Organisational Structure and Internal and External Factors Impacting Premier Inn Hotel Chain

This case study analyses the organisational structure of Premier Inn hotel chain and the internal and external factors impacting its business, including a SWOT and PESTEL analysis. It also discusses the impact of Covid-19 on the hotel chain.

Case Study Premier Inn
Hotel Chain

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Organisational structure of Premier Inn hotel.............................................................................3
Internal factors which impact on Premier Inn business..............................................................4
External factors which impact on Premier Inn business.............................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8
Online-.............................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
It is essential for every organisation to analyse their internal ad external business
environment so that they will get to know what are the factors which help them to grow well and
what are the factors which impact negative to their growth. There are various kinds of methods
and procedures to analyse internal and external business environment such as PESTEL analysis
which is used to analyse external business environment and their positive and negative impacts
upon a specific business (Kumarasiri and Dissanayake, 2020). On the other hand, SWOT
analysis is used to identify strengths and weakness of a business so that they will work harder to
convert their weakness into their strengths. It also helps to analyse opportunity for future growth
and threats to defend well as the threats are those uncontrollable factors which impact worst
upon business and the company. Premier Inn hotels are founded in 1987 by its parent company
Whitbread. It is one of the most popular and well established chain of hotel in UK. It is
headquartered in Dunstable, England, UK. They are having more than 800 hotels at worldwide
level with approx 72,000 rooms. The following report will covers organisational structure of
Premier Inn hotel, internal and external factors which impact on their business as a result of
Covid-19 by using appropriate models.
Main Body
Organisational structure of Premier Inn hotel
Organisational structure is the way of defining how the specific organisation distribute
their activities and divide their organisational roles and responsibilities in such a way which will
help them to achieve organisational goal (Gaspary, Moura and Wegner, 2020). Organisational
structure will help to analyse that who will report to whom and who will order to whom for their
tasks and activities. There are few examples of organisational structure which are mentioned
below-
 Divisional organisational structure- Here, departments are formed like marketing
department, finance department, HR department and many others and each department is
assigned a manager who will look over their department duties an responsibilities well
and the employees are hired on the basis of their skills and put in those department which
is best suitable according to their skills and knowledge as well as experience (Su, Chen
and Wang, 2019).

 Functional organisational structure- Here, the entire organisation is divided into
smaller sections called departments and these departments are formed on the basis of
specialised functions of organisation.
 Matrix organisational function- It is the combination of functional department and
divisional department. Employees in this structure are having specialisation in at least
two areas. They report to two bosses one is team leader and another is the boss of
functional group.
In context of Premier Inn hotel, they are following functional organisational structure
where they are having different departments like front desk department, housekeeping
department, customer service department and many others. It is having departments according to
its main functions as a hospitality company. Secondly, it hire employees on the basis of their
skills and expertise and provide them job role in that department which is best suitable to their
knowledge and skills (Longhurst and et. al., 2020).
Internal factors which impact on Premier Inn business
SWOT analysis-

Strengths-
Promotional activities- Premier Inn
continue to spread awareness about their
brand and conduct their promotional
activities continues in covid pandemic. This
will help them to aware their customers
regularly and create a strong brand
recognition even in the lock down
conditions.
Additional focus on hygienic factors-
Premier Inn hotels focus more upon their
hygienic factors and make their rooms and
dinning area cleaner than before the
pandemic so that their customers will
attracted toward the brand and feel safe
from the disease.
Weaknesses-
Management of employees- During the
covid pandemic, Premier Inn is unable to
manage their large workforce. Their teams
are mismanaged by their tasks and
activities and due to this they misguided the
way to achieve their organisational goal.
Lack of financial management- This is
the common issue faced by almost every
company during covid situation (Solangi
and et. al., 2019). Premier Inn hotels are
unable to manage their financial activities
during covid situation. They are occurring
more expenses then their incomes which is
impacting the business to suffer from loss.
Opportunities-
Investing more in digital marketing- It is
a good opportunity for Premier Inn hotels
to expand their business with digital ways.
They can use more digital devises and tools
to promote their brand at worldwide level.
Using more digital technology will help
them to protect their data from external
threat.
Partnership with other hotels- They can
also tie up with other hotels of different
countries to analyse their marketing
preference and demand for hospitality
services. This will help them to attract their
customers and reduce the risk of financial
Threats-
Lock down during pandemic- Lock down
is one of the biggest threat for hospitality
industry where the government restrict the
social gathering and travelling from one
place to another. Due to lock down people
are supposed to stay in their homes only.
Hence, their international customers as well
as local customers refuses to use their
facilities due to government rules and
regulations.
Competitors- They are one of the biggest
threat for any company (Wongchuig-Correa
and et. al., 2020). Competitors of Premier
Inn hotels like Hilton, Rosewood hotels and

loss. many others are having strong strategies
and capability of organisational growth.
External factors which impact on Premier Inn business
PESTEL analysis-
Political factors- in context of UK, they are having less restrictions on their trading
activities and support globalisation which means they allow foreign investment and humans to
travel their country for different purposes (Pan, Chen and Zhan, 2019). This will help the
Premier Inn to attract more international customers from various countries. “Eat Out to Help
Out” scheme of UK is made by UK government to promote their hospitality business during
covid. According to this scheme, government will help restaurants by providing them 50% cost
of their food from Monday to Wednesday in a week. This will help premier Inn to develop their
revenue.
Economical factors- UK is the nation which is having good employment rate. During
covid situation Premier Inn terminate most of the unproductive workers from their organisation.
Hence, they have the option to hire skilled and talented workers from well maintained
employment rate of their nation. On the other hand, the cost of raw material is high in UK which
means Premier Inn will purchase their raw material in higher prices and offer it in the form of
finished goods at higher prices to customers. This will impact upon customer purchasing power
and their customers will switch to other hospitality brand.
Social factors- UK population is having high purchasing power which means they are
more focused on purchasing quality products and services whether they have to pay little high.
Hence, this is a good opportunity for Premier Inn to serve their customers a good quality of
accommodation services and quality food products at their dining areas (Ortega and et. al.,
2019). After covid pandemic, customers of UK hospitality industry prefer to visit those
restaurants more which is having appropriate cleaning and focused more on their hygienic
factors. Premier Inn hotels adopt high hygienic factor during the pandemic.
Technological factors- UK is known for their advanced technological factors. Premier
Inn can use advance technology in their kitchen to prepare their food items quicker and tastier.
counter-top projectors, steam oven, Digital backsplashes, smart oven hoods and many others are
the technology which help Premier Inn to make their food items by more easier way.

Environmental factors- In context of Premier Inn, they contribute to save their
environment by using paper bags instead of plastic bags. They also use steel containers to store
their food items instead of plastic containers (Nurmi and Niemelä, 2018). They also focus to use
those technology in their hotels which focuses on reduction of less carbon emissions.
Legal factors- In context of UK, their government have made various legal laws for
protecting their citizens from covid disease like lock downs, social distancing and many others.
This impacted bad for Premier Inn but it is compulsory to follow them as they are laws which is
compulsory to follow. They can conduct their business activities by following all laws and can
find new and innovative idea to attract more customers like they can maintain social distancing
in their restaurants and allow only limited number of customers to enter the dinning area and
their hotels. On the other hand, their Data Privacy and GDPR law is helping Premier Inn hotel to
use those technology ad software which will protect the data of their customers as well as their
employees (Kairuz and et. al., 2020). This will also help them to gain high reputation in market
as the data is protected well and customers will use their facilities more as they know that their
personal data is protected by the hotel.
Conclusion
It is concluded that every organisation is get impacted by covid pandemic. It is essential
for every organisation to analyse their internal business environment and focus on their strengths
and mitigate their weaknesses well for organisational benefit. SWOT analysis is used to identify
internal business environment and also help the company to analyse opportunity for growth. On
the other hand, PESTEL analysis is also used to identify positive and negative impacts of
external business environment upon a company and their operations.

References
Books and journals
Gaspary, E., Moura, G.L.D. and Wegner, D., 2020. How does the organisational structure
influence a work environment for innovation?. International Journal of Entrepreneurship
and Innovation Management, 24(2-3), pp.132-153.
Kairuz, A.R.P. and et. al., 2020. PESTEL analysis of environment state responsibility in
Ecuador. Neutrosophic Sets and Systems, 34, pp.70-78.
Kumarasiri, B. and Dissanayake, P., 2020. Barriers to implementing waste-to-energy projects in
Sri Lanka: a PESTEL analysis. Built Environment Project and Asset Management.
Longhurst, G.J. and et. al., 2020. Strength, weakness, opportunity, threat (SWOT) analysis of the
adaptations to anatomical education in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland in
response to the Covid‐19 pandemic. Anatomical sciences education, 13(3), pp.301-311.
Nurmi, J. and Niemelä, M.S., 2018, November. PESTEL analysis of hacktivism campaign
motivations. In Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems (pp. 323-335). Springer,
Cham.
Ortega, R.G. and et. al., 2019. Pestel analysis based on neutrosophic cognitive maps and
neutrosophic numbers for the sinos river basin management. Infinite Study.
Pan, W., Chen, L. and Zhan, W., 2019. PESTEL analysis of construction productivity
enhancement strategies: A case study of three economies. Journal of Management in
Engineering, 35(1), p.05018013.
Solangi, Y.A. and et. al., 2019. Evaluating the strategies for sustainable energy planning in
Pakistan: An integrated SWOT-AHP and Fuzzy-TOPSIS approach. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 236, p.117655.
Su, Z., Chen, J. and Wang, D., 2019. Organisational structure and managerial innovation: the
mediating effect of cross-functional integration. Technology Analysis & Strategic
Management, 31(3), pp.253-265.
Wongchuig-Correa, S. and et. al., 2020. Assimilation of future SWOT-based river elevations,
surface extent observations and discharge estimations into uncertain global hydrological
models. Journal of Hydrology, 590, p.125473.
Online-
Premier Inn SWOT Analysis, Competitors & USP, 2020 [online]. available through
< https://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/tourism-and-hospitality/14052-premier-inn.html>
Whitbread plc SWOT and PESTEL analysis, 2021 [online]. available through
<https://www.swotandpestle.com/whitbread/>