Understanding Business Organizations: Organizational Structure, SWOT and PESTLE Analysis of Premier Inn

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of the organizational structure, SWOT and PESTLE analysis of Premier Inn, the largest hotel brand in the UK. It covers the different types of organizational structures, Premier Inn's SWOT analysis, and the impact of political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors on the company. The essay concludes with a summary of the findings.

Understanding
Business Organisation

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE.........................................................................................3
SWOT ANALYSIS.....................................................................................................................5
PESTLE ANALYSIS..................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Business organisation refers to structure of the businesses that helps them to achieve their
goals. Business organisations are designed to focus on either generating profit or improving
society(Borovikov and Smolyakov, 2019). There are different categories of business organisation
such as sole proprietorship, partnership, NGO and corporation. In context to Premier Inn, it is
largest hotel brand in United Kingdom with over 800+ hotels in variety of location. It is
headquartered in Dunstable, UK. It is one of the leading hotel brand offering quality
accommodation at affordable prices across United Kingdom. The organisation was founded by
Whitebread as Travel Inn in the year of 1987. Whitebread bought Premier Lodge in the year of
2004 and merged it with Travel Inn, which becomes 'Premier Travel Inn'. The name then
shortened to 'Premier Inn' in the year of 2007. Premier Inn solely contributes 70% of
Whitebread's earnings. Premier Inn aims to provide quality and affordable hotels for the guests to
help them to live and work well. This file consists organisational structure of the company which
helps company to define their growth and potential. It includes organisation internal and external
factors with the help of SWOT & PESTLE analysis. At the end, conclusion of the company is
described.
MAIN BODY
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
Organisational structure determines that how a company is organised and well structured
in order to achieve the objectives of the organisation. It includes chain of command and
accountability relationship. This also describes how information flows within the organisation
and decision power is distributed among different levels of the company. A well organised
structure describes the work of each employee and how they are contributing to the
organisation(Klever, Visser and Engelfriet, 2021). All types of businesses use organisational
structure to maintain a specific kind of hierarchy within the organisation. This structuring
provides a visual representation to the company that how it is organised and how it can take
decision to meet their goals. If there is not any proper structure within the organisation,
employees can face difficulty knowing to whom they report. There are certain things which can
affect the organizational structure as strategy, goals, environment, technology and size of the

organization. There are different types of organisational structure for any organisation. Some of
them are mentioned below as:
 Functional Structure: It is also known as bureaucratic organisational structure. In this
organisations are categorised into specialised departments with specific roles. Each of
these departments have manager. Greater sense of teamwork of this structure can be
useful for Premier Inn organisation.
 Divisional Structure: In this structure, there are different segments or divisions are
defined for specific products or services in the organisation. It allows divisions to work
independently.
 Hierarchical Structure: It is most commonly used organisational structure in which
chain of command goes from top to bottom. It is pyramid shaped in nature. In this
employees of the company are teamed up together and each team assigned with a
supervisor (Kwilinski, Dzwigol, and Dementyev, 2020). Premier Inn organisation is
using this same structure within the company. It benefits the company in various ways
such as it establishes defined levels of authority, defines career growth and promotes
team work.
Ill
ustration 1: Hierarchical structure, 2021

SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT analysis is a technique used to analysing and identifying Strength,
Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats of any organization. It is also used for self assessment and
even for any project(Falcone and et. al., 2020). The SWOT analysis enables Premier Inn to
analyse the internal factors of the company such as business performance as compared to the
competitors. Premier Inn's Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threat(SWOT) are as
follows:
Strength Weaknesses
 Brand recognition – Due to the high
level of customer satisfaction and
understanding, Premier Inn occupies
approximately 76% of occupancy rate
in hotel industry(Sharma and Sehrawat,
2020). It is highly recognised as
Whitebread. Premier Inn is also
awarded with the Hotel Chain of the
Year award at British Travel Award
which enhanced its brand image.
 Strong presence in UK: Premier Inn is
UK's largest hotel chain with more than
800 hotels across United Kingdom.
According to Whitebread survey, 2022,
Premier Inn serves more than five
million customers every month.
 Limited global presence: Premier Inn
has hotels in few countries only which
is pushing it backward to become a
global brand. It covers only countries
are UAE, Ireland, Qatar and Germany
across the globe.
 Refund Issues: There are some
customers who are unhappy with the
refund policy of the Premier Inn. It
takes longer time to get refund back.
Opportunity Threat
 Seasonal offers: Mostly people travel
different places according to different
season. There can be strong opportunity
for the company to attract more
customers by introducing seasonal
 Competition: There is intense
competition in the market with the
player like Holiday Inn, Easyhotel and
lbis within the same category of budget
segment(Kumar and et. al., 2018).

offers.
 Brand Value: Premier Inn can further
enhance its brand value through
providing quality service to its
customer. It can increase the customer
satisfaction which is directly related to
brand value. Brand value can also be
enhanced by investing in digital
marketing tool which helps company to
increase customer base.
There is also threat of new entrants in
the market.
 Decline in tourism: There is decline in
the tourism & hotel industry due to the
pandemic worldwide. There are also
terror activities that affected the hotel
industry.
PESTLE ANALYSIS
PESTLE analysis is a technique used to identify the major external forces that shape the strategy
and competitive landscape. It is defined as Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Legal
and Environmental factors affecting any company or organisation (Alanzi, 2018). Premier Inn is
using PESTLE analysis to evaluate and identify different strategy in the competitive market. It is
helpful for Premier Inn to take strategic decision.

 Political factors: Political factors are related to involvement of local and national
government in the company's business. UK government is establishing regional growth
fund for hospitality industry which increases the growth in the sector. It is expected that
UK budget in hospitality sector is going to be more in upcoming years. It is positively
impacting Premier Inn for expansion of their hotel chains.
 Economical factors: It describes the economic condition of country like inflation rate,
exchange rate, taxation rate, interest rate and labour condition etc. organisation
performance is directly influenced by the economic development(Eierle, and et. al.,
2021). In the year of 2008 financial crisis put UK into recession, there are many
companies faced losses during this period. However, Premier Inn posted benefits. It is
due to the budget hotel with affordable pricing for customers.
 Social factors: Social factors help companies like Premier Inn to better understand the
way of doing business and customer preferences in hotel & tourism sector of UK. Due to
the change in lifestyle and living standard brought many societal changes. Premier Inn is
Illustration 2: Pestle Analysis: A Mechanism for Analysis of Businesses, 2020

considering this and providing services such as rooms as per customer preferences, easy
accessibility, security and online reservation system.
 Technological factors: Technological factors are innovation in production, innovation in
product offerings, innovation in supply chain, technological advancement in marketing
and technological advancement in research and development etc. Premier Inn is using
latest information technology which helps to maintain smooth functioning for hotels.
Premier Inn is also focusing on web development to make its website more interactive.
 Legal factors: Legal factor plays a significant role in hotel industry. They have to follow
the legal policies such as data protection laws, property protection rights, discrimination
rights etc. Premier Inn has developed Responsible Sourcing Policy to maintain the legal
issues of the company. There is also minimum wage rate increased to 15.5% by the UK
government that is affecting the operating cost of budget hotels.
 Environmental factors: Over the last few years considering environmental factors are
crucial for businesses and industries. It includes carbon emission, safe disposal of
hazardous material, climate change issue, safe waste disposal and pollution regulations
(Grishko and et. al., 2020). Premier Inn has developed Corporate Social
Responsibility(CRS) to reduce carbon emission and water consumption. This approach of
Premier Inn is guided by environmental & energy policy.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that business organisation plays the significant role
as they are ensuring the higher profitability by which they are contributing to the economy. In
respective to this, organisation is operating their business in hierarchical business structure in
which all the instruction is given by the manager only and employees need to follow their actions
so that all the work can be completed in an appropriate manner. Moreover, Swot analysis has
been conducted in order to understand the internal factors or the business by which they can
further comply with the emerging change in order to sustain in the competitive market. Lastly,
PESTLE Analysis has been conduct in which Political, Economical, Social and Technological
factors are positively impacting the organisation whereas Legal and Environmental factors are
impacting negatively.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alanzi, S., 2018. PESTLE Analysis. Project Management.
Borovikov, A. and Smolyakov, O., 2019. Principles of organization and structure of the
management system of a holding type company. UPRAVLENIE/MANAGEMENT (in
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Di Vaio, A. and et. al., 2020. Artificial intelligence and business models in the sustainable
development goals perspective: A systematic literature review. Journal of Business
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Eierle, B. and et. al., 2021. External Factors and the Pricing of Audit Services: A Systematic
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Pricing of Audit Services. AUDITING: A Journal of Practice & Theory.
Falcone, P.M. and et. al., 2020. Towards a sustainable forest-based bioeconomy in Italy:
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Grishko, V. and et. al., 2020, June. Features of Strategic Analysis of Externals Factors of the
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Klever, S., Visser, M. and Engelfriet, A., 2021. Planning and organisation. In Digital Marketing
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Kumar, A. and et. al., 2018. Analyzing Indian research and development organizations: a SWOT
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Sharma, M. and Sehrawat, R., 2020. Quantifying SWOT analysis for cloud adoption using
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