Hospitality Digital Marketing: Impact on Hilton Hotel and Marketing Strategies

This report discusses the impact of digital environment on the hospitality industry, specifically on Hilton Hotel. It analyzes the opportunities and challenges faced by the company and the types of marketing channels used to improve its digital presence. The report also includes a critical assessment of Hilton Hotel's digital presence and the communication objectives and justification of introducing a new spa service within the hotel rooms of customers.

HOSPITALITY AND
DIGITAL MARKETING
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Table of Contents.
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
P1. Environmental analysis:.........................................................................................................3
Opportunities-external environment factors:.....................................................................3
Challenges:........................................................................................................................4
Impact of digital environment on the industry:.................................................................4
Types of marketing channels and how they serve communication objectives:.................5
P2: critical assessment of Hilton Hotel- Digital presence:..........................................................6
Designing communication objectives:.........................................................................................9
P3: justification of communication objective:.............................................................................9
P4: Marketing communications plan.........................................................................................10
P5:Measurement techniques and performance metrics in digital marketing.............................15
P6: Actions to improve performance in digit marketing...........................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................18
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Introduction
Hospitality refers to the service industry involved in the food and drink services, event
planning and travel and tourism business. It includes hotels, accommodation, tourism agencies
and food restaurants etc. Digital marketing refers to the promotion of products and brands to
connect with customers through the use of internet (George, 2021). Hospitality industries uses
digital marketing to interact with their potential customers through online platforms.
Hilton hotels is one of the largest hotel brands in the world. It is an American
international hospitality company which manages and franchises a wide portfolio of resorts and
hotels in all around the world (
Welcome TO HILTON, 2021). It targets business and leisure
travelers with locations in major and popular destinations around the world. This report will
discuss the impact of digital environment and its impact upon business of Hilton hotels. A plan
for digital marketing activities and methods to measures its effectiveness will be discussed.
P1. Environmental analysis:
Environmental analysis refers to factors which are beyond the affect the working of
organizations (Keith, 2017). Environment analysis of Hilton hotels can be done by considering
its opportunities, challenges can impact that digital environments cause.
Opportunities-external environment factors:
The following opportunities can be explored by Hilton hotels focusing on its digital
presence: Digitalization and better use of opportunities: Over the past years, Hilton hotels have
invested huge amounts of money into the online platforms. This can create new sales
channels for the company. This opportunity can be leveraged through knowing the
customers in better ways and catering their demands using big data analytics. It can also
open up new revenue streams for the company (Bala and Verma, 2018). Improving current services through technology up-gradation: Hilton hotel can improve its
customer services through technology up-gradation. It can focus upon research and
progress to improve in production and supply of its services with in the optimum cost.
The current services provided by the company can be improved with the use of improved
and advanced technology to gain a competitive advantage.
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
Marketing campaigns: Marketing campaigns are the emerging opportunities in digital
world. They can help to gain the attention of customers through the social media.
Everyone is present on social media which is a great opportunity to expand digital
presence. Hilton hotel's past marketing campaigns have been successful so, it can create
new marketing campaigns for promotion of its services (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick,
2019).
Challenges:
Hilton hotel's digital presence faces the following challenges: Change management capabilities: Digital transformational represent a change across the
entirety of business. Hilton hotel's have to ensure that they have necessary capabilities
which can cope up with new technologies. Unable to do so can present a real challenge
for company to its digital transformation initiatives. Risk management: A risk aversive culture can be a real barrier to the digital presence
attempts (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). Creating a culture in which all the employees of
organization have adapted the idea of digitalization and where innovations are
encouraged instead of welcoming them, is a big challenge for Hilton hotels. It needs to
ensure that they are facilitating digitalization and changes from inside out the
organization.

Cybersecurity: Managing Cybersecurity is the biggest challenge to Hilton hotels. It needs
to protect itself from cybercrimes as more and more information is moved to clouds and
is published on digital platforms.
Impact of digital environment on the industry:
The impact of digital era on hospitality industries including Hilton hotels is as follows:

Online customer base: Digitalization have given the industry a huge online base of
customers (De Pelsmacker, Van Tilburg and Holthof, 2018). The customers have moved
to the modern methods for purchasing services instead of using traditional methods of
service purchasing. The hospitality industries need to be digitalized for providing
information regarding services because consumers prefer online channels of distribution
more.
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 Integration systems: In the past hospitality industries including Hilton hotels have used
the simple customer relationship management systems. However, with the introduction of
digitalization, these systems have become sophisticated. Multiple features on these
systems have improved the integration process for companies.

Mobile communication: An increase in the use of smartphones and social media, travel
companies have made way for travel applications (Kaur, 2017). People have a variety of
options to chose and compare the travel options from. This intensifies the competition in
travel industry.
Types of marketing channels and how they serve communication objectives:
Marketing channels refers to the ways a business reach to its customers: Search engine optimization: These are the channels which make the website pages of
companies rank higher on internet search engines such as google. Pay per click: These channels turns latent users into engaged prospects and then
transforms them into buyers. Email marketing: These are he personal ways to connect with target consumers through
the use of emails. Social media marketing: social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and twitter
provides great opportunities for marketing (Nieves-Casasnovas and Lozada-Contreras,
2020). Video advertisement: In this marketing channel, online displays ads hat have video
within them are used. Network marketing: A pool of professionals, influencers and wholesalers are identified
and assembled. Then they keep the customers updated and engaged throughout the digital
campaigns.

Content marketing: In this marketing, online retailers gets other dealer who can sell their
products and services as an add-on or deal package with their own products.
All these channels of marketing makers use of digital platforms to interact with the
customers and convince them to turn from a prospect into a buyer. Most of the population uses
online media to gain knowledge about products or services (Konovalova and et.al., 2018). They
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target the ideal customers and get to know about their demands and preferences. They firstly
target the prospect audience and then communicate ideas with them. It focuses on comparing its
products with other competitors who provide the same products. These channels are used for
ensuring the clear, accurate, relevant and truthful communication to the stakeholders involved.
P2: critical assessment of Hilton Hotel- Digital presence:
Key digital tools
Some key digital tools used by various hospitality organizations are as following: Website building tools: These tools showcase an impressive and user-friendly website for
showcasing the property to its potential customers. These tools do not require any
programming or technical skills. Websites can be implemented and ready very fast.
Maintenance of these tools is very easy. It offers limited E-Commerce functionality.Recommended tool: Lodgify Social media listening tools: These tools give access to know the customer's opinions,
competitors and related keywords upon social media to gain knowledge about customer's
demands. These tools require management skills and technical skills are not required.
These tools can be implemented in no time. Maintenance of these requires active
participation on social media (Ristova and Dimitrov, 2019). These tools are very cannot
identify sentiment which influences brand relationships with customers.Recommended tool: Awario Revenue management softwares: These tools help the companies to sell the right product
such as hotel room to the right customer at the right price and on the right distribution
channel. High technical and analytical skills are required. These tools take time for
preparation and implementation in the company. These tools take time for preparation
and implementation in the company. Maintenance of such tools is required as they get
easily influenced with small changes. Customers can shift to other competitors because
the prices can be easily compared.Recommended tool: High Tech Report
Digital Platforms and Channels Social media: Social media has evolved into a grand, bigger and better version of itself.
Companies can reach its potential buyers by engaging in a personal and authentic way. It
is all about building a strong and positive relationship with the customers and brand.
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 Websites: A platform where audience can get information about products and services
offered by company. It requires a great understanding of target audience and a solid
content marketing strategy. Valuable information can be provided to potential customers
through blog posts and announcements (Jones Hillier and Comfort, 2017).

Email: Email allows the companies to provide the latest trends in content marketing such
as automation and personalization without affecting the budget of the company. They
also support other marketing objectives as well.
Critical assessment of Hilton Hotel business- comparison of digital presence:
Basis of difference Social media platforms Digital platforms
Meaning The internet based or smartphone
based platforms controlled by
companies such as Hilton hotels
which facilitates promotion the
business.
Digital platforms are the platforms
which provides the facility to
companies such as Hilton hotel for
commercial interactions with
audience.
Reach It provides a global reach to
company which creates a base from
all over the world.
Digital platforms of Hilton hotel's
target its regional customers more.
Tools Social media platforms need online
means to reach out target audience.
Digital platforms uses both the offline
and online digital means for reaching
its customers.
Channels Hilton hotel's Social media
campaigns are carried through
channels such as Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram.
Digital marketing campaigns of the
company uses various channels such
as TV, online advertising, SMS and
mobile advertisements.
Strategy The given company actively posts
fresh and unique content on its
social media accounts to engage
and interact with its target
The company uses TV
advertisements, e-billboards and
websites or Internet to promote its
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audience. services.
Benefits  It helps the company in
building close relationships
with its customers.
 It helps in better forecasting
of demand.
 It connects the company to
all over the world.
 It increases visibility of
company towards the
market trends.
 Digital media generate
genuine sales for the
company.
 These platforms allow faster
innovation in company.
 It increases the focus of
company towards its business
issues.
Limitations  The company receives
negative feedback from the
fake customers.
 It requires huge resources to
be invested daily to create
and manage content (
Welcome
TO HILTON, 2021).
 It sometimes pushes the
sales without actually
engaging with audience
which lead to negative
feedbacks.
 Company can face major
issues such as cybercrime
and cyberthreats.
 Digital advertisements can be
complex for some customers
to understands.
 It limits the interaction of
company with the customers.
 It involves huge costs to be
invested by the given
company.
Most popular
media
Twitter Websites
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Designing communication objectives:
The communication objective for Hilton hotel in its digitalization can be designed
through SMART objectives. SMART objectives refers to Specific, measurable, attainable,
realistic and time bound objectives (Besley, Dudo and Yuan, 2018). Here the communication
objective of Hilton hotels is to introduce and persuade the demand of its new service of Spa
within the rooms of guests.
 Specific: The goal here is to introduce the new spa service of company to its customers. It
will be provided within the hotel rooms of customers and it will be starting from end of
this month.
 Measurable: The company will use social media to introduce this service. The goal of the
company is to enhance the maximum customer experience.
 Attainable: The goal of the company is less because the target audience is premium
segment which prefers luxury and leisure without putting any effort (Schultz, 2018).
 Realistic: the goal is relevant as it was found that customers go to nearby salons for their
spa and beauty treatment. If the company provides these services within their rooms they
will shift towards the company.
 Time-bound: Hilton hotels will be achieving this goal from within the 6 months of
starting of service.
P3: justification of communication objective:
Hilton hotel is introducing its newest service of spa through the social media channels.
The company will be providing this service in the rooms of customers. The objective is feasible
as the company deals with the premium and luxurious segment of customers. This segment of the
customers prefers spa and other services whenever they visit hotels for leisure purposes. They
choose the nearest salons and spa because they do not want to put many efforts while they travel.
This gives the company an opportunity to grab those segment of customers to open up a new
revenue stream (Konovalova and et.al., 2018). The company will use social media for promotion
and persuading the customers as most of the customers of company are attained through digital
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platforms and social media platforms. The company will receive following benefits from the
above objective:
 A new revenue stream for the company.
 It will provide an opportunity to retain the existing customers engaged with company.
 It can help in creation of a competitive advantage over its customers.
 This objective will help the company to persuade the segment of customers who prefer
luxurious treatments while leisure travelling.
P4: Marketing communications plan
Hilton Hotels- Digital marketing planExecutive summary:
Hilton Hotels has taken an initiative of building its multi channel capabilities in its
Luxury business division and Active holiday seekers division. The company wants to build
these capabilities and market them through the digital marketing. The Target market for both
the divisions will be provided along with the internal analysis of the company.Introduction:
Hilton Hotels is an American multinational company which provides a global brand of
full service resorts and hotels. The company is planning to build its digital marketing strategies
for its two divisions such as Luxury business division and Active holiday seekers division.Target market:

Luxury business division
The target customers for luxury business segment will be as following:
 Premium customers
 High profile individuals
 Business professionals

Active holiday seekers
The target customers for A
ctive holiday seekers segment will be as following:
 Families
 Individuals
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 Groups
SWOT analysis:
Strengths: Strengths refers to the core areas of business where the companies excel. The
strengths of Hilton hotels are following:
 It has High brand recognition in all over the world
 Innovations and creativity attract and retain existing customers of the company.
 Highly developed markets all over the globe have helped the business to grow even
more.
Weaknesses: Weaknesses are the factors in which companies lack behind. The weaknesses of
Hilton Hotels are following:
 The company do not own enough networks of channels in some countries. The company is highly dependent upon some suppliers.Opportunities: Opportunities are the factors which companies can garb to grow and expand its
businesses. The opportunities available to Hilton Hotels are following:
 Major game events can help the company to establish goodwill in the global market and
increase customer base. The company can acquire local hotels to eliminate competition.Threats: Threats are the events which can affect the working of a company. Threats to Hilton
hotels are following:
 Intense competition in the market is a major threat for the company.
 There are major companies which are thinking to come in hospitality industry which
have the potential to eliminate businesses.
Communication objectives:
Hilton Hotel's communication goals are to build multi channel capacities for its Active
holiday seekers division and Luxury business division.
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Communication mix:
The company currently promotes its products through traditional methods more. The
plan will focus upon building the capacities of the chosen segments through digital marketing
strategies. The communication mix for building multi channel capabilities will be as following: Advertising: The two divisions will be promoted through digital platforms such as
Social media, company's official website and internet advertisements etc.

Social media:
The company will use the Social media Channel selection tools to promote its new products.
The company have an active presence on all the social media platforms such as Instagram,
Facebook, Twitter and other channels as well. The services will be communicated in all the
channels. Hilton Hotels aims to achieve a target of 20,000 new followers on its official
Instagram account. Social media handlers of the company will implement unique and relevant
hashtags such as #BestVacation for each post. As a result of the posts, the content will be
organized and the customers will be able to find the services of company according to their
interests.
Estimated budget for Instagram campaigns
Cost per follower $3-3.50
Number of target followers 10000
Target number of new followers per day 40
Total cost per day $130
Timeline 60 days
Total $7800
 Website and online: Hilton Hotels will introduced the chosen divisions of customers
through web content which will support the communication plan. The company will
post regularly to interact with customers more. The posts will be varied and include
videos and flash advertisements. Aim of using this channel is to create a visually captive
content which can attract customers attention. Mobile platforms: The products will be promoted on the travel mobile apps and official
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mobile app of the company.

Lead generation: The company will use e-mail marketing for its new communication
plan.
Competitors analysis:
Overall Budget of the plan:
Budget refer the estimated amounts of money to be sent on the plan. The outline of the budget
is provided below:
Costs of Disseminations of marketing communication messages
Advertisement costs 6000
Website developments 500
Instagram Campaigns 7800
Lead generation 650
Mobile App 2000
Total $16950
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21 60%
5 14%
3 9%
6 17%
Hyatt Hotels and resorts
Marriot Hotles
Fairmont Hotels
and resorts
Holiday Inn.

Proportions of the budget used on each component:
Media strategy:
Hilton Hotels will use the following strategies for new marketing plan. Pull strategy: Hilton Hotels will implement the Pull strategy through which the company
will direct its digital marketing activities towards its end consumers to persuade them to
buy their services. If the plan is successful then the company will be successful in
building its multi capabilities for both the chosen segments.

Digital strategy: Digital social media marketing is the fastest growing direct marketing
which the company will implement for this marketing plan. It will be used ton enhance
brand awareness and customer loyalty and directly engage the customers of Hilton
Hotels towards it (
A deep dive into the social media habits and performance of Hilton.
2018). The company have:
Instagram accounts- 18 Facebook pages- 513
Followers- 90 million Followers- 100 million
LinkedIn accounts- 5 Twitter Handles- 108
Followers- 20 million Followers- 40 million
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Website development
Advertisement
Instagram campaigns
Lead generation
Mobile app
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
500
6000
7800
650
2000

 Positioning: The company will use value preposition to clarify differentiation from its
main competitors. It is vert important because most of the customers are offering same
services as Hilton Hotels.Integrated marketing mix strategy
Hilton Hotels will use a number of marketing components which will produce the
expected response in the target market of new marketing plan.
Marketing mix of the company's new marketing plan about Luxury business division and
Active holiday seekers divisions will be as per follows:
Product
Luxury business division and
Active holiday seekers
division
Price
Competitive price
according to the services
and additional services
chosen.
Promotion
Social media, Email
marketing, Websites, mobile
apps and advertisement.
Place
All over the globe
P5: Measurement techniques and performance metrics in digital marketing
Measurement techniques and Performance metrics are the measurable values used by
marketing teams to show the effectiveness of the campaigns across the marketing channels used
(López García and et.al., 2019). The effectiveness of marketing campaigns used by Hilton Hotels
can be demonstrated through the following methods and metrics: Web traffic sources: The websites serves the customers as a home base and the face of a
brand (Saura, 2021). The digital marketing efforts of the company will likely to focus
upon driving traffic on official website of the company.
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 Mobile traffic: This metric helps in tacking the browser and devices of the customers
prefer as well as provides the content they prefer. Company can use this metric to analyse
the preferences of mobile user customers. Email open rates: This metric shows the number of people who have opened the email
campaigns from the overall number of receivers (Kotarba, 2017). The company can use
this metric to track the number of people who opened the email campaigns as compared
to overall number of people who have received the email. Cost per lead: This metric provides the average cost of digital campaigns divided by the
total number of leads generated over the same time (De Pelsmacker, Van Tilburg and
Holthof, 2018). It will provide the data of where the marketing efforts implemented by
the strategies are most effective. Exit rates: Company will also use exit rate metric in which percentage of visitors who
have left the site from a specific page out of everyone who have visited the pages can be
measured. Through this the company can analyze the reasons and effectiveness of
strategy implemented. Lead to close ratio: This metric helps the companies in providing information on which
digital marketing platform yields the most leads which can be converted. This metric can
help the company in showing how many of the leads generated are actually convertible. Social engagement: It reflects the number of interactions received on a social media post.
It can contain clicks, shares, retweets, comments and likes (Purwanti, 2021). Hilton
Hotels can use this technique to measure effectiveness of its digital marketing strategies
as it can help in measuring all the social media success.

Page view: It refers to the total number of pages viewed y the people. The company can
use this metric to analyse the users who constantly visits their pages. It can be analysed
so that those people can be triggered to be a customer.
P6: Actions to improve performance in digit marketing
The company can use following actions to enhance its performance in its digital
marketing strategies: Implementing a multi channel digital marketing campaign: To maximize the results of a
marketing plan, Hilton Hotels can implement a multi-channel digital strategy for more
result driven and effective campaigns. It can help in reaching out and generating
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favourable responses from targeted audiences through whatever channel is used. It can
help in generating traffic as the customers tend to go through at-least five channels prior
to ensuring their final decision to purchase a service. Developing a unique content creation strategy: The company should focus on creating the
content which is unique and relevant to the target audience. It will ensure that the target
customer reads, views and likes the content posted on social media accounts. It can help
the company in generating hundreds of shares and thousands of visitors on its pages
(Nissen and Francis-Cummings, 2019). This can also result in creating higher
conversations and deeper engagements of the content posted. It can be done through
enhancing content wit the use of videos, links and images. The content becomes more
attractive when it includes graphics as it is eye-catching for the audience. Compelling digital marketing team: As the company already have a separate digital
marketing team, it should do some selective hiring and hire the creative and innovative
candidates. The digital marketing team should include the persons who are story tellers,
content curator and data mangers. High quality and original content creation is the key to
success of the marketing campaigns. The more unique content is, the more it will attract
audience to Digital platforms.

Reviewing the strategies: Companies can receive good results form its marketing
strategies only when it reviews the posts made by it constantly (Desai, 2019). Hilton
Hotels should remain active on its marketing channels throughout the campaigns.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that hospitality is an industry which is involved in the
accommodation, food and event businesses. Hilton Hotels is an American international chain of
hotels who is present worldwide. Through the external environment analysis it was seen hat the
company have various opportunities such as digitalization and technology up gradation.
However, company faces some challenges such as cyber security and risk management. The
company uses various digital marketing channels and tools to serve its communication
objectives. Through the assessment of Hilton Hotels it was analysed that company uses social
media for marketing. Company designs its marketing objectives through SMART metric. A new
marketing communication plan is formed through which the company concentrated upon its
Luxury business division and Active holiday seekers division. For the measurement of
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performance and effectiveness of the digital marketing techniques and metrics the company can
use web traffic sources, mobile traffic, exit routes and page view etc. Company can use some
actions such as developing unique content creation for improving its performance
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