Rekindling the Interest in InterContinental Hotel-Holiday Inn - Essay Example

The InterContinental Hotel-Holiday Inn has noted that its esteemed customers are departing and finding comfort in budget hotels or more luxurious hotels. This has necessitated the establishment of a marketing communications plan aimed at rekindling the interest of the customers who have deviated their loyalty to others in hotels (Kenneth & Baack 67). For this to happen the marketing and advertising team have to establish the internal and external causes of the customer's deviation of loyalty then find a plan to reverse this process in a manner that will benefit both the hotel and its customers.
Situation Analysis
A SWOT analysis was conducted and the following was ascertained: the strengths of the hotel related to the predicament included; it is among the units of the third most dominant hotel chain in the globe and the most important strength is that the hotel has an unsurpassed marketing and advertising team and vast pool of resources. This gives the hotel an added advantage in the cutthroat competition. The weakness is that the expendable funds had been already allocated to another project thus leaving the marketing communications plan with a limited budget. The opportunity that presented itself is that the city where the hotel is located was recently made the headquarters of an international body and that meant that a lot of foreign dignitaries would be coming to the city and this was a big potential market for the hotel. Finally, the threat was that the rival hotels were really stiffening the competition and to add salt to the injury even more hotels of the same kind were being established.
Alternatives
The team came up with three different sets of solutions to counter the predicament that the hotel had suddenly found itself in. the first alternative was to change the format of the hotel's rooms and facilities so that the hotel could have the ability to accommodate the customers who want a budget accommodation and those who want a luxurious experience. This would be a good strategy for getting customers who want to save a buck and get good accommodation and those who want to spend an extra buck to get an extremely luxurious experience. It would also enable the hotel to get back the customers it had lost for either of the reasons stated above. However, the trick would be to craft an advertisement of this strategy in a manner that wouldn’t drive away from the customers because the advertisement pastes a picture of the hotel either as cheap or extremely expensive or a contradiction of both.
Creating a new way to bring back the customers who had deviated to other hotels by introducing a system of rewarding loyalty was the second plan. This would not only bring old customers back but also introduce a new customer base. The problem in this is that it would limit the profits of the hotel but if well executed the small incentives given to the loyal customers wouldn’t matter because the new customers would improve the profits of the hotel.
The final plan was to tap into the newly established market of foreign dignitaries. The advertisement strategy would be to come to an arrangement with several airline industries so that the hotel could advertise itself to any persons coming to the city from another country. This would give the hotel a head start in getting the foreign market interested in it but this would have a negative impact on the demand of the local market.
Recommendation
The marketing and advertisement committee suggested the best way forward was an execution of alternative two. This is because a proper execution would enable the hotel to achieve the objectives of alternative one and two. Every customer wants free things whether local or foreign. Rewarding loyalty would attract both local and foreign customers and the best thing is that it would attract customers who are regular not seasonal.
Summary Plan
This marketing was aimed at retaining the hotels remaining customers, getting back to the ones who had deviated and finally getting a new breed of regular customers both local and foreign. The marketing communications objectives included creating awareness of a new type of market, changing the attitude of the customers who don’t view the hotel as what they want and finally to remind the customers who have deviated of the benefits they can get if they associate with the hotel. The target market was both local and foreign customers who would frequently need the services of the hotel, not the seasonal ones.