Strategic Management Company Report - Essay Example

This expansion program made it become the first international hotel brand to have a truly international presence with hotels in Latin America, Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The original goal by PanAm was to assist local entrepreneurs and organisations design, build and operate hotels in important international airway gateway destinations and traffic centres to enrich the international travel experience (InterContinental 2012b). Currently, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts comprises of 169 hotels globally that have a capacity of 57,598 rooms.

It has also been named as the World’s Leading Hotel Brand for three consecutive years (2009 to 2011) by the World Travel Awards, the ultimate travel accolade worldwide (InterContinental 2012a). Also, the company is owned by the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), a mega-corporation that owns five other leading global hotel and resort brands. The other brands owned by IHG are Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites. Given that the InterContinental Hotel is a significant part of the IHG, most of the available research data is presented within the context of the IHG / group.

For this reason, this report too shall evaluate this particular business within the same group context. 2.0. Analysis of the Internal and External environment According to Gillespie (2007) analysis of the macro-environment allows management to get a clearer picture with regards to external factors that are likely to change and which among these will have a greater effect on the future survival, profitability and growth of the organisation. In this document, PESTLE analysis is used to evaluate the macro-environment.

Within the same macro-environment, Porter (2008) argued that there are five forces that determine the structure and profitability of any given industry. For this reason, this paper uses the five forces framework to analyse InterContinental Hotel’s industry structure. This section also evaluates the internal environment of the company using strategic capabilities. 2.1. External environment 2.1.1. PESTLE analysis I. Political factors The InterContinental Hotels are found in over 60 countries across the world.

This represents a diverse geo-political landscape that the company needs to balance. Political factors affect government policies which in turn affect either one or more than one of the five competitive forces that influence an industry’s profitability (Porter 2008). Two key areas that global politics has embraced is offering support for increased international trade and increased interdependence of national economies. This has naturally led firstly to increased business travel and then to leisure travel as the business travellers get exposed to new cultures and tourism sites.

This implies that globalization – which Barnes (2008) referred to as increase in international trade, increase in interdependence of national economies and increase in cross-border social, cultural and technological exchange – indirectly promotes the travel and lodging industries. II. Economic factors Both the Asia-Pacific region and in the United States (US) –