Analyzing Contemporary Issues and Challenges in the IHG Hotel Industry

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and issues faced by the IHG hotel industry. It begins by identifying key challenges such as technological advancements, the importance of meaningful customer experiences, and the impact of digital marketing. The essay then critically evaluates these issues, drawing on academic and professional sources, with a particular focus on the IHG's Green Engage program and its efforts towards sustainability. It also explores the implications of these challenges on career development, especially for post-graduates in hotel management, and discusses the skills and initiatives needed to succeed in the industry. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding both the positive and negative implications of the challenges to ensure operational efficiency and career success. It covers various functional areas within the hotel industry, including marketing, and suggests strategies for personal development within the sector.

Essay writing
1

Table of Contents
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
1) Identify key challenges and issues that are part of the industry:........................................4
Critically evaluate the issues as well as challenges in order to support academic and
professional sources. Provide conclusion of impact such challenges in chosen industry......5
2) Implication of reflective statement against challenges in order to build subsequent career7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
2

INTRODUCTION
Global management competencies can be achieved by effectively acknowledging the
global mindset for which efforts of diverse workforce are contributed to successfully display
unique image of entity. Hotel industry in the recent past has experiences immense hike due to the
changing trend of people prevailing to explore national and international market. Based on
graduate development scheme opportunity are offered by institution in terms to experience
professionalism in different areas like hospitality sector. To better understand the topic IHG
company has been selected which is global multinational hospitality industry whose headquarter
is in UK. The hotels comprise of various room as well as food and beverage facility and
accommodate diverse requirement of traveller. This report cover topics like identify and
critically analyse the contemporary issues as well as challenges faced by hospitality industry.
Furthermore, prepare reflective assessment in terms to analyse the challenges faced by particular
industry and subsequently build the career.
MAIN BODY
1) Identify key challenges and issues that are part of the industry:
There are many challenges that are being faced by the hotel industry and that is leading
towards lot of measures so that the overall negative impact can be reduced or minimised.
According to the case study, been a major challenge that is result of the environmental pressure
because of the expanding pleasure meeting conferences sector that is leading to increase in the
number of travelling of people (Featured Case Study: InterContinental Hotels Group – Green
Engage, 2014). IHG, has recently started a green engage program that is made for dealing with
the challenges of reduction in the overall operating cost and also for reduction of the carbon
emissions water consumption. Sustainable development is a big issue that has to be dealt with
hospitality industry in this changing environment has been a shared value approach that has been
adopted by IHG Group of hotels (Ammachathram, and Anderson,2018). There are lot of
challenges that are being faced by the hospitality industry and specially for the hotel industry in
the present scenario there has been many changes that are taking place in the overall dynamic
environment and that is leading to lot of increase number of issues that are being created for such
hospitality organisations below mentioned are some of these challenges that have result in issues
for such hospitality organisation:
3

1) Technology: There have been a lot of advancements that are being made in the technology
and the changing Technology has resulted into lot of benefits both for the customers and
organisations but Technology can be sometimes a big challenge for search service industry. Such
as with the help of digital media as sources for marketing of plants are being used by
intercontinental hotel. But the issue comes when many people are customers who are slightly
dissatisfied providing negative reviews on their social media pages that leads to lot of defamation
of a particular brand and can affect their overall brand image for the present base of loyal
customers.
2) Meaningful experiences: Case of service industry the main aur repeated purchase or repeated
visit is the experience start a customer can have with the organisation that can lead towards
visiting them again.
These were some of the challenges that are on part of the hospitality organisation but apart from
this there has been lot of challenges that are faced by post graduates in hotel management, search
as the shifting of hospitality Industries towards more social media marketing and digital
Technologies for the marketing department of the organisation has led to reduction in the number
of job opportunities for the marketing segment of this such organisations (Chou, ., Horng, . and
Liu, 2019). Also, there have been different types of major issues such as those that are related to
the running energy cost and utility bills for such organisations. There have been many
technological innovations that have to be dealt with the overall environmental impact such as
reducing in the wastage of food, water consumption, energy utilisation such as lightening,
cooling and heating and water consumption are some of the very popular challenges that are
being faced by the hotel industry for dealing with such issues the green programme have been
initiated by IGH group of hotels.
Critically evaluate the issues as well as challenges in order to support academic and professional
sources. Provide conclusion of impact such challenges in chosen industry
Hotel industry is growing with rapid pace which at one side has enormously increased the
employment opportunity for the local residents but on other side has become major implication
of carbon footprint. Dependency on the resources has increased which leads to the wastage and
shortage of resources for local people. It is essential to carry out growth opportunity by
4

maintaining the interest of external environment and society which better helps in achieving
sustainable goals. Existence of innovative process does not affect the future generation and helps
to avoid the probability of scarcity of resources. Critical analysis of the external challenges helps
to better determine the situation based on which innovative strategies can be incorporated
successfully. So to overcome negative implication on environment IHG hotel has well
incorporated the use of online technology that engage diverse customers through digital platform
leading to Green engagement. This has probably increased the commitment and collaboration of
diverse staff who manages to reduce the chances of carbon emissions. Based on green engage
certificate program was transmitted to the general manager in order to carry out the actions
flexibly (Kužnin and Walker, 2017). Benchmarks are set to reduce waste diverse and make
significant use of available resources which acts as a comprehensive measure for professional
source. According to Global Business Travel Association it is necessary to carry out corporate
social responsibility for the travel industry under which contributions are made for the Welfare
of employees, environment and society. It helps in developing desirable reputation of the
company and directly helps to gain favourable responses from internal and external stakeholders.
Further, technology or innovation helps to incorporating diverse activities of business in better
way. In the competitive environment it is essential to install latest innovation which makes the
task easier for Hotel. Like training is providing to work on special software so rather than
depending on one other employees can well access the data. On contrary, it holds negative
implication like expenditure on such elements involve huge amount of expenditure, time as well
as energy. This somewhere led to the gap in performance of activities as certain time is required
to offer desirable training. Thus, it has been concluded that both negative as well as positive
implication needs to be well understood to overcome the challenges within hotel industry.
Specific role of industry to perform work
Hospitality industry comprises of different functional area like the role of receptionist,
chefs in kitchen department, HR, housekeeping staff, marketing, finance and so on. Amongst
diverse functional area I am interest to work within marketing department which itself is a broad
area in term to promote the services of hotel, resolve their query, carry out promotion and sustain
interpersonal skill. This field can give me better exposure in terms to actually understand the
market and address the anticipated requirement of customer. Being digital marketing at trend I
will get adequate learning of digital marketing tools like use of Google analytics in order to get
5

the result at real time. As IHG company comprises of various brands and operate globally due to
which it is vital to extensively use the online platform and deliver customer support services to
maintain relationship with existing as well as potential customers (Ullah, Ranjha and Rehan,
2018). Thus, I need to improve my communication, persuasion, listening and interpersonal skill
to better gain the desirable position under marketing department within IHG hotel. The hotel
industry gains immense amount of market share and it’s better to work in the desirable industry
where i can get suitable and secure job and attain my predetermined objective successfully.
2) Implication of reflective statement against challenges in order to build subsequent career
The reduction in the number of job opportunities in the hotel management sector has been
a major concern of the overall issues that are rising in case of hospitality sector. Post graduate I
have felt that there have been lot of personal implication such as when my post graduation is
completed, and then I want a suitable job opportunity according to my qualifications work as a
marketer for search hotel industry and because of the changing Trend and preferences towards
digital media sources if I am not able to get enough of job opportunities that can offer me
utilisation to my qualification then it is a big challenge for me to find a suitable opportunity.
Sustainability has been a major issue that is being faced by prospective employees who are
willing to be a part of the hospitality sector (Kansakar, Munir,. and Shabani, ., 2019).
Apart from possessing the required number of skills that is very necessary to perform all
the job roles of there has been challenges are very important concern for me as I do not possess
many alternative that can help in and reducing the negative amount of such challenges on my
career. I support the “go green initiative” that are been taken by such hotels organisations that are
part of the hospitality sector in is there wastage there has been a main dilemma related to the
higher expenditure that has to be done on the environmental cost and environment sustainability
(Szende, Bagnera, . and Cole, ., 2020). so that there can be possibilities to provide best results to
the overall environment and help in sustainable development of the environment but at the same
time it has lead to lot of alternative cost that has been resulted utilisation of financial resources to
a fixed expenditure reduction in the amount of monetary compensation being offered for various
job roles and job positions available in search hospitality brands. There are lot of skills that are
required to serve the customers and guests and I strongly feel that I have been able to
successfully acquire all the required and necessary skills so I am willing to be part of this sector
but there has been loss of many job opportunities because of the limited availability of resources
6

with such hospitality organisations. I believe that such challenges has lead to higher cost that
have to be incurred by such organisations are going to reduce the number of monetary offerings
according to the particular job responsibility in such hospitality organisations. Hence, there is a
requirement to maintain the overall cost so that there can be proper amount of compensation that
can be offered to prospective employees who are willing to work as part of such hospitality
sector and be a part of the service sector.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been determined that to carry out operation in the global
market it is necessary for company to effectively understand the external market and
performance of whole industry. As due to rapid changes it is somewhere complex to maintain
core competencies but by understanding the challenges and making counter plan against issues
acts as a better way to incorporate desirable operations. Diverse viewpoint and critical analyses
of situation needs to be done in order to effectively support the academic and professional
sources.
7

Books and Journals
Achhra, S.L., Tsikine, S. and Paykis, S., Visa International Service Association, 2019. Point of
sale device with additional service capabilities. U.S. Patent Application 16/083,249.
Adebisi, A.E., Adejuyigbe, A.S. and Amos, D.D., 2020. Consumer-Related Corporate Social
Responsibility and Brand Switching Behaviour of Subscribers of Mobile Network
Providers in Akure Metropolis, Ondo State, Nigeria. American Scientific Research
Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 66(1), pp.35-46.
Cummins, S., Peltier, J. W. and Dixon, A., 2016. Omni-channel research framework in the
context of personal selling and sales management. Journal of Research in Interactive
Marketing.
Deac, V., Dobrin, C. and Gîrneață, A., 2016. Customer Perceived Value-An Essential Element in
Sales Management. Business Excellence and Management, 6(1), pp.43-55.
Homburg, C., Schäfer, H. and Schneider, J., 2012. Sales excellence: Systematic sales
management. Springer Science & Business Media.
Ingram, T. N. and et. al., 2015. Sales management: Analysis and decision making. Routledge.
Malek, S. L., Sarin, S. and Jaworski, B. J., 2018. Sales management control systems: review,
synthesis, and directions for future exploration. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales
Management. 38(1). pp.30-55.
Pushkar, B.K. and Pandey, S., 2019. Role of Promotional Strategies in Rural Market.
Razmochaeva, N. V., Klionskiy, D. M. and Chernokulsky, V. V., 2018, September. The
Investigation of Machine Learning Methods in the Problem of Automation of the Sales
Management Business-process. In 2018 IEEE International Conference" Quality
Management, Transport and Information Security, Information
Technologies"(IT&QM&IS) (pp. 376-381). IEEE.
Reid, D. A. and et. al., 2017. Examining the use of sales force management practices. Journal of
Business & Industrial Marketing.
SEZGİN, M. and TELİNGÜN, K., 2016. STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION AND
ADVERTISING. Journal of International Social Research, 9(43).
Syam, N. and Sharma, A., 2018. Waiting for a sales renaissance in the fourth industrial
revolution: Machine learning and artificial intelligence in sales research and
practice. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, pp.135-146.
Ullah, N., Ranjha, M.H. and Rehan, M., 2018. The impact of after sale service and service
quality on word of mouth, mediating role of customer satisfaction. International Journal
of Services and Operations Management. 31(4). pp.494-512..
8

9

10