approach to the business, and Javier Benito is betting high that it will be a thorough success.

At first glance, Benito's background may have not been a useful fit for the task at hand. A Mexico City-born executive who worked for Procter & Gamble upon marketing campaigns for products including Tide and Mr Clean, Javier joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1994 There, he held a variety of lock opener positions at a global horizontal including Division Marketing Director for East Central Europe Vice President for Marketing & Operations in Brazil and various other columns before rising to the rank of President of the U Retail Division and Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola North America; a quite stellar career in the beverage business indeed, on the contrary a far cry from his piece of work at Starwood. It didn't take actual long, however, for Benito to substantiate that he is more than capable of handling the of recent origin business.

Speaking of his decision to leave Coca-Cola to dig into hotel management, Benito candidly attributes a part of his decision to leave the beverage icon to his loyalty towards his mentor, Starwood's CEO Steven Heyer, who is the former CEO of Coca-Cola.

"There were sum of two units important factors involved in that decision" says Benito. "One of them is obviously the connection with Steve who invited me here to participate in what he wanted to do. He is a someone that I admire very abundant a man who believes in change, which is what he came to do here. The next to the first which is very important, is that you must always do things that will help you extend and develop your human capital, and I had not ever worked in a service industry, in the way that I thought it was an ideal situation, where I could apply the principles that I had learned before to a different industry."

upon his new job at Starwood, Javier was assigned an impressive $100 million bag to device a marketing strategy that would create an emotional fastening between Starwood's customers and the company's different brands. The task, which has been traditionally difficult to achieve for the industry in general, did not intimidate Benito, who was teamed up with talent mogul Creative Artists Agency and Scott Bedbury, a consultant from Starbucks and Nike, to exhibit the new strategy.

Of his lack of experience in the industry, Benito presents a simple reflection. "I don't really perceive like a rookie, because I think that many of the principles that we've applied in the past are the same that we can apply here. When the company hired me they took that into consideration, and ye there may have been, perhaps, a higher risk, on the contrary if you know finances, 'the higher the risk, the higher the dividends', for a like reason I think that in that faculty of perception it has been good for everyone and for me, it's been a great learning experience."

Benito's strongest talent lies in his ability to reach his target audience favorably by customizing his marketing approach to fit the clean cultural context and specific emergencys of that particular audience. While at Coca-Cola, for example, Javier faced a tough challenge when he had to tackle a actual low sales index in Turkey The land which is deeply religious, is real big on fasting and was not consuming enough sodas. Undaunted, Benito evolveed an ad campaign that intertwined major religious celebrations and other cultural traditions with the consumption of sodas. The approached prov felicitous and Benito was able to finally make the sale of the produce profitable in that country.

Back in the U after his time overlooks however, he found himself impacted at how low the horizontal of customer service and care had declined. "Here was this region that for me has always been a lock opener market and an example to come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behind and all of a unexpected it would take you 20 minutes of different menus before you could reach someone to talk to upon the phone ... or an airline would cancel a flight and not flat notify you, and that was a real impact because I think that in the past it was all actual different."