Hospitality Marketing Plan: Strategies, PESTLE Analysis for Hilton

This report provides an in-depth analysis of marketing strategies within the hospitality industry, specifically focusing on Hilton Hotels. It discusses the importance of marketing in the hospitality sector, emphasizing how hotels contribute to a country's economy. A PESTLE analysis is conducted to evaluate the external factors impacting the organization, alongside a discussion on the necessity of market segmentation for targeted customer engagement. The report also explores the implementation of a marketing plan, covering key concepts such as brand reputation, customer loyalty, and marketing mix elements like price, place, promotion, and product (services). Pricing strategies and policies relevant to the hotel industry are examined, and the report concludes with an evaluation of the marketing plan's effectiveness, highlighting the significance of customer relationships and strategic location choices for business expansion. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and resources for students.

Running head: MARKETING IN HOSPITALITY
MARKETING IN HOSPITALITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Executive Summary
This paper deals with the importance and the need of marketing in the hospitality industry.
this paper explains about the industrial sector of the hospitality sector. Hotels are one of the
vital sectors that provide huge revenue in the country’s economy. In the paper a PESTEL
analysis have been carried out to understand the external factors that affects the working of
an organization. The need of market segmentation has also been discussed in this paper. This
paper also discuss about the implementation of the marketing plan.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................6
Some of the marketing concepts/strategies for the hospitality industry are:.........................7
Relevance of consumer market in the industry....................................................................12
Market Segmentation...........................................................................................................14
Rationale for developing different market segment:............................................................15
Hospitality marketing mix....................................................................................................16
Pricing strategies and policies in relation to the hotel industry...........................................19
Evaluatation of the marketing plan......................................................................................19
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................21

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Introduction
This assignment discuss about the marketing concept in the hospitality
industry.Marketing is the art of choosing the right target markets and making a profitable
relationship with the customers. Marketing also means obtaining, retaining and developing
the customers. Marketing in hospitality means how the different segments of the hospitality
industry for example restaurants, hotels, amusement parks utilize different marketing
techniques for the promotion of their products and services. Hospitality marketing is done to
increase the revenue of the hospitality industry (Baker 2016). This paper explains about the
hotel industry. The hotel, which is chosen in this assignment, is Hilton. Hilton is a UK based
hotel, which provides rooms and other services to its customer. This assignment discusses
about the concepts of marketing for the hotel industry. Marketing is necessary for any
industry to build a good brand reputation and to reach out to the people. Good marketing
strategy will help a restaurant, hotel, amusement parks etc. Hospitality industry is the sector
where the main products that the hotels are offering are heir services. The service that they
are offering should provide satisfactory feeling to their customer. The marketing environment
of the UK based Hilton hotel will be assessed with the help of PESTLE analysis. PESTLE
means Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors that
affects the organization.PESTLE analysis analyzes the external environment of the
organization. Political factors are the factors, which are influenced by any political changes
or any new government policy. Economic factor depends on the economic conditions of the
country. It can be anything like inflation, or any government rules regarding the economic
policy. Social factors are factors related to society. Technological factors are the factors,
which explain how the technology affects the organization. Legal factors are the legal rules
and regulations that the government impose on the hotels to avoid any damage or illegal

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doings (Theaker 2017). This paper also explains about the need of developing market
segments. Market segmentation is the new strategy that is applied by the organizations to
have a better control over their customers. Market segmentation is the process of dividing or
splitting markets potential customer by some unique attributes. Dividing the customer
depends on their shared value or needs. By segmenting the markets, the managers target the
particular group in certain ways by which the organization will be profitable. This paper also
explains about the different components of the marketing mix. Marketing mix consists of
mainly 4P’s . Price, place, promotion and product, product in the hotel industry means the
services that they are providing. Hilton hotel is one of the renowned hotels in the UK and
they have a huge possibility or it can be said that they can expand their business
internationally. This paper will help to understand the factors for evaluating the marketing
plan of the Hilton Hotel.

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Discussion:
Marketing in hospitality means how the different segments of the hospitality industry
for example restaurants, hotels, amusement parks utilize different marketing techniques for
the promotion of their products and services. Marketing is done to retain the customer and to
develop a new customer base in the market. Hospitality marketing is done to increase the
revenue of the hospitality industry.
Importance of marketing in the hospitality industry:
Marketing is necessary for Hilton hotels to build a good brand reputation and to reach
out to the people. Good marketing strategy will help Hilton Hotel to build good brand
awareness and to form a good customer’s base. Customer loyalty is the ultimate motto of
every organization (Hill and Alexander, 2017). Marketing managers spend a lot of resources
and time to build brand awareness.
Hospitality sales and consumer good sales are different from each other because in
hospitality marketing the managers have to sell both the tangible and the intangible products
in the market. The hospitality managers mainly market the services rather than the goods and
their success depends on crating good feelings in the customer’s mind. For example, a resort
or hotel will want to provide a relaxing and fun atmosphere that can be easily recognizable by
the customer (Walker and Walker, 2016).
The hospitality industry mainly consists of tourism and an experiential service, a well-
reputed consistent brand identity is necessary. Marketing managers’ wants to create brand
recognition so that the customer visit or use their services repeatedly. Repeated customer’s
not only bring a huge revenue in the business but they also bring a help the organization to
form a good customer face (Liu-Thompkins and Tam, 2013).

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Some of the marketing concepts for Hilton hotels are:
 Customers prefer hotels and other experiential service for a number of reasons. From
facilities provided to them, location, companies or business organization have to look
that they are providing what the customer’s are looking for. The role of the marketing
manager of Hilton hotel is to find out the unique selling proposition that can attract
the customer. Apart from this, they should also research about the factors that attract
the customers to use that particular service. These needs a lot of research and the
information can be obtained by interacting with the former and the current guests,
reviewing customer’s feedback, monitoring industry data and so on (Nishimura and
NEC corp, 2013).
 If the customer’s does not know about a certain service or brand, they will not be able
to purchase that. This is where the brand awareness comes in effect. Management of
the Hilton hotelhas to keep track that the information about the hotel, restaurants and
resorts are easily available to the customer and that all the information available is up-
to-date.This can be easily done by purchasing space on the travel sites, or by creating
an official website of Hilton hotel. Television advertisement will also help to aware
the customer about their services or products (Huang and Sarigollu, 2014).
 Another brilliant strategy that the marketing managers use nowadays is seasonal
promotion. Seasonal promotion means to promote their service product in the certain
season or period in the year (Fernandez-Morales, Cisneros-Martinez and McCabe,
2016). For example, promotion of resorts and hotels are done during the New Year or
any vocational period when customers travel for a vacation. Apart from this,
promotional activities can also be carried out during the period when the business is
slower. This can be achieved easily by introducing incentives. Hilton hotels should
use this kind of strategy to attract customers.

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 As discussed earlier repeated purchase not only bringshuge revenue into the business
but it also helps to expand the customer’s base. Customer relationship is is necessary
so that the customer uses their product repeatedly. The best way Hilton hotels
canbuild a good relationship is by organizing customer loyalty programme. This
programme rewards the customers for using a particular service repeatedly.
 Managers of the Hilton hotels need to market their product in such a way that the
expensive products or services can still attract the customer. Most of the resorts and
five star hotels are relatively expensive but the services that they are providing should
attract and form a customer base. This will help Hilton hotels in expanding their
business internationally.
 Hilton hotel should choose the location carefully as the revenue earned by them
would totally depend on the number of customer visiting that place. A resort or hotel
located around a coastal area will be much more benefited than a hotel, which is
located in urban areas (Yang, Luo and Law, 2014).
Impact of marketing environment on the industry
Before preparing any business plan, the organization should understand about the
environment that they want to base their organization. The impact of the marketing
environment on Hilton hotels can be examined with the help of PESTLE analysis.PESTLE
analysis helps to understand the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental
and Legal factors (Jurevivius, 2013). Some of the external factors that will affect the
operation of the Hilton hotel are explained below.
Political factors:

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Political environment is the most important area that all the business organization
needs to monitor constantly as because politics are very unpredictable and can be influenced
very easily. The reason behind this is that the governments have the power to form legislation
and introduce new regulations that may affect the business organizations. However, United
Kingdom is a free market; the UK government still keeps tracks of the private sectors to
ensure that all the financial transaction and other related activities of the business are working
as per the best interests of the UK’s economy and well-being. Some of the Political factors
that have an effect on the Hilton hotels are:
 Digital Economy Act 2010 – This Act of the parliament was introduced to decrease
the frequency or amount of copyright infringements or illegal file sharing that is
common in digital society. However, this Act has a fierce criticism from the different
establishments especially from the hotels, which offer free hotspots to its customers.
The Act states that if the guests of the hotel break the law while using the free hotspot
that is provided by the hotels, then the hotel authorities will be held responsible and
they will face the penalty for breaking the laws. For this reason, the hotel authority of
Hilton hotels may have to charge from their customers for using their free wi-fi and
this may affect the customer base of the hotels(Mansell and Steinmueller, 2013).
 New immigration policy –This policy from the government has affected the Hilton
Hotels.The new immigration policy imposed sac cap on the immigration outside the
European market, which leads to the shortage of skilled employees. Apart from the
operational roles, a shortage in the managerial skill can also be found. Shortage of
employees still exists with only 6% of restaurant and 10% of hotel managers having
managerial level qualification (Knowles, 2016).
Economic factors:

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Economic factors depend on the economic condition of the country. The amount of
budget that will be spent by the government in a particular industry affects the organization.
Economic factors of the country are necessary to understand to run the business.
 Hilton hotel is facing a huge competition in the market due to the increased number of
hotels in the UK market.Easyhotel, Premiere Inn sand Travelodge offers same kind of
services in the market. The Hilton group is having a fierce competition and all the
hotels are using the cost advantage to attract the customer (Boella and Goss-urner,
2013).
 In recent years, the tourism spending has increased in UK. This has happened due to
the decrease in Sterling’s value against the Euro and the recession. The tourism
spending in UK has hit a record of 10.5 billion. This is one of the positive sides for
the Hilton hotels to earn huge revenue and to build a strong goodwill in the market
(Arlt, 2013).
 The coalition government started acting upon the deficit of the UK’s budget, the VAT
have increased significantly from 17.5% to a staggering 20% which will no doubt
have an impact on the customer’s disposable income. Many renowned economists
states that this increase in VAT will discourage the customer to spend less and will
affect the UK-based customers and tourists. However, this increase in the VAT will
have a positive effect on the small hotels, as the customer will prefer now to visit to
the premium hotels rather they will stick to spend less in the small hotels (Adam and
Browne, 2013).
Social factors:
 The 2012 London Olympics have been the most profitable event for the UK
hospitality industry and mainly for the hotels and the Inns (Bernstock, 2016). The

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2012 Olympic brought in a huge influx of people from all around the world to
London, which had increased the demand for hotels. This had helped the hotel
industries to increase their customer base to increase the brand awareness of the hotel.
Increased brand awareness will ultimately lead to repeated purchase by the customer.
 United Kingdom has attracted tourists from all over the world for its huge tourism
spot spreading all over the country. This has helped the hospitality industry of the
United Kingdom to grow and make a huge brand loyalty. This has also helped the
economic condition of UK (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully, 2013).
 Supply of staffs of lower levels is a directly associated with the seasonal employment
in the community.
Technological factors:
Hilton hotel can use technology to increase the satisfaction of the customer. For
example, CRM is a technology, which helps to record the customer’s information so that if
any problem regarding anything arises then the problem can be solved immediately with
ease(Rodriguez, Peterson and Ajjan, 2015).
Customers also love to give feedback about the product or service they use. Potential
customers use online sources for gathering information about an hotel before using their
services. Online sources like reviews, comments and suggestion helps the customer and also
help the hotel management to increase their goodwill and customer’s base (Liu and Park,
2015).
The use of IT in the hotel industry has helped in gathering more information, which
ultimately help the management in decision making and this help the organization to come up
with more effective plan in future activities (Leung, Bai and Stahura, 2015).

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Advancement in technology and usage of technology by Hilton Hotel will help in
managing the resource consumption. This will help to reduce the wastage of resources.
Environmental factors
Weather and the environmental changes have a huge impact on hotel industries. In
extreme weather conditions, policies and taxes changes to provide a friendly environment to
the customer (De Freitas and Dias, 2013).
Extreme weather conditions like flood, heavy rains and storms have a direct impact on
the Hilton hotels. Hotel management has to take vital measures to tackle with such calamities.
This will help to reduce the troubles of the customers and the staffs of the hotel can handle
easily.
Natural factors, which are uncertain like earthquake, have a bad impact on the sales of
the hotels.
Legal factors:
Legal environment is an important factor for the growth of the Hilton hotels.There
have been a huge change in the policies and laws in the last year that have affected the Hilton
hotels. Legal factors like health and safety laws are a necessary factor that the organization
has to consider (Australia, 2013). In most of the countries, the hotel industry has to follow the
age law. However, discrimination law has been eliminated recently. Customers get attracted
to the hotels, which follow proper rules and provide safety and secured service to their
customers.
However, current war situation in many Asian and non-Asian countries may have an
adverse effect on the Hilton hotels. This situation may force the hotel authorities of Hilton
hotels change their laws. Government becomes more flexible during this time and thinks