Contemporary Issues Of The Hotel Industry Essay

A brand is a powerful tool, especially in the hotel industry where services are intangible. Many hotels of the 21st century have made branding one of their top most priority with the realisation that hotel branding helps to set them apart from their competitors and create a firm customer base. Branding creates brand recognition, brand preference, increase customer satisfaction and most importantly, customer loyalty.

For instance, in the hospitality industry, the Hilton brand symbolises high-end properties, elevated quality of service and a unique guest experience. Brand name and brand image are essentially two factors that differentiate companies which operate in the same industry and market. Therefore, the brand name must be unique. Hotel companies like the Hilton have established strong national brands and seek to use them globally with an intention of increasing profits. Once its established as a global brand, the company has successfully created an international image that can lead to increased efficiency through branded marketing efforts and cost savings on a much larger scale. Nowadays with an increase in international travel, the competition among international hotel corporations is becoming a lot more competetive. Those tourists that travel to foreign countries tend to stay in one of the known hotel brands and their standardised quality of service. Hotel chains are motivated to maintain a high rate of global expansion as a key marketing strategy of creating brand loyalty (King,

In today’s market whether it is shopping for a vacation spot or purchasing tangible goods the consumer is one thing that never changes. Research tends to support brand equity and brand loyalty. In choosing a vacation, spot customer not only wants the facility to meet their needs they want it to exceed their expectations, none the less for the best price. Branding within the hotel industry is no different. Consumers look for key risks, perceived benefits and costs when making their purchases. Through all the ways, that tourist can book hotels and read prior reviews on where they are, going to stay the decision is, usually, made before the trip. With the case of Peaceful Rest Motor Lodge, there are

Nations Hotel Corporation is one of the reputed USA based hotel company, with an international presence in 15 countries worldwide. Hospitality industries are quiet competitive in nature and today’s success rule of hospitality includes knowledge, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency which provides pleasure of stay and departure to their guests. Any addition or subtraction in these components can increase or decrease the rating of any organization. Nations Hotel with 98% brand awareness and 72% as customer satisfaction ratio were still far from the race of preferred choice amongst the customers. Hence there, arose a need to

For my luxury brand marketing analysis I choosed the Four Season Hotels chain, as on my mind it is one of the most successful and well-known hotel chain, providing 5 star service all around the world.

The hotel industry is a very hard industry to enter into, due to one of the biggest obstacles, which is brand recognition. Right now there are a few large hotel chains that make a large footprint in the market. It is hard for a new entrant to come into the industry and compete with these large hotel chains without bringing something new to the table. Many large chains in the industry dominate the industry due to economies of scale due to franchising.

Hilton Hotels is one of the biggest players in the US lodging industry. It contributes to about 9% of the total rooms in US lodging market. It has presence in over 78 countries with more than 2500 hotels. Lodging industry is highly capital intensive industry, so to reduce capital expenditure Hilton Hotels opted for self-owned Hotels as well as franchising model with the real estate owners. One of the key features of lodging industry is low switching costs for customers. There is very little margin to differentiate from the major competitors in the industry which include Marriott international, IHG, Accor etc.

Brand strategy is of upmost importance when it comes to customer visualizing a company. Branding is critical to the company as well as the product. The company brand embodies what the company is about,including the product (Hatline, M.D. & Ferrel, O.C., 2014). Branding provides the company with leverage when it tries to enter new markets Whether that be new locations or new product offerings (Douglas, S. P., Craig, C. S., & Nijssen, E. J., 2001).

Delicate consideration of factors pertaining to the internal and external environment, are a necessity in executing Hyatt’s ultimate goal of “being the preferred brand”. Internal and external environments are factors that may be within or beyond the control of the firm. Theses factors influence the direction, action, structure, and internal process of an organization. The operating, industry, and remote environments are sub-environments that are associated to a firm’s environment (Pearce and Robinson, 2013). Its associates, guests, and owners through its presence in each community it is located in impact Hyatt’s environments.

In 2000, Unilever decided to reduce 1,600 brands down to 400 and then select a small number of them to serve as “Masterbrands”. One of the reasons to have fewer brands is to decrease control issues. It is harder to manage so many brands, especially when each one has its own particularities. As Deighton pointed, Unilever’s brand portfolio had grown in a relatively laissez-faire manner. In other words, the company’s brands were created without large interference.

The corporate branding strategy will create a sort of umbrella under which all the properties of the company will fall, thus sharing the same quality level in the customer’s perception. Moreover a strong corporate brand will ease the company identification and potentially increase the number of new guests through word of mouth, thus enabling the company to gain a bigger market share. Nevertheless the implementation of such a strategy will necessarily involve big costs and a structural change in the organization. Its culture, the way in which advertising is done, the facilities and supplies in each resorts, the way in which management operates will have to be adapted to the new branding strategy. Furthermore undertaking this action may let down some valuable customers who are particularly affectionate to a resort and may be afraid that it will lose its unique and individual features. Plus it might also disappoint some skilled hotel managers which may feel threatened in their autonomy and potentially leave the company. Retraining the whole body of employees to adapt to the new strategy may be expensive and time consuming as well.

Branding is a tool to make the goods of one producer different from another producer (Keller, 2003). Carroll (2008) asserts that branding is a sign of quality, and it is helpful to increase

A lot of business travellers want to stay in well known hotels like Mariott or Hilton. Only 16% want to stay in individual hotels. So for the industry it is important to have a very good reputation. Of course the people try to get the best price for a room and most hotels have company rates which are below the normal rack rate. Also important for a booking is the location of the hotel and the bonus programs. For 26% of the guests Airline milage is important. So the hotels have to work with airline companies and they want special conditons as well.

Marriott is a multi brand company with a Global Portfolio that providing lodging that fit within many market segments. This report will discuss briefly Marriott’s Portfolio of hotels, what they do, briefly examine a number of their key marketing strategies and examine how they are implemented, measured and ask the question does this make them market leaders?

The organization has explicitly kept this advantageous environment over other organizations by improving its service capacity. Additionally, the organization ensures that it stays ahead of its rivals by engaging in research and development that focuses on luxury products and markets analysis. The Ritz-Carlton hotel uses data from its research to predict the future of the industry; therefore able to dictate what and how the market will trend in the foreseeable future. Another factor that keeps the organization’s advantage over its rivals is that while rivals tend to become a hotel brand in the industry, Ritz-Carlton has rather position itself to be a leader and lifestyle brand that constantly develop new properties and ensure that customers live the culture of the hotel. The final factor that has kept the advantage of the organization intact is the culture of trust that exists between the management and employees. The leadership of the hotel lives and communicates the organization’s value to its employees who in turn satisfy customers in a way that they often anticipate a return visit. These are some of the reasons that the Ritz-Carlton hotel continued advantageous environment over its rivals has persisted in the hotel and resort industry (Reiss,