Marketing Strategies and Competitive Advantage: A Case Study of Holiday Inn

Holiday Inn emphasizes on providing full-service restaurants, friendly hotel staff, free breakfast, and high-speed Wi-Fi to attract travelers and families. By doing so, customer loyalty and satisfaction increase. The company also invests heavily in families, with over 52% of revenues earned from this demographic. Holiday Inn uses various marketing strategies like TV, radio, posters, personal relations, digital marketing, and websites to gather attention and increase brand awareness. Despite facing competition from other hotel chains like Carlson Hotels, Marriott, and Hilton, Holiday Inn targets budget customers and families to grow its customer base and revenue.

Critical analysis of the
customers are being target by
Holiday inn in UK

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................4
Main Body..................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................8

Illustration Index
Illustration 1: Marketing Strategy of Holiday Inn......................................................................5
Illustration 2: Gross Revenues of Holiday Inn...........................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Holiday Inn is one of the leading American chains of hotel, launched in 1996 in UK.
The hotel is continuously expanding its business in various region of country. It has around
1,150 hotels with more than 209,122 rooms. The present report is aimed to emphasize on the
situational analysis of target customers of Hotel Inn, UK. Critical evaluation of target market
of hotel affecting the marketing strategies of the hotel. The main aim of report is to target
budget customers and family holiday visitors. Moreover, it will also explain the reason for
choosing target customers.
MAIN BODY
The main guest of the Hotel Inn is 'Contemporary Traveller' and family who value
relationships more than success. As, contemporary customers have their own beliefs and
values, they wanted to feel connected like in a relationship therefore the hotel Inn is
concentrating to provide high quality services and ease ton their guests. The hotel fulfil the
needs and demands of customers by providing them familiarity, reliability and convenience at
maximum level. Moreover, the brand is rich in delivering wide range of customer services,
hospitality and comfort. The main target audience of the hotel is adults in the age group range
from 25 to 35 and men in the age group of 35-54, who are business visitors, travellers and
family. The hotel is targeting new demographics, which will change its marketing strategies.
The price range of hotel is set at moderate level or lower price, so that middle class people
could also make avail its facilities and services (Remaking the Holiday Inn Brand Family.
2010). Moreover, the hotel is also emphasizing to offering excellent services at low price so
that every body can afford them on last minute deals.
Each traveller look for new destinations for travelling and tourism, and for that they
are required luxurious hotel and restaurant with full facilities of free Wi-Fi, best price
services, food quality, guarantee, convenience and other factors (Raju, Bai and Chaitanya,
2014). The Holiday Inn is developing many strategies to bring creative ideas for their
customers in order to avail excellent facilities. Moreover, the hotel is targeting budget
customers which includes predominantly domestic guests who wants limited facility in
cheapest price. As, the presence of number of middle class people or average income level
group in the world in more as compared to the availability of high class people. Due to
availability of large customer-base across the world, mix of business and leisure international
guests, the hotel is continuously focusing to bring forth new opportunities and innovative
ideas regarding their customer services. As per the statement of an author, the Holiday Inn is

also emphasizing on family because, there are more number of people in the family who will
render maximum services and products of hotel due to which revenue of hotel will increases
(Berezina and et. al., 2016.). Moreover, the hotel is availing family holiday packages so that
more people can be attracted. Average income level groups are always keen to look for
discount offers in holidays packages with extra facilities, therefore Holiday Inn is changing
its marketing strategies. It is estimated by an author, that the hotel is required to provide full
service restaurants, friendly hotel staff, free breakfast, free high speed Wi-Fi, flexible meeting
spaces and spacious guest rooms for customers to attract travellers and families (Dev, 2015).
By providing this much facilities, customer loyalty and satisfaction increases. According to
the needs and preferences of customers, services should be rendered, that's why Holiday Inn
is emphasizing on activities and services which saves time, value money and satisfy
customers. It has been argued by many authors that, this concept of was worthy and
thoughtful, but some of them stated that it may increase the cost of hotel (Manning and et. al.,
2015).
It is also stated by an author that Holiday Inn is investing for families on large basis,
over 52% or revenues are being earned from families in the portfolio of hotel. The company
is expanding its business over the broad spectrum of different countries like, Asia, America
and Europe to increase the customer-base which comprises of people that are concious about
Illustration 1: Marketing Strategy of Holiday Inn
Sources:Holiday Inn Express Disrupting the Budget Hotel Category. 2013

their budget. From the view point of an author, it is depicted that over 100 million visitors of
the Holiday Inn per night is showing the level of customer satisfaction (Manning and et. al.,
2015).
The Holiday Inn is using many marketing strategies and techniques like, TV, radio,
posters, Personal Relations, digital marketing, personal websites and through many other
modern technologies in relation to gather the attention of customers and increase the
awareness about the brand. The organisation also take feedbacks from its customers,
employees, suppliers and shareholders about the performance and productivity of the
business in order to improve its operations. However, there are many authors who are
contradicting the fact that by targeting budget customers and families, the overall revenue can
be increased (Hollensen, 2015). There are many competitors of Holiday Inn such as, Carlson
Illustration 2: Gross Revenues of Holiday Inn
Sources:Remaking the Holiday Inn Brand
Family. 2010.

Hotels, Marriott and Hilton Hotels which can affect its competitive advantage. As, Holiday
Inn is still trying to penetrate in the emerging international markets. It is also predicted that
this hotel is loosing its existence in the competitive market, as many competitors are
acquiring large market share in the hospitality industries (Dovalienė and Virvilaitė, 2015).
However, by considering budget customers as target market, the growth rate of sales
revenues of hotel is declining. By providing luxurious facilities to budget customers, hotel is
bearing opportunity cost due to which its position in the competitive market is reduced.
Therfore, it required that the Holiday Inn should develop many strategies like Poster's Five
force of models, PESTEL analysis and BCG theory.
CONCLUSION
From above report, it is concluded that by targeting both budget travellers and
families, the Holiday Inn is increasing its customer-base and growth rate in emerging market.
However, there are also some factors which can affect its profitability and competitive edge.
To survive in competitive market, it is developing many effective marketing strategies which
can minimise the threats from external environment.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Berezina, and et. al., 2016. Understanding satisfied and dissatisfied hotel customers: text
mining of online hotel reviews. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management,25(1),
pp.1-24.
Dev, C., 2015. Hotel Brand Conversions: What Works and What Doesn’t.
Dovalienė, A. and Virvilaitė, R., 2015. Customer value and its contribution to the longevity
of relationship with service provider: the case of theatre industry.Engineering
Economics,56(1).
Hollensen, S., 2015.Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Manning, G.L., and et. al., 2015.Selling today: Creating customer value. Pearson Canada.
Raju, P.S., Bai, D.V.R. and Chaitanya, G.K., 2014. Data mining: Techniques for enhancing
customer relationship management in banking and retail industries.International Journal
of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering,2(1), pp.2650-
2657.
Online
Holiday Inn Express Disrupting the Budget Hotel Category. 2013. [Online]. Available
through:<http://hospitalityawards.com/fileadmin/Hospitality_Awards/Candidats/2013/
Communication/Holiday_Inn/Holiday_Inn_Express_Award_Entry_FINAL-hehe.pdf>.
[Accessed on 26th April 2016]
Remaking the Holiday Inn Brand Family. 2010. [Online]. Available
through:<http://www.ihgplc.com/files/pdf/investorrelations/holiday_inn_bf.pdf>.
[Accessed on 26th April 2016]