Service Marketing & Relationship Marketing: A Case Study of Accor Hotel

Service Marketing & Relationship
Marketing
Accor Hotel

Table of Content
Brief Introduction.......................................................................................................................2
Flow Chart-Service Blueprint....................................................................................................2
Front Stage Flow Chart..............................................................................................................3
Back Stage Flow Chart...............................................................................................................4
Significance of Service Encounter.............................................................................................4
Managerial Implication..............................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

Brief Introduction
Accor group of Hotel is one of the pioneers of the hotel industry which has over 4500 hotel
under its wings and employees over 250,000 people. The group functions under different
brands such as Banyan Tree, Novotel, Pullman, Mercure and many others which significantly
boast its standing in the hospitality sector (Li, Fang & Huan, 2017). Accor group is
considered to be a remarkable brand which has been pushing the envelope of service offering
to its esteemed clientele by its innovative and creative practices. Services in hospitality sector
plays a pivotal role, thus brand engage them to create a service blueprint and function
according to the blueprint created (Ren, 2018).
Service marketing emerged out of nowhere in the 1980s, when a lot of companies were
creating more or less undifferentiated product, thus, service marketing rose to the occasion to
help the brand differentiate them. Service marketing is an entirely new concept, quite
dissimilar to product marketing. The reason for the same is due to element of intangibility,
inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. Service encounter on the other hand can be
understood as the transactional interaction a customer has with the service employees or the
representatives. The reflective essay here will focus on the Accor group of Hotels and create
a flow chart of its back-stage and front end operations. The essay will further provide an
analysis of these operations and the significance of service encounter. Towards the end, the
essay will also discuss some of the implication for the manager working in the service
industry(Lovelock & Patterson, 2015).
Flow Chart-Service Blueprint
A Flow Chart or a Service Blueprint can be understood as a technique which was initially
created and designed for service innovation and design, later this flow chart also found great
utility in improving the operational efficiency of the hotel. These can also be seen as pictures
of maps which describe how the service process in the hotel or the service organization is
built up. Flow Chart gives a clear idea of delivery of services which can be further used for
evaluation of services with the objective of improving the operational efficiency
(Gummesson, 2014).