MARKETING PLAN FOR MARRIOTT HOTELS IN DUBAI

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Marketing Plan for Marriott Hotels in Dubai

Executive Summary

Marriott Hotels and Resorts is a multi-national brand with a potential to grow beyond the visible horizon. The marketing plan will contain an analysis of the current situation of the company including the key issues. In addition, we shall also analyze the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Marriott Hotels and Resort branches located in Dubai. The plan will also outline a brief overview of the lodging service as a main product in the hotel, the pricing, and distribution strategies. A comprehensive and feasible marketing strategy that caters to the main objectives will be drafted. The marketing strategy will conclude with an extensive list of possible recommendations on how the company can exploit new opportunities and improve on old ones.

 

 

Table of Contents

Marketing Plan for Marriott Hotels in Dubai 2

   Executive Summary 3

   Introduction 4

   Analysis of Current Situation and Target Market…………………………………………..4

   Key Issues Analysis…………………………………………………………………………….4

   Objective………………………………………………………………………………………..5

   Service Strategy…………………………………………………………………………………5

   Analysis of Problems……………………………………………………………………………5

   Marketing Plan…………………………………………………………………………………6

   Recommendations ……………………………………………………………………………..7

   Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….9

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..………11

 

 

 

Introduction

Marriott Hotels and Resort is a large organization with a group of hotels and Resorts. It is intricately connected to the tourism industry. The hospitality industry has experienced a fast rate of expansion in the recent years. Hazbun (2008, p.38) states that due to this, rapid increase of hotels within the country and thus competition has been realized. Founded in 1927, Marriott Hotels and Resort has secured a position in the hotel industry as an organization that provides a wide variety of goods and services for its consumers. These include lodging services, hotels, resorts, boutique hotels, facilitating services, and hospitality management services. The organization currently boasts of a chain of more than 500 hotels throughout America, Europe, and Asia. The environment of the services provided has a positive outlook with the growing tourism and hotel industry. The service encounter is high, with employees having a high level of interaction in a bid to become more informed of the customer’s needs.

Analysis of Current Situation and Target Market

One of the major problems the organization faces is the high competition within the industry. Marketing strategies are very easy to emulate, thus originality may be lost in a short period. In addition, the products and services are similar within the competitors, thus there is the need to become more innovative on packaging, pricing, introduction of new products or distribution methods. The current target market is the tourists that visit from different regions and the middle to upper class demographic.

Key Issues Analysis

Innovative ideas are difficult to keep within the company. Within a short period, smaller companies and competitors are likely to copy them, thus making Marriott Hotels and Resort

Lose its competitive edge (Krajewski, Ritzman and Malhotra 2013). There is also much difficulty in coming up with these new strategies, as this involves an intricate adjustment and involvement of other sectors of the company as well as association of other industries to achieve such goals. Marketing strategies that involve advertisements are also quite expensive, and this has the potential to bring the company’s revenue to a low margin of profit.

Objective

The goal of this marketing strategy is to increase profit margins of Marriott Hotels and Resort through expanding the marketing of lodging services in the United Arab Emirates. There are currently two Marriott Hotel branches, The JW Marriott Hotel and the Dubai Marriott Harbor Hotel & Suites. The strategy will be expected to realize profits within a period of eight to twelve months after implementation. Becker (2013, p. 51) maintains that tourism has grown exponentially in the United Arab Emirates, and forms a significant proportion of foreign revenue gained by the nation. Therefore, the inclusion of this factor into the marketing strategies of Marriott Hotels and Resort would not only increase the value of services but also maintain the brand image as a superior quality service provider.

Service Strategy

Due to the rapid expansion of the tourism industry in the United Arab Emirates, the market service will mainly be focused on the tourism sector, due to their increasing population. Marriott Hotels and Resort will market itself as a brand that values customers’ needs and preferences, and therefore strives to provide the best quality service. The organization will be able to communicate the ability to cater to diverse types of consumers, given that the tourism industry will attract people from different parts of the world and consequently different cultures.

Analysis of Problems

Strengths: Marriott Hotels and Resort provides quality services in more than 500 hotels. Therefore, it has a high brand value. The company is also sensitive to customer’s needs, as demonstrated by their ability to provide consistently high quality service to different types of people worldwide.

Weaknesses: Pricing is high as compared to some of their competitors.

Opportunities: Marriott Hotels and Resort has the potential to expand their markets to other parts of the world such as some countries in Africa.

Threat: The growing hotel industry is giving rise to new competitors, thus the company must come up with new and innovative ideas to gain a competitive advantage.

Marketing Plan

Service Products: Within the context of a flower of service model, Marriott Hotels and Resort in Dubai has worked hard to achieve a well-rounded approach to customer satisfaction. Training of employees will enable the consumers to receive customized advice on the products. This will help them select the most preferred choice. This could be achieved through creating an online page that answers customers’ specific questions in real time. Special services such as taking care of a customer’s religious, dietary, medical, and disability requirements will ensure that customers have a safe and comfortable stay in the lodging facilities. Compensation services can be a huge boost to for encouragement of customers who feel unsatisfied by the products (Cook 2012). Other more conventional services related to the lodging facilities such as room service and pool facilities could be expanded to cater for those customers with special needs. In addition, the lodging facilities will introduce affordable family packages for tourists who are not visiting alone. This will be an all-inclusive service product of bed, breakfast and dinner for a period of 7 days. This will not be inclusive of public holidays.

Service Distribution: The available services will be located in the two hotels in Dubai, which are the JW Marriott Hotel and the Dubai Marriott Harbor Hotel & Suites. Their strategic locations with proximity to many of the tourist sites such as beaches and ruins make them a preferred choice for customers. Aside from creating a warm rapport with related industries, this will ensure that tourists who visit the country are more likely to choose Marriott Hotels and Resort as a preferred location to enjoy their stay. Intermediaries (employees in the hotels) play a key role of ensuring that services are delivered satisfactorily and in a timely fashion as stated by Perreault, Cannon, and Mccarthy (2015, p. 26).

Pricing: The objectives of pricing include the ability to serve customers affordably and the ability to achieve a reasonable profit margin for the company. This profit margin will ensure that all expenses such as advertising, payment of employees, and products purchase are covered. Due to the high competition within the industry, there is a high level of consumer power, which will determine the regulation of prices in correspondence to the competitors. Expensive product service will reduce their demand and thus customers will be more attracted to the competitors.

Promotion Mix: Method of marketing distribution will involve use of online and televised advertisements in conjunction with the tourism sector. This will strengthen Marriott Hotel’s position within the country. Online advertisement has the ability to reach a wide network of tourists all over the world. Thus, even the potential customers will have the ability to financially plan ahead of their visit. Specific challenges involved may be the high price of advertising and lack of specific knowledge of interests the tourist may possess, due to the diverse target market. Customers will also be involved in the communication process through a portal in which they will be able to air their queries and concerns.

Recommendations

Improvements: The areas of improvement are an intricate connection between the target market, preparation of product and process of production and distribution.

• People: The people involved are the staff involved in delivering service to the customers. It would be advisable for the management to carry out an audit on the employees to make sure they are conversant with the service product. Due to the slight adjustments made on the lodging service and packages, a training session would be necessary to keep the updated (Qiu 2014, p. 19).
• Process: The process forms the most important part of the marketing plan. A careful evaluation of the profit and expenses must be made in order to ensure the service development is both beneficial to customers and profitable. This may involve hiring an audit firm to provide logistic and financial consultation on the viability of the marketing plan that has been drafted.
• Product: The service product is the key element of interest in the marketing plan. This item is being presented to a consumer. As such, the marketing planner must work hard to package it in a presentable fashion. The package must be clearly defined in terms of price and specific target market. Thus, there is need for advertising it in a way that will reach the specific target market, maintains Luther (2011, p. 28). The mode of advertisement must therefore be very specific in how it reaches that target of consumers. Online advertising has proven to be very efficient in reaching most parts of the world, as opposed to local advertising, which communicates to people residing within the area or country.
• Partners: In this case, the suppliers can be regarded as the attractions that form the basis of tourism. These tourist attractions are related to the tourist industry (Films for the Humanities & Sciences 2009). Therefore, the market planner must be aware that in targeting this segment of the demographic, the tourism industry forms an essential part of the process (Emrouznejad and Cabanda 2014, p. 98). Business ties are therefore important in maintaining the two industries asserts Popky (2015, p. 43). These could be achieved through joint online advertisements.

Standards of Services: The highly reputable Marriott Hotel and Resort has achieved a high level of success due to the superior quality they offer their customers. It is important to establish some key performance indicators of customer service agents (Sherman 2007). The most important indicator is customer satisfaction, and this will be achieved through thorough knowledge of the service product, good command of languages required and professional courtesy (Ziegenfuss 2007). Another indicator may include repeat calls. Here, a customer service agent is rated according to the number of customers that call repeatedly. This may serve as an indication that the initial contact was not satisfactory.

Service and Model: The service model should be made as a tool for creating attention and communicating a message. Wood (2011, p. 49) maintains that designing an effective service model will help the members of a team to work faster while using les effort and resources. Organizational behavior is motivated by instilling a culture that controls the process of making decisions for each member with minimal supervision. Clear, specific and feasible goals must be integrated in this design in order to obtain objectives of the mission. Service environment refer to the optimum conditions that members require in order to perform effectively. These include the surrounding, safety, and psychological well-being.

Conclusion

Marriott Hotels and Resorts is a multi-national brand with a potential to grow beyond the visible horizon. As seen, the marketing plan contains an analysis of the current situation of the company including the key issues. In addition, an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Marriott Hotels and Resort branches located in Dubai. The plan also outlines a brief overview of the lodging service as a main product in the hotel, the pricing, and distribution strategies. A comprehensive and feasible marketing strategy that caters to the main objectives has been drafted. The marketing strategy has concluded with an extensive list of possible recommendations on how the company can exploit new opportunities and improve on the challenging areas.

 

 

Bibliography

Becker, E 2013, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism.

Cook, S 2012, Complaint Management Excellence Creating Customer Loyalty Through Service Recovery. Kogan Page, London. http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?BIZP;2646277.

Emrouznejad, A., & Cabanda, E 2014, Managing Service Productivity: Using Frontier Efficiency Methodologies and Multicriteria Decision Making for Improving Service Performance. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43437-6.

Films for the Humanities & Sciences (Firm), Films Media Group, & Video Education Australasia 2009, Operations Management a Hotel Case Study. Films Media Group, New York.

Hazbun, W 2008, Beaches, ruins, resorts the politics of tourism in the Arab world, University of Minnesota Press, EBL. Minneapolis. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=433183.

Krajewski, L. J., Ritzman, L. P., & Malhotra, M. K 2013, Operations management, N.J., Pearson, Upper Saddle River.

Luther, W M 2011, The Marketing Plan: How to Prepare and Implement it. Amacom, New York. http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=36904.

Marriott International Brands, 2010, Marriott International Brands: Ritz-Carlton, Big Boy, Jw Marriott Hotels, Marriott Hotels. [S.l.], Books Llc.

Perreault, W. D., Cannon, J. P., & Mccarthy, E. J. 2015, Essentials Of Marketing: A Marketing Strategy Planning Approach.

Popky, L. J 2015, Marketing Above The Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage With Marketing That Matters.

Qiu, R. G 2014, Service Science: The Foundations of Service Engineering And Management. http://catalogimages.wiley.com/images/db/jimages/9781118108239.jpg.

Sherman, R 2007, Class Acts Service And Inequality in Luxury Hotels. Berkeley, University of California Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=179137.

Wood, 2011, The Marketing Plan Handbook. Prentice Hall, Boston.

Ziegenfuss, J. T 2007, Customer Friendly: The Organizational Architecture of Service. University Press of America, Lanham, MD.

Zou, S & Fu, H 2011, International Marketing Emerging Markets. Bingley, Emerald. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10445346.