Abstract
The main objective of a tourism hotel’s internal marketing practices is to meet the desires and needs of the hotel guests. This research intends to find out some of the customer-specific internal marketing activities that hotels carry out to improve service provision to elderly tourists. The elderly tourist in this research is identified as a person who is at least 65 years old and travels for leisure. This research also seeks to find out the extent to which hotels hire staff, train, and motivate them towards adopting marketing practices that are most appealing to the elderly tourists when attending to their needs and interests.
Introduction
In hotels, internal marketing practices are seen as a prerequisite for success in external marketing activities. Some of the activities that are considered as internal marketing processes include: disseminating marketing information to employees; implementing a recognition and reward system and establishing a service culture among the employees. The main objective of internal marketing practices by hotels is to meet the desires and needs of the hotel guests. The hotel guests in this research are identified as elderly men and women who are above 65 years old and visit different tourism destinations for leisure.
This research attempts to find out if hotels recognize the importance of hiring, training, and motivating employees who can meet the hospitality needs of the elderly tourist segment.
Literature Review
Internal Marketing
The need to initiate organizational capacity growth in delivering satisfactory customer services in the tourism industry and particularly among the elderly population is increasingly raising concerns among the professionals in the sector. There are several cases where hotels have demonstrated stiff resistance against marketing strategies that would require major changes to be initiated within their organization.
Internal marketing is a concept that has been raised to impart business effectiveness through improved relations within the tourism internal market. The concept entails the use of traditional marketing strategies as well as the related marketing mix where the workers are handled as clients (Cooper and Cronin, 2000). In the tourism sector, the emerging discipline of internal marketing helps in the aligning, motivating, and empowering of workers in all levels and functions to ensure that their service delivery is consistent and by the customer’s expectations.
According to Cooper and Cronin (2000), internal marketing in the tourism industry should be based on the need to stir up service awareness among the workers and performance that is focused on the client’s requirements for leisure. The concept should therefore trigger efforts by the hotel’s management to train and encourage the workers to offer more satisfactory and client-centered services.
Tourism Industry and the demographic factor
According to statistics from the World Trade Organization (WTO), Tourism has been cited as one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world today. The highest rise in the sector was recorded between 1970 and 2002 where the number of tourists rose sharply from 159 to 715 million with the revenue from international tourism rising from US$ 17 to US$ 463 billion within the same period (Cooper and Cronin, 2000).
Since the year 2002, the industry has been growing steadily and the total tourists’ arrivals are expected to hit 1.56 billion by the year 2020, where the US is rated as the third most preferred destination after Europe and Asia with a projection of 282 million arrivals (Cooper and Cronin, 2000). There has been a general demographic shift in the US and other developed nations where the population is found to be aging steadily raising the percentage of the population who are above 60 years. The aging population in these nations can be attributed to low birth rates and the rising life expectancy in the affected countries.
As this trend continues, elderly tourists are expected to constitute a significant proportion of global tourism. As the tourism sector experiences expansion among the elderly population, concerns are rising on the effectiveness of the hotels in offering well-customized products and services that are suitable for these sections of clientele. The elderly clientele seems to prefer having more relaxing experiences as opposed to possessions and they have more money to spend in such long leisure activities as compared to their younger counterparts. The elderly also have more free time to spare for vacations and can therefore afford longer expeditions than their younger counterparts whose availability is in most cases restricted by job-related commitments.
In recent days, with the discovery of the emerging market by the elderly population, many tourism agents including airlines and hotels have introduced special offers designed for this section of the population. Many tour operators have also customized some of their services to fit the elderly in terms of prices and schedules that prioritize heritage and cultural experiences. As the growth of tourism activities among the elderly continues to expand, it is becoming increasingly important for hotels in the destination countries to strategically prepare to offer them satisfactory services through relevant in-service training for the employees.
Customer Satisfaction
Effective satisfaction of the elderly population in the tourism market has become the subject of many research projects across the world today. Customer satisfaction can be understood as the overall judgment on a particular service that has been offered. It is therefore an evaluative process based on the clientele’s perception of the organization during and after the period in which the services are offered (Chi and Qu, 2008).
According to Oliver (1980), customer satisfaction is a result of the disparities between the expectation of the clients and the actual performance of the organization. Satisfaction is therefore said to have occurred when the customer judges a service as better than what he/she expected. Previous studies have shown that customer satisfaction impacts the overall performance of an organization for it directly influences the profitability margins. For example in the hotel industry, unsatisfied customers would not prefer going back to the same hotels a case which would reduce the clientele base and therefore the profitability.
A survey conducted by Chi and Qu (2008), to investigate the link between clients’ satisfaction and their behavior patterns revealed that satisfaction raises the dependability of the customer and raises the possibility of the customer coming back again and introducing the organization to other potential customers. The survey established that satisfaction is mainly a subject of how relevant the service is in meeting individual needs and emotions as well as the additional features on the services rendered about specialized needs of the different customers.
Another research by Choi and Chu (2001), on hotel industries, indicates that customer satisfaction can be significantly influenced by such factors as cleanliness of the rooms, value for money, security, and the general courtesy of the workers. The response by hotel workers to the travelers is, therefore, an important factor in influencing the overall perception by the tourists towards the appropriateness of the hotel. In most of the hotels today the management use suggestion cards to evaluate the satisfaction levels of their customers after the service has been offered. However, according to Su (2004), the use of guest cards in hotels has been faced with numerous faults even though the management continues to use the procedure as the basis for important managerial decisions.
The major faults reported by the research findings include the nature of the distribution of the sample of respondents, the design of the cards, and the method used for data analysis. Working on the findings of the survey Yoo and Park (2007) established a more reliable sampling method that was geared at reducing the bias on the respondent. The new sampling method proposed that the hotels offer a form of incentives that should be availed to all guests who will be willing to fill up the guest card questionnaire.
The questionnaire should be based on the expectancy-value theorem should reveal the perception of the client about the hotel and state whether the services were as expected. The services and products offered can also be effectively evaluated through this questionnaire to establish explicitly what the special customer like the elderly would consider as a priority.
It can therefore be concluded from the past researches that service quality for hotel services is closely related to customer satisfaction. The elderly whose number is increasing in international tourism is a section of the population whose needs are different from the rest of the travelers. As the hotel management accommodates this section of the population they must institute a paradigm shift in the way the customers are handled. These changes may as well need further training, familiarization, and new incentives to the employees to ensure that they effectively face the rising challenge of the demographic shift in the tourism sector.
Research Model
This research seeks to answer the two main questions:
- Do hotels and other players in the hospitality industry adopt internal marketing practices specifically to serve the elderly tourists well?
- Do the elderly tourists represent a large enough percentage of visitors to warrant special attention from the hotels?
Hypothesis
All the hypotheses for the research question are on the affirmative side. They are:
- H1: Hotels take considerable effort to hire, train, and retain staff that can provide exceptional service to the elderly tourism market.
- H2: Although not as large as the 30-55 age groups, the elderly tourist population still represents a large enough percentage of the tourist market and thus attracts special attention from the tourist hotel management.
Methodology
Research purpose
This research is conducted for exploratory, explanatory, and descriptive purposes. The exploratory studies are carried out when the research problem does not fall in specific definitions. Descriptive research defines the questions to be used in a survey, describes the survey sample, and the analysis method before commencing data collection. The explanatory research is used for purposes of identifying the relationships between causes and effects of variables.
Research Strategy
This research intends to analyze the role of internal marketing practices and how it affects elderly tourists. The research will measure this by evaluating the internal marketing practices that such hotels have adopted to ensure that the elderly tourists are well catered for. In addition, the availability of aging-related leisure activities will also be used as a measure of how readily a hotel is to receive, accommodate, and entertain elderly tourists.
The research was based on a set of questionnaires whereby, the management of 10 [Three, Four, and Five-star rated] hotels in New York City, U.S.A. were requested to reply for the internal marketing practices they undertake regarding the serving and marketing the hotel services to the elderly tourists. These hotels were also provided with 100 questionnaires for top elderly tourists. Their answers concerning services and activities in the hotels were then used to gauge the success of the respective internal marketing activities adopted by the hotels.
Of the 10 selected hotels, one of them did not participate. Of the remainders, none of them registered a 100% return of the elderly tourist’s questionnaires. The response rate was 8 questionnaires per participant; therefore, the research ended up with 72 elderly tourist-based questionnaires.
The participated hotels were chosen based on the fact that these hotels serve international tourists. Moreover, since elderly tourists are apt to stay longer on holiday, their preferred facility is more likely a Three, Four, or Five star-rated hotels as such premises can provide the comfort and services for the long-vacations.
The internal marketing practices were rated on the perception that hotels awarded the elderly tourists with the comfort of the rooms, location, cleanliness, service, elderly-sensitive activities, etc.
Validity & Reliability
To enhance the validity of this research, the researcher carefully selected which hotels can be participated to ensure that the population is well-diversified. The researcher also contacted the hotels well in advance to confirm their willingness to participate in the survey. This ensured that these hotels had plenty of time to respond to the questionnaires accordingly.
Result & Discussion
Internal marketing initiatives
Of the nine respondent hotels, all said that they recognized that focusing on employee management practices is the best way of attaining internal marketing strategies for the elderly tourists. All respondent hotels confirmed that they believed motivating their employees played a vital role in how the employees would later relate to elderly tourists.
Seven out of the nine respondents stated that they encouraged their employees to express any feeling, concern, or issue observed when attending to the elderly tourists. Notably, these hotels also sought opinions from their staff on how best to handle issues that arose when dealing with elderly tourists.
The survey revealed that hotels that used internal marketing strategies anticipate that motivating and appreciating staff would lead to better service provision to the elderly tourists. Remarkably, all the hotels which adopted internal marketing processes stated that the ability to relate well with tourists from different cultures and backgrounds was a prerequisite for their hiring practices. Good communication skills were also considered important in the hiring process.
Effects of the internal marketing initiatives on the elderly tourists
Of the 72 responses from the elderly tourists, four questionnaires were deemed not fit for analysis because of their incompleteness. As such, the remaining 68 questionnaires were used. As shown by chart 1 below, 20% of all respondents rated the service provisions in the respective hotels as excellent; whereas 68% rated the services as good, and the remaining 12% stated that the services needed improvement. An astounding 85% of the respondents affirmed that they would consider staying in the same hotel on a return visit or recommend the hotel to others.
Furthermore, 72% of all respondents mentioned the service attitude of hotel staff as the main reason for such decision. Moreover, 18% of the respondents cited the combination of activities, food and dining, service, and lodging facilities as the reason for their returning. Asked whether age was a factor in receiving the kind of treatment offered, 54% of the respondents agreed that indeed age merited the treatment they received while 20% were not sure. The remaining 26% did not think that age was a factor in the treatment.
The elderly tourists made up 20% of the participated hotels’ total visitors annually. Additionally, all hotels stated that the elderly tourists prolong their bookings than any other age-based segment.
Discussion
Recruitment, training, motivation, communication, and employee retention are all internal marketing strategies. In this research, the researcher focused on gauging the effects of internal marketing strategies on the quality of service provision on elderly tourists. Hotels that specifically trained their staff have registered more satisfaction among the elderly tourists. The quality of service provision was a major consideration among the elderly tourists since most of them stated that it impacts their decisions for a repeat stay. The elderly tourists also used the quality of service as a major reason why they would make hotel recommendations to others.
Service organizations need to succeed in their internal marketing before they can appeal to the external market. As found in this research, the tourist hotels targeting the elderly tourism market need not only to design packages, activities, or accommodation that interest the seniors, but also to recruit, train, motivate, and retain staff members who provide quality services to the elderly tourists. Employees need to be provided with all the necessary information to fulfill their tasks to the elderly tourists. The empirical data collected during this research shows that all respondent hotels value the recruitment, training, motivation, and communication processes to their staff members. These findings suggest that Hypothesis 1 in this research is correct.
The long stay for elderly tourists indicated that these hotels value the elderly tourists even though they only represent a small percentage of age-based visitors. This also proves that hypothesis 2 in this research is true.
Conclusion
With the fierce competition in the hotel industry, hotel owners must build customer loyalty through customer satisfaction. This can only be obtained through exceptional service delivery, which is the responsibility of the hotel staff. Loyalty scheme for elderly tourists is identified as one of the strategies that international tourism hotels can use to their advantage; especially because elderly tourists are less adventurous than others and are more outspoken about their needs and interests. Therefore, hotel management must train their staff to employ strategies that are most appealing to the elderly tourists when attending to their needs and interests.
References
Chi, C.G. and Qu, H. (2008). Examining the structural relationships of destination image, tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty: An integrated approach. Tourism Management 29: 624-636.
Choi, T. Y. and Chu, R. (2001). Determinants of hotel guests’ satisfaction and repeat patronage in the Hong Kong hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management 20: 277-297.
Cooper, J. & Cronin, J. (2000) Internal marketing: A competitive strategy for the long-term care industry. Journal of Business Research, 177-181.
Oliver, R. L. (1980). A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions. Journal of Marketing Research 17: 460-469.
Su, A.Y.-L. (2004). Customer satisfaction measurement practice in Taiwan hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management 23: 397-408.
Yoo, D. K. and Park, J. A. (2007). Perceived service quality analyzing relationships among employees, customers and financial performance. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management 21 (9): 908-926.