Situation analysis
Hotel Concorde’s main business is to offer hospitality services to its clients through various channels such as leasing its facilities for meetings, conventions, as well as for wedding arrangements.
This market plan intends to create a prospect database to capture current non-customers at Hotel Concorde, as well as help in the delivery of leads that can be used by marketing sales representatives and the telemarketers.
Market Analysis
External industry analysis
Malaysia is one of the Asian economies that are regarded as the Asian Tigers.
Fast growth in the economy over the years has seen the country become an attractive destination for tourists who visit the country for holidays.
The growth in the economy has also seen local businesses flourish, thus increasing the average incomes and profits for their proprietors (Malaysia Tourism Report, 2011, p. 5). These business communities, in essence, have achieved the financial power to afford hospitality services in hotels.
However, the fast economic growth has faced a slowing effect in the recent times owing to the global financial crisis.
The slowing growth has limited the number of foreign tourists going for holidays, while business firms have also recorded a slump in their profits and revenues (Sadi, 1999, p. 86).
As the global economy slowly takes on the recovery path, there are positive indicators that ‘travels and holidaying’ will recover as well.
Malaysia has a presence of numerous hotel brands, both international and local, that compete for the market. The presence of these facilities has enabled the country to be a renowned destination for tourists and other business travellers who visit the country on a regular basis.
The great competition, especially in Kuala Lumpur, has seen the industry players raise the quality of their services and operations in order to attract customers (Hashim et al. 2008, p. 2).
Company analysis
Concorde Hotel is a four-star hotel that enjoys the ability to attract customers seeking for high range services, both foreign and local. The hotel is strategically located in Kuala Lumpur City, sitting about one-hour away from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (Concorde Hotel 2013 para 1).
This makes it the best choice for foreign tourists and business delegations that often visit the country (Oppermann, Din & Amri, 1996, p. 55).
The quality services and wide range of activities, including massage, sauna facilities, and cable TV make Concorde the perfect destination for revellers. The Concorde brand name is internationally renowned, which makes it highly competitive compared to its local competitors.
With technological advancements, Concorde has integrated its services with ICT, especially in the area of online booking. This enables customers to make reservations from the comfort of their offices or homes (Concorde Hotel 2013, para 4).
Objectives
- To create a prospect database for Hotel Concorde from current non-customers.
- To deliver leads to be used by telemarketing or marketing sales representatives.
Marketing strategies
Concorde Hotel will embark on elaborate advertising and adopt lower pricing to increase its publicity among the foreign and local business executives, as well as among foreign and local tourists to enhance our growth rate and revenues.
This proposition will raise interest among the target audience because it seeks to lower their expenditure and cost on hospitality services and facilities.
With most economies still regaining their strength, the targeted consumers will welcome the idea of reduced prices and costs. The idea of reduced costs will also influence the need to make use of high quality, world class facilities and services that are offered by Hotel Concorde.
We shall persuade our potential customers to leave their current brand choice by introducing discounts to them within the first three months. In addition to the low prices, prospective customers will enjoy a further 5% discount on all prices.
This will present them with a cheaper option more than what the other service providers are offering.
The newly acquired customers will also automatically qualify for fully paid holidays and gifts if they will have influenced other customers to buy Concorde’s services within their first three months. This will place them at par with other existing regular customers.
We shall request all our regular customers to volunteer the names and contacts of at least five friends or colleagues whom we shall reach.
In order to persuade our regular customers into cooperating, we shall offer them gifts and fully paid holidays in case the people they volunteered information about eventually turn up to purchase our services.
Customers who offer to volunteer more than five names will be encouraged through their names being entered for raffle draws to win instant prizes.
Communication Plan
Action plan
We will pay extensive advertising in order to create awareness and publicise our low rates and offers.
Our advertisements will inform our target customers of the lowered costs for hiring our ballroom and hall facilities for holding activities such as meetings, conventions, and weddings during the year 2013.
We want to attract more customers and return business from our regular customers, who we shall rely upon to provide us with potential customers who currently do not exist in our database.
Our target audience includes tourists and business executives, both local and foreign. The target customers are arranged in two main segments that include foreign and local market.
We shall reach each one of them by use of numerous media types depending on how effective the medium performs.
Advertisements will be carried out in all major airliners, as well as on TV, radio, and newspapers in the following five countries that have more tourists and business executives visiting Malaysia; Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Brunei. We will also carry out extensive advertising in the local TVs, radio, leading newspapers, and most visited websites.
In the airlines, we shall provide brochures and leaflets free of charge to passengers flying from Malaysia to any of the five destinations listed.
TV advertisements will particularly be aired during prime hours to reach a wider audience. Commonly visited online websites, such as Google, Yahoo! Facebook, and Twitter pages will display advertisements about the new offers by Concorde Hotel.
We will also lower our prices by 15% compared to the average market price by all four-star hotels. This will see more customers prefer our services from those of the rival firms.
We will request our customers to volunteer the names of at least five of their friends or business accomplices, together with their contacts. We shall then contact and invite them to our facilities.
If we succeed to bring the volunteered prospects, we shall offer free holidays to the regular customer who offered us the contacts.
Out of the five prospective contacts we shall obtain from our regular customers, we estimate an average of three to respond positively to our offer.
With our current regular customer base of 20,000 customers, we expect at least fifteen 15,000 to volunteer to us names of their friends and accomplices.
Out of the five names forwarded by each of the fifteen thousand regular customers, we expect to receive a positive response from about 45,000 prospective customers making inquiries and investigations.
From the three prospective names from each of the 15,000 customers, we anticipate to have at least two people physically coming to our hotels and seeking our services. This will make it 30,000 new customers from our plan.
For those who are in foreign countries, we shall mainly use email as the main communication media. However, we shall make phone contacts where such prospective customers are not comfortable with this emails.
Prospective customers in Malaysia shall mainly be contacted by telephone. However, where it is not suitable we shall use email contacts and even social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.
We shall communicate with the potential customers immediately we receive the names and contacts. The initial contact will be via phone call, both for the foreign and local target customers.
From the initial phone contact, we shall request the client to advice us on the best communication channel we can adopt and when to expect their feedback information.
We shall have a two-stage program in the communication schedule. The first one will involve communicating our objective to the prospective client, while the second will include sending them the detailed price list and offers for our services.
We shall test our capability to contact the prospective clients through phone by evaluating the ability of our call centre agents to handle multiple calls at the same time. We shall also test all our phone gadgets to ensure they are able to withstand constant usage.
We shall also evaluate the ability of our servers to withstand increased hits and visits that we expect from the prospective clients.
With our marketing department workers being expected to form the face of our company in front of the customers, we shall train and improve on their interpersonal and communication skills in order to create more chances for growth and success.
Database Strategy
Our database will contain four basic details about a prospective client. These will include their names, their contacts, mainly the phone number and their email addresses, and their nationality. We shall also include details about their occupation.
In addition to the basic details about the prospective clients, we shall indicate the source of our information about the prospective clients.
We shall mainly gather this information from our existing regular customers. The hotel shall prepare printed forms that will be handed to the regular clients and requested that they fill the information requested.
The printed forms will contain fields for the name of the regular customer and their contacts. It will also include five fields upon which the regular customer will be required to indicate five names of people he knows well, such as friends, relatives, or colleagues, and who are potential customers.
Against each name, the customer will fill their contact details, at least two, and the respective nationality. He will also indicate their profession or occupation that shall be stored together with the rest of the information about the potential client.
Only the marketing team will be allowed to request for these details from our clients. This will ensure that no information is acquired by unauthorised staff.
To assure the source of our information that the details will be exclusively be used for purposes of business only, we shall print in bold beneath each of the forms indicating our commitment. Our marketing staff will be required to adhere to the hotel’s ethical practice.
This involves guarding any information that is acquired concerning Hotel Concorde while in their line of duty. All filled out forms will not be allowed outside the hotel, but they shall immediately be surrendered to the marketing department.
The information captured on the forms will be fed to a computer system and thereafter the forms destroyed by shredding. The information stored on the computer system will be protected by a password that will only be accessible to the operators at the marketing department.
Prospective customers whose details were gathered first will be the first ones to be contacted. The actual contacting will begin immediately after the data has been accurately fed into the computer system.
Subsequently captured contacts from the regular customers will be contacted as soon as they are ready within the computer system. Filled out forms that are received at the marketing department will immediately be marked with the dates upon when they were received.
The details about the potential customer’s occupation that will be stored in the database will be used to build a picture of each prospective customer. Business executives and owners from foreign countries are likely to visit Malaysia for business conventions and meetings.
On the other hand, other professionals such as doctors, engineers, and lecturers are likely to visit Malaysia purely as tourists. The location of the customers will also offer hints on building the prospect’s picture.
Locally based potential customers will be easier to contact and influence, while foreign-based individuals will be relatively difficult to contact and convince.
The database will be created in a way that it will support great interactivity. The call centre agents will be able open the database and access the details that will be arranged according to when the information was captured.
Information acquired initially will be ranked as the first, while information acquired recently will be ranked as the last. The call centre agents will be required to click on a name and a phone call will automatically be placed.
The agent will write short notes as the conversation with the potential client continues and thereafter fill the details on the same row against the client’s name. Once a call contact is made, the database will automatically indicate by changing the font colour of the client’s details.
Where the phone contact is malfunctioning or unavailable, the database will automatically send a computer generated email immediately the target client’s name is clicked.
From the feedback details filled by the call centre agent, the database will automatically prompt for the next course of action, particularly where dates and time details have been entered.
Creative Approach and Budgeting
We expect to increase the number of our regular customers by twice within the first four months of rolling out the plan. The Hotel Concorde marketing is expected to break-even in the first six months. We do not expect other service providers to roll out any similar plan during this period.
We expect competition to be based mainly on price and market awareness. In these two areas, we expect to be highly competitive.
Expense Forecast
We expect the return on expenditure to begin doubling by the sixth month of the year. We believe that a significant time is needed before the marketing efforts can begin to pay off dividends. Over time, the number of customers will increase as the revenues and profits also increase.
There are four main areas where the expenditure will be divided. These areas include training of workers, acquisition of additional phones and computers, advertisement, as well as printing of forms.
We shall draw out statistics about all the new clients that we shall acquire owing to the marketing plan. We intend to determine how the new customers learnt about Hotel Concorde and its related services.
A final figure will be drawn to determine the main channel of communication that conveyed information to the customer about the hotel. From these figures, we shall determine the return value for each RM spent in the budget.
List of References
Concorde Hotel 2013, Welcome to Concorde Hotel Kuala Lumpur. Web.
Hashim, S et al. 2008, ‘Corporate brand characters of hotels in Malaysia’, Faculty of Economics and Business Working Paper Series, no. 0806, pp. 2-7.
Malaysia Tourism Report 2011, Business monitor international, London, United Kingdom, London.
Oppermann, M, Din, K, & Amri, S 1996, ‘Urban hotel location and evolution in a developing country: the case of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’, Tourism Recreation Research, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 55-55.
Sadi, M 1999, ‘Responding to the Asian financial crisis: Malaysian capital controls and their implications for tourism’, Journal of Hospitality Financial Management, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 86-86.