Shangri La London: Azerbaijani Travellers - Case Study Example

Shangri La London - Azerbaijani Travellers Shangri La London - Azerbaijani Travellers Introduction The Shangri-La Hotel is one of themost prestigious hotel in London. Its target population are the middleclass upper people, the politicians, the tourists and the executive managers moving from one place to another for pleasure. It occupancy in one of the tallest buildings in London gives it a limelight ahead. The hotel is located in Shard tower or the London Bridge Tower. This is the tallest building in the City of London. The hotel boast of immense facilities ranging from well-furnished guest suites, a special presidential suite, well contouring comfortable beds, variety of favourite dishes from all cultures across the world and business services. Moreover, the hotel also has a well-equipped gym, music station, swimming pool, sauna and steam (Enz & Siguaw, 1999). The hotel is a host to variety of people from all over the world, including the Azerbaijani. In the recent times, the current management board have intensified the services provision sheet to fight the competitors. The services introduced are travel and transportation, children playing areas, conferencing facilities, increased parking areas, health facility for emergencies and banking services. All this aims at counteracting the rising competition from other hotels providing the same services. Therefore, there is a need to market the facility in the e-market in a bid to win more customers. The hotel receive at least one hundred thousand tourists from Azerbaijani semi-annually (Llamas & Belk, 2011). There has been a noted decline in the number of visitors from the Azerbaijani paying visit to this hotel. Despite the tight measures in visa acquisition and security threats, the hotel management sees it important to market the hotel to these travellers via digital methods. These methods are effective as they reach to a larger population. According to the Euro monitor website, the market size of outbound tourism in London has been on increase for the past five years recording an exponential 15% every year from the Azerbaijani travellers. This demonstrates the untapped tourists population that the hotel can target through digital marketing (Law, Rong, Vu, Li, & Lee, 2011). A study of Azerbaijan’s international tourism departures and arrivals gives us the following; Year Arrivals Departure 2002 576,000 1,141,000 2003 768,000 1,475,000 2004 989,000 1,473,000 2005 693,000 1,830,000 2006 682,000 1,836,000 2007 732,000 1,631,000 2008 1,043,000 2,162,000 2009 1,005,000 2,363,000 2010 1,280,000 3,176,000 2011 1,562,000 3,550,000 Strategic analysis of the hotel The hotel is located in a serene environment, the core business centre of London. There are many people working in the offices in different shifts. These people are well educated and constitute the upper middleclass and the upper class. The hotel targets these people to seek services from them. There are other hotels located in the same environment. They offer similar services through at a different cost and flexibility. Therefore, such environment can offer a good atmosphere for these Azerbaijani travellers. In a bid to cater for the consumers changing demands regarding meals, the hotel is well packed with various diet varieties from different cultures across the world. This ensures that the needs of the tourists are fully addressed. The hotel organization also prompts its success. There is decentralization of activities. All the services in provision are in various departments hence easy to manage the affairs. It is very critical to establish the organization macro and microenvironment to lay out objectives that will receive acceptance from these visitors, hence an acceptance of the services on offer. The hotel has access to and control over its macro environment hence can utilize it in marketing its products and services. This increases the sales services and improves the operations leading to customers reporting increased satisfaction. For this hotel to ensure that its customers report satisfaction to their services, they have to appreciate the consumer needs. The hotel management needs to adopt a system whereby quality products and services are their core aim. A cadre of well professionals who undergo rigorous training before making a contract is in place. This enhances quality meals preparation and servings by cook with rationale. The hotel has a mechanism of promoting its products through the websites, billboards and road shows. Any client hence increasing the knowledge levels regarding the hotel spreads brochures in the hotel across the city. All the services offered in the hotel are on the brochure. Moreover, the prices are affordable and not too high for the target consumers. The location of the hotel itself gives it a more advantage over the other competitors as more tourists comes to the site to view the London City and in the process access the services from the hotel. The cooperation from the staff is reassuring. The online booking program also increases and eases the accessibility to the hotel. The hotel rooms are tidy, clean and well-furnished hence creating a good environment(Poon, Hsiao, & Zuo, 2009). Due to the expanding market demands, the hotel has increased challenges in hiring and placing more staff. The operational costs are high. The recruitment process is also time consuming and expensive to the hotel. There are also uncertain economic trends that affect the income. The government plan to impose heavier taxes on imported goods may cost heavily to the hotel as it also relies on imported goods to cater for different cultures. The consumers are also undergoing a shift in their attitudes, opinions and demands on the hotel products and services. The rapid changes in technology also impose heavily to the hotel, as they have to adopt the most recent technology(Wei, Ruys, van Hoof, & Combrink, 2001). Defining the strategic objectives Strategic objectives aid and act as a channel to achieving the organizational goals. On adoption, the objectives provide greater returns to the organisation. Proper objectives possess the characteristics of being measurable, specific, appropriate, and realistic and time bound. The Shangri-La Hotel needs immediate strategic objectives to cater for the changing demands of the Azerbaijani Travellers. The radical change in the technology also needs immediate intervention. Adoption of these objectives will also act as a motivation and inspiration to the employees who will achieve better results (Ku, Wu, & Lin, 2011). The hotel’s core vision remains to be a word-class hospitality facility that provides the most quality services and facilities in season and out of season. The facility also aims at covering and reaching out to the widest population it can through current and up to date marketing protocols. Innovation and quality service delivery remain the philosophical aspects of the hotel. The facility also aims at ensuring that it remains competitive in the rapidly changing hospitality area. Therefore, to remain competitive the management team have decided to adopt the latest technology in meeting the consumers’ demands and in marketing their products. The use of social media in marketing the organizational products will have great implications to the sale. Most people have an account in either Twitter, Facebook, Myspace or others social sites. These people have access to their accounts for the better part of the day through their internet-enabled phones, laptops or iPad. Formulating a well-updated social account will enable the consumers of the hotel services to unleash out their desires and feelings. It sets out a platform for discussion and those proposals are useful in improving the service delivery. The Shangri-La Hotel’s website needs proper update often. The hotel’s homepage should be appealing to attract more viewers. A person experienced in Information communication Technology should be responsible for this department. The webpage should have a summary of all the services offered in the hotel, the costs incurred in those services, the location of the hotel and any other information beneficial to the target consumer. It is evident that most young people have access to the internet therefore more information deliverance(Chung & Law, 2003). The hotel also needs to target the blogs that experience huge flow of people. In the process of accessing these blogs, the target consumers come across these advertisements therefore increase knowledge about the hotel. Utilization of products promotion also increases the sales and popularity of the hotel. For example, the hotel can adopt the system of awarding those who buy at a certain day. Formulation of the strategies The strategy formulation process comprises the process of choosing the best course of action to achieve specific goals and objectives. The process provides a basic framework to the process to achieve the anticipated results. All the organizational staff needs to express awareness on the organizational goals, objectives, vision and mission. It enables the organization to react to changes that may occur in future be it in terms of marketing, sales, advertising or procurement. It enables the firm evaluate its resources, do comprehensive budgeting, allocate the budgets to various departments and maximize on return on investment(Wei et al., 2001). The development of the strategic plan will enhance the hotel to remain competitive in the rapidly changing business market. The online marketing strategy needs priority. Use of social media, blogging, creation of appealing websites and making online booking more accessible is likely to make the gain an extra advantage. The introduction of this system needs more funding to enhance its functioning within 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition to that, an experienced person should be in charge of this system and monitor it. The consumer remain the epitome of the whole project hence any feedback needs consideration. Product branding is another consideration. The outward appearance of the Shangri-La Hotel should be appealing to the consumer. More variety of food should be present to cater for the population visiting the London City. The hotel should employ a team of marketers with a passion in marketing department. The team is responsible for ensuring that the hotel has proper public relations with the consumers. The marketers should maintain excellent communication skills(Granitz & Greene, 2003). The Shangri-La Hotel has a great potential growth for its market. The new threats to the hospitality industries are continuously cropping in. A desire to adopt a new method of reaching to the consumers is likely to bear much fruits. The firm need to adopt a system of online ordering and delivery. The marketers can deliver the ordered meals to the areas of delivery. The method draws more people who are too busy to come out of their offices(Kelly, Bochynska, Kornman, & Chapman, 2008). Implementing the strategies Measures need to be in place to enhance proper implementation of all the established objectives. Selection of a monitoring and evaluation team is the basis of implementation process. The objectives need evaluation on a monthly basis. The website set up needs an experienced person to monitor it, as well as the social sites created. After the evaluation process, the team needs to communicate the findings and addressing the areas that require immediate change(Horn, 2011). Moreover, a well-updated system should be available to check on the number of visitors from Azerbaijani in a bid to ensure that the marketing efforts are bearing any fruits. Conclusion It is evident that the Shangri-La Hotel as a pinnacle of London business is critical as a good site for relaxation, meeting and conferencing. Instituting measures of marketing it through digital aspects such as websites creation, use of blog posts and social media will further increase awareness among the Azerbaijani travellers. The method is cost effective and likely to bring good results. References Chung, T., & Law, R. (2003). Developing a performance indicator for hotel websites. 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