An Analysis of Consumer Behavior Influences: Sheraton Hanoi Hotel

This report analyzes consumer behavior at the Sheraton Hanoi Hotel, examining the cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors that influence customer decisions. The report highlights the hotel's location, services, and target demographic, which primarily includes business travelers and MICE customers. It explores the impact of cultural preferences, social influences, and demographic characteristics such as age and occupation on consumer choices. Furthermore, it discusses the influence of technological trends such as face recognition and online booking platforms (OTAs) on customer behavior, and the strategies the hotel can implement to adapt to these changes. The report emphasizes the importance of providing personalized service and considers the potential benefits and challenges of implementing new technologies to enhance the guest experience. Finally, the report provides insights into consumer behavior and the importance of adapting to these changes to meet the needs of the customers.

SPEAKER NOTE
1. Information about Sheraton Hanoi Hotel
Sheraton Hanoi hotel is located at K5 Nghi Tam, Tay Ho district, Hanoi with the
spectacular views of city, Red river, West lake – the biggest lake in the city. It was built and
started being operated in 2003. At first, the hotel belonged to Starwood Lodgings – America,
however, recently years, it is managed by Marriott International Group. Since being opened,
the hotel has been received lots of rewards about its quality of service and business activities.
2. Investigate different cultural, social, personal and psychological factors that
influence consumer behaviour and attitude in Sheraton Hanoi Hotel
There are 4 factors: cultural, social, personal and psychological which have impact on
consumer behavior and attitude in the hotel. However, cultural, social and demographic are
important to Sheraton Hotel.
 Cultural:
Culture is like tradition in which different people are living like in the UK, India, Japan, each
country has different culture and this culture gives a great impact on people minds as they
have got used to the culture in which they live. Therefore, it also influences hospitality
generally and particularly in Sheraton. Whenever tourist visits another country, they feel
unsafe that they will get proper food or not, good behavior from the peopler our their either
from hotel staff or from other local people and after that if they get touch of their country
then they get impressed with hospitality of hotel. Sheraton has all quality of proving best
facility to their customer. (Like different culture breakfast at Oven D’or Restaurant, employee
with foreign languages skills, etc, architecture combining Asia with the West culture)
 Social:
Social factors create great influence on hospitality industry. It is due to the fact that there are
variety of customers who visit Sheraton Hanoi and every individual or couple, family staying
in hotel has different mindset and this all customer together creates a society. So if they are
satisfied with the service in hotel, they will come back next trip or recommend for their
families or friends. They will also write reviews on online website channels. But if they are
unsatisfied with hotel, they will prefer other hotels or have bad feedback, then maybe other
potential customers will be distracted from these. (Evidence)
Fortunately, Sheraton Hanoi has received range of good feedback for their quality of service.
Therefore, many business customers return when they go for business in Hanoi. Or in Oven
D’or Restaurant, variety of customers often visit this place because of delicious meal and
satisfied service. It is extremely important for Sheraton Hanoi Hotel to build good impression
for the guests from their welcome to post stay duration. Because customer review and
references make huge attribution into the number of guests using services in the hotel.
 Demographic:
- Age & Occupation
Most of guests in Sheraton Hanoi are business and from MICE. Therefore, the average age of
guests in this hotel is usually from 30 to 60 years old (middle age). The architecture is
classical so it may be suitable and create comfortable environment for these customer in these
age. In addition, the hotel has extra services and facilities for business work such as

workspace, conference room, wifi with high speed (Link@Sheraton). Location of this hotel is
near the centre of capital, customers will tend to choose Sheraton to save time for moving.
 Psychological
- Demand of customer:
+ In pick wedding season, lots of couple choose Sheraton to hold their wedding party
because of the luxury service and beautiful scenery. Therefore, the hotel can increase
demand of customer by providing promotion, such as combo wedding party and room for
1 night honey moon for new married couple.
+ To attract family staying in hotel, this business provide combo for them, including
meals and rooms and other extra services
+ In Oven D’or Restaurant, to increase customer, they offer promotion that buy 1 get 1 or
discount for the 2nd guests. This promotion attract range of customer because they can
use luxury service with affordable price.
3. Trends due to the impact of technology in Vietnam
 Face Recognition Technology
Some hotels in Vietnam apply this technology to save time in check in and on – stay
process. For example, in Vinpearl or Flamingo Cát Bà, customer use Face ID to unlock
service in hotel without ID card or passport. They take advantage of this technology to
use breakfast or other extra services. In some self – service hotel or no touch hotels, they
use Face Recognition to check in and check out (eg: Sojo hotel). The factors which have
main influence into this trend are psychological and social. In term of psychological, as
customer just have undergone the pandemic. Therefore, they put safety into the first
priority. When hotels are able to apply this technology, they can minimize interacting
directly with staff, so that they can keep suitable space to prevent diseases. In addition,
when applying this technology, customers can use services in hotels without ID cards or
room key. Sometimes, customers feel inconvenient when they need to bring lots of
documents. Therefore, this method maybe a sound idea for them. Referring to social
factors, it is due to a reason that the technology has applied in some countries and the
young has intention to travel much more than before. They would update new
technologies to use service in convenient way and they can show off with their peers. In
Flamingo, Vinpearl or Sojo hotels, mostly guests are gen Y,Z, so they can easily get used
to new technology. Moreover, sometimes, there are some people look the same at some
points and automatic machine can not recognize and deal the problem, so that it may
have mistakes. There is still one big problem about protecting information security.
Therefore, face recognition is still unavailable in Sheraton Hanoi hotel. As core customer
(demographic factor) in Sheraton is different from these hotels. Most of consumers in
Sheraton Hanoi hotel are in government from others countries, they put security and
safety in the first priorities. They may not be willing to use Face Recognition because
they are afraid of security of this technology. In addition, most of customers in this hotel
are in middle age. Therefore, they have more difficulties in adapting with new
technologies than the young. Solution for this hotel is using fingerprint identify instead
of face recognition. Besides that, the hotel should provide detailed guide on the screen of
kiosk for users to save time and easily get familiar with technology. Moreover, because
Sheraton is one of Premium Hotel in Marriott scale, the consumers in this hotel have

from medium to high income, so they prefer service with face to face interaction, which
belongs to hobby (personal factors). They would like to have experience with friendly
and warm welcoming service. Therefore, the hotel needs to consider to apply
technologies in suitable point in process. Or beside automatic machine, they can arrange
some staff to support customer and they can experience the service in direct and online.
 Online booking (OTAs)
Recently, most business take use of OTAs to advertise and sell their service and
products. Lots of customers use these channels to find and book hotels for their holiday
because they can easily imagine about the future place to stay or compare between
different hotels and apply discounts. Psychological and social still have impact on the
trends. Firstly, in term of psychological, customers tend to book hotels via OTA channels
as they are made guarantee about the places they will stay in future. In addition, they can
easily compare price, facilities between different hotels. They are able to imagine
generally the place they will come. It can be concluded that OTAs is the easier method
for customer to book rooms than the previous time. Secondly, in term of social factor,
recently, the number of people using smart phone is increasing enormously. Therefore, it
creates gold opportunity for OTAs developing. These channels such as Traveloka, Agoda
or Booking.com mainly focus on B2C. They usually choose hotel when they have
holiday or go for business. However, the target customer (demographic) of Sheraton is
MICE consumers and government from others countries or long-stay from companies
such as Samsung (B2B). Although they post their products and services on these
channels, it is not effective. It is due to the fact that the customer they target is not mainly
about travellers. If they would like to increase the revenue from B2C way, they could
offer special promotion to attract customers or design their own website easily
approaching.

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