Issues Faced by The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain: A Business Consulting Research Report

This research report identifies and analyzes the major issues faced by The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain, including improper advertising and promotion, varying pricing strategy, and ineffective IT tools and technologies. The report also provides an overview of the client, target customer market, competitor analysis, and external influencing factors. The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain is a small hotel chain located along the North Coast of New South Wales, with five hotel complexes along the main coastal highway between Brisbane and Sydney. The primary target market is families who often stop overnight during their long drive between Sydney and Brisbane. The report suggests that the hotel chain needs to adopt effective IT tools and technologies, such as social media marketing and digital marketing, to improve its promotional and advertising strategies and chase competitive advantage over its competitors in the hospitality industry.

Business Consulting
Research Report

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Overview of the Client.....................................................................................................................3
Summarisation of issue/ Problem identification .............................................................................4
Problem Statement of Dunsters Farm..............................................................................................4
Analysis of top three issues the client is facing...............................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
The aspect of business consulting is considered as a document which consists of all the
significant consultant’s experts that are undertaken a client with advice on the specific subject
matter or complexities (Allca, 2021). The existing research report mainly includes secondary
research in order to effectively identify as well as analyse the major issues that are faced by The
Quick-Stop Hotel Chain which is a small hotel chain that is located along the on the North Coast
of New South Wales. This hotel chain covers five distinct hotel complexes that are located
various hours drive apart along main coastal highway between Brisbane and Sydney. The
Quick-Stop Hotel Chain is facing the issues that are concerned with advertising as well as
promotion of the hotel chain and its features.
Overview of the Client
The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain is located just over 2 miles from the city of Sheffield and is
offering free on-street parking. It is also engaged in providing a wide number of services such as
free Wi-Fi, a 24-hour front desk as well as luggage storage. The hotel chain offers private or
dormitory rooms which can accommodate 1 to 6 guests. Every room within the hotel chain has a
sink and a TV. The rooms within the respective hotel have access to 4 shared bathrooms along
with the power showers as well as 4 toilets. The primary target market of this hotel chain is the
family segment as there are families that often select to drive from Sydney to Brisbane or
Brisbane to Sydney and back again for their holidays. This trip takes a minimum of 12 hours
drive and therefore, many travellers select to stop overnight within the order break up their
journey. Hence, The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain has deliberately selected famous stopover towns
for their hotels. Along with the respective location strategy, the hotel chain promote itself with
the slogan, “the perfect place for a break”. The individual hotels of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain
vary a little within the aspect of quality, but all are having either a 3 or 4 star rating. It means that
these individual hotels are of medium or good quality in relation to the facilities as well as
general standards of accommodation (Bustamant and et.al., 2021). On an average, the individual
hotel chain has approximately 80 rooms along with a fair wide range of the facilities such as
heated swimming pool, restaurant and bar, room service, kid's club during school holidays, a
small gym, a couple of stores and few having tennis courts. In context to the promotional
strategy of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain, the individual hotel chains are heavy outdoor

advertisers on the coastal highway. These individual hotels also advertise within multiple holiday
and travel directories along with on the tourism website of the government. These individual
hotels are also varying in the pricing strategy throughout the year. Within the hotel chain, the
strategy of pricing is usually used as a tool that helps in enhancing the demand within the low
season and boosting the revenue within the high season.
Summarisation of issue/ Problem identification
This has been reviewed that unlike most of the hotel chains within the United Kingdom,
the small hotel chain of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain is badly hit because of the pandemic
situation of COVID-19 as there was sudden economic lockdown and in order to afloat as well as
survive within such situations, this became significant for the hotel chain of The Quick-Stop
Hotel Chain to change its business and marketing practices (Nissen and Seifert, 2018). The key
challenges and issues that are being faced by the respective hotel chain are associated with the
promotion and advertising practices, pricing strategies and ineffective tools as well as
technologies and many others. As a result, there has been declining in the sales volume of the
hotel chain and ultimately, the level of profitability of the organisation also got declined. This
has hampered the financial reserves of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain along with the lower level
of efficiency within the hotel chain. The key issue that has been faced by The Quick-Stop Hotel
Chain during the pandemic situation of COVID-19 was concerned with the improper promotion
and advertising of the hotel chain and its services and features. Moreover, the varying pricing
strategy throughout the year has also became a great challenge of the hotel chain that has
sometimes resulted in the reduction in the profit margins of the organisation and thereby its
overall efficiency. These are some of the problems and issues that are associated with The
Quick-Stop Hotel Chain.
Problem Statement of Dunsters Farm
The problem statement of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain consists of the issues or the
problems that are concerned with the promotion and advertising, pricing strategy and many more
that is indirectly impacting the engagement of the customers towards the hotel chain within the
marketplace (Nissen and et.al., 2019). It has also been reviewed that The Quick-Stop Hotel
Chain is also facing the issue of ineffective use of the technologies and tools within the process
of its business operations. The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain is lacking in the proper promotion and

advertising strategies of its hotels and key features. This has been analysed that The Quick-Stop
Hotel Chain is still making use of the traditional form of marketing and shifting to the modern
tools and technologies has yet not been made within the hotel chain. Therefore, lack of proper
marketing, varying pricing strategies and ineffective use of the IT tools and technologies are the
major issues and challenges that are faced within The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain which is effecting
the level of productivity and performance of the hotel chain.
 Target customer market: The key target customer market of The Quick-Stop Hotel
Chain is the family segment who are often choosing to drive or travel from Sydney to
Brisbane and back again after having fun and enjoyable time within the holidays.
 Competitor Analysis: There is intense level of competition that is prevailing within the
markets of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain as there are a wide number of players that are
dealing within the same kind of business in the markets of United Kingdom (Quiroz and
et.al., 2021). Such competitors are also engaged in making use of the highly developed
and advanced technologies within their business that saves their both time as well as cost.
In order to improve the promotional and advertising strategies, The Quick-Stop Hotel
Chain is required to adopt effective IT tools and technologies. The hotel chain can also
make use of the social media marketing, digital marketing, online and offline advertising
in order to advertise and promote its services along with the features and can chase
competitive advantage over its competitors that are active within the marketplace of UK
in hospitality industry.
 Influencing factors from external environment: There are several types of factors that
exist within the external environment and currently influencing the operations of business
of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain. Some of the factors that are present within the external
environment and are impacting the business performance of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain
consist of Economic lockdown, taste and preferences of customers, expectations of the
market share, laws and legislations of the government, corporate social responsibilities,
trade restrictions and many more (Rubio Godines and Galvez Ramirez, 2019). These are
some of the factors that are affecting the operations of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain and
resulted in either the reduction or increment in the level of productivity, profitability and
efficiency within the business. Factors like economic lockdown, varying taste and
preferences of customers, ineffective IT technologies and tools are bringing negative

impact on the functioning of The Quick-Stop Hotel Chain. There are also some factors
that bring positive impact on the performance of the business and such factors include
political stability of the UK government, large number of market share, etc (Sharonin,
2021). The favourable influence of these factors on the business operations facilitate in
improving the profit margins of the hotel chain.
Analysis of top three issues the client is facing
The three major issues that the client is facing include improper advertising and
promotion, varying pricing strategy throughout the year and ineffective IT tools and
technologies. Improper advertising and promotional strategies are resulting in the reduction of
the number of market share towards the hotel chain. This has also declined the sales operations
and profit level of the organisation that adversely influenced the brand image and performance of
the hotel chain within the markets of UK. The respective hotel chain is making use of the
ineffective technologies that results in increasing the overall cost of the business which brings
negative impact on the organisation (Torre and et.al., 2021). The third issue that the client is
facing is concerned with varying pricing strategy as it is not possible for hotel chain to make
sudden changes within the pricing strategies of the business as it can hinder the profitability level
of the hotel chain and can adversely influence its business operations and performance within the
marketplace of UK.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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