How Marketing Intelligence Increases Hotel Booking Accommodation Application in Thailand

Research concept paper 1
HOW MARKETING INTELLIGENCE INCREASES HOTEL BOOKING
ACCOMMODATION APPLICATION IN THAILAND
Presented by
Student affiliation
Supervisor
21st, May 2018

Research concept paper 2
Analyzing the business problem
Marking intelligence is a section in marketing information that involves collection of data from
internal and external sources to facilitate decision making (Scholes, 2015). Marketing
intelligence is used in hotel industry to develop operational application systems for making
booking or reservations (Foskett, 2010). Marketing intelligence is an important component in
any management decision making. It involves a process of collecting and storing relevant data
originating from external environment in order to make valuable strategies (Scholes, 2015).
Some of the data collected through marketing intelligence are related to consumer spending
habits and population size, competitor’s analysis and government legislations. Hotel booking
systems is a kind of application that allows users to conveniently make reservations for drinks,
foods and accommodations. Figure 1 shows an example of a hotel accommodation booking
system.
Figure 1 Hotel accommodation booking system
The hotel accommodation booking system (figure 1) shows various descriptions ranging from
the rooms available, pricing and process of booking. Design of the system is normally depended
on the owner’s technological strategy to be competitive in the market (Royle & Laing, 2014).
Studies have shown that market intelligence as an aspect is never considered when developing a

Research concept paper 3
hotel booking system. In a booming hospitality industry like that of Thailand managers can reap
the benefit of using marketing intelligence before developing or revising their own
accommodation booking application systems (Royle & Laing, 2014). The marketing intelligence
may provide information that would increase their market share and competitive edge (Michael
Berthold, 2003). The use of the concept needs to be scientifically justified to be part of hotel
manager’s decisions. The current study will be seeking to empirically establish how marketing
intelligence will increase hotel booking application accommodation in Thailand?
Research design
In order to obtain the desired outcome the study will employ a mixed research approach. The
approach entails using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to obtain data for
the study. Mixed research approach will be chosen because it provides a comprehensive data
collection to address the problem outlined by the study (Kothari, 2012). Qualitative data will be
obtained by conducting open ended interviews to the key informants while quantitative data will
be obtained by using structured observational checklists. Both instruments will be structured on
the basis of the theme of the study (Neuman & Robson, 2012). Open ended interviews will have
questions focusing on how marketing intelligence would increase accommodation bookings. Use
of structured observational checklists will provide a guide in collecting secondary data on
number of bookings trends obtained from the booking system and organization records.
Both instruments will be subjected to content validity and reliability test before the actual data
collection process. Validity will be achieved by having a constituted panel scrutinizing the
content and nature of questions (Vu, 2016). For validity a test-pre-test will be conducted to a few
respondents (not in actual study) obtained from target population. The results of the test will be
subjected to cronbach’s alpha a value of more than 0.7 will be accepted. The process of
collecting data is scheduled to be 14 working days after necessary authorizations and bookings
have been done from the hotel managements. Research assistants will be contacted and trained to
facilitate and speed up data collection process. The estimated time for conducting interviews is
less than 30 minutes. The entire data collected will then be sealed safely ready for analysis.
Key study variables and their measurements