Solutions for InterContinental Dubai Marina: Competitiveness, Marketing, Energy Management, and Cleanliness

This report discusses the problems faced by InterContinental Dubai Marina in terms of competition, marketing, energy management, and cleanliness, and proposes solutions to address these issues.

HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

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Table of contents
1. Company description 2
2. Problem identification 2
3. Proposed solutions 4
4. Conclusion 5
References 7

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1. Company description
The hotel InterContinental Dubai Marina is subtle amalgamation between a hotel and and
museum. The design concept of the hotel primarily revolves around the contemporary museum
atmosphere which means that the entire hotel is punctuated by different works of art scattered
around inside the hotel. The hospitality industry in the UAE has been predominantly following
the traditional styles of interior designing. The form of the hotel was to definitely follow functions.
At the same time, the designs were supposed to be minimalistic. This inviting yet contemporary
space is responsible for creating a very good first impression and leaves a lasting impact. This
hotel shares podium with a couple of residential towers in Bay Central development and boasts
of 39 floors, 328 rooms as well as residence suites and five star service.
InterContinental Dubai Marina has six outlets serving food and beverages. The food service
facility includes five functional areas namely the service area, receiving and storage, general
support, sanitation and HVAC requirements (Ihg.com, 2019). The service area includes the
areas where food or beverages are being dispensed. The receiving and storage areas include
the dedicated food service docks, ventilated storage, refrigerator and freezer storage. The area
has been designed for withstanding a live load of 150 LB/SF in the area.The sanitation and
HVAC requirement is fulfilled by utilisation of specialised equipments. Heat and odor generated
from the area are not allowed to permeate throughout the building by making use of the air
handler units (Ihg.com, 2019).
InterContinental Dubai Marina is a recently opened hotel and at the present the company has
no requirement for renovation per se. However, InterContinental Dubai Marina needs to put
some effort and money to develop the customer help center that will give the tourists
accessibility to local information, transport facilities and general customer service. The hotel
also needs to upgrade their energy management systems and hotel management systems that
will enable InterContinental Dubai Marina to deal with the increasing volume of tourists that avail
its services. Lastly it is necessary for company to invest in human resources as the hotel is built
for catering to a large number of people and without sufficient manpower, the establishment will
definitely fail (Kotsi & Michael, 2015).
2. Problem identification
The hotel industry in the UAE is blooming like never before. UAE has become a major tourist
hub and this means that InterContinental Dubai Marina faces intense pressure while catering to
the service users (Ahmad, 2015). Few of the identified problems are high competition, improper
marketing effort, energy management crisis and cleaning issues. The identified problems go a
long way to inhibit the efficiency and quality of the services offered by InterContinental Dubai

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Marina. In today's hospitality industry individuality drives luxury and this means that
InterContinental Dubai Marina needs to work on the identified problems for establishing itself as
a unique competitor in the UAE hospitality market (Beshr & Hossan, 2018).
The hotel industry faces heavy demand as customers prefer to spend for perfect
accommodations. This means that the hotel industry is a very competitive sector of the
hospitality industry. In crowded destinations like UAE, one can find numerous hotels in a
locality. This means InterContinental Dubai Marina is highly threatened form the competitive
environment in the hotel business. In order to reap profits from high demands many of the
hotels compromise on price, services and conveniences. Market rivals also improve, expand
and introduce new facilities that can severely affect the footfall in InterContinental Dubai Marina.
No industry sector has remained untouched from the influence of technology today (Mohamad,
Ab Yazid, Khatibi & Azam, 2017). The rapidly changing and improving technology has made a
number of options available to hotels that help them in capturing the market. It may come as a
surprise but the majority of players in the hotel industry do not make use the technological
prospects and follow the old and established marketing practices. InterContinental Dubai Marina
is highly affected in matters of brand recognition and sales due to the poor marketing efforts of
the company in a market where competitiveness is very high and rivals have started making of
use of marketing and management tools and software.
Hotels which invest in eco friendly and renewable resources have a high probability of
increasing the overall margins of profits. This demand for eco friendliness is driven by consumer
psyche of tourists who prefer to avail services of a eco friendly hotel rather than an ordinary
one. This is responsible for influencing the hotels to adopt the energy management strategies
which will be helpful in cutting down carbon emissions as well as save energy. At the present,
even though this is not a priority for InterContinental Dubai Marina. However with time,
InterContinental Dubai Marina has to make energy management a priority in order to increase
their profit margins, appeal to the consumer psyche and do their bit for the environment.
Cleanliness is another aspect in which InterContinental Dubai Marina has been facing problems.
Even though the overall hygiene and cleanliness aspects of the company are well covered, the
company still lacks at some places. InterContinental Dubai Marina needs to make sure that the
lodging rooms are not only clean but also odour free, spacious and eco-friendly. Since the hotel
industry operates round the clock, time available for minor cleaning by hotel staff cannot be
guaranteed (AlFaris, Abu-Hijleh & Abdul-Ameer, 2016).

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3. Proposed solutions
On the basis of the problems identified in the section above, some solutions are proposed for
InterContinental Dubai Marina that will help the company to deal with their issue of competition,
cleanliness, energy management, marketing and cleanliness. InterContinental Dubai Marina is
in no way a mediocre hotel. However, their reputation has been suffering a severe blow due to
their inability to properly brand and market their services, cut down on energy consumption and
carbon emissions, maintaining cleanliness and standard of hygiene. If InterContinental Dubai
Marina does not look for probable solutions now, then their future operations is at risk.
In order to manage with the competitive nature of the market, InterContinental Dubai Marina is
recommended to draw out strategies that can help them to establish a unique selling point for
themselves that will help in distinguishing them from their competitors. Also, InterContinental
Dubai Marina needs to revisit its marketing mix and tweak with their pricing strategy so that they
neither get undersold by cheap alternatives provided by the market competitors nor do they
overcharge their consumers for the services offered by them. It will be also a great idea for the
company to identify possible mergers and acquire them to increase market reach and capability.
As already discussed the marketing efforts put in by InterContinental Dubai Marina is not up to
the mark. This means that the company needs to up its strategy for capturing the offline as well
as online marketing space. InterContinental Dubai Marina should hire marketing professionals
who can make help the company with their digital marketing aspects. Apart from that the
customers can be provided with feedback form, which helps in identifying the consumer psyche.
This in turn will be helpful in providing individualistic services to the consumers who are an
effective means of doing offline marketing (Mohamad, Ab Yazid, Khatibi & Azam, 2017).
A hotel consists of several different aspects of business and operations and it is actually very
difficult to manually manage each and everyone of them. Technology has advanced to such
levels where automation has become commonplace. InterContinental Dubai Marina has to
make use of this technology to make sure that their energy consumption and emission ratings
go down. For this purpose, InterContinental Dubai Marina can make use of voltage optimisation
for reducing incoming power into the hotel premises for reducing power consumption as well as
protect the equipments or go forward with energy management systems that automatically turn
appliances on or off depending on room occupancy.
Since running a hotel is a 24x7 job where consumers require service round the clock, it is
impossible to take care of all the cleanliness and sanitation needs. Major cleaning services are
not an issue, but since the time is constrained, minor cleanups may not be possible at moment’s
notice. For this purpose, it is recommended that InterContinental Dubai Marina hires

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professional cleaning services as this is the best possible way of ensuring that all the
requirements pertaining to hygiene and cleanliness are met without compromising on time that
can be effectively used for dealing with customers (Alameeri, Ajmal, Hussain & Helo, 2018).
4. Conclusion
The present report tries to understand the working of InterContinental Dubai Marina and basis of
the available information identify the problems which are responsible for innovating the growth
and prosperity of the company. On the basis of the identified problems, suitable solutions have
been recommended that will not only e deal with the existing crisis in the hotel but also help to
tackle the future problems with much ease. The abc mi company is located in UAE which has in
recent years Cena sudden increase in tourists. It is a 5 star hotel and the consumers expect the
services and offerings to be at par as well as unique with other high end hotel.
Most of the hotel suffer primarily due to two reasons namely competitiveness and under
marketing. The competitiveness and marketing are proportional to each other as
competitiveness can be related to the market presence of the company while marketing
describe the actions necessary to be undertaken and order to create presence in the market.
Traditional marketing includes word of mouth referrals from visiting customers. However this
approach will be insufficient in the present day and the customers can access information
pertaining to the hotel from numerous sources like internet, social media and advertisements.
Over competitiveness is also tackled by making use of customers feedback. The customer
feedback is an important measuring tool that helps in identifying the shortcomings of the
business operation and services provided. Customer feedback can be effectively used for
altering the marketing as well as pricing strategy. It is also beneficial in identifying the current
trends in the consumer psyche which can be utilised by Hotel industries for introducing or
removing services as per the responses available from the consumers. The consumer response
will help the company to portray itself as a consumer-centric organisation which will not only
help in strengthening the market position but also factors route for doing additional marketing.
With increasing tourists incoming to UAE, the demand for resources has gone significantly. With
rise in demand is responsible war increasing ecological in balance that describe the sanctity of a
tourist spot. This is why it is necessary to make considerations for dealing with Energy
Management. Improper Energy Management not only the resources but also incur heavy losses
for the company. InterContinental Dubai Marina needs to minimise the loss and in order to do so
it needs to make use of the commercially available resource management systems that will help
in cutting down on unnecessary wastage of resources which in turn will help in increasing the
profit margin.

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Last but not the least, tourists who are looking for accommodation, for hygienic and clean
environment apart from environmental friendly and risk free can surely avail for the hotel.
Hence, it is necessary that InterContinental Dubai Marina make sure that the lodgings are clean,
the food and beverage dispensing areas a sanitized and the toilet and swimming areas are
hygienic. All the efforts into improving marketing strategy will fail if the overall cleanliness and
hygienic standards of InterContinental Dubai Marina are low (Pirani, Arafat & Thompson, 2016).

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References
Ahmad, S. Z. (2015). Entrepreneurship education in tourism and hospitality programs. Journal
of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 27(1), 20-29.
Alameeri, A., Ajmal, M. M., Hussain, M., & Helo, P. (2018). Sustainable management practices
in UAE hotels. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 12(4),
440-466.
AlFaris, F., Abu-Hijleh, B., & Abdul-Ameer, A. (2016). Using integrated control methodology to
optimize energy performance for the guest rooms in UAE hospitality sector. Applied
Thermal Engineering, 100, 1085-1094.
Beshr, H. A., & Hossan, C. G. (2018). Key drivers for service innovation in the UAE's hotel
sector. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 22(3),
251-268.
Ihg.com, (2019) INTERCONTINENTAL Retrieved from
https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/us/en/dubai/dxbpl/hoteldetail Retrieved on 16
April 2019
Kotsi, F., & Michael, I. (2015). Planning and Developing ‘Destination Dubai’in the Context of the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). Planning for Tourism: Towards a Sustainable Future,
Oxfordshire-Boston, CABI, 149-168.
Mohamad, H. A. D., Ab Yazid, M. S., Khatibi, A., & Azam, S. F. (2017). Measuring the mediating
role of customer satisfaction between service quality and customer loyalty in UAE hotel
industry. European Journal of Management and Marketing Studies.
Mohamad, H. A. D., Ab Yazid, M. S., Khatibi, A., & Azam, S. F. (2017). MEASURING THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER
LOYALTY IN THE UAE HOTEL INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE. European Journal of
Management and Marketing Studies.
Mohamad, H. A. D., Ab Yazid, M. S., Khatibi, A., & Azam, S. F. (2017). SERVICE QUALITY,
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY OF THE HOTEL
INDUSTRY IN UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (UAE): A MEASUREMENT MODEL.
European Journal of Management and Marketing Studies.
Pirani, S. I., Arafat, H., & Thompson, G. (2016). FRESH: A Food-service Sustainability Rating
for Hospitality Sector Events.