Marketing Plan Assignment: The Mountain Side Hotel (Research Proposal Sample)

Marketing Plan; The Mountain Side Hotel
Name
Institution
Executive Summary
The Mountain Side Hotel is a five star hotel that has a total of three hundred and twenty five luxury guest rooms and its major specialty is in servicing clients who are in the business and corporate world. The hotel is located in downtown Manhattan New York and serves the business community and visiting clientele in this locality.
The hotels major clients are corporate clients that have been contracted from both the local and international markets and who are within the tourism and travel industry, the information technology sector and the automotive industry. What is key to the success of the hotel is the strategic position in which it is situated and the up-to-date facilities that are provided to their clients within the conference rooms and inside the guest rooms. The repeat businesses that the hotel gets on an annual basis and the high levels of customer loyalty are also factored in the high levels of success the hotel enjoys.
The hospitality industry in the country is currently undergoing a depression because of the restriction the government is making on corporate travel within the country and due to the economic meltdown all over the globe (Bonn, & Forbringer, 2012). However these challenges can be considered to be short to medium term threats, The Mountain Side Hotel has to continue focusing on the delivery of excellent and commendable services that are affordable to its clients. This will be done with intent to establish a long term relationship with customers.
As a strategy to attract more contract customers, rates for hiring rooms and conference facilities have been significantly reduced for a period of twelve months. The survival of the hotel in the current political and economic climate is based on customer loyalty to its brand and repeat corporate and business contracts. Therefore, the hotel brand has to continue delivering on its values and promises.
The intent of this marketing plan is to strengthen the brand that The Mountain Side Hotel has managed to build over years. The plan intends to cover the corporate mission, market analysis, product positioning and differentiation, competitive analysis, marketing strategy and an overview of the competition.
Corporate Connection; Mission Statement
The Mountain Side Hotel is committed to ensuring that its clients have the highest quality of service and standards. The hotel seeks to deliver its promise of quality and value above everything else. The hotel highly values its place in the community and will endeavor at all times to develop relations that protect and respect the environment.
The hotel will at all times strive to create value for all stakeholders while honoring the values entrenched in its brand and encourage its personnel to grow in a loyal and trustworthy environment.
Market research
PEST Analysis
This marketing plan intends to use the “PEST analysis” as the market tool that will help to analyze the external and environmental issues that affect the mountain side hotel.
Political
A stable political environment that has little effect on businesses’ ability to generate revenue is suitable for the hospitality industry (Ong, 2012). However, the current restrictions that the government has placed on corporate and business travel have affected the hotel negatively even though measures are being taken to cushion its effects.
Economic
The current economic recession has had a major impact on the hospitality industry. It has led to the liquidation of smaller business oriented hotels that do not have enough resources and infrastructure to support underperforming sales (Simkin, 2014). Even though the economic situation has began to recover, it will take quite some time before fully lifting all corporate travel policy restrictions and return the travel business back to where it was three to five years ago.
Social
There is an emerging trend that is oriented towards cost effectiveness in business travel and tourism. This trend has made clients to always seek more value for their money. The hotel’s value added differentiation strategy comes into play at this point.
Technological
Some airlines have installed “on board” room reservation systems on their aircrafts. This requires that the hotel integrates such systems in their central reservation system so as to access clients who will make reservations as they travel by air. Integration of such technology is quite costly and will require high investment levels.
Positioning & Product Differentiation
The Mountain Side Hotel has been placed as a five star hotel with its niche being business and corporate clients. This is as a result of the hotel’s dedication to provision of high quality personalized services and also as a result of its strategic position. The focus of the hotel is to offer its clients added value and to differentiate itself in its levels of personalized service. The hotel offers an experience that values and respects its clients and truly appreciates their business.
By providing high quality personalized services and maintaining state of the art facilities, the hotel has managed to differentiate itself from competitors with respect to overall brand strategy. This approach has been successful in securing multiple repeat businesses.
Competitive Analysis
SWOT Analysis
This analysis shines light on the organizations internal strengths and weaknesses and also highlights the opportunities and threats that the hotel faces externally (Yasin, & Yavas, 2015). The hotel intends to work and improve on its areas of weakness and also undertakes to come up with contingency plans to counter the threats it is potentially facing. The hotel is also leveraging its organizational strengths with the aim of capitalizing external opportunities that may come to pass.
Strengths
The major strength of the mountain side hotel is its personnel. The hotel has pride in the level of diversity of skills that are within the staff and the management. The team is specialized, experienced, well trained and most importantly, it is proud of the hotel values and they respect and promote these values at all times.
The reputation and the brand of the hotel are another major strength that the hotel possesses. Its reputation for reliability, quality and provision of exemplary services precedes it in the local, corporate, travel and tourism markets. The brand values of the hotel are well represented and they engender loyalty among the new and the existing clients.
The strength of the hotels strong participative culture and its values that are clear and well communicated cannot be over emphasized. The other advantage points that the hotel has include a well placed differentiation strategy and a decentralized structure.
Weaknesses
Although the company posses an exemplary differentiation strategy, it needs to be more clear and well communicated to both the local international market. Another point of weakness within the hotel is the rate of seasonal turnover. This is costly as brings the need for ongoing training and orientation of new employees.
Due to the constant change of technology, the hotel needs to constantly upgrade its facilities. Therefore, guest rooms and conference facilities require constant renovation so as to fit in technical equipments that include laptop links and high speed internet.
Opportunities
The economic recovery in the hospitality industry after a hunch period is a major opportunity to the hotel. This is also attributed to the fact that the hotel does not have any direct competitors within its niche.
The hotel has a long-term well established relationship with its suppliers, thus times of economic difficulties will not affect the presence of supplies. Another major opportunity that the hotel has is the level of dependency that clients have on it. Personalized services and quality delivery has made corporate and businesses to have repeat contracts with the hotel. Also, the luxurious environment that has been created by the hotel cannot be ignored by the clients.
Threats
As much as the hotel enjoys monopoly in its niche, there is the threat of potential entry by competitors with a similar services and brand. Another major threat is from the slowly growing property markets that offer fully furnished apartments that are customized for business activities and are offered at lower rates.
The recovery from the economic recession may take time and thus will affect the profitability of the hotel.
Marketing strategy
Product
By providing high quality personalized services and maintaining state of the art facilities, the hotel has managed to differentiate itself from competitors with respect to overall brand strategy. This approach has been successful in securing multiple repeat businesses.
Price
The hotels pricing strategy has maintained high consistency with its differentiation objective of providing added value at a reasonable price instead of having discounts on its products and services and then devaluing them in the long run.
Placement
The information on the services provided by The Mountain Side Hotel is made available to its clients through advertisements, personal selling, the internet and direct marketing. The channels of delivery that the hotel marketing department uses include international reservation systems and travel agents.
Promotion
Mass communication has been the prime focus of promotion. This has been done through printed advertisements on social media and trade publications, personal selling in the local market and direct mailing to both po...