Opportunities, Challenges, and Impact of Digital Marketing on the Hospitality Industry

Digital Marketing
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Task 1 ..............................................................................................................................................3
Opportunities, challenges and the impact of digital marketing on the hospitality industry........3
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................6
Digital tools, platforms and channels used by various organisations.........................................6
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................9
Plan for organising digital marketing activities to support Hilton's initiatives of building
multi-channel capabilities in luxury business division and active holiday seekers....................9
Task 4.............................................................................................................................................12
Methods to monitor, evaluate and measure the effectiveness of digital marketing..................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14
2

INTRODUCTION
Digital marketing can be defined as the process of marketing products and services of a
company using various digital technologies through mobile applications, Internet, display
advertising or any other mediums (Buchanan and et. al., 2018). There are endless options of
carrying out branding for a company through digital marketing including social media, website,
email, video etc. Digital marketing not only makes it easier to create engagement and brand
awareness but also helps in converting new potential buyers into permanent customers who are
loyal to it. This will lead to the customers talking and sharing information about the company's
products. Hilton is a hospitality brand that is globally recognised for providing exceptional
services and a lasting experience to its customers. The brand was founded in 1919 by Conrad
Hilton and is now an international name having nearly 15 different brands across various
markets. The report explains the various opportunities, challenges and impact of the digital
environment in the hospitality industry with a critical assessment of the various digital tools and
channels used by various organisations in the industry. A plan is also provided in order to
organise various activities of digital marketing to help the organisation in building multi channel
capabilities with an evaluation of various digital marketing methods effectively.
MAIN BODY
Task 1
Opportunities, challenges and the impact of digital marketing on the hospitality industry
Digital marketing can be defined as the process of marketing of goods as well as services
by using various digital technologies and involves various tools, channels as well as platforms.
Today, digital marketing is considered to be one of the most powerful forms of marketing which
is a cost effective way of marketing businesses. There are many benefits of digital marketing
such as a digital campaign is easy to measure and adjust to (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019) .
It helps in reaching out to customers globally with a small amount of investment and has low
cost attached to it. Also, there are improved rated of conversion as the customers are only a few
clicks away from buying something.
Opportunities
Evolving technologies in the market have made it necessary for the organisations to adopt
the process of digital marketing in order to sustain in a highly competitive and dynamic
3

environment. There are several opportunities that digital marketing has in the market today
which are explained below -
 Expanding social media presence – In today's era, social media is the go-to platform for
people who use internet (Critchlow and et. al., 2016). Digital marketing helps in
expanding the presence of a brand online as social media is a place where people can
share their memories of holidays and tours etc. This holds true in the case of hospitality
firms like Hilton as by opting various techniques it has been able to create a global reach
worldwide.
 User experience – Adopting and implementing various digital marketing methods help
organisations in providing their customers with a lasting user experience. It has been
observed that people who have a good experience on the social media pages as well as
the websites of a particular hospitality organisation, are more likely to make another
purchase for the same since the customers turn to internet to gather information regarding
something specific.
Challenges
Digital marketing is all about market products and services by using the digital
technologies with help of internet, mobile apps and display advertising to reach at large no. of
consumer base. In respective report which conduct study on the presence of Hotel Hilton in
digital world and some challenges faced by them during that process are as follows:
How to track and monitor the multitude of different devices used by customers:
For an organisation it is very much important to track and monitor the multitude of
various devices availed by the consumers that shows the factors contribute in success of them
(Kingsnorth, 2019). In context of Hilton they present digitally in marketplace to reach at large
no. of consumer base. Measuring effectiveness of digital campaign is an integral part of the
engaging, exciting marketing. It is a complex process to measure the success of digital marketing
as in competitive world accessibility on various platforms are very much obligatory and
consumers also uses multiple devices as per their need. so it create problem for Hilton to record
their presence on every digital platform and track consumers experiences on various devices.
Shift from brands and suppliers to customers and their experience of the brand:
In today's competitive world organisation majorly focusing on the enhancing consumers
experience rather than brands and their suppliers (Hanlon, 2019). In context of Hilton they
4