Accommodation Management Report: Sales and Marketing Department

This report provides an in-depth analysis of accommodation management, specifically focusing on the sales and marketing department within the context of a hotel, using Pearl Continental, Pakistan as a case study. The report identifies the roles, tasks, and functions of the sales and marketing department, including its responsibilities in brand promotion, customer engagement, and strategic positioning. It explores the roles and needs of customers, emphasizing the importance of quality accommodation and customer satisfaction. The report also evaluates the impact of outsourcing solutions on the department, weighing the potential benefits and drawbacks. Finally, it offers recommendations for future improvements, such as forming an active sales team, implementing effective marketing strategies, and maintaining financial stability to enhance revenue generation and customer service.

Running head: ACCOMMODATION MANAGEMENT
Accommodation Management
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Selection of a department within the hotel......................................................................................3
Identification of roles, tasks and functions of the department in context of accommodation
management.....................................................................................................................................4
Roles of customers and their needs.................................................................................................6
Impact of outsourcing solution on the department..........................................................................7
Recommendations to move forward................................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Selection of a department within the hotel
Within a hotel, various departments manage the business operations and processes and
ensures that the business can flourish with ease and effectiveness. The department chosen here is
the Sales and Marketing department, which is committed to the establishment and promotion of
the hotel brand for the purpose of attracting more customers and generating more revenue in
business (Pchotels.com 2018). The Sales and Marketing department is in charge of the
negotiations, management of business and hospitality groups, operators of tours and is also
concerned with the management of accommodation and tours for the tourists. The Marketing
department within Pearl Continental is one of the major department within the Sales category
that manages the exposure of brand name and image and creates promotional and advertising
strategies for grabbing the attention of customers (Abbey 2014). The Sales and Marketing
department of Pearl Continental, Pakistan has also involved various social media platforms
including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and even collaborating with Trip Advisor for
engaging more customers and enhancing the brand identity too.
At Pearl Continental, Pakistan, the sales and marketing department manages various roles
including research and development activities, distribution of products and services in the
market, customers’ services and communication (Altin, Schwartz and Uysal 2017). The
marketing department manages contacts with the customers to drive the sales level whereas the
sales division of the department develops marketing strategies for managing the marketing
communications and ensuring that the brand name is enhanced for attracting and retaining new
and existing customers respectively (Andzulis, Panagopoulos and Rapp 2012).

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Identification of roles, tasks and functions of the department in context of accommodation
management
There are various roles, tasks and functions that are managed by the Sales and Marketing
department of Pearl Continental in Pakistan. The sales and marketing managers communicate
with the customers and guide the development and distribution of products and services
according to the various elements of the marketing mix strategy. This helps in fulfilling the needs
and requirements of the customers and allows for determining what the hotel wants to sell and
what prices will be set for the products and services offered to the customers. The sales and
marketing managers also decide what intermediaries should be used along with the wholesalers,
distributors and retailers (Bateman and Snell 2013). Not only the marketing and sales department
manages these functions, but also handles the customers’ services properly to ensure that the
purchasers can be kept happy. Customer surveys are conducted along with special offers
provided to them for resolving certain issues and make sure that the company does not lose its
customers. The department of sales and marketing at Pearl Continental has managed the
promotional activities by involving social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to
attract more customers and even managed the public relations and event sponsorship. By
choosing the right media for promoting, the company has promoted its services and made
customers informed about the products and services delivered to them (Blal and Sturman 2014).
They also develop contests, discounts and giveaway coupons for providing other benefits to the
customers while making purchases of the accommodations services within the hotel. It is also the
responsibility of the Sales and Marketing department to decide the publications that are needed
to be advertised along with the selection of most suitable websites and promotional platforms to

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facilitate the marketing processes and ensuring better exposure of the brand to its customers
(Dima, Ţenescu and Bosun 2014).
The sales and marketing department is also concerned with the strategic positioning of
the organisation to position the brand within the market properly and ensuring that a positive
mindset is created among the customers. This has helped in understanding the requirements and
preferences of the customers and set prices accordingly for keeping them satisfied and influenced
to make purchases again from Pearl Continental, Karachi, Pakistan. It is not always meant to be
linked with the income generation rather the strategic positioning allows for positioning the
company and using business models to analyse the market place, identify the competition in the
market, the consumers’ demands and preferences within the changing business environment and
understanding the trends and approaches to become successful in the future (Evans, Stonehouse
and Campbell 2012).
By understanding the changing needs and preferences of the customers, it would be easy
for the sales and marketing department to identify the factors that can create the hotel’s appeal
and awareness among the customers. The concerned department also monitors the reviews and
feedbacks of the customers from the hotel’s website and provides solutions, which further helps
in identifying the recent trends to increase demand for low cost family accommodations and
other facilities from the hotel authorities (Filieri and McLeay 2014). To increase the efficiency
of reaching the targeted market segments comprising of the customers, the Sales and Marketing
department of Pearl Continental also posted details about accommodation and other facilities
available at the hotel and even collaborated with various venues of meetings. It has further
helped in providing the delegates with accommodation facilities and gain access to the potential
customers with ease and effectiveness (Garay and Font 2012).

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Roles of customers and their needs
The customers’ roles are to provide their views and opinions along with the feedbacks
about the services that they have obtained from the Pearl Continental. It has enabled the Sales
and Marketing managers to make necessary changes for the fulfillment of the customers’ needs
and preferences and even make it convenient for them to find information about the hotel and the
services can be availed. One of the most important thing that is considered by the customers to
gain a positive experience has been the quality of accommodation facilities and rooms available
for them (Herrero and San Martín 2012). Being one of the most popular luxury hotels in
Pakistan, Pearl Continental has provided services to suit the needs of both business leisure
travelers and allowed them to chose from multiple luxury rooms and suites during their stay at
the hotel. Other than the comfortable accommodation facilities, the hotel also offered fine dining
options, health club and indoor temperatures controlled swimming pools for improving their
experience and made them carry out word of mouth promotions for making other people aware
of the accommodation services too (Kim, Ham and Moon 2012).
The accommodation manager must make sure that the suites and rooms are provided to
the customers according to their preferences even assign the housekeeping units to provide
constant help and support whenever needed. The accommodation manager’s roles are also to
maintain the health and safety standards and plan for work schedules and manage staff rotations
for making 24 hour services available for the service users of Pearl Continental. The
accommodation managers are also responsible for providing training sessions and make the
staffs maintain cleanliness, furthermore keep the guests healthy and safe by complying with the
health and safety regulations and rules too (Kim, Cho and Brymer 2013).

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Impact of outsourcing solution on the department
Outsourcing within the hospitality industry may or may not be a viable options, though
depending upon several factors that are needed to be considered from the sales and marketing
perspective. The outsourcing solutions are provided by the third party and it mainly enables the
sales and marketing department of the hotel to allow another hotel to manage certain tasks and
functions for saving a significant amount of time, money as well as resources. Outsourcing in
this department might not be a viable and feasible option because of the wrong assumption of
workload and not being able to subcontract the specialized hotels for providing the best quality
services to the customers (Kwok and Yu 2013). Pearl Continental has fixed costs and staffs are
being with specific amounts of wages. When certain issues arise, the hotel might contract various
activities to turn the fixed costs into the variable costs and this could facilitate the outsourcing of
solutions for the Sales and Marketing department. Few benefits of outsourcing for the
department included decrease in fixed costs, enhanced quality of products and services delivered
to the customers and saving lot of time, resources and money too. There are no such employee
contractual obligations and no wages burden for the staffs who have been skilled and
knowledgeable (Lamminmaki 2012).
The drawbacks, on the other hand could be the loosing of control and losing certain skills
to handle multiple operations at the same time, which might degrade the organizational
functioning. The lack of alignment with the business goals and objectives could be another
disadvantage of outsourcing for this department while there were security related issues as well,
which hindered the confidentiality and availability of data and information of customers
(Leeman and Reynolds 2012). The customers must make sure that the information provided by
them were accurate and those were kept private, so that it does not fall in wrong hands.

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Therefore, it could be understood that outsourcing might not be a viable solution for the
concerned department of Pearl Continental (Mohammed and Rashid 2012).
Recommendations to move forward
It is recommended to form an active sales team for estimating the current and future sales
as well as ensure utilization of the resources properly for driving the sales performance in the
future. The Sales and Marketing department, to improve its sales through marketing strategies
must also schedule periodic maintenance, repairing and mange innovation for improving the
efficiency of marketing (Wang 2012). To ensure financial success and better revenue generation,
the accommodation managers of the hotel must also maintain proper budgetary methods,
accounting and create financial reports for delivering the best quality customers’ services. This
would also save a lot of cost, time and achieve the targets and objectives of gaining more profit
in business within quick time (Pchotels.com 2018). Pearl Continental’s marketing and sales
department is also responsible for developing an effective diversification strategy to make new
products and services available for the target market segments. To increase its sales, the hotel
could introduce new subsidiaries and banquet halls for attracting more customers towards the
hotel and it influenced their buying behaviors. It should foster business growth and prosperity
and the risks would be resolved that might be faced in case the customers were not satisfied with
the services (Rishi and Gaur 2012).
The products and services of Pearl Continental were promoted in social media, internet
websites, televisions and radios along with advertisements on Khyber channel for increasing its
sales and make people aware of the services delivered. The marketing mix strategy is used to
analyse the market conditions and determine the various elements for managing changes in

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prices of products, add new locations for sales, which can improve the response rate of the
customers (Wang and Ritchie 2012). The needs and requirements of the customers should be
assessed and reviewed, based on which the accommodation services could be provided
accordingly and keep them satisfied as a whole.

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References
Abbey, J.R., 2014. Hospitality sales and marketing. American Hotel & Lodging Educational
Institute.
Altin, M., Schwartz, Z. and Uysal, M., 2017. “Where you do it” matters: The impact of hotels’
revenue-management implementation strategies on performance. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 67, pp.46-52.
Andzulis, J.M., Panagopoulos, N.G. and Rapp, A., 2012. A review of social media and
implications for the sales process. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32(3),
pp.305-316.
Bateman, T.S. and Snell, S., 2013. Management: Leading & collaborating in a competitive
world. McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Blal, I. and Sturman, M.C., 2014. The differential effects of the quality and quantity of online
reviews on hotel room sales. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(4), pp.365-375.
Dima, I.C., Ţenescu, A. and Bosun, P., 2014. Informational stocks and e-logistics management
of a tourism company. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 16(1), pp.75-85.
Evans, N., Stonehouse, G. and Campbell, D., 2012. Strategic management for travel and
tourism. Taylor & Francis.
Filieri, R. and McLeay, F., 2014. E-WOM and accommodation: An analysis of the factors that
influence travelers’ adoption of information from online reviews. Journal of Travel
Research, 53(1), pp.44-57.

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Garay, L. and Font, X., 2012. Doing good to do well? Corporate social responsibility reasons,
practices and impacts in small and medium accommodation enterprises. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 31(2), pp.329-337.
Herrero, Á. and San Martín, H., 2012. Developing and testing a global model to explain the
adoption of websites by users in rural tourism accommodations. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 31(4), pp.1178-1186.
Kim, H.B., Ham, S. and Moon, H.Y., 2012. The impact of hotel property size in determining the
importance of electronic distribution channels. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism
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Kim, W.G., Cho, M. and Brymer, R.A., 2013. Determinants affecting comprehensive property-
level hotel performance: The moderating role of hotel type. International Journal of Hospitality
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Kwok, L. and Yu, B., 2013. Spreading social media messages on Facebook: An analysis of
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Lamminmaki, D., 2012. A management accounting perspective on hotel outsourcing. Accounting
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Leeman, D. and Reynolds, D., 2012. Trust and outsourcing: Do perceptions of trust influence the
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Mohammed, A.A. and Rashid, B., 2012. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Hotel
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