Marketing and the Hospitality Experience (Mod4_EdX)

  1. The Brand Promise (4.1.1 from 02.08). Marketing a hospitality experience involves developing and communicating a brand promise associated with the facilities and features of the hospitality enterprise. In this video, we see what the brand promise is and why it is important.
  1. What is the role of marketing in hospitality? What is ‘the brand promise’? As you watch, complete the definitions below.

Marketing is a continuous, sequential a) ______through which hospitality managers plan, research, b) ______, control, and evaluate c) ______, designed to satisfy both the customer d) ______and wants and their own organization's e) ______.

Out of that activity is the brand promise. It's the experiential f) ______from the services that are provided. It's how the service ______the customer's needs and wants into g) ______experience.

That brand promise emanates from the company's h) ______about where it places in the marketplace and, for that matter, the i) ______and services that it can offer to the j) ______.

  1. How do the hospitality enterprises below meet supply and demand in terms of brand promise?

SUPPLY / DEMAND
Shangrila Hotels
McDonald’s
Las Vegas
  1. Target Markets for the Hospitality Enterprise (4.1.2). A successful hospitality enterprise must have enough customers willing to pay for the services offered. It must be able to attract and keep those customers. Let’s see how marketing professionals approach these challenges using target markets.

a) What are the different types of customers? Make notes in the table below.

Business
  • Corporate
  • Managed
  • Unmanaged

Leisure
  • Mercenary
  • Loyal

Group
  • Large
  • Small

b) (from 02.36) What are psychographic characteristics? Why are they important?

c) Complete the table below with examples for each characteristic.

Activities
Interests
Opinions

W Hotels:

  1. Distribution Channels (4.3.1). Consumers engage with service suppliers through various channels, both in person and online. Sometimes channels of distribution involve more than just the customer and the vendor; they involve intermediaries. Let’s explore the role of distribution channels and intermediaries in the hospitality industry.

a) Complete the notes below on different marketing channels.

One of the major aspects of marketing for hospitality enterprise are the channels through which the customer engages with the service suppliers. They're called the channels of ______.

Formally it's the mechanism by which the customer gets to the supplier or the supplier reaches out to the customer.

There are two basic types of channels, ______to the supplier or through an ______.

b) Who are the intermediaries in hospitality typically associated with hotels and cruises? Make notes below. (up to 02.07)

1) / Brick and mortar, entity, where we speak with an individual about travel.
2) / TUI, Thomas Cook, in Europe are examples. They put together comprehensive ______which include air, car, hotel, other
destination services into a single package sold to the ______or corporate travel departments.
3) / Entities which sit behind a complicated process of managing a travel experience. They facilitate the booking of ______and cars and hotels. If you are putting together a whole passenger name, set of records, and allow the booking of ______and the changing of those, and the management of those, ______payments and the like.
4) / Could be internal to the organization itself, someone's assistant putting together a ______or a meeting, a company who has a whole organization devoted to just meeting ______, or it could be private organizations who operate and ______those activities for companies.

c) Watch the rest of the video. Do you agree? Does the same apply in your country / area?

  1. Ask the Expert about eCommerce in Hospitality (4.3.2). In this video, Professor Carroll talks with Kathy Misunas, Principal at Essential Ideas. Kathy was formerly President and Chief Executive Officer of the Sabre Group (a division of AMR Corporation) and Chief Information Officer of American Airlines, Inc. She offers her views on what has had the greatest impact on hospitality distribution in recent years and big changes we might see in the years going forward.
  1. Complete Kathy’s answers below. Before you watch, try to answer the questions yourself.

What have been the major changes in hospitality distribution?
What are major distribution possibilities for the future?
Are there any differences geographically in terms of distribution, changes or trends?
What are the different challenges faced by independent companies and chains?
  1. On Line Opportunities and Threats (4.4). The Internet has revolutionized hospitality distribution. Professor Bill Carroll explains what this means for hospitality marketing in the following video.
  1. Hospitality New Media Marketing (4.4.1). What are the main differences between the ‘sales funnel’ of the past and present? Identify and define the stages of the present.

PAST / PRESENT
Acquire
Engage
Convert
Retain
  1. What are the devices mentioned? ______
  1. New Media Challenges (4.4.2). Search engine optimization and reputation management are just two of the challenges facing today's marketing professional. In this video, Professor Bill Carroll discusses these issues as they pertain to the hospitality industry.
  1. What are the challenges of marketing using new media? Identify and illustrate each challenge.

CHALLENGES
  1. Measures of Marketing Performance (4.5.2). Hospitality managers can measure marketing performance in a variety of ways. The ideal measure of marketing performance may be return on investment, but marketers may have difficulty calculating that. Are there other measures? Complete the notes below.

 marketing is part of driving ______for a hospitality enterprise. And the owner of those enterprises expects a ______.

 the ideal measure is a return on ______for marketing activities, sometimes called ROI, return on investment which can be expressed as a number or a ______.

 ideally, it's the ______revenue less the incremental ______associated with business which is driven to the enterprise by marketing activity.

 Capturing a return on investment is not so easy in the hospitality space because it's hard
to ______how the customer made the ______of a particular service provider

 An example of the complexity of attribution: buying a particular ______in a search engine in
order to ______on a search engine's result page when a particular word or phrase is ______. Google provides ______, which allows an analyzer of marketing activity to ______over a period of time the variety of websites that a ______may have searched before they came to your ______website.

 it's possible to do things like ______what percent of the time a customer ______on your particular keyword, when that came into your ______center, or when that came into your brand ______and ultimately was ______into a transaction.

 Activities associated with social media eg. TripAdvisor reviews, which is a ______-to-peer review,

lead to a return on ______, that is, efforts to measure the level of engagement

that the consumer has with the ______.

 rate of engagement is how ______are we at gaining ______and engagement of customers. Practically it is an effort to ______the level of engagement, who are the customers, and what are those engaging with the enterprise ______with regard to brand ______and brand ______?

 There is an entire industry ______to helping firms do a better job of ______their return on investment and engagement which are focused on both social media and ______.