Unit 15 - Hospitality Marketing Essentials

Unit 15 - Hospitality
Marketing Essentials

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing function in Holiday Inn hotel..................................3
P2 Interrelation and influence of marketing with other functional departments.........................5
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................6
P3 Comparison of marketing mix strategies in context to hospitality companies.......................6
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................9
P4 Basic marketing plan for Holiday Inn....................................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Marketing essentials are the most necessary elements of marketing such as sales,
advertising, public relations and sales techniques that are significant for an organisation. The
actions used in the marketing are aimed for creation, communication, delivery and exchanging
offers that sustain value for customers, partners, society and clients at large (Lanier and Lanier,
2017). This report will focus upon the requirement of marketing especially after the Covid-19
pandemic when the hospitality industry is facing huge losses, job cuts and uncertainty. The
chosen organisation is Holiday Inn, which is a British-American brand of hotels headquartered in
Buckinghamshire, UK with more than 1000 active hotels and over 200,000 rentable rooms. This
report will evaluate the key responsibilities and functions of marketing in the hotel and the ways
in which marketing influences other departments and functional units. The report will also
elaborate a comparative marketing mix of the hotel with its competitor and also produces a basic
marketing plan for the hotel.
LO 1
P1 Roles and responsibilities of marketing function in Holiday Inn hotel
Marketing is aimed at creation of value for customers and building strong relationships in
order to capture value in return. The marketing process consists of understanding the customer
needs, wants and the marketplace within the industry and designing and devising a successful
marketing strategy. The four basic marketing process can be described as strategic marketing
analysis, planning through marketing mix, implementation of marketing strategies and marketing
control. The process also includes development of an integrated marketing plans which is aimed
at delivering value, situational analysis, market segmentation and appropriate marketing
strategies (Pricilla, 2019). The process is driven towards building professional relationships
through customer loyalty and retention as well as capturing value from the customers by
increasing the lifetime value. There are various marketing functions that are undertaken to
completed the marketing process in the Holiday Inn hotels. The major roles and responsibilities
of marketing functions are as follows:
 Promotion: This function is aimed at mapping of the goals of the Holiday Inn hotel
through activities that help in building brand awareness. Various activities like email
marketing, content marketing, promotion campaigns for building brand awareness,
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educating visitors of the hotel and sparking lead generation are performed by the hotel.
The promotional activities are the basis of gather consumer’s attention and are essential
for the hotel for generation of qualified leads.
 Selling: Every marketing decision of brand promotion, campaigns, marketing strategies
are aimed for ultimately increasing the sales. The Holiday Inn hotel has to incorporate
service and product-centric as well as personalised aspects in the marketing
communication. The hotel also has to relay talking points and offer differentiation which
are all an integral part of the selling strategies (Blythe and Martin, 2019).
 Product management: Holiday Inn hotel has a major duty to ensure that the products and
services in context to hospitality which are offered consistently meet the needs and
demands of the customers. The marketing team need to conduct analysis in context to
customers and competition, communicate the services with prospects and also gather
customer feedback to improve the services that are offered by the hotel. For example, the
room types, facilities, customer service needs etc.
 Marketing management and information: The process of marketing is driven through
the collection and analysis of data and information in order to make changes in the other
functions like promotions and product management. It is a major duty of Holiday Inn
hotel to use the granular information from various specialised tools for determining the
preferences and demographics of customer in order to deliver appropriate services and
targeting the right customers (Yadav and et.al., 2016).
 Pricing: The setting up of prices for the products and services offered by the hotel is a
major responsibility and can be quite complicated and the method for selection is not
only gathered from the marketing research but also from the perceived value of the hotel
brand. It is also the duty of the marketing team of the hotel in ensuring that the pricing
aligns with the promotional strategies and the value offered.
 Financing: Marketing functions ted to generate money in multiple ways beside the sales
that occur on the sale of rooms and other facilities. When financing is conducted adeptly
by the Holiday Inn hotel, the brand equity can be enhanced and funding can be gathered
for the hotel (Law and et.al., 2018).
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