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In her three years with Starwood, branding guru Eva Ziegler has completely transformed the face of Le Méridien. With W Hotels now also under her wing, Ziegler shares her expertise in creating the emotional connection with a guest beyond reason and price

Eva Ziegler is the sort of wonder woman that one senses absorbs everything around her, constantly juggles three tasks at once, and most likely dreams up quirky hotel concepts in her sleep — when she has time for it.

Ziegler, Starwood Hotels & Resorts global brand leader for W and Le Méridien, was in Dubai recently for the launch of the first in-hotel L’atelier des Chefs at Le Méridien Dubai.

This cooking school-cum-restaurant, where guests must prepare their own food if they want to eat, is one of Ziegler’s latest additions to the Le Méridien chain, and one she is passionately excited about.

Along with the recent introduction of the LM100 — a community of creative experts and cultural innovators selected by Le Méridien’s cultural curator Jerome Sans and designed to guide the hotels into creative hubs — L’atelier des Chefs is part of the final phase of Ziegler’s mission to transform Le Méridien into a lifestyle brand for Starwood.

This was no small challenge — Le Méridien had a 35-year history as a standalone chain with its roots in France before it was acquired by Starwood in November 2005.

Ziegler joined the company early in 2006, following a varied background branding soft drinks, consumer goods and cars, and has been working since, round-the clock one can only assume, to relaunch the brand according to the Starwood philosophy — that of transforming the hotel business from a transaction-oriented business to a lifestyle branding experience.

From a product perspective, explains Ziegler, Starwood consolidated the brand and 40 hotels left the group, leaving it with 95 to develop.

“You can really class the achievements [with Le Méridien] into three distinct years with three distinct phases,” says Ziegler.

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“The first year, 2006, was all about integrating Le Méridien into the Starwood processes and systems. In parallel, we started to develop the fundamentals of the brand — what are the core values, what is the target audience, what is the positioning, what is the visual identity, what are the naming conventions; all the strategic basics of a brand were identified in 2006. In 2007, it was identifying the experiences that we wanted to brand, developing that world that we wanted to create and piloting the experiences that we wanted to start with, because before we roll out anything globally you pilot them in different parts of the world,” continues Ziegler.

She explains that Le Méridien has three focus areas that were critical to the rebranding —arrival, in-room and cuisine— and also three core values, which Ziegler sums up as  “chic, culture, discovery that feels sophisticated, original and contemporary”.

For example, at Le Méridien the arrival experience has four components, all piloted in 2006, which are: the transitional portal achieved through the use of an art appliqué on the door; a sensorial atmosphere of a specific scent, sound and light on entering a Le Méridien; the “unlock art experience”, whereby each key is designed to “be a piece of art that unlocks a cultural institution locally”; and the “elevated experience”, which involves a “24-hour soundscape” playing in the lifts.

It was details as fine as these that were then rolled out in 2008, the first year of global implementation.

Ziegler says: “This year we are still continuing the rollout, and basically out of those three areas of arrival experience, in-room and cuisine, arrival was implemented by the end of March globally; cuisine, in terms of the breakfast, the Coffee Culture and hopefully a second L’atelier des Chefs, should be done by the end of this year; and then in terms of in-room we have developed a bed, towels, bathroom amenities — everything that touches the body.

“That is the longest to roll out because a bed is a big capital investment and the requirement is that anybody that has a bed that is older than five years has to change it. We should have a high level compliance by beginning 2011,” says Ziegler.

As well as rebranding  the three key areas, Le Méridien has implemented a new hotel communications programme, a redefined website, new uniforms called the LM Collection and trained around 100,000 staff in the new service culture, which Ziegler says “was absolutely critical”.

And of course, now Ziegler is at the fun part of focusing on the needs of the “creative guests” that the brand wants to attract.

“We have actually set to offer culture in a new perspective that feels sophisticated and original,” says Ziegler, hence the appointment of Jerome Sans earlier this year.

“The role of cultural curator is completely new; the first ever one in a hotel,” she says.

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