Premier Inn Case Study: Analyzing Business Environment and Strategy

This case study examines Premier Inn, a prominent UK hotel chain, analyzing its organizational structure, which is identified as functional. It delves into the internal and external factors influencing the company's performance, utilizing SWOT and PESTEL analyses to assess its business environment. The SWOT analysis highlights Premier Inn's strengths, such as its strong UK presence and brand recognition, and weaknesses, including limited global presence and customer refund issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Opportunities for growth are explored, particularly in expanding into new markets like Germany and Ireland, as well as investments in technology. Threats from competitors and the negative impacts of the pandemic are also discussed. The PESTEL analysis considers political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors affecting Premier Inn, including government regulations, economic impacts of tourism, social trends, technological advancements, environmental concerns, and legal aspects related to safety and security. The case study concludes by summarizing the key findings and the impact of COVID-19 on the company's strategies.

Case study

Table of Content
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................3
Presenting organizational structure of Premier Inn......................................................................3
Premier Inn's Business Environment............................................................................................4
SWOT analysis.............................................................................................................................4
PESTEL ANALYSIS:..................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSON.................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Premier Inn is a hotel chain and the UK's huge brand, its having 800 hotels with 72000
rooms. Company works in different site of centre, commuter belt and air station participated with
Travelodge’s and Ibis Hospitality. This was began in 1987 as Travel industry. The first location
was open as The Watermill. While in 2004, Whitbread acquires one more group of hotel toll
house 536 million euro. In 2007 Whitbread changed the name as 'Premier Inn'. By 2009
companies earning was 70% by Whitbread. Its aim is to provide affordable hotels in all area of
UK by giving the advertising in prime time T.V., It also do online and digital promotion or
booking for the brand. The aim of the case study is to understand the environment Within the
organization and outside the organizational factor of the brand Inn. It will present the
organizational structure of the Premier Inn hotel. It will describe the internal and external factors
by using different models It will also discuss the SWOT analysis of the Premier Inn by
describing the impact of covid -19 in each model. Further, the study defines the meaning of
PESTLE analysis and tells about the favourable and unfavourable conditions that might affect the
external environment of the company.
Presenting organizational structure of Premier Inn
The organizational structure Premier Inn is following is functional in nature and it benefits the
company in effective manner. Along with this, this method has been adopted so that smooth flow
of information is maintained in the company and it enhances their performance in external
market area. In this type of structure, the flow of communication is form is in two ways such as
order has been given from higher authority to subordinate and their references has been taken
into consideration while planning for innovative ideas (Kumar and et.al., 2019). In addition to
this, there has been various functional unit which helps in maintain the work of the company in
effective manner. The functional unit of Premier Inn are divided into 4 part such as human
resources that contributes in company success through hiring talented employees as well as to
conduct activities which are useful for improving the work of subordinates. It conducts activities
like training and development for enhancing their career.
Although each department there is one senior manager and team leader who are responsible for
duty of the employees. Moreover, the finance department is responsible for gathering the money
and to invest in the other functional unit for enhancing their performance. Along with this, the
finance department is very crucial for Premier Inn so all its report is presented in front of top

management and its major decision are in their hand (Zhou and et.al., 2020). Although marketing
sector of Premier Inn is responsible for promoting their services in the market area in order to
attract customer. The company mainly use of both digital and traditional method for creating the
awareness in the market area. There is one head mange and sub manage for the different group as
marketing area consist of various sector like sales, customer management and product
development. The last department is operation management which helps in managing the external
and internal operations of company.
Premier Inn's Business Environment
Business environment refers to the exterior and interior factors that affects business operations
as well as this causes negative impact over the business performance. That is why, different
models and strategic framework has been used in order to understand the key operations that
affect the business either positively or negatively.
SWOT analysis.
It is the strategic framework which consist of Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and
Threats. Its and strategic management technique that used to identifying the internal factor that
affect an organization.
Strength:
With a tenant rate of higher than 76.4%, the Premier Inn is holding good place in its industry. Its
having powerful roots in the UK, such that 800 Inn with 80,000 rooms that serves over 5 Million
guest and customer every month. These are mostly located near to the airports and tourist places,
that is why, majority of the customers prefer to stay in Premier Inn. Hotel also being awarded like
with Best UK Economy hotel 2017, TripAdvisor Travellers 2020, choice award 2019 this shows
that tit has a brand image at global level.
Weakness:
For the Premier Inn market is not enough, limited global presence is a weakness of Premier Inn.
Customer and Guest are facing refund issues at the time of lock-down and this lead to
dissatisfaction among customers. Due to covid -19 pandemic everything got shut down and the
travellers were not travelling and due to that financial performance of an organization was not
well which in turn affect the business operation negatively.
Opportunities:

Premier Inn should explore the new market for the growth and success. After a successful arrival
in the Germany, now it is in also going to the republic of Ireland. Forward extension in Germany
premier Inn open 28 motels within the Germany. As this Germany is the most visiting places in
entire Europe and in the world as well. Company also invest in advance technology so that it
create positive impact over the business.
Threats:
Premier Inn faces main competition from Holiday Inn, Easyhotel, and ibis because the company
is offering the same price service to their customers. It should also focus on the CSFs Critical
success factors. Pandemic having very negative impact on the company, due to the lock down
many countries GDP declining and resources become limited and people were not feeling safe to
stay in hotels.
PESTEL ANALYSIS:
Pestle analysis is the strategic framework commonly used to for evaluating the business
environment externally. It refers to a PEST analysis (Agrawal, 2016.).
Political: The stronghold by the public power over the inn business. Event that having the group
of beliefs in power could do boycott movement, it could badly impact on the Premier Inn
industry. The nation has losses economic support that is important in one choice. Another thing
the public authority controls the penalties. In UK, should be prime duty in lodging proprietors, so
they can make good low penalties. That maybe work on overall business. Improvident and high
score premier Inn provides more facilities for visitors.
Economic: Premier industry are complete work on the migratory nature of the customer but the
pause on the worldwide Travel and Tourism, Hotel and Restaurant services. These industries
contributed 10.5% of the total worldwide GDP. UNWTO found a 21-31% worldwide tourist
arrivals decline. Pandemic gives an opportunity at the same time to the Inn business to respond
new pathway created by the pandemic. The interconnected to the cvid and the precautions saefy
and hygiene, demand evolving, digitalization and innovation etc.(Seyitoğlu and Ivanov, 2020).
Social: Social is also had dynamic nature which is keep on changing in everyone's life style and
way of living at its standards brought many on Social and cultural differences all over the world.
Standard increases only when they are having good wealth (Roy and Chowdhury, 2021). If cost

of living increases people prefer low product and services. The social changes also influence the
hospital industry around the world. Premier inn focus in customer satisfaction and keeping them
loyal with the social values and connected with the brands, they offer money back guarantee of a
good quality rooms, Comfortability, and the all electronic appliances working, Friendly Services.
Technological: It is another factor that could directly impact the business activities. It is link
with the all the electronic gadgets and availability of the technical support for the guest the online
booking services are also convenient and easy to access on finger tips, they maintain the database
for sending the promotional messages to the customer.
Environmental: Now a day, customers are become more rational and favoured the organization,
when it uses environment friendly product (George, 2021). The strong importance towards the
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) are the major advantages of Premier Inn. It has developed
the strong CSR strategies “Goods Together” and WhitBread. The objective is to lessen of the
carbon emission by almost 26% at the end of 2025, the hotel also makes steps to reduce water
waste by 80% and water consumption by 2%.
Legal: In the region of higher crime rate, everyone's need some safe place. Picking the
wrongdoer is urgent for all the Inn proprietors, no client will feel safe to stay in these areas.
Innkeeper laws ensures the safety and security of the customer and guests & the building as well,
this law says how much innkeeper need to pay in case of stolen the items of the customer and
guest (Pan, Chen and Zhan, 2019).
CONCLUSON
From this report concluded that the organizational structure of the Premier Inn hotel was
Functional structure, which focus on the single area of work from that productivity increases and
staff become skilled. It evaluated the internal and external factor that hamper the organization, it
also discussed the SWOT analysis and the PESTLE analysis of the Premier Inn and the impact of
covid -19 in each approach of SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Strength
had a strong presence in the UK and located at the tourist places and near to airports, weakness
Report defines what is PESTLE analysis and tells about the favourable and unfavourable
conditions.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Agrawal, V., 2016. A review of Indian tourism industry with SWOT analysis. Journal of tourism
and hospitality, 5(1), pp.196-200.
George, R., 2021. Tourism and Hospitality Marketing Planning. In Marketing Tourism and
Hospitality (pp. 149-182). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Kumar, V. and et.al., 2019. Advanced Functional Structure‐Based Sensing and Imaging
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Pan, W., Chen, L. and Zhan, W., 2019. PESTEL analysis of construction productivity
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Roy, M. and Chowdhury, S., 2021. Ecotourism and Hospitality in Bangladesh: The Application
of PESTEL Analysis and Determining the Internal Factors. In Tourism Products and
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