Lounge description
The Lounge in Hilton Hotel is a business facility that offers accommodation services to business people and tourists visiting San Francisco (Hilton Hotels & Resorts, 2012). The lounge is located at Chinatown and attempts to exploit business opportunities derived from the uniqueness and popularity of the place.
The place is located in San Francisco’s Financial District where a large pool of people comes to do business. In addition, the place is speculative due to its location near the city’s attractions and areas, hence many tourist visit it. In regard to these factors, the visitors find value in the accommodation services offered in the lounge in order to accomplish their missions conveniently. The services are tailored to meet the differing needs of visitors such as conference rooms for business people and beautifully appointed rooms for vacationers.
Competitor landscape description
Within Chinatown, the target market for most of the competitors in regard to accommodation can generally be divided into three groups: business people, vacationers and general tourists. For business people, the competitors usually compete for convenience. This means that they attempt to make the target customers find convenience in accomplishing their business activities by including necessities such as conference rooms, business centers and communication equipment among others.
For vacationers, the competitors compete on comfort for a long period. Many try to achieve this by including family rooms and concierge services for the target customers. Nevertheless, the competitors compete for satisfaction when targeting for general tourist. Most of these come to San Francisco for a short period of time and the competitors try to make their time valuable.
Direct competitors include the hotels, inns, clubs and resorts within or near Chinatown. There are over 90 competitors including the famous Executive Hotel Vintage Court, Hotel Triton, Hotel des Arts, Orchard Hotel, Baldwin Hotel, University club and Royal Pacific Motor Inn (Hotels.com, 2012).
The direct competitors compete for business people and vocational tourists. They have been vigorous and effective in ensuring convenience, timely, quality and techno-enhanced services. The Hilton Hotel Lounge however has the advantage of price, location and state-of-art technology while most of the direct competitors enjoy prestige and a variety of services.
Indirect competitors include business firms, community centers, community hostels and private homes. Some business firms offer accommodation services to their expatriates as well as community centers, community hostels and churches which offer accommodation to tourist associated with their inclination.
Private homes again offer accommodation to tourist friends and vacationers. These competitors compete for lower prices and social inclinations effectively. However, they do not offer the comfort, convenience and technological consciousness offered in Hilton Hotel Lounge.
Future competitors include new hotels and cultural centers. While the attractions within the city of San Francisco continue to attract new investors, diverse groups have started to form cultural centers such as the Jewish cultural center that threaten the Lounge. These centers might in future offer accommodation to the visitors of particular origins. The Hilton Hotel Longue enjoys first mover advantages over the future competitors such as established customer base and knowledge of the market.
Recommendations
The competitive analysis suggests that the market is crowded due to the presence of many competitors. There are competitors with superior competencies than Hilton Hotel longue such as firm 1 in the grid.
However, the performance of the longue is not very bad as many competitors lag behind in terms of competitive advantages. The analysis recommends that the longue should adopt offensive strategies in order to exploit strengths and capitalize on opportunities (Bharadwaj, Varadarajan & Fahy, 1993).
This will be accomplished by first exploiting their technology capabilities to market their business and attract the new pool of visitors expected in San Francisco. Next, the Lounge should use the strong financial capabilities to expand its tangible assets and adopt new technologies in order to accommodate more customers and increase efficiency in service provision.
In addition, the longue can focus on its pricing strategy in order to be more competitive against the other competitors using low-pricing strategies such as firm 3 & 4 in the grid. Finally, the longue may advertise about its strategic location and attract new tourists resulting from the increasing popularity of the city.
References
Bharadwaj, S. G, Varadarajan, P. R. & Fahy, J. (1993). Sustainable competitive advantage in service industry: a conceptual model and research proposition. Journal of Marketing, 57(4), 83-99.
Hilton Hotels & Resorts. (2012). Hilton San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf. Web.
Hotels.com. (2012). Chinatown (San Francisco) Hotels-Union Square-Convention Center. Web.