Promotional Campaign of a Premier Inn - Essay Example

and Section # of INTRODUCTION Premier Inn is the largest and fastest growing hotel brandin the United Kingdom. It has 578 hotels which house more than 40,000 rooms altogether across the United Kingdom and Ireland. The hotel has made its reputation as the largest hotel chain in the UK and is offering a wide variety of services to its clients’. The salient features of the hotel are its suites with attached baths, TV access with Freeview and WiFi internet access. Other features include a bar and a restaurant, which are either located inside or adjacent to the hotel premises. Just to make a point that they are the largest hotel brand in the service industry they offer client’s a money back guarantee that is termed as “Good Night Guarantee”, which covers for the rooms, hospitality, service and the overall experience at the hotel (Premier Inn, 2009). The hotel offers a lot of packages to its clients’. The most noticeable ones’ are the 2 for 1 package where a customer pays for the rent for one individual but can accommodate two, additionally the kids are free. Then there is the park and fly package, which includes a nights stay, car parking facilities and Grab & Go Breakfasts. Another important offering to the clients is the premier offer that allows people to stay at the hotel for as low as £ 29. This cheap accommodation is only provided to customers if they plan and book their stay online at least 21 days prior to their arrival. Throughout the text, we will focus on the premier offer and will describe ways in which it can be re-launched in a very effective manner. PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN Objectives The objectives of the promotional campaign are focused around the increasing the brand value. There are several factors which can be used to increase the brand value. The first one is building awareness of the offer in the mind of the target market. In order to sell a service it is of utmost importance to reach out to the customers effectively and portray to them exactly what is on offer. Then, the company should focus on creating consumer interest and providing information through easy and well communicated channels. Another important objective of the campaign is to stimulate the demand; the right promotion can drive customers to make a purchase. Finally, the most important objective of the promotional effort is to reinforce the brand name (Know This, 2009). Promotion should not be viewed as an effort to incur a onetime sales but it should be an effort that promotes the brand. The brand value and brand loyalty will reap long term benefits and hence the effort and the cost associated with the promotional campaign should aim to increase the brand value and loyalty. Target Audience The target audience for this offer is varies into different segments. Since, the offer is also valid in the holiday season near Christmas; it is a good offering for the small families that visit other places during the holidays. On the other hand, it is also a very viable offer for a businessman who has to travel on designated routes on designated times, for example a sales manager who has to travel to all the cities under his domain. Similarly, it is also suitable for tourists who intend to visit places for a short time and seek to spend most of their time visiting new places. Hence, the target audience ranges from teenagers to families. Budget The budget for the campaign should be related to the total revenue. Hence, the budget should be a specific percentage of the revenue. The budget this campaign will be 5% of the total revenue and will be allocated across the different advertising techniques used for creating awareness amongst the consumers. According to the Whitbread statements releases in 2009, the total revenue for the year 2008-2009 is £ 555.1 million (Interim Results, 2009). Hence, the budget for the year for the campaign will be £ 27.8 million approximately. Programme The campaign will employ different strategies to ensure that maximum exposure is obtained. For this reason, different modes of information delivery networks will be employed. Since, advertisement is the premier source of creating awareness amongst the consumers; the company will focus on using newspaper advertisements, magazines, and internet and television commercials. In order to communicate the offering to the target market, specific advertisements will be created for specific mediums. The newspaper advertisements will be most effective as they will offer the service to a wide majority of the public. The advertisement will be designed in a manner that it creates an appeal amongst the masses for the experience they will have at the Premier Inn. The advertisement will appear in the leading newspapers, from time to time so as to maintain the balance in between customer retention and customer fatigue. Special efforts will be made during the holiday season and the frequency of the advertisements will increase during this period. Similarly, the television commercials will boost about the reputation of the hotels, reinforce the brand attributes and values and aim to create a demand for the service by emphasizing on the quality that is provided to the customers. Since, the commercials cannot give out a lot of details of the offering; they will be designed to create user involvement and will help in bringing customers to the website for booking purposes. Internet marketing will also be employed with a focus on advertisement through social media networks such as Facebook. Since, social networks provide the ability to target specific customers, internet advertisement will prove to be one of the most important mediums for advertisement. Apart from the social networking websites, advertisements will also appear on popular websites and instant messenger advertisements. As a result the company will try and reach out to customers using every possible medium. The promotion will not only focus on bombarding the market with the offer but also strive to stimulate the demand by portraying the overall experience of the Premier Inn hotels. Testing the campaign The campaign will be tested by employing it in certain cities initially and in other cities later. When the campaign will run in certain cities the sales of the previous terms will be compared with the sales in the current term. Risk and mitigation plans will be formulated according to the results of the initial tests. The advantage of not airing the campaign in the entire region at once will be that it will give the company a good estimate of the conditions during the promotional phase, while the results of the cities which will be subjected to the campaign will determine the success or failure of the campaign. Other testing measures include conducting recall tests with selected audience members so as to check the efficiency of the advertising effort. Implementation and Evaluation Implementation refers to the campaign being run on full throttle throughout the region. This will mean that the advertising campaign will not only run all parts of the United Kingdom but also in Ireland, while the Internet marketing will reach the entire world. The evaluation of the campaign will be done on the basis of the amount of sales that it generated and on the basis of the value added to the brand name. Apart from the sales, which will be evident by the accounting books, the evaluation will be done based on the objectives identified earlier. Hence, during evaluation the company will estimate the level of awareness created by the promotional effort, the amount of user involvement and interest (by monitoring the daily traffic on the website) and whether the information provided to customers was adequate and helped them to differentiate the hotel from other hotel chains. Similarly, during evaluation the company will also try to find out what reinforcement was done by the marketing effort. They will seek to determine if there are any positive reinforcements because of the advertising campaign. Did they succeed in occupying the top spot in the mind of the consumer? CONCLUSION Premier Inn is one of the most successful hotel businesses in the United Kingdom but even the most successful of business need to re-launch a product at some point in time. Similarly, Premier Inn re-launched its offer of £29 per night if one got the dates booked 21 days before the intended date of stay. The campaign for the re-launch of the service offering focused on targeting different segments of people during different times of the year. The offer was communicated to the target market by using different mediums of advertisement the most important ones’ being the newspapers, television commercials, internet and magazines. Evaluation of the effort was done on the basis of different tests which included the effect of the advertisement on sales and the brand name. BIBLIOGRAPHY Interim Results, 2009, Whitbread Interim Results 2008-2009. Last accessed 25/12/09 (On-line) url http://online.hemscottir.com/ir/wtb/pdf/Interim_Res_Pres141008.pdf Know This, 2009, Types of Promotion Activities. Last accessed 25/12/09 (On-line) url http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/promotion-decisions/types-of-promotion-objectives/ Premier Inn, 2009, About Us. Last accessed 25/12/09 (On-line) url http://www.whitbread.co.uk/about_us.cfm?id=about_us Read More