Comparing to the situations in other developed countries, offering pet hotels in Taiwan is more of a value-added service attached to other major pet businesses rather than a well-developed individual business sector.
Because of its immaturity, pet boarding services right now in Taiwan are mostly run by pet shops or vet clinics. But as a matter of fact, an emerging sector of dedicated professional pet hotels has been observed on this island.
Amateur players with unclear positioning
There are 2,640 registered pet stores island wide.4 50% of them are individual stores selling puppies, foods, and accessories, while the other 50% of them are vet clinics providing health checks, vaccine injection, and consulting. Around 70% of them offer stay-over services, and are chosen by dog owners for the following reasons:
♦ Convenience of location
Location is the major concern when pet owners are looking for a place to buy pet foods and accessories, or a veterinary clinic for their beloved pets.
♦ Trust
Most pet owners take very good care of their pets as if they were their kids. Very similar to the factors and processes to be considered when choosing babysitters, trust has been a major concern when choosing pet hotels. Vet clinics therefore have inherent advantages over other choices to be handpicked by pet owners.
♦ Emergency handling
This is something related to trust, but with more techniques, experiences, and capacity to handle emergencies, especially dog’s health problems that require
4 The pet store statistics is retrieved from a survey conducted by Company A in 2006.
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instant medical treatments and care during boarding. Vet clinics again have inherent advantage to meet this requirement.
♦ Facility and service quality
To middle to high end consumers of pet hotels, the facility and service quality matter significantly. Details such as the air conditioning, living spaces, service staff’s knowledge and professionalism are all magnified when choosing pet hotels. Generally speaking, very few pet stores and vet clinics have facilities with good quality for pet boarding services owing to space and profession limitations.
Furthermore, none of the players in Taiwan have created any brand images or had a clear market positioning compared to matured branded pet hotels in Japan, Singapore, Europe, and USA.
Dog owners have no knowledge of the uniqueness and advantages when selecting between pet hotels.
Competition Geography
Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, are still the core areas of pet related businesses to enter.
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TABLE 6.1COMPETITOR DISTRIBUTION BY AREA Source: 2006 research by Company A.
Competition Categorization
Pet hotel business units in Taiwan can be divided into 2 categories:
♦ Subsidiaries
Business units that provide pet boarding services as value-added services attached to their core businesses. The most common players in this category are vet clinics and pet shops.
♦ Professionals
Business units that provide pet boarding services as their core businesses. The common players in this category are downtown pet hotels and countryside pet resorts.
To really understand these two categories, the killer features and customer value provided are compared as below.
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Source: First hand survey data and personal experience.TABLE 6.3CUSTOMER VALUE OF PET HOTELS IN TAIWAN Source: First hand survey data and personal experience.
Overseas Peer Benchmark
In our observation, there are no players in Taiwan which qualify to be five-star or
Pick Up
Service Pool for Pets Pet Grooming Service
Hotel Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Countryside
Pet Resort Yes Yes No Yes Yes No
Categories Convenience of Location
Medical
Attention Facility Quality Service Quality Price Advantage
Subsidiary of
Pet Shop Best Fair Fair Fair Good
Subsidiary of
Vet Good Best Fair Fair Best
Downtown Pet
Hotel Good Good Good Best Fair
Countryside
Pet Resort Fair Fair Best Best Fair
Categories
Single Room Service with Air Conditioning
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even six-star pet hotels. To obtain a role model for The Phoebe’s, benchmarking overseas peers is necessary. We have benchmarked several renowned five-star pet hotels in the US, Singapore, Japan, and Britain, and we found that they have some common elements as listed below:
♦ Real five-star atmospheres
From check in counter, to check out process, all software and hardware for customer interfaces present a real five-star feeling and quality, just like any five-star hotels for human beings.
♦ More than trustworthy lodging
Trustworthy lodging no doubt is the essential service those five-star pet hotels want to bring to their customers. Actually they want to achieve much more than that; they want to make both the boarding pets and their owners happy as much as they can, and they want to do anything possible just to help pets and their owners vent out the bad feelings from separation.
♦ Absolute professionalism
With only a glance, you can tell their professionalism. Most of the overseas five-star pet hotels have professional crews performing different services; they also have in-depth knowledge of pet care, medical treatment, and even pet import/export regulations. Many of them are members of professional pet care associations, among the associations the most mentioned one is Pet Care Services Association (formerly known as ABKA)5.
5 The Pet Care Services Association (formerly known as ABKA or American Boarding Kennel Association) is the non-profit trade association for over 3,100 pet care service businesses in the United States and around the world. Only Pet Care Services Association members commit to the Pet Care Services Association Code of Ethics and the Pet Owners' Bill of Rights which assures pet owners that their beloved pets will receive professional, loving care. Pet Care Services Association members offer a variety of services for your pet including boarding, dog daycare, grooming, training, pet transportation, shipping, pet supplies, food sales, etc.
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♦ Overwhelming service offering
Besides basic lodging and boarding, they provide value-added services ranging from day camps for exercise, swimming pools, training courses, pet import and export, remote real-time surveillance, puppy selling, grooming and pedicure, pet taxi and ambulance, dog-walking service, pet accessory selling, cremation and columbarium.
♦ Solid customer relationship management
All customer interfaces, such as web portal, reservation system, customer testimonials, and check in/out process, have been well designed and managed.
Many of them even have membership club for increasing the customer loyalty.
♦ Often being in chain business
Many overseas five-star pet hotels are in chain hotel business type. It means that once if the pet hotel business model has been well established in one location, it will be easy to be replicated to other locations.
One other important finding is that five-star pet hotels tend to be built in cities with heavy-traffic airports, like New York City, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The same characteristics apply to Taoyuan, where Taoyuan International Airport with
climbing air traffic and high hope of cross-strait direct flights is located.
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Market Segmentation
The Phoebe’s is targeting the high-end consumer segment with the belief that their pets are not only their best friends but also their beloved children. According to the market survey conducted by Company A in 2006, the pet food market can be segmented into different levels of pet owners, with the so called “Indulgent nutritionist“ being the segment that The Phoebe’s is targeting. In that segment, pets are often being liked more than most humans.
TABLE 7.1PET OWNER SEGMENT Source: Company A.
A typical target consumer figure would be Paris Hilton. “My dog is my family, he is not just a dog, I am willing to do anything to make him happy,” said Hilton. As Paris is a public figure and needs to travel around a lot, there are places that might not be suitable for her dog to come along. In order to relief her pet from separation anxiety; a six-star upscale pet hotel would absolutely be her first choice.
Just like Paris, there are many pet owners in Taiwan who treat their pets as their
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