Strategic Planning for the Hospitality Industry

This report outlines the appropriate factors for the chosen strategy by Inter Continental Hotel Groups (IHG) in the hospitality industry. It also outlines creative business strategies and evaluates different performance metrics.

Strategic Planning for the
Hospitality Industry

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Critically analysing appropriate factors for chosen strategy.......................................................3
Creative business strategies to be competitive in hospitality industry........................................5
Analysing and evaluating the different performance metrics.....................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Strategic planning refers to the process in order to develop the plan, provides the
roadmap for the hospitality which is basically based on the mission, vision, goals and values. The
strategic planning in the hospitality industry is very important as it creates the long-term success
and have the sustainable tourism in the tourism sector. This project is based on Inter
Continental Hotel Groups (IHG) which is the British multinational Hospitality industry having
its headquartered in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. This report will outline the appropriate
factors for the chosen strategy by the company. Further it will outline the creative business
strategies chosen by organization in order to be competitive in hospitality industry. At last this
report will outline the different performance metrics.
MAIN BODY
Critically analysing appropriate factors for chosen strategy
Strategy refers to planning done by the person in order to achieve the long-term goals or
overall aims of the company. This is the art of planning and directing the operations of the
industry in order to achieve the success. The hospitality organization must have the better
strategies in order compete in the competitive market (Antipov and et.al., 2019). As there are
some marketing trends and strategies has arrived in the competitive market which are impossible
for Inter Continental hotel to ignore. In order to survive in competitive market they have
followed the strategy to have their presence in the digital market and use the best to make
their hotel best. By having the digital presence and embracing the technology helps the company
to stay in the competitive market. In the growing digital age, it is very important to the firm to
have the digital presence through different sites of the social media. In order to follow this
strategy the organization requires the factors which are described below:
Target market: The target market refers to the group of potential customers that the
company used to identify in order to sell the products or services in the market. The market can
be divided or grouped by the factors like age, location, income and lifestyle. The organization
must have the good target market to compete in the competitive market. As company has chosen
to have its digital presence, so they must decide to use the digital marketing in order to attract the
customers (Johnsen, 2019). By identifying this it increases and attracts the customers to visit the

hospitality. By having marketing in different language and good images of the organization to
target the customers.
Budget: The budget is basically the estimation of the profits and expenses for the specific
period and which is re-valued on the certain periodic basis. This can be made by the person or
group of person in order to spend the money. As the organization has selected the digital
marketing the company will require the low cost in order to have the digital presence in the
market. By using this strategy company can explore its business across the globe. This includes
having social-media presence, blogging, making videos, posting images of the hotel which
required very low cost (Martinelli, Collard and Gamache, 2020). This is the important factor that
the company must focus on in order to have the digital presence in the competitive market.
Talent: The person who is implementing the strategy must have experience and
knowledge. The experience and knowledge the person or its team have in the digital market will
make them to implement that strategy in the overall market. As it is the big hospitality industry
they must have the talented groups and members in order to implement that strategy in the
market. It is also the crucial factor to have the digital presence in the market, as without talented
people company will not able to implement this strategy. Before implementing and going in the
digital market they must also check the marketing ideas and measure the success in the market.
Technology: The technology plays the important role in order to have the presence in the
digital market. As servers are getting down and there are many software issues and websites are
not getting loaded these are the some common issues that plays the crucial role in order to
develop the digital marketing presence. Inter continental hotel must focus on these issues before
implementing the chosen strategy in the organization (D’Ely, Mota and Bygate, 2019). The
company has to invest in the technologies in the certain equipments and services to promote their
hospitality. If the company has to post the video they must have digital camera to record the
videos which makes costly for the company to do so.
Time: In order to have presence in the digital marketing it requires the time. It is the
important factor in order to implement the chosen strategy. The organization has to go planning,
implementing and checking the strategies of the market for this requires lots of time. To have
digital presence the organization has to be very update about their new products and services
which makes the customers attract and visit the cited hospitality. As digital marketing requires

the continuous monitoring in order to measure and fulfil the requirements so the organization
must fulfil the requirements on time.
Websites: To promote the business on the digital platform the organization must have its
own websites to impress and attract the customers. This makes the customers to know about the
hospitality and its products and services (Oliveira and et.al., 2018). The websites of the company
should be very clear and provides the good information about the organization. By this the
customers can do online booking in the hospitality.
Creative business strategies to be competitive in hospitality industry
The business strategies are combination of the ideas and decisions which are taken and
perform by the organization in order to accomplish the business aims and objectives. This makes
the company to have and secure the competitive position in the market. As the organization faces
unique challenges, so they must have some strategies to maintain the profitability in the business.
There are some creative business strategies that the organization must follow in order to compete
in the hospitality industry are as follows:
Identify the competition advantage: By knowing the advantages the competition it
allows the company to create its own stand-out features and services. The organization should
make the list of the competitors by focusing on location, price, audience and their marketing
concept (Gomes and Berman, 2020). By this company will able to know it strengths and
weaknesses and make themselves to overcome from that. By comparing from competitors will
not make the company to win but its make the firm aware about is weaknesses and have some
uniqueness to compete and have more profit. This strategy makes the company to have good
profitability in the competitive market.
Have authentic relationship through customer feedback: By creating the good
relationships with the guest in the hospitality it makes the company to make their customers visit
again. The firm should take the feedbacks from the customers in order to listen the valuable
things and things that they need to improve (Correia, 2019). The firm should be more focused on
the negative feedbacks and improve those products and services which their guest did not like.
By adopting this feedback strategy its makes the company to have opportunities to perform
better. The organization must create trust with the customers visited in their hospitality. It can
create and engage with the planners through social media or through websites to build the
relationships and increase the loyalty.

Streamline Direct Booking: This is the main and foremost strategy that the organization
must follow in order increase its profitability. In the growing world, the guest wants the quick
and easy booking services from the organization. The firm can start the services of doing the
online booking which makes easier for the customers. By booking online through the websites of
the company makes them to attract more customers to visit there hospitality. It creates the
opportunities to connect more customers across the globe to visit there hospitality.
Product differentiation strategy: The organization can use the product differentiation
strategy in order to compete in the market. They can provide the best quality of goods and
services to attract the customers. The cited organization can apply this strategy in order to make
themselves compete in the hospitality industry.
New products and services: The company can adopt the new products and services by
finding the new products and services. By providing the customers new products and services
makes them to compete in the competitive market.
Influencer marketing: This type of business strategy would allow the quoted firm to
increase the digital presence in target market in long run. However, initial cost of such business
strategy would be higher but future returns would be much greater. Moreover, it would attract
the customers as they would be able to relate and would likely to be interested in the services
that are offered by the firm (What is influencer marketing: How to develop your strategy, 2021)
Further, this would help in developing better engagement between the IHG and its customers that
would help more in repeated sales of the business. Hence, this business strategy is effective if
proper marketing plans and policies are developed by IHG.
Analysing and evaluating the different performance metrics
For the success of strategy implementation, it is necessary for the company that they must
effectively analyse the working of the company. For analysing the success of strategy
implementation it is necessary to analyse the critical success factor relating to the strategy.
These factors are as follows-
Larger audience: This is important success factor as greater number of customers than larger
the revenues for the firm. Also, this will indicate the firm that customers are aware about the
hotel and services that are being offered in the market and thus help in improving business
customer relationship (Tambovtsev and Rozhdestvenskaya, 2020). Moreover, through the digital
technology companies would be able to analyse and use various marketing techniques that are

essential for analysing the overall success of the firm in specific time-frame. Thus, it is important
critical success factor for the hotel like IHG that has large number of competitors in the market.
Higher commitment and retention of employees: This is critical factor that helps the firm to
identify that current strategy is working very well and both customers and employees are
satisfied with changes that are brought in the organization. Also, higher retention of the older
employees means that individual is motivated in taking complex responsibilities that is also the
sign of success for the quoted firm (Lai, 2018). Thus, such type of success factor help the firm to
develop changes in the firm in smooth and efficient manner.
Achieving the financial performance: This is also critical success factor through which the
quoted firm would be able to identify that whether the current strategy is effective or not.
Further, if IHG has achieved the revenues that have targeted before the implementation of the
strategy than it would mean success for the firm. Also, there are various ways through which the
financial performance of the firm could be measured such as through charts, graphs, budgets etc.
Thus, higher revenues of the firm means greater satisfaction and successful implementation of
the strategy by quoted firm.
In addition to the, success factor the use of KPI is also very necessary for the successful
implementation of the strategy. The KPI that is Key Performance Indicator is a tool which assist
Inter-Continental Hotel Groups (IHG) in measuring the performance of the company in order
to attain the objectives of the business. This use of KPI will assist the company in setting some
indicator against which the success of the strategy will be analysed and evaluated. In the present
case of Inter-Continental Hotel Groups (IHG), the KPI set was profit (Al Dakheel and et.al.,
2020). This profit was simply used as the KPI that is the current performance after
implementation of the strategy was compared with the indicator set. The current performance
was better in comparison to the indicator. Hence, it can be implied that the performance of the
company has enhanced after the implementation of the chosen strategy.
Along with the use of KPI, balanced scorecard was also used to monitor the performance
of the company. The balanced scorecard is a strategic tool or metric which assist company in
measuring the performance of the company. This tool is being used by Inter-Continental Hotel
Groups (IHG) in order to improve the internal and external operation of the company in better
and effective manner to attain the objective of business. This balanced scorecard involves four
different elements that is financial perspective, customer perspective, internal business

perspective and innovation and learning perspective. Majorly all these elements make a majority
part of the successful attainment of the business objectives.
Hence, it is necessary for Inter-Continental Hotel Groups (IHG) that they must first set
the goals relating to all these four perspective and then apply the strategy. After the
implementation of the strategy, the actual performance is being compared with the objectives
being set in balanced scorecard. In case there will not be much deviation within both these
objectives then this implies that the chosen strategy has been implemented in proper manner
(Quesado, Aibar Guzmán and Lima Rodrigues, 2018). On the other hand, in case after the
implementation of the strategy there is more deviation then this implies that the strategy has not
been implemented in proper manner and objectives have not been attained.
Thus, with this analysis and performance metric it can be stated that analysis of the
strategy is very important for the successful working of the company. the reason pertaining to the
fact is that in case the strategy is not implemented in proper manner then this will affect
attainment of business objectives (Fatima and Elbanna, 2020). In addition to this, the use of
performance metric assist Inter-Continental Hotel Groups (IHG) in analysing the current
working situation and try to improve it so that objectives can be attained in proper manner. Also,
the use of these different performance metric also assists Inter-Continental Hotel Groups
(IHG) in comparing its performance with the competitors as well and find the areas in which
they are lacking.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be summarized that strategic planning is detailed and long
term process that need to be developed by the firm with careful observation and analysis.
Further, the report had analysed various factors such as target, budget, technology etc. that need
to be considered so that strategy would be implemented in the best manner in long run.
Moreover, the study had identified various creative business strategies such as customer
feedback, authentic relationship etc. as part of establishing efficient business strategies in the
firm. Also, the study has laid the importance of such business strategies in gaining competitive
advantage in the long run. Moreover, the report had identified various critical factors that are
crucial for determining the success of business strategy. Lastly, different types of performance

metrics that could be used by the firm in evaluating the growth along with certain key
performance indicators for current strategy had also been covered under this report in detail.

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Online
What is influencer marketing: How to develop your strategy. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://sproutsocial.com/insights/influencer-marketing/>.