Marketing in Hospitality Industry (Research Paper Sample)

MARKETING IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

(Name)
(Course)
(Institution)
(Professor’s Name)
18th October, 2008.
Introduction
The marketing section outlined the hotel target market to be the corporate market. Advertising was found to be little effective so initiative was taken to research why and it was found that the wrong mediums were used for specific promotions. Advertising became more effective then after. The section then touched on the mediums used and why it was used for a particular promotion. Basically, newspapers are the management’s preference for advertising because most of the public reads a newspaper hence the promotion would reach a large number of audiences. Also copywriters can usually prepare newspaper ads quickly and at a reasonable cost, property can reach their target almost daily. The hotel also used customer and staff surveys from the public relations agency to improve itself.
Marketing
Target Market
The Blue Ribbon’s major target market focuses on corporate customers. The hotel’s marketing strategies focus on current customers’ need, level of satisfaction, conference facilities as well as extra business facilities. Corporate buyers behave differently from customers. Therefore, Blue Ribbon Hotel developed its business strategy that focuses on service.
Advertising Effectiveness
The Blue Ribbon hotel never failed to advertise every month as management believed that advertising plays a big roll in increasing sales. Advertising has many advantages for a business such as improve long term profits by increasing sales, increasing the hotel’s image index, increasing market awareness, and influence consumers.
However, only few of the hotel’s advertisements were effective as the management did not know what media was best for some products. It is important to carefully choose a media when advertising so to effectively communicate the message to the targeted audience. Because of this, management finally bought a report to review the effectiveness of their advertising. Subsequently the advertising effectiveness increased and sales increased along with it
Choice of Media
Corporate
Except for the third quarter, where the corporate market demand is only 25%, the hotel used ‘Business press’ to reach out to the corporate market to promote both weekday and weekend rooms. As mentioned earlier in section 2.1, the hotel’s focus is on the corporate market hence management chose the business press to make sure as many corporate customers knew about the Blue Ribbon hotel.
Leisure
The major advertising medium used to capture the leisure market during the third quarter was the Sunday National Newspaper. Newspapers are the management’s preference for advertising because most of the public reads a newspaper hence the promotion would reach a large number of audiences. Also copywriters can usually prepare newspaper ads quickly and at a reasonable cost, property can reach their target almost daily. The management team learnt from that people had more time to flip through their newspapers during the weekend compared to weekdays where consumers just wanted to read the news and filtered the advertisements from their attention.
Conference
For the conference facilities Blue Ribbon hotel focus on direct sales force. The sales message can be varied according to the motivations and interests of each prospective customer. Also, when the buyer has question, the salesperson can offer detail explanation the product. Furthermore, salesperson works more effective than other forms of promotion in obtaining a sale and achieve satisfied customer.
Meals
Meals were advertised almost every month for 3 years because food and beverage made up a third of the hotel’s total revenue. The management team used the local weekly newspaper for the same reasons mentioned above.
Others
Weddings were only briefly marketed twice in the high seasons period in a year. The hotel advertised weddings because it was having a promotion and decreased the price to only $50 per head.
Tours were seldom promoted but management did when the leisure market demand high and needed to increase occupancy for...