Analysis of Marketing Challenges Faced by Hilton Hotels in the UK

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the marketing challenges faced by Hilton Hotels in the United Kingdom. It begins with an introduction to Hilton Hotels & Resorts, its global presence, and its customer segmentation strategies, including geographic, demographic, and psychographic segmentation. The report then delves into Hilton's marketing mix, including product, price, place, and promotion strategies, followed by an examination of the competitive landscape. A SWOT analysis is presented, outlining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by Hilton. The report further explores the challenges specific to marketing in the hospitality industry, such as the impact of online reviews, the need for data analysis, and changing consumer behavior. Finally, the report offers recommendations for Hilton to adapt to these challenges, including becoming a 'choreographer,' 'neighbour,' 'architect,' and 'curator' to enhance customer experience and maintain a competitive edge.

The Hospitality and
Tourism Market
Challenges Faced

The Hilton, United Kingdom
INTRODUCTION
Hilton Hotels and Resorts is a worldwide recognised corporation that has a chain of
hotels and resorts and is the flagship of Hilton. The founder of business corporation
is Conrad Hilton. By 2017, there are 570 and more properties in 85 countries.
These are mostly franchised, managed or owned by independent operators of
Hilton. The Hilton Hotels is one of the largest brands in the world. It targets
business and leisure travellers both (Walker and Walker, 2016). With all the
locations in major cities and near airports and vacation spots. The travellers or the
visitors who make direct booking from Hilton owned channels get special offers
and exclusive discounts and free Wi-Fi, keyless entry and a choice of room.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION
There are three types of market segmentation that The Hilton uses:
 Geographic segmentation
 Demographic segmentation (Bowie, Buttle, Brookes and Mariussen,
2016)
 Psychographic segmentation

HILTON MARKETING MIX
 Product
It provides a variety of hotel services all around the world. Luxury hotels,
focused chain services like Garden Inn. Loyalty programs like HILTON
HONORS PROGRAM is a special program for its loyal customers
(Vanhove, 2017).
 Price
Hilton’s target customer are the exclusive segment of society. It has
always maintained an exclusive price range for its customers like in India
a single room costs around 5000 to 35000 per night in the metro cities
(Lee and Kotler, P2015).

 Place
It is located in 103 countries with more than 5100 properties (Luo,
Roach and Jiratchot, 2015). Starting from the US to the Western
countries targeting the exclusive segment.
 Promotion
The group uses collaborations with business firms and multi-nationals of
their booking on priority. It has also collaborated with payments banks
and different restaurants for food provision (Armstrong, Adam, Denize
and Kotler, 2014).

COMPETITION FACED BY HILTON, UK
Hilton hotel has a very friendly environment that offers invitations to the
travellers and tourists to live in their own homes. It is just 4 minutes far
away from the Thames River and a famous shopping centre. The hotel is
very close to the Reading train station and it hardly takes 25 minutes to
reach the main airport which is very convenient for customers.

HILTON WEBSITES PAGES

MARKETING BROCHURES

SWOT ANALYSIS
 Strengths
The hotel group has a huge brand recognition in the hotel industry. The technical
innovations has improved consumer experiences (Kuo, Huang, Tseng and Boger,
2016).
 Weaknesses
There has been a very limited market share despite of a good brand recognition.
 Opportunities
There are various expansion opportunities in market especially in emerging one.
 Threats
The major ones have been due to the Euro Zone crisis and recession. A volatile
currency market is also making it difficult to plan operations (Stavroulakis and
Riza, 2015).

CHALLENGES FACED IN MARKETING IN HOSPITALITY
INDUSTRY It also easy for customers to share their experience like TripAdvisor and other sites
as well.
 Tried and tested methodologies are no more in the list of requirements Email
marketing is considered as the most empirical means and mechanism for making
involvements with the prospective guests but it is destined to fall wayside
(Gorbunov et al., 2016). Generation y already sees email as boring and for them
video content is smarter a technology.
 Less influence on guests than before- TripAdvisor’s website gets approx. 20
million visits every month and many reviews left for the hotels. Each of the hotel
review can influence the customer in a positive as well as negative way, with very
little input from the hotelier.
 Maintaining top rank on top of the data is a must- It is not always easy to
analyse big volumes of data and make the correct choice of decision. The more the
data the more strategic you can be (Kotler, 2015). It’s not possible to correctly track
a customer’s experience by a buying process .

RECOMMENDATIONS
 Become a ‘choreographer’- He a virtual person to oversee
and look after the guests’ stay. The hotel will be boosted by busy
people who will value the convenience above everything.
 Become a ‘neighbour’- he understands the need of fitting in
the surrounding area and becoming its destination.
 Become an ‘architect’- which uses the spaces inside and
outside to help all the guests. It pays attention who stay for a longer
time, and require flexibility.
 Become a ‘curator’- To keep the hospitality is to be kept fresh
and enables the guests to try good new things. The hotel has to know
that he has many guests and change their mood and mind set.

References
 Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P. (2014) Principles of
marketing. Pearson Australia.
 Bowie, D., Buttle, F., Brookes, M. and Mariussen, A. (2016) Hospitality
marketing. Taylor & Francis.
 Gorbunov, A.P., Efimova, E.V., Kobets, M.V. and Kilinkarova, S.G.
(2016) Perspective Tools of the Strategic Management of VFR Tourism
Development at the Regional Level. International Journal of
Environmental and Science Education, 11(18), pp.10801-10815.
 Kotler, P. (2015) Framework for marketing management. Pearson
Education India.
 Kuo, C.M., Huang, G.S., Tseng, C.Y. and Boger, E.P. (2016) SMART
SWOT Strategic Planning Analysis: For Service Robot Utilization in the
Hospitality Industry. Consortium Journal of Hospitality & Tourism,
20(2).

 Lee, N.R. and Kotler, P. (2015) Social marketing: Changing behaviors
for good. Sage Publications.
 Luo, A., Roach, S. and Jiratchot, C. (2015) The effect of the 7Ps of the
marketing mix on air freight customer satisfaction and repurchase
intention. Journal of Supply Chain Management Research and
Practice, 9(2), pp.28-36.
 Stavroulakis, P.J. and Riza, E. (2015) Meta-calculations of Quantitative
SWOT Analysis: A Crosstab Approach. Meta, 2(02).
 Vanhove, N. (2017) The Economics of Tourism Destinations: Theory
and Practice. New York: Routledge.
 Walker, J.R. and Walker, J.T. (2016) Introduction to hospitality
management. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.