Hospitality Marketing Essentials: Hilton Hotel Case Study Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing strategies employed by the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. It begins with an introduction to hospitality marketing and its distinction from other product marketing, highlighting the importance of promoting intangible goods and experiences. The report then delves into the role of marketing within the Hilton Hotel, defining its functions and responsibilities, and how it interrelates with other functional units such as finance, production, HR, and sales. The core of the report examines how Hilton utilizes the elements of the marketing mix (7Ps) to achieve its objectives, including product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. Furthermore, the report explores the development of a basic marketing plan for the hotel, outlining its objectives and strategies for market segmentation and increased occupancy. The report incorporates marketing concepts like production, product, selling, marketing, and societal marketing concepts. The report also looks at the role of marketing in gaining a competitive advantage in the hospitality sector. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a list of references.

HOSPITALITY
MARKETING
ESSENTIALS
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................3
LO 1: .........................................................................................................................................4
Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units in the
Hilton Hotel on Park Lane.....................................................................................................4
LO2: ........................................................................................................................................14
Comparison of ways in which hospitality organizations use the elements of marketing mix
(7Ps) to achievement of its objectives.................................................................................14
LO3: ........................................................................................................................................20
Developing a basic marketing plan to meet the marketing objectives for a hospitality
organisation ........................................................................................................................20
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................25
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................26
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INTRODUCTION
Hospitality marketing is different from the marketing of any other product as it has to
promote mainly intangible goods and the experiences they offer. Promoting intangible goods
is much more difficult than promoting tangible goods. In this study, Hilton Hotels and
Resorts based on Park Lane London, will be analysed to evaluate the marketing methods used
by the company to attract customers and gain a competitive edge in the market.
This study aims to look at the various different roles of marketing in the hospitality industry.
It first and primarily defines what the hospitality industry is and explains the role of
marketing with regard to the Hilton Hotel. It also helps in analysing the various roles and
responsibilities of marketing in the context of an organisation. It further looks into the
different ways in which the Hilton Hotel use the different elements of marketing in order to
sustain itself and perform its functions. It looks into the development of a marketing plan and
its objectives.
The London Hilton on Park Lane is one of over 570 Hilton Hotels and Resort chain
around 85 countries, owned by a private company London & Regional. An icon of British
hospitality, London Hilton on Park Lane is the first Hilton Hotel open in 1963 in UK, in the
exclusive Mayfair district of London, overlooking Hyde Park and is located on the former
site of the historic Londonderry house. Also, the Hilton hotel is close to West End theate,
famous shopping districts, Piccadilly a minute away and easy access to Buckingham Palace
and Hyde park Corner underground station. The Hilton Hotel is 101 meters tall, has 453
rooms including 56 suites, 28 stores and on the top floor a Michelin starred restaurant Galvin
at Windows.
The Hilton Hotel is one of the known brand in the world, a 5 star hotel based on the
quality and amenities to provide customer satisfaction. In Hilton hotel the organizational
department is very well-structured and the order of hierarchy is: General Manager, Assistant
General Manager, Front Office manager, Housekeeping Manager, Maintenance Manager,
Food & Beverage Manager, Financial Manager, and HR Manager. Hilton Hotel has 538
employees in both full and part-time position, that means full time equivalent of 450 jobs.
The room occupancy rate in Hilton Hotel was 82% in 2018, and for 2019 was predicted to be
87%. All our departments collaborate to increase work productivity and efficiency. The
elegant rooms inside have original 1960s hard-wood furnishings, but smart and up to date
bathrooms and a magnificent view. In Hilton Park Lane hotel, the price for a guest
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room/night start up from £271 to £629, a suite with lounge access from £543 to £1,764, and a
Presidential Suite can be booked from £3,480/night. A similar hotel nearby is the 5 stars
Metropolitan Hotel, where rates start from£309/night. Each guest room at London Hilton on
Park Lane features: air conditioning, elegant bathrooms with exclusive organic bath products,
mini bar, telephone with voicemail, TV, tea and coffee making facilities, trousers press, well-
lit work desk. For an unforgettable experience, our clients can select a spacious suite which
offer separate living rooms, dining- areas, window- seats and walk-in-wardrobes. Each Suite
features: elegant bathrooms with bathrobes and slippers, butler service, standard Wi Fi, safe,
hairdryer, mini bar, etc. The Hilton hotel offer family options like free buffet breakfast for
children under 18, Children’s menu 5 under in Podium Restaurant, complementary Wi Fi for
family and children TV channels available in rooms. For business convenience, the Hilton
hotel has 11 flexible function rooms for up to 1,250 guests, with Audio/Visual Equipment
Rental, Business Center, Meeting Rooms, Video Conferencing available. Also, Podium
Restaurant and Bar offers all-dining in a relaxing and stylish atmosphere, a perfect location
for business lunch and dinner. The Hilton Park Lane offer many others services to ensure
maximum comfort: concierge shop, barber shop, SPA, fitness room, sauna, designer flowers,
laundry service, room service, foreign currency, exchange, lounge, safety deposit, parking
facility and wheelchair ramp for reception access. The Hilton Park Lane has seasonal rates to
maintain occupancy at higher levels, being both a luxury leisure and business hotel, leisure
demand compensates for periods when business is quiet and vice versa.
`Hilton Hotel on Park Lane is a perfect location whether conducting business,
spending quality time with family and to make unforgettable experiences for customers by
offering the services they need, the amenities they expect and the extra they deserve.
LO 1:
Explain the role of marketing and how it interrelates with other functional units in the Hilton
Hotel on Park Lane
According to Kotler (1994), marketing is a social and managerial process by which
individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and
exchanging products of value with others. In Hilton Hotel, marketing has the first place in the
sequence of management functions and is concerned with identifying a need the organisation
can exploit with a right product or service, with the right price, in the right place, to the right
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customer. Marketing functions can be defined as roles of business organisation to identify a
new successful product, to promote and sell the product. The marketing functions involve
marketing research, product plan, development process, finance, promotion, sales and
customer service. In Hilton Hotel we use the marketing functions for strategy management,
marketing research, product development, sales, finance, HR and all these functions have
roles and responsibilities to growth business.
Proper marketing and use of marketing tools such as digital marketing, direct marketing and
other resources of the appropriate marketing plans and strategies are obtained in order to
provide ample exposure for the services that are offered by the marketing industry (Bowie et
al. 2016). Hilton Hotel’s Marketing department develops a basic plan for 12 months, to
increase the room occupancy and to achieve a new market segmentation. In Hilton Hotel,
every marketing function is separate entity, but they are link together for increasing the
profitability of the hotel. The role of Finance department is to provide the budget to the
marketing department for the planning and implementation of this basic marketing plan. The
role of Production department is to communicate the supply and demand of rooms and
services for the right quality and the right quantity. HR department has the role to provide a
high-level infrastructure for managing people by training and development of staff, and has
the legal responsibilities as well. An important role plays Sales department which is
responsible for identifying new business opportunities, build and keep a good relationship
with existing and new customers to enable future booking, to promote and manage the brand,
By promoting Hilton Hotel, we will make a loyalty program, will provide a virtual tour on
Hilton Hotel website, will make easier to book a room on Hilton Hotel, will create a special
packages for groups events (business class meetings, family and friends reunion), will
encourage the current and past customers to share their experience at Hilton Hotel. Also, we
will use The newspapers and travel magazines.
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Marketing Functions
Figure 1: Marketing Functions (Source: Created by Author)
The wide range of activities undertaken by an organisation to promote a product or service
with the view to earning maximum profits as well as customer satisfaction is known as
marketing. Marketing is done by involving various marketing functions like Market
Research, Planning, Marketing strategies, Advertising and Distribution. As opposed to the
traditional meaning of marketing, that simply meant to focus on selling a product to earn
maximum profits, the modern concept of marketing is to focus on the needs of the customer
and giving them what they want to maximise customer satisfaction (Minazzi, 2015). The key
roles and responsibilities of marketing functions are market research, financing, product
development, product distribution, planning, promotion and selling. According to Huang and
Cai (2015), this popularity can be attributed to the long history of excellent service provided
by the multiple hotels situated all over the world. However, successful implementation of
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marketing strategies, functions and plans are of extreme importance, since failure in
implementation of appropriate marketing strategies can cause immense losses to the
organisation.
Marketing Concepts
Marketing concepts refer to the marketing strategies that companies implement in
their marketing structure in order to gain popularity among customers and gain a competitive
edge in the market (Abratt and Bendixen, 2018). The five major marketing concepts are
production concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept and societal
marketing concept.
Figure 2: Marketing Concepts
(Source: Influenced from Abratt and Bendixen, 2018)
Production Concept
Production concept refers to the production aspect of the product or service. This
concept determines that The Hilton Hotel’s customer will only choose the product or service
that is available at an affordable cost.. The Hilton Hotel concentrate its attention on
production efficiency, distribution and cost in order to attract customers to its product.
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Product Concept
Product concept is the aspect that caters to the services provided in a product.
According to Marasco et al. (2018), this concept is based on the idea that the customer will
only choose the product that provides the most services and is the best in terms of quality,
performance and the availability of unique features while catering to the current market
trends and customer needs. This concept determines that products and services that are not in
alignment with the current trends and needs are useless regardless of their high quality. The
Hilton hotel manager makes sure the product is the right quality, the right standard, goes to
the luxury level, in a limited market.
Selling Concept
Figure 3: Selling Concept
(Source: Iedunote.com, 2019)
The selling concept is concerned with the marketing strategies used by the
organisation to promote and sell products and services. As opined by Noo-urai and
Jaroenwisam (2016), the basic idea behind the concept is that customers will only choose to
buy a certain product or service only if the organisation chooses to invest a monumental
amount of funds and time on marketing and promotion.
Marketing Concept
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Figure 4: Marketing Concept
(Source: Iedunote.com, 2019)
The marketing concept determines that The Hilton Hotel need to have a thorough
understanding of the needs of customers in order to deliver them and provide better
satisfaction than competitors to the customers (Soelberg et al. 2018).
Societal Marketing Concept
Figure 5: Societal Marketing Concept
(Source: Iedunote.com, 2019)
This concept of marketing questions the idea that the marketing concept may overlook
a potential conflict between the short-term and long-term wants of the consumer. In this
concept, the organizations work with the goal to provide value to the well-being of both the
customer and the society (Kim et al. 2016). The Hilton Hotel make marketing decision not
only by considering consumer’s wants and the company’ requirements, but also society long-
terms interests.
Role of Marketing and other functional units
Other tools of marketing also help in the development of this sector in order to help
the hospitality industry companies such as Hilton Hotel to gain a competitive advantage. The
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marketing tools of finance and competitive financing can be effectively used in order to
create a competitive advantage over the competitors in the industry.
Marketing as a business function can help Hilton Hotel to integrate active marketing
into its operations and its organizational structure in order to improve the efficiency and the
exposure of the services that are offered by the company. It also helps the company in
effectively competing with its competitors in the market such as Marriott and Hyatt in order
to gain market shares. The presence of innovative marketing further helps it in increasing its
chances of capturing larger market shares as per the saturation of the industry.
Roles and responsibilities of marketing in the wider organizational context
The responsibility of marketing in Hilton Hotel is to inform about product, to satisfy
the customer and achieves the profit, and the marketing role is to find the right way to
achieve these. Marketing functions play a very important role in Hilton Hotel, as other
organizational functions are very closely linked with marketing functions. Only if all the
departments of an organization work together can the marketing strategy be successful
implementation of a marketing plan needs cooperation from all departments of an
organization, like Finance, Sales and HR. The HR function in Hilton Hotel provides a high-
level infrastructure for managing people and monitor, key indices such as absences, turnover,
wage costs. Finance function play the lead role in Hilton hotel, in collecting key financial
information and preparing reports for management. The Sales function sets the strategies and
decides what marketing communications it needs to support its efforts, guides the
development of product, promote the product. As stated by (Alegre and Sard, 2017), the
organizations compete in becoming the top priority of their consumers and protecting their
market share. Marketing focuses on creating consumer retention and gaining their trust. So,
we carry out our promotions and campaigns from time to time which have been proven as a
successful initiative for attracting more customers. Marketing is also essentially responsible
for carrying out the functions and integrating the processes of the organizations into
achieving the goals that have been set. Marketing is responsible for understanding and
tracking the various changes and shifts in the customer demands of the market and effectively
maintaining a proper communication process in the industry between the company and the
customers of the company (Kandampully et al.2015). Therefore, The Hilton hotel develop a
basic plan for next 12 month, and the main goal is to increase the hotel occupancy. Also,
other objectives are to be the most known brand in each customer segment and to increase a
high level of customer satisfaction. Marketing environment plays an important role in
planning process and consist in research of internal environment factors such as customers,
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staff management, culture structure, resources, budget (using SWOT analysis), and external
environment factors like suppliers, local authorities, competitors, (using PEST analysis). So,
after the marketing department set the goals, make the research, the SWOT and Pest analysis.
Micro environment
Internal environment exists inside the organization. There are various factors of
internal environment such as existing workers, organizational culture, Technological
capabilities, behaviour of employees, management etc. All these factors directly impact the
performance of the company. Hilton Hotel should use different tools and techniques to
understand the impact of internal factors on the operations of the Hotel.
Company can use framework such as SWOT analysis to evaluate the changes that are
occurring in internal factors (Raja and et.al., 2019). This will help to identify the strengths
and weaknesses of the Hotel. Through which firm will make efforts to use its strengths for
grabbing the opportunities that are existing in the environment outside the Hilton Hotel.
Internal environment analysis will also help to control the impact of these factors.
Macro Environment
External environment analysis refers to analysing the factors of macro environment
that can impact the business of company indirectly. These factors exist in the environment
outside the firm. Hilton Hotel should use PEST analysis framework to determine the changes
that are happening in macro environment that can indirectly affect the operations of the Hotel
(Akkanen, 2017). External environment includes factors such as Social, Technological,
Political, economical etc. Analysis of external environment helps to identify the opportunities
that are existing in the environment. It will help Hilton Hotel to use its strengths for grabbing
the opportunities that are existing in the market. For example- Hotel can use advance
technology for offering services to the guests. This will help the company to gain competitive
advantage over other Hotels.
How Internal macro environment affect marketing function
Internal and external business environment is very much effective to the business
function that force outside marketing that influence marketing management ability to develop
and maintain a successful relationship with its targets. Such changes and market research
affect the marketing functions in different context. Such as internal environment such as
employees, customers, intermediaries all such factors affect the business the marketing
manager. For example: due to lack of employee skills and knowledge it affects the marketing
functions. On the other side, external environment factors affect the marketing activities like
political, legal, environmental (Wang and et.al., 2016). Such as demographic factors include
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human populations in terms of size, destiny, age, location, race and occupation all such
factors affect the business organization and its goals and objectives. Economic environmental
affect directly business power and spending patterns and income, policies, trade cycles,
distribution of income and wealth.
Technological factors and economic factors are affect the business in different
manner. Marketing is the only sector that influenced by the external environmental factors an
affect the business opportunity gains. Marketing function factor affecting business in direct or
indirect manner. Such as suppliers, market intermediaries, competitors, customers. Macro
environment of the marketing is that most influencing different task manner (Ansah and
Sorooshian, 2017)
PEST analysis
The business environment of Hilton Hotel can be divided into internal business
environment and external business environment. Internal business environment includes
mission and vision of company, organisational structure, quality of HRM, labour unions,
physical resources and technological capability. The external environment of business can be
divided into two parts that is micro external environment and macro external environment.
The micro external environment includes employees, management, suppliers, resellers,
customers, competitors and the general public. The macro external environmental factors
include demographic forces, economic factors, technological elements, social and cultural
forces. PEST is a concept of marketing principle which is used by companies for analysing
the external environmental factor which are affect to business and its operations. This
framework is includes such as political, economic, social and technological factors. This help
to identify a change in macro business environment. With the help of this model, manager of
Hilton hotel successfully monitor and respond towards the changes at macro environment
able to differentiate by competitors. This provides best details of operating challenges. To
analysis the changes in macro environment which are affect to Hilton hotel are as follows:
Political factor:
The marketing functions of the company includes performing the market research,
producing the marketing plan and development of product. The marketing function gets
affected due to the political factors because it intervenes in the economy and even the
particular industry. The tax policies, trade regulations, trade restrictions and employment
laws leads to bring influences on the how business operates and thus on the marketing
function as well. Political factor plays significant role for analysing those factor that may
impact Hilton hotel in political manner. Political factor includes tax policies, labour law,
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