A Service Marketing Mix: Holiday Inn - Essay Example

A Service Marketing Mix: Holiday Inn Introduction The service marketing mix entails an adjustment of the traditional 4Ps of product, price, promotion, and place to compensate for the same factors by adding three more Ps namely, process, physical experience, and people. Still, the 3Ps of a service matrix also address the product matrix Ps. A service such as that offered at Holiday Inn is not tangible. Holiday Inn specialises in the products and services in the hospitality industry. Applying extended 3Ps Process The selected business strategy guides the use of the process component of marketing mix. The hotel strives to maintain the process of offering services in the premium category through ways that remain luxurious. All the outlets run their businesses 24/7 as opposed to what other institutions and players in the industry do. Definitely, providing accommodation service through any other system is questionable. The marketing process applied by the hotel justifies its quest to remain competitive in the industry and business. The process of marketing Holiday Inn starts with a decision defining the position of the hotel would be products, and services that would go on sale (Jerome 21). The visualized types of clients also appear at the initial stages of designing a marketing process. Essential marketing process includes creating awareness as of the hotel and its services and products as igniting the demand for the services and products offered at the hotel. They essentials help in meeting the set goals as well as gaining a competitive advantage in the market against other players. The growth of electronic marketing is one of the most influential, and essential patterns in the field of information and communication technology as well as marketing and business. The trend remains part of these fields over the past ten to twenty years. E marketing continues to revolutionize ways through which businesses carry out their promotional activities. The development of social media platforms provides the possibility to expand the manner in which business organizations and their interaction with consumers in future business environment. This discourse delves in to the analysis of the influence of e marketing on the business environment and the entire business as well. In carrying out the evaluation, the paper follows three comprehensible parts. Defining the concept of electronic marketing is in the first section the discourse giving room for evaluating ways through which e marketing contributes to the efforts by business institutions reaching their target market segment. Finally, the author of the paper outlines some significant merits and demerits of e marketing. Holiday Inn puts into effect a promotion strategy that puts into perspective different concepts of the promotion mix. The hotel’s major components of promotion are public relations, advertising, sales promotion, as well as personal selling. Expert in marketing define advertising as a negotiated channel of communication, paid for by the initiator of the communication from a specific source, structured to convince the receiver to undertake a certain action either in present time or in future. Holiday Inn runs the slogan, ‘Go Everywhere by Staying at Holiday Inn.’ The slogan passes across the marketing message of the giant hotel as a global brand while at the same time keeping a high-level of quality in all the outlets. A specific group of components carry the marketing message contained in the advertising promotional strategy including adverts in magazines and newspapers preferred at senior management levels. The level brings together senior professionals and managers. Such channels include Fortune, Forbes, The Economist, as well as Financial Times among others. Broadcast advertisements also facilitate the marketing message as coined by Holiday Inn. It takes place in few selected channels. Public Relations constitute a planned goodwill designed for sustainability with the aim of establishing and managing mutual understanding between the hotel and the clients. The definition as embraced by Holiday Inn borrows a lot from that provided by The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPD). Simply, the hotel relates with its clients and the public as a whole defines public relations (Gronroos 60). The hotel manages its public relations through communication with various parties among them employees, clients, as well as other public and private institutions. Specifically, Holiday Inn uses delivery of offline and online press releases regularly. Furthermore, the hotel communicates using newsletters with business stakeholders. The most effective platform used by Holiday Inn for engaging the public is its website. The other aspect of promotion is personal selling that entails hotel representatives meeting potential clients through different channels with the sole purpose of making a sale. According to the management at Holiday Inn, personal selling has many advantages including increasing chances of retaining a customer. Others are the likelihood of maintaining long-term customer relationships after establishment and applying interpersonal skills to manage the sale. However, the hotel does not the method often because of some of the expenses that come with the system. Sometimes the hotel spends much money to carry out the personal selling yet the representative meets fewer people. Rarely, do you find the company applying the personal selling promotion mix (Gronroos 19). On the other hand, sales promotion refers to efforts by the hotel to convince clients to buy services and products by introducing incentives. It is popular at Holiday Inn, the same way it is popular at the industry level. Holiday Inn uses this promotion mix extensively. T-honours reward-based programme offers discount vouchers to clients and are available on the hotel website. It is in addition to other deals available on the website as well with the aim of increasing revenues. Physical Evidence The tangibility of services offered at Holiday Inn and the physical results generated from selling services at the hotel define physical evidence in detail. Physical evidences at Holiday Inn are luxurious exterior and interior designs, the customer relations experience when receiving services, as well as addition of tangible goods in the process of offering the service (Gronroos 63). Physical evidence revolves around the place of delivering the service. The greatest influence is on the outlets. It is makes the difference between Holiday Inn and other competitors in the hotel and hospitality industry. The company uses physical evidence to charge premium prices on its clients in the process of establishing a positive experience. The condition of the room for instance, determines the price of the bed for all room offered by Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn divides its pricing strategy into four broad categories falling into penetration, economy, premium, and skimming pricing strategies. The four constitute the pricing strategy matrix. Defining the concept of internet marketing is core to understanding ways through which e-marketing influences businesses as well as explaining the relationship between business organizations and their clients. Therefore, vivid definition of the ideas of internet marketing appears first in this discourse. Scholars among them Patricelli hold that it is appropriate to apply the terminology e marketing in referring to the broad range of internet-related operations and activities. The activities consist of consumer communication, web development and promotion, newsgroup adverts, and electronic mail marketing and many more. Nonetheless, the terminology continues to develop enormously over time and due to the growth and development of technology and presently, it incorporates various activities with the application of the social media to reach the target audience being one of the most essential features Under the economy pricing strategy, Holiday Inn offers primary features and characteristics to clients with low budget. The hotel offers high quality services and products at a low price compared to competitors in the market with the aim of increasing the market share under the penetration pricing strategy. On the other hand, skimming works in the opposite direction in the manner that services and products reach the clients in the market. Here, Holiday Inn offers services and products at higher prices compared to other players in the market (Dixon and Blois 103). The hotel offers such high prices to exclusive services and products with the highest quality in the market. The hotel offers premium pricing when charging high prices for services and products considered by the management as having premium quality besides other additional features and characteristics. Generally, the hotel applies the premium pricing strategy. Holiday Inn only offers four star and five star services as well as rooms. This enables the hotel to charge clients premium prices. Their services are beyond core products. Additionally, Holiday Inn sells a group of intangible benefits including high status, sense of success, and luxury. The distribution strategy at Holiday Inn aims at enhancing the availability, accessibility, and affordability of the services and products offered by the hotel to clients when, where, and how they require them. The hotel fully uses the advancements in Information and Communication Technology in its distribution strategy. First, the hotel uses its website effectively for distribution of services. The hotel supplies various capabilities and features offering real-life help to clients including booking a room, planning for weddings and events, booking airport pick-ups and scheduling meetings. Additionally, Holiday Inn uses applications available on mobile phones and android platforms as well. The social media is another platform adopted by the hotel to distribute services and products efficiently. The official Facebook Page for the hotel for instance, already has more than six hundred thousand likes (Constantinides 71). People who like the page receive regular updates on the latest news and events regarding the hotel. Moreover, the hotel offers subsidised advertisements services through the website and Facebook page. The internet offers a range of conveniences making it the most suitable element for the distribution strategy. Holiday Inn customers get opportunities to purchase hotel service and products in advance within the shortest time. People Various groups of people play an important role for the success of business at Holiday Inn. People with direct influence on the success of the hotel fall into three categories namely, employees, clients, and suppliers. Reasons that make clients a significant group to the hotel are clear. Among others, the hotel targets various customers from business travellers to those seeking leisure (Carman 49). The biggest challenge is for the hotel to satisfy all sets of clients. It is important to mention that needs and wants of these people change over time. Employees constitute a classified group with tremendous influence on service outcome and have direct impact on profit levels achieved by the hotel. The hotel depends on various suppliers besides the delivery of services by employees of suppliers. Some of them influence the performance of the hotel indirectly. It is a component of the marketing mix evaluating systems applied in delivering the service. Efficient and clearly defined processes should underpin all services at Holiday Inn. It helps in eliminating confusion by promoting a consistent service. Processes define ways of doing things, means of doing them, and the precise timeframe of carrying out the roles. Holiday Inn runs a number of hotels in addition to other related services including gambling, accommodation, and entertainment with the aim of capturing each opportunity in the market. Of those areas, only gambling is new to Holiday Inn (Bennett 154). Holiday Inn offers accommodation services as the main category of it business operations through the resorts, hotels, as well as apartment hotels. The process of selling hotel rooms to clients stands as the main source of revenue generation for Holiday Inn. The hotel also offers various other products and services that increase the level of income including bars, restaurants, spa, smaller shops, travel desk, laundry services, banquet halls, and business centre. Division of rooms brings the highest income to the hotel compared to other services and products. The hotel divides products into three levels (Bennet 96). The levels are facilitating, core, and supporting products. The hotel defines core products as the primary form of a product. Simply, the hotel offers core products for clients to purchase. Hotel rooms remain the core product of Holiday Inn business. Clients pay to stay in for a specified time. Additional services and products are peripheral services on top of the core product that Holiday Inn offers. Peripheral services help the business to gain a competitive advantage in the market. On the other hand, facilitating services constitute services that complement the process of consumption of core products by clients. Holiday Inn offers a group of popular services referred to as facilitating products among them bars, customer services, and restaurants. Additional facilitating products are online reservation facilities. Supporting products are extra services and products offered by Holiday Inn to secure a competitive advantage in the industry of other players in the market. It is possible because they increase the value of core services and products. Holiday Inn runs various services supporting products (Banting, & Ross 116). They include among others free newspapers, 24/7 room service, concierge services, and magazines for travellers. The final product offered by Holiday Inn is the augmented product. They entail the benefit offer by Holiday Inn bringing together peripheral services and core product. At Holiday Inn, augmented products include luxurious rooms, discounts to registered members, high-class restaurants, exterior designs, as well as a relaxed hotel environment. Conclusion The use of sale promotion offers Holiday Inn practical advantages through increase in the levels of income as well as meeting use of rooms largely. However, analysts warn against using aggravated sales promotions in the hotel industry (where Holiday Inn belongs) because of the risk associated with compromising with the value of the brand. It could take place in a manner that promoting sales and the likelihood of using brand services in cheaper prices entails the potential to compromise the degree of exclusiveness attached to the Holiday Inn brand. The management at Holiday Inn considers this aspect therefore, uses sales promotion occasionally as it offers short-term advantages. Bibliography Banting, Peter; Ross, Randolph E. (2010)" Springer Link - Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Customer satisfaction in hospitality, Volume -11-12. Bennet, P.D. (2000). Dictionary of Marketing Terms, Chicago: American Marketing Association. Bennett, A.R. 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Jerome D, (2009). “How Advertising Performance Depends on Other Marketing Factors,” Journal of Advertising Research, 2 (March), 2-10.Kenya Associations of Hotels, (2008) Annual membership drive up-date 2007-2008. Read More