Fictional hospitality operation and its products
Comfort Hotel Inn
Comfort Hotel Inn is a tourist hotel located on the coast of Zanzibar. The hotel has been in operation for the last two years; however, it has been facing difficulties to penetrate in the hotel industry. Nevertheless, as its marketing manager, I will change the direction and make the hotel more competitive.
Target Customers
The hotel is in a coastal region; this makes it effective for tourists. Zanzibar is a tourist destination, especially in festival seasons and summer. When tourists come to a country, they are interested in having a different experience/feeling. To ensure that this target customer’s needs are addressed, I will upgrade the hotel’s facilities.
Tourism is not an all year round activity; there are months that the flow of tourists is on a slow move. The company targets domestic tourists as its second target customers. Other than individual visitors, the hotel has halls for corporate customers and conferences.
Strategies to Target Customers
The general rule of customer care says, “a dissatisfied customer tells two others, and a happy one tells another one,” so the first thing is to ensure that quality and good services are provided in the inn (Cook 67). After all, measures have been put (for quality), the next step is marketing and advertisement. Marketing is a long trail of processes that ranges from drawing a raw strategy, setting the value of goods and services, creating consumer awareness to spreading out of different available concepts. The hallmark of this process is to enhance the supply of goods and services to meet the demand of consumers as well as achieving both the specific and general goals of a business enterprise (Paley, 1999).
Hospitality Brand Founded Before 1990
McDonald’s
McDonald’s is a fast-food company that was founded in 1955. Other than operating as a restaurant, it has been franchising its name to other companies all over the world. It is located in 117 countries and has over 32,000 local restaurants outlets. Its founder is Ray Croc. The major known brands of the company include Egg McMuffin, world Famous, Quarter Pounder, Chicken McNuggets, and Fries, among others (McDonald’s Official website, 2010).
Product Changes Over the Years
The company initially manufactured hamburgers, but today numerous products are produced by the restaurant. It sold its 100millionth hamburger in 1958. Today the restaurant has a wide variety of foods. Hamburgers today are different from the old day’s hamburger. The recent development on the products is the introduction of McCafe real fruit smoothies and frappes that were launched on July 13, 2010, in the United States of America (McDonald’s Official website, 2010).
The Current Phase of the Product Life Cycle
The products of the company are in the introduction, growth, and maturity ages, depending on the product (Paley, 1999). There are new products introduced to the market like the new McCafe real fruit smoothies and frappes. Egg McMuffin is in the development stage is not an old brand since it was introduced in the 1990s. It has grown in the way it is made, and more people are willing to give it a trial.
There are other products like chicken McNugget, which was introduced in 1980 and is in the maturity stage. It has been in existence for that long, and the customers today are elderly people, who form a small portion of the population.
Reference List
Cook, S. (2008). Customer Care Excellence: How to Create an Effective Customer Focus. New York: Kogan Page Publishers.
McDonald’s. (2010). The Company’s Official Website. Web.
Paley, N. (1999). The manager’s guide to competitive marketing strategies. New York: CRC Press.