Relationship Management In Hotels Industry - Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss about the Relationship Management In Hotels Industry. Answer: Selection of a department within the hotel Within a hotel, various departments manage the business operations and processes and ensures that the business can flourish with ease and effectiveness. The department chosen here is the Sales and Marketing department, which is committed to the establishment and promotion of the hotel brand for the purpose of attracting more customers and generating more revenue in business (Pchotels.com 2018). The Sales and Marketing department is in charge of the negotiations, management of business and hospitality groups, operators of tours and is also concerned with the management of accommodation and tours for the tourists. The Marketing department within Pearl Continental is one of the major department within the Sales category that manages the exposure of brand name and image and creates promotional and advertising strategies for grabbing the attention of customers (Abbey 2014). The Sales and Marketing department of Pearl Continental, Pakistan has also involved various social media platforms i ncluding Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and even collaborating with Trip Advisor for engaging more customers and enhancing the brand identity too. At Pearl Continental, Pakistan, the sales and marketing department manages various roles including research and development activities, distribution of products and services in the market, customers services and communication (Altin, Schwartz and Uysal 2017). The marketing department manages contacts with the customers to drive the sales level whereas the sales division of the department develops marketing strategies for managing the marketing communications and ensuring that the brand name is enhanced for attracting and retaining new and existing customers respectively (Andzulis, Panagopoulos and Rapp 2012). Identification of roles, tasks and functions of the department in context of accommodation management There are various roles, tasks and functions that are managed by the Sales and Marketing department of Pearl Continental in Pakistan. The sales and marketing managers communicate with the customers and guide the development and distribution of products and services according to the various elements of the marketing mix strategy. This helps in fulfilling the needs and requirements of the customers and allows for determining what the hotel wants to sell and what prices will be set for the products and services offered to the customers. The sales and marketing managers also decide what intermediaries should be used along with the wholesalers, distributors and retailers (Bateman and Snell 2013). Not only the marketing and sales department manages these functions, but also handles the customers services properly to ensure that the purchasers can be kept happy. Customer surveys are conducted along with special offers provided to them for resolving certain issues and make sure that the comp any does not lose its customers. The department of sales and marketing at Pearl Continental has managed the promotional activities by involving social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to attract more customers and even managed the public relations and event sponsorship. By choosing the right media for promoting, the company has promoted its services and made customers informed about the products and services delivered to them (Blal and Sturman 2014). They also develop contests, discounts and giveaway coupons for providing other benefits to the customers while making purchases of the accommodations services within the hotel. It is also the responsibility of the Sales and Marketing department to decide the publications that are needed to be advertised along with the selection of most suitable websites and promotional platforms to facilitate the marketing processes and ensuring better exposure of the brand to its customers (Dima, ?enescu and Bosun 2014). The sales and marketing department is also concerned with the strategic positioning of the organisation to position the brand within the market properly and ensuring that a positive mindset is created among the customers. This has helped in understanding the requirements and preferences of the customers and set prices accordingly for keeping them satisfied and influenced to make purchases again from Pearl Continental, Karachi, Pakistan. It is not always meant to be linked with the income generation rather the strategic positioning allows for positioning the company and using business models to analyse the market place, identify the competition in the market, the consumers demands and preferences within the changing business environment and understanding the trends and approaches to become successful in the future (Evans, Stonehouse and Campbell 2012). By understanding the changing needs and preferences of the customers, it would be easy for the sales and marketing department to identify the factors that can create the hotels appeal and awareness among the customers. The concerned department also monitors the reviews and feedbacks of the customers from the hotels website and provides solutions, which further helps in identifying the recent trends to increase demand for low cost family accommodations and other facilities from the hotel authorities (Filieri and McLeay 2014). To increase the efficiency of reaching the targeted market segments comprising of the customers, the Sales and Marketing department of Pearl Continental also posted details about accommodation and other facilities available at the hotel and even collaborated with various venues of meetings. It has further helped in providing the delegates with accommodation facilities and gain access to the potential customers with ease and effectiveness (Garay and Font 2012). Roles of customers and their needs The customers roles are to provide their views and opinions along with the feedbacks about the services that they have obtained from the Pearl Continental. It has enabled the Sales and Marketing managers to make necessary changes for the fulfillment of the customers needs and preferences and even make it convenient for them to find information about the hotel and the services can be availed. One of the most important thing that is considered by the customers to gain a positive experience has been the quality of accommodation facilities and rooms available for them (Herrero and San Martn 2012). Being one of the most popular luxury hotels in Pakistan, Pearl Continental has provided services to suit the needs of both business leisure travelers and allowed them to chose from multiple luxury rooms and suites during their stay at the hotel. Other than the comfortable accommodation facilities, the hotel also offered fine dining options, health club and indoor temperatures controlled swimmin g pools for improving their experience and made them carry out word of mouth promotions for making other people aware of the accommodation services too (Kim, Ham and Moon 2012). The accommodation manager must make sure that the suites and rooms are provided to the customers according to their preferences even assign the housekeeping units to provide constant help and support whenever needed. The accommodation managers roles are also to maintain the health and safety standards and plan for work schedules and manage staff rotations for making 24 hour services available for the service users of Pearl Continental. The accommodation managers are also responsible for providing training sessions and make the staffs maintain cleanliness, furthermore keep the guests healthy and safe by complying with the health and safety regulations and rules too (Kim, Cho and Brymer 2013). Impact of outsourcing solution on the department Outsourcing within the hospitality industry may or may not be a viable options, though depending upon several factors that are needed to be considered from the sales and marketing perspective. The outsourcing solutions are provided by the third party and it mainly enables the sales and marketing department of the hotel to allow another hotel to manage certain tasks and functions for saving a significant amount of time, money as well as resources. Outsourcing in this department might not be a viable and feasible option because of the wrong assumption of workload and not being able to subcontract the specialized hotels for providing the best quality services to the customers (Kwok and Yu 2013). Pearl Continental has fixed costs and staffs are being with specific amounts of wages. When certain issues arise, the hotel might contract various activities to turn the fixed costs into the variable costs and this could facilitate the outsourcing of solutions for the Sales and Marketing departm ent. Few benefits of outsourcing for the department included decrease in fixed costs, enhanced quality of products and services delivered to the customers and saving lot of time, resources and money too. There are no such employee contractual obligations and no wages burden for the staffs who have been skilled and knowledgeable (Lamminmaki 2012). The drawbacks, on the other hand could be the loosing of control and losing certain skills to handle multiple operations at the same time, which might degrade the organizational functioning. The lack of alignment with the business goals and objectives could be another disadvantage of outsourcing for this department while there were security related issues as well, which hindered the confidentiality and availability of data and information of customers (Leeman and Reynolds 2012). The customers must make sure that the information provided by them were accurate and those were kept private, so that it does not fall in wrong hands. Therefore, it could be understood that outsourcing might not be a viable solution for the concerned department of Pearl Continental (Mohammed and Rashid 2012). Recommendations to move forward It is recommended to form an active sales team for estimating the current and future sales as well as ensure utilization of the resources properly for driving the sales performance in the future. The Sales and Marketing department, to improve its sales through marketing strategies must also schedule periodic maintenance, repairing and mange innovation for improving the efficiency of marketing (Wang 2012). To ensure financial success and better revenue generation, the accommodation managers of the hotel must also maintain proper budgetary methods, accounting and create financial reports for delivering the best quality customers services. This would also save a lot of cost, time and achieve the targets and objectives of gaining more profit in business within quick time (Pchotels.com 2018). Pearl Continentals marketing and sales department is also responsible for developing an effective diversification strategy to make new products and services available for the target market segments. To increase its sales, the hotel could introduce new subsidiaries and banquet halls for attracting more customers towards the hotel and it influenced their buying behaviors. It should foster business growth and prosperity and the risks would be resolved that might be faced in case the customers were not satisfied with the services (Rishi and Gaur 2012). The products and services of Pearl Continental were promoted in social media, internet websites, televisions and radios along with advertisements on Khyber channel for increasing its sales and make people aware of the services delivered. The marketing mix strategy is used to analyse the market conditions and determine the various elements for managing changes in prices of products, add new locations for sales, which can improve the response rate of the customers (Wang and Ritchie 2012). The needs and requirements of the customers should be assessed and reviewed, based on which the accommodation services could be provided accordingly and keep them satisfied as a whole. References Abbey, J.R., 2014.Hospitality sales and marketing. American Hotel Lodging Educational Institute. Altin, M., Schwartz, Z. and Uysal, M., 2017. Where you do it matters: The impact of hotels revenue-management implementation strategies on performance.International Journal of Hospitality Management,67, pp.46-52. Andzulis, J.M., Panagopoulos, N.G. and Rapp, A., 2012. A review of social media and implications for the sales process.Journal of Personal Selling Sales Management,32(3), pp.305-316. Bateman, T.S. and Snell, S., 2013. Management: Leading collaborating in a competitive world. McGraw-Hill Irwin. Blal, I. and Sturman, M.C., 2014. The differential effects of the quality and quantity of online reviews on hotel room sales.Cornell Hospitality Quarterly,55(4), pp.365-375. Dima, I.C., ?enescu, A. and Bosun, P., 2014. Informational stocks and e-logistics management of a tourism company.International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences,16(1), pp.75-85. Evans, N., Stonehouse, G. and Campbell, D., 2012.Strategic management for travel and tourism. Taylor Francis. Filieri, R. and McLeay, F., 2014. E-WOM and accommodation: An analysis of the factors that influence travelers adoption of information from online reviews.Journal of Travel Research,53(1), pp.44-57. Garay, L. and Font, X., 2012. Doing good to do well? Corporate social responsibility reasons, practices and impacts in small and medium accommodation enterprises.International Journal of Hospitality Management,31(2), pp.329-337. Herrero, . and San Martn, H., 2012. Developing and testing a global model to explain the adoption of websites by users in rural tourism accommodations.International Journal of Hospitality Management,31(4), pp.1178-1186. Kim, H.B., Ham, S. and Moon, H.Y., 2012. The impact of hotel property size in determining the importance of electronic distribution channels.Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology,3(3), pp.226-237. Kim, W.G., Cho, M. and Brymer, R.A., 2013. Determinants affecting comprehensive property-level hotel performance: The moderating role of hotel type.International Journal of Hospitality Management,34, pp.404-412. Kwok, L. and Yu, B., 2013. Spreading social media messages on Facebook: An analysis of restaurant business-to-consumer communications.Cornell Hospitality Quarterly,54(1), pp.84-94. Lamminmaki, D., 2012. A management accounting perspective on hotel outsourcing.Accounting and Financial Management, p.341. Leeman, D. and Reynolds, D., 2012. Trust and outsourcing: Do perceptions of trust influence the retention of outsourcing providers in the hospitality industry?.International Journal of Hospitality Management,31(2), pp.601-608. Mohammed, A.A. and Rashid, B., 2012. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Hotel Industry: A framework proposal on the relationship among CRM dimensions, Marketing Capabilities, and Hotel performance.International Review of Management and Marketing,2(4), p.220. Pchotels.com. (2018). Best 5 Star Hotel in Karachi | Pearl Continental Hotel Karachi. [online] Available at: https://www.pchotels.com/pckarachi/ [Accessed 13 Jan. 2018]. Rishi, M. and Gaur, S.S., 2012. Emerging sales and marketing challenges in the global hospitality industry: A thematic analysis of customer reviews from the world's top two tourist destinations.Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes,4(2), pp.131-149. Wang, J. and Ritchie, B.W., 2012. Understanding accommodation managers crisis planning intention: An application of the theory of planned behaviour.Tourism Management,33(5), pp.1057-1067. Wang, X.L., 2012. Relationship or revenue: Potential management conflicts between customer relationship management and hotel revenue management.International Journal of Hospitality Management,31(3), pp.864-874.