Premier Inns Marketing Strategy - Case Study Example

Topic: PREMIER INN- MARKETING STRATEGY. Insert Insert Insert TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary3. Situation Analysis3. Market Analysis..4 Marketing Strategies4 Value Proportion.5 Critical Issues.5 Target marketing strategy 6 Modes of aggressive marketing strategies6 Messaging6 Branding...6 Strategy Pyramid...7 Marketing Mix Strategies..8 Web Promotion..8 Services..9 Sales Strategy.9 Implementation Plan...9 Implementation Plan Activity10 Conclusion.11 References12 Executive Summary: Premier Inn is a chain of inn with in UK with 500 hotels across the country. Premier Inn exclusively deals in best hotel service with prices with in the budget. We are making a strategic marketing policy for Premier Inn. Our detailed report covers all the aspect to analyze and gives a marketing strategy for the Company. Further more the report also covers the strategy implementation plan. It not only boosts up the sales of the company but also aggressively brings high yield for the Company. Situation Analysis: At present Premier Inn is doing well, in the market. As it account 5% of the market share in Hotel Industry. It aims to provide best service to their precious clients with economical packages. The properties of the brand are that it specializes in personal service with high quality of food and excellent room service. However the biggest drawback of the Premier Inn is its lack of service and management focus more on quantity rather in quality. The strong point of the Premier Inn is that they offer money back guarantee to their clients and believe in influences the customers. Due to recession, the economic activity of hotel industry is low. This threat should be considered short term for the Premier Inn and the company should focus on providing consummate business service to their valuable clients at affordable rates in order to appeal more and more customers. Market Analysis: Premier Inn with more than 500 hotels in UK, and a symbol of 4 star hotels in UK specialize in providing quality service at affordable rates. Further more due to recession, the economic activity in hotel industry sharply slow down. People are not willing to spend on vacations and travel. And that's the biggest threat to the company. The biggest competitor is and Brimingimah City Center. Our Hotel has edge in the market due to vast chain spread all over the country. The class of clients our company has corporate and families. But families on vacations brings larger portion of revenue for our hotels. We want our clients to know that we are here to provide them personalized service. Moreover our guests need to know that we are here to develop a relationship with them to ensure them the efficiency of service, value of their money. And their reliability on us to provide them best service they expects. However like wise other competitor, our company focuses more on aggressive and fruitful marketing strategy to bring fruitful results even in recession. The key is to retain the loyal customers and business. So the marketing strategy of our company should be to retain the loyal customers and focus on more on serving them at our best. Marketing Strategy: Every business as certain objective, and goals in order to attained maximum yield for the owners. To accomplish these goals, the management formulates and implements certain strategies for the business. These strategies are a set of plans which company implements to increase yield while cutting down the unnecessary costs. Every market strategy clearly focuses on achieving high market share and high sales while maintaining the quality of service or product. Our marketing strategy basically focuses on delivering high quality service and products which will bring high yields for the company. If the quality is good it not only retains the loyal customers, but also attracts new ones. Secondly the company focus on increasing the sales by giving different services packages which others hotels wont offers. Moreover our marketing strategy will allow our precious clients to communicate our brand values and to build a strong relationship with us. While we focus on identifying their individual needs and try to serve them accordingly. Further more we focus on growth of the hotels by focusing new areas of businesses globally. Further more the strategy of the company should be easy to implement, feasible and suits the company bests. The following are the strategic marketing options for the company. 1. Value Proposition. 2. Critical Issues. Value Proposition: The Hotel Premier Inn lacks the basic facilities in their room and the company should focus on providing nice desk in their rooms, with internet access and wireless internet technologies at their rooms. Further more in order to appeal corporate clients. The Company should provide easy access to meeting room with all necessary facilities like audio visual technology and serve at their best for longer meetings. In this way premier inn not only succeeded in retaining the corporate clients but it boosts up their sales tremendously. Critical Issues: Our marketing strategy all focus on enhancing our strengths and focus to eradicate our weaknesses so that we can serve at our best and increase our sales. Our strength is our best man power which is highly courteous, efficient and qualified. Our staff always tried to serve at our best and helpful to our clients. Our weakness is our management. Though management is doing well but there is still more potential to improve. Further more our management fails to clear our marketing strategy to the external environment. Further more due to seasonal fluctuations we cannot clear our strategies to our human resource which is key to success of many companies. Further more as far as our threat is concern no doubt the company has a threat from competitors but company can do well with their improved marketing strategy. Further more our company has a competitive advantage and a good brand name with majority of loyal customers. The company should focus on following points: We can continue to make difference and have competitive edge by giving value added services to our clients at economic rates and by serving them by our highly courteous and qualified staff. We should retain our current level of businesses and focus more on developing the business by attracting new clients. We should provide positive results of hotel experience to our valuable customers. Our strategy further includes targeting the growth of the company within a specified period of time. We should further focus on expanding our business by targeting new market for our services and products. Target Marketing Strategy: Apart from our regular customers, we should focus on targeting new market for our hotel by attracting corporate sector. We should focus more on them because it can bring high yield for the business. The company can focus on local corporate clients by offering them conference facilities, and by providing luxurious and comfortable rooms with value added services to our valuable and precious executive professionals. Modes of Aggressive Marketing: 1. Messaging: By aggressively targeting the new area, the company can bring fruitful results. It is extremely important that the company should focus on maintaining high quality service with out class standard for all types of customers. By maintaining our high standard we can deliver the messages all by itself. Further more we should print brochures with high quality photographs as well as fine quality of paper. By spending a little on marketing, the company can deliver messages to its customers of their high and exclusive services. 2. Branding: Premier Inn is considered to be four star brands with exclusive high quality services all over the UK and now it's expanding in Dubai and India as well. The Premier Inn properties are renowned for their strategic locations and the brand give personalized exclusive service to its all clients no matter who they are. Another exclusive feature is that the company serves at very economical rates and has more than 500 hotels all over the country. Our Marketing Strategy Pyramid: Our strategy pyramid basically focuses on three factors: Best Business Facilities to their valuable clients. Luxurious amenities to the high profile clients. Personalized services to each and every client. Marketing Mix Strategy: Further more the company should also look at others factors like marketing mix factors which can price of the service and products, place, promotion and type of product they are offering. 1. Product: The company can offer a high quality services which should be differentiated from other competitors. The best way is to serve them with personalized service. 2. Prices: The prices should be consistent with competitive edge and the quality of service should be extra ordinary with in the economical rates. 3. Promotion: The company should focus on promotion of their products and services via ads in trade publications and via internet. Direct mail campaigns to new and existing clients controls the marketing costs as well. Good public relations will help the company to advertise with out any additional costs. Web Promotions: Though our website is running well but there is still need to update it and give it a fresh and new look. The contents are good but it needs more improvement by: New home page design should be revised and should be attractive with some beautiful scenic pictures. The website should give facility of printing brochures. The reservation capability is good but needs to be improved. Services: Our hotel provides best 4 star personalized services. Our hotel rooms are comfortable and cozy. We give a relaxed and warm environment to our valuable customers. Moreover we focus to give them value added and personalized service with high quality of delicious food. However there is lot to do more in terms of making our service different from others. We can differentiate by: We should recognized the clients who come to our hotels again and again and should give them a rebate or something or additional package. In this way company can retain its valuable clients. We should offer luxurious rooms to our high profile clients so that they feel like doing business while at home. The staff should be highly courteous and have a strong service orientation ethics. The business facilities the Premier Inn should provide have no comparison in the town. Sales Strategy: The company should prepare a sales strategy to increase sales in the up coming season. The basic theme of sales strategy is to retain the existing corporate clients in our sales accounts as well as to attract new customers while offering value added services to our clients. The company should focus more on the price and amenities the company offer to its precious clients. Further more the sales policy of the company should target as: In order to increase the sales, the company should give discounts or rebates to their regular customers with some additional services. Specially families and kids. If the regular customer or corporate client experience the personalized services at economical rates they shall prefer to be in Premier Inn rather than any other hotel The focus should be delivering the quality service to the clients instead of quantity. There should be a direct mailing to the corporate accounts either in form of email or letters with brochures so that the corporate gets to know the additional features to the clients and remains up to date. IMPLEMENTATION PLAN: The new marketing campaign should be implemented from the first week of December as it is the peak season of vacation in most of the areas. The company should mean while prepare and improve the existing website with the new and exciting ideas to appeal more customers. However the plan if get successful continued to the rest of the part of the year. IMPLEMENTATION ACTIVITY: Our business marketing strategy can be implemented from the first week of December. However the following factors must be considered before the final implementation. These are: Feasibility. Acceptability. Suitability. 1. FEASIBILITY: Feasibility is concerned with whether an organization has the resources and competences to deliver a strategy" (Johnson et al, 2008, p380). When focusing the business corporate customers, with high skilled and service ethics, so to satisfy the customer's demands capabilities and qualified staff is highly required. It will retain our valuable and loyal customers with additional services offered to them. Where as far as attracting new customers are concerned the company need high resources and competences to develop and target new market. The Premier Inn is in a situation to attract new customers by developing new corporate market. Further more the company should focus more on providing the valuable services to their clients with additional new features to new and retained customers. Where as, the company should focus on festivals, exhibitions so that it could create a huge market. 2.ACCEPTIABILTIY: "Acceptability is concerned with the expected performance outcomes of a strategy" (Johnson et al, 2008, p368). The strategy of marketing should be acceptable to the management because it give practical solutions to the company to the develop new market and retain existing one. The strategy is to earn more profit with low investment risk. And the share holders will be more interested to focus more on advertisement rather than investing huge on other areas. Further more the company should also focus on a strategy which is cost effective and brings fruitful results. In this way keeping in view the acceptability, The stake holders will be interested in such a marketing strategy which will is cost effective and highly practical. 3.SUITABILITY: Johnson et al (2008, p366) define that "suitability is concerned with whether a strategy addresses the key issues that have been identified in understanding the strategic position of the organization". The suitability of the three strategic options will be assessed by using the TOWS matrix (Johnson et al, 2008). The marketing strategy which the company focuses now is highly suitable for the management. The management will please to adopt as it is cost effective and focus more on training the staff and staff services rather than on other features. KEY TO SUCCESS: Following are some facts which unveils key to success. These are: The first and foremost factor is to develop ongoing relationships with existing and new clients. The company or management should focus on implementing a strong communication with local and international markets. Identifying and targeting new markets for our services also contribute tremendously towards the success of the company. The continuous and rapid innovation in products and services leads to the growth of the company. PROSPECTING PLAN: The company should also focus on the clients and their class while looking at the client profile. The key is to identify whether the client is corporate and leisure type. If the clients belong to the corporate class then the staff should get the addresses and names and should send the corporate packet to the clients/companies by giving them corporate prices and amenities they can offer. CONCLUSION: The good marketing strategy not only brings high yield for the company but also helps to gain a good repute and helps in retaining long term loyal customers. The quality of service provided is very important to increase customer satisfaction, and if customers satisfy, the opportunities for the repeat purchases will be much more. If so, with no doubt, total sales will increase. Quality employees are the most important element to guarantee quality service. With fully analysis and understanding of external and internal environment, the performances of Ibis will be better if it implement strategies well which requires attention on different elements. REFRENCES: A. V. Seaton, M. M. Bennett 1996, THE MARKETING OF TOURISM PRODUCTS, CONCEPTS, ISSUES AND CASES Publisher: Cengage Learning. Arch G. Woodside, Drew Martin 2008, TOURISM MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS BEHAVIOR AND STRATEGY Publisher: CABI. Bob Brotherton 2003, THE INTERNATIONAL HOTEL AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY STRUCTURE, CHARACTERISTICS AND ISSUES. Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann. Cathy H. C. Hsu, Thomas F. Powers. 2001, MARKETING HOSPITALITY Publisher: John Wiley & Sons. Christopher P. 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