Holiday Inn Express Service Marketing

Holiday Inn Express Service Marketing

Holiday Inn Express Service Marketing

Introduction

The recent happened economic crisis and credit crunch in UK has affected the whole economic environment in UK, with no exception of service industry. Hospitality industry is highly influenced for consumers start to cut down their holiday plans and companies also try to reduce their business travel costs. A report by Deloitte (2009) indicated that the economic crisis has driven down the occupancy rate and revenue of European hotels. In UK, November 2008, revenue per available room (revPAR) fell 8.2 percent as occupancy dropped 6.2 percent. By the end of year, year-to-December revPAR was in negative territory down 0.4 percent on 2007 to £59. Deloitte report also mentioned that “2009 will be extremely difficult year for hoteliers across UK with further substantial falls in revPAR to come.” However, also according to their report, “the high end hotels, people are not staying so much and downgrading to cheaper hotels because of good PR and costs”. In this case, the budget hotel industry in UK is now actually facing a good opportunity of growing. Then, how to improve service quality and customer relationship through service marketing is very important for budget hotels.

Holiday Inn Express (HIE)

Holiday Inn Express (HIE), which is under the management of the world's biggest Hotel Corporation Intercontinental Corporate, is the one of the leading budget hotel companies in the world. Holiday Inn Express matches the increasing demand for limited service hotels with the familiarity of the Holiday Inn Brand, which makes its success since the beginning. Holiday Inn Express also continues to distinguish itself in the limit-service hotel market with innovative services and amenities, and efficient operation.

Product / Service Differentiate

A service is the diametrically opposed non-material counterpiece of a physical good. A service provision comprises a sequence of activities that does not result in ownership of the outcome, and this is what fundamentally differentiates it from furnishing someone with physical goods (Wikipedia source). In this case, the core service provided for the customer by HIE is the accommodation / room occupying service. According to Lovelock and Wirtz (2004), the supplementary service hotel provides besides the core service also include: information service, such as local, weather information inquiry, or flight and train information inquiry; payment services; consultation service, such as local tour packet consultation and booking; safekeeping service, which include the personal and belongs safety; order-taking service, such as dry-cleaning services or catering services.

Holiday Inn Competitive Advantage

Competitors

The chain dominated the motel market, leveraged its innovative Holidex reservation system, put considerable financial pressure on traditional hotels and set the standard for its competitors, like Ramada Inns, Days Inn, Howard Johnson's, and Best Western.

Ramada Inns

Ramada Inn is a traditional motel in Parkville, Melbourne affiliated with the Australian "Golden Chain" group of hotels and motels. It underwent extensive renovation recently, but is known locally for its use of the humorous Uncle Ben vintage logo and idiosyncratic abbreviation of the word "kilometre" on its ...