Marketing Communication Plan for Hilton Hotel: Strategies and Analysis

This report presents a comprehensive marketing plan for Hilton Hotel, encompassing an executive summary, introduction, and company overview. It delves into situational analysis using SWOT, positioning, branding, and target audience identification via STP (Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning). The report outlines marketing objectives, including enhancing the customer base, increasing revenue, and becoming a pet-friendly hotel. It details the marketing communication mix, including advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, merchandising, public relations, and publicity. Furthermore, it provides an example of a promotional campaign focused on pet-friendly services to meet specific objectives. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, emphasizing the importance of a well-defined marketing plan for organizational success. References to relevant books and journals are included.

COMMUNICATION
MANAGEMENT IN HOSPITALITY,
EVENTS AND TOURISM

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION OF COMPANY................................................................................................1
SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS..........................................................................................................1
POSITIONING AND BRANDING, AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE TARGET AUDIENCE2
OUTLINE OF MARKETING OBJECTIVES................................................................................3
MARKETING COMMUNICATION MIX OVERVIEW..............................................................3
EXAMPLE OF A PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN THAT WILL MEET AT LEAST ONE OF
THE OBJECTIVES.........................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This assignment had focused upon development of marketing plan for Hilton Hotel. In order to
develop an effective marketing plan, this assignment had focused upon introduction of company,
marketing objectives, situational analysis, Positioning and branding, and identification of the
target audience, Marketing communications mix and promotional campaign.
INTRODUCTION
Marketing plan can be defined as a kind of document or business plan that helps in
outlining advertising and promotional strategy that can help in generating or reaching target
market of the organization (De Pelsmacker, Van Tilburgand Holthof, 2018). Development of
marketing plan is extremely important for an organization as it helps in promotion of their
products and services and generating awareness about their services within their target
customers. This assignment will lay emphasis upon production of marketing communication plan
for Hilton Hotel.
INTRODUCTION OF COMPANY
Hilton is a multinational organization is a multinational organization that manages
franchises of broad portfolio of hotels and resorts. Hilton was founded in 1919. They have their
hotels worldwide in more than 118 countries at approximately 6215 locations. Hilton provides
hospitality and accommodation products and services to people. All of their European operations
are managed and are based in Walford, UK. They have approximately 49 hotels in United
Kingdom.
SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS
Situational analysis is a kind of analysis of both internal and external factors of a business
in order to identify capabilities of business, analyse their business environment, potential
customers, and impact that identified factors have on business (Margariti, 2018). Situational
analysis of Hilton Hotel will be done with the help of SWOT analysis.
Strengths: It has high brand recognition as it is present in approximately 118 countries. They
have maintained excellent reputation in market for their high- quality products and services. their
strong portfolio of hotels has helped them in in developing a strong brand image. Global
presence of Hilton is another one of their main strength. Focus upon technical innovation for
improving overall experience of customers by constantly upgrading their business processes has
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helped them in enhancing their customer experience and enhance loyalty of their customers
towards brand.
Weaknesses: their main weakness is combating with malware and viruses as due to a malware
they had to pay £525,000 fine for two credit card data breaches as a result of their infected cash
register because of a credit-card targeting malware. It has always been one of their main
weakness (Goryushkina and et. al., 2016). They have limited market share in UK despite of
having excellent brand recall. Lower focus upon security of their network and system had also
affected overall trust of their shareholders.
Opportunities: they can focus upon expanding their overall business in developing countries
because emerging market have high potential for development and expansion of their business.
Digitalizing overall business will directly help them to attract more customers and provide much
better services. they can focus upon providing new services or develop mew products such as
2487 chatbot service for customers, Robots for serving customers due to current situation of
Covid-19.
Threats: Entry of several brands in international market that have developed strong brand
portfolio has increased competition for them. Current satiation of Covid-19 s a threat for Hilton
as it has reduced travelling of customers due to which this situation has become a threat for their
business. Some of the main competitors of Hilton that has become a threat for them are: Accor,
Hyatt, Marriott International and many more.
POSITIONING AND BRANDING, AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE
TARGET AUDIENCE
Positioning, branding and targeting of customers of Hilton can be identified and analysed with
the help of STP (Segmentation, targeting and positioning)
It helps in analysing customers to whom company sell their products and services to and
brand positioning where they have categorised their products and services to (Kotler and et. al.,
2017). Hilton have categorised that customers on the basis of demographic and geographic
segmentation.
Geographic segmentation involves target customers as per their geographical location at
both national and international level. Hilton has focused upon developing their hotel on locations
that are populated with their target customers. For example, London is one of the most famous
location for business and travelling. Another segment of customers targeted by Hilton is
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demographic segmentation of customers in which as per social class and income of customers
they have been targeted. Hilton focuses upon upper middle- class people that have high family
income level.
Targeting helps in identifying target customers that are targeted by Hilton. They target
more than one segment at a time as they have developed a strong brand portfolio of all of their
hotels. Hilton targets upper middle- class and high- income level customers who love to travel a
lot for luxury or business purpose.
In order to position themselves in the current competitive marketing environment they
have adopted premium pricing strategy for their upper middle- class customers (Borisova and
Razumeiko, 2018). Brand positioning of Hilton has been categorised as luxurious full- service
hotel that provide all kinds of services to their customers such as accommodation, food and
beverages, meeting rooms, halls for party purpose, laundry service, housekeeping service with
other complementary services like spa, Gym and many more.
So from this analysis it can be said that Hilton has positioned themselves as a full service
luxurious hotel with premium pricing strategy whose main target customers are upper- middle
class high income level customers.
OUTLINE OF MARKETING OBJECTIVES
In order to develop an effective marketing, plan it is important for organizations to first of
ser marketing objectives that are required to be achieved on which this marketing plan will be
based upon (Badri and Kazemi, 2020). Main marketing objectives of Hilton that will achieved
with the help of this marketing plan are as follows:
 To enhance overall customer base by at least 5 percent within 12 months.
 To increase overall revenue and profitability by 10 percent within 12 months.
 To become a pet friendly hotel within 6 months.
MARKETING COMMUNICATION MIX OVERVIEW
Marketing communication mix is a research method which is used for promoting
organization, their products and services to their targeted customer base (Badri and Kazemi,
2020). Marketing communication mix od Hilton is as follows:
Advertising: Hilton focuses upon print media advertising for communicating their marketing
message with their customers. Their main marketing message focuses upon highest standard of
service provision. They focus upon maintaining high level of integration of information
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technology with their services so that they can provide high quality of personalized service to
their customers. Print media marketing which is focused upon by Hilton for communicating their
marketing message is magazine, newspaper etc. mostly that focus upon popular professional
magazines such as Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, and Financial Times. They also use
broadcasting advertisement medium such as television etc. for communicating their marketing
message with their customers.
Sales Promotion: It focuses upon attempting ways in which an organization persuade their
customers to purchase their products and services though various kinds of sales promotion
programs (Badri and Kazemi, 2020). Hilton uses following form of sales promotion. They have
developed loyalty program for customers that offers various kinds of discounts to customers, and
provide many other kinds of offers such as free internet, digital check-in, late check-outs and
many other kinds of offers. They also provide discount vouchers that are available on their
official website and on other discount websites.
Personal selling: It is a direct marketing element that focuses upon extensive sales force. As
Hilton provide high end products that require more efforts to persuade customer’s so that focus
upon both telephone and face to face personal selling. When customers make booking within
Hilton, managers talk to customers so that they can avail other services as well or they many
times call their loyal customers to inform them about new services.
Merchandising: it is a point of purchase advertising that involves in- house technique where
customers are encouraged to make purchase. For this Hilton has developed food menu, soft drink
beverage menu, wine menu etc.
Public relation: It is similar to adverting but it involves message communication though mass
media (Badri and Kazemi, 2020). Hilton focuses upon non- paid communication method for
communicating information about their products and services. for maintaining public relation
they focus upon social media marketing where they focus upon using social networking sites for
reaching to their customers and communicate message about their products and services.
Publicity: For publicity that use all most of communication i.e. print media, broadcasting, digital
marketing etc.
EXAMPLE OF A PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN THAT WILL MEET AT
LEAST ONE OF THE OBJECTIVES
Hilton Hotel
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Pet- friendly hotels are becoming increasing popular nowadays. Travellers who cannot to
get separated from their beloved pets, Hilton Hotels are focusing upon becoming a pet friendly
place for their customer’s where their customer’s will be allowed to bring with dog or cat pets
with them. Not only this, Hilton is also focusing upon providing some pet friendly services to
customers such as service to take dogs for a walk etc.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarized that marketing plan plays a vital role
for an organization as it helps them to develop business strategies for their organizations in order
to attract more number of customers, increase awareness about their products and services. it has
been summarized that in order to develop a successful marketing plan it is important to develop
marketing objectives that are required to be achieved so that business strategy can be developed
accordingly.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Badri, S.A. and Kazemi, N., 2020. How Does the Hotel Quality Rate Influence the Preparedness
against the Effects of Disasters?. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism,
pp.1-23.
Borisova, K. and Razumeiko, A., 2018. Hotel Rebranding: Marketing Plan for Piter Inn
Petrozavodsk.
De Pelsmacker, P., Van Tilburg, S. and Holthof, C., 2018. Digital marketing strategies, online
reviews and hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 72.
pp.47-55.
Goryushkina, N.Y., and et. al., 2016. Marketing management in the sphere of hotel and tourist
services. International Review of Management and Marketing. 6(6S).
Kotler, P., and et. al., 2017. Marketing for hospitality and tourism.
Margariti, A., 2018. Strategic marketing plan for hotels: The case of Hotel Pyrgos.
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