While maintaining its spacious properties, the Oaks brand will move from a serviced apartment ethos to a full-service hotel offering, which will be helped along by 11 “operating hallmarks”.
Operating hallmarks will include barista-made coffees in Oaks lobbies, the introduction of “grab and go” food offerings, including freshly baked goods, a “refreshed” F&B offering, centred on communal dining and “elevated” bathroom amenities which will all have a new signature citrus, lavender and eucalyptus scent. Other hallmarks include merchandise and bundles – from kids to fitness to personal grooming – that will help guests travel light while still having everything they need in their travel destination.
With yoga and meditation classes to be available digitally at Oaks properties, wellness is also on the agenda for the repositioning and extends to providing an in-room night-time ritual for guests to promote good sleep. At some properties sunrise swims and run clubs will feature.
Each guest will also receive a signature lamington on arrival, which will be tailored to the location and will be adopted by the brand worldwide, not just in Australia, opening up potential for a new differentiating viral experience moment at individual Oaks properties.
All of the hallmarks will be localised to the destination and will be flexible to move with the times.
“It has to evolve. It has to be dynamic. The brand has to move,” Minor Hotels’ chief operating officer for Australasia, Craig Hooley, told micenet.
“It can’t be stagnant. And that’s why things like the hallmarks that you develop, they allow the brand to grow and evolve. And people get confident in knowing that that’s what they’re going to experience,” he says, while adding that the hallmarks also have the potential to add an element of surprise to the guest experience.
“The big difference in travellers between 10 years ago and 10 years ahead is that people are definitely getting out more and experiencing the local environment, whether it’s walks or beaches or shops, whatever it is,” says Hooley.
“I would say when Oaks was first emerging, the whole thing around home was that you got somewhere you felt like you were at home, you could come in, sit down, watch TV, cook a meal and you can feel like home.
“Where we see the traveller [in future] is that they want their senses to work a bit harder. They want experience where they are.
“They can wash, they can clean, they can use the facilities, they can lie on the lounge and have a snooze but still be connected by the hallmarks of the brand and by what’s around them, to where their destination is. People are more interested in what’s going on around them now.”
Hooley says the repositioned Oaks is designed to “make [guests] feel like they don’t have to have FOMO, they’re in it. They’re part of the story”.
The new era of the Oaks brand is set to be gradually applied to open Oaks properties as well as new openings.
