CORPORATE HOSPITALITY

Corporate Hospitality

Corporate Hospitality

Introduction

Corporate hospitality is involved with the organisation of activities and events so as to better entertain the existing and potential, clients or customers, and employees at the expense of the company. In United Kingdom, the corporate hospitality industry comprises of around 5000 corporate hospitality consultants, event organisers, venue representatives, agents, activity operators, and brokers (Baxter, 2000). In 2000, the spending on corporate hospitality was recorded to be around 700 million GBP; and was predicted to be around 835 million GBP by 2003 (Baxter, 2000). Horse racing, rugby, football, cricket, and golf are the major sports accounted for most number of corporate hospitality events. Among these sports, soccer tops the chart with the percentage of approximately 16, and second was booked by horse racing with nearly 15% of the total spending on the corporate hospitality events.

Corporate hospitality adds value to the communication strategy of the company, and thus enables the marketing managers to better develop their relationship with this extended tool. However, it is believed that most of the company don not prefer this tool to be standalone, and rather integrate as a part of corporate communication activities. Corporate hospitality (CH) is very useful for the company, as with the help of CH loyalty, trust, perception, and experiences of the customer could be shaped positively. However, there are various problems associated with this as well such as rivalry among hosts has led to proliferation of corporate hospitality, thus resulting in the inundation of potential guests. The other major problem is related to the bribery, especially when public figures are involved. Provision of gifts and awarding of contract directly under the head of hospitality received irrespective of any piece of work for goods and services clearly violates the Bribery Act of 2011.

Discussion

Every organisation seeks to develop the long term positive relationships with the potential and existing clients and businesses. The traditional tools used to market the company's product and to build the company's image and reputation has now required another tool to clinch the market share more enough than their competitors. The traditional communication mix which includes advertising, public relations etc acts a front view of the company; however the backhand game is being played under the name of corporate hospitality. But yet the power of public relations (PR) cannot be ignored as it play vital role in maintaining the profitable relationship especially inclined with the nice market (Briggs, 2001). Many companies are spending huge amount of money in not only sponsoring the particular events but also to provide the luxurious gifts which are required by the relevant individuals. But, if we will look at the earlier literature it advocates the current practice that individuals who found company awarding gifts, and arranging events has the positive experience with the company.

According to Cramer et al., (1995) individuals used to be attracted with the business entities and individuals having good experiences and used to decline one with bad experiences. Moreover, this has also been confirmed by the theory of liking ...