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The Hilton Group compromises of various accommodation and hotels all over the world. The hotel has some of its hotels situated in Africa, Europe, and America. Each of the hotels has its own pricing criteria according to the location. Marketing strategies employed by individual hotels ensures they get enough customers in accommodation. Their main target of clients is the tourist visiting different countries like Kenya. To capture these customers, the need to create awareness of what services are offered arises.
The hotel has marketing criteria where different prices are charged for the different seasonal period in a year. The pricing strategy is to ensure that clients visit the hotel during peak and off peak periods. The different marketing strategies employed by the Hilton hotels are discussed below showing their effectiveness. One of the popular modes of marketing used by the hotels is the selection of agents. The tourism industry is a business flooded by different agent companies that book and reserve hotels on behalf of their clients. These agents receive a percentage of the prices they charge clients on room prices.
The main advantage of using agents is that they perform their own marketing on their websites and through other channels Handlers and Manuel 24). Carrying marketing on their own cuts on cost of marketing the hotels’ services to people from different countries. An agent company established a long time ago has the advantage of having good knowledge of the operational market. The data that these agencies have collected over years can be provided to the hotel to make decisions on what prices and strategies to engage. Selection of the agent has to be done with carefulness.
Agents should have offices running to reduce chances of appointing fictitious agents who will steal the clients’ money without providing required services (Handlers and Manuel 32). The agents are required to wire the money paid by their clients to the hotels’ accounts together with the details to confirm booking. The online booking system will eliminate chances of double booking a room or over booking of hotel spaces. The agent form of marketing has proved to provide a large number of customers because of trust between customers and their representative agency. Trust arises in the place where customers meet the agency people face to face.
Once the customers reach the offices they are provided with pictures of the hotel rooms and meals as a marketing tool. The pictures will help the client in making decisions on the room they will need to occupy during their travel. Agents have hotness that they call any time they need to clarify an issue. The hotlist ensures that an agent does not give wrong information to customers on pricing or availability of a room. Continuous evaluation of the independent agents’ offices is carried out to determine their compliance to the laid down standards. Some of the standards are Tanat teeny snouts nave ten latest news Ana catalogues AT ten note.
Evaluation on number of customers provided by the agent is done annually to determine their effectiveness. Payment of agents on commission basis ensures return of investment because agents are paid on basis of their effectiveness (Smith 312). The hotel has an online website, which is a marketing tool. The website contains details of the different places the hotel is located and the pricing of the different services. The building of the website is a great marketing technique because of its universality accessibility by clients from different locations of the globe.
The website though written in English can be translated to different languages using tools like Google translate. The Google translate is free, and no extra cost is incurred by the hotel. The website method of marketing proves to be the cheapest among the other form of marketing. The cost effectiveness arises from where the only fee required is the website construction cost and hosting. The hosting prices are charged on an annual basis, which is around 100 US dollars. To ensure correctness of the information on the website; the hotel has an information technology department charged with the task of updating information.
Update is carried on the current price of rooms or any additional services that the hotel has begun to offer. The updating of the website has an advantage in that any error in marketing the website that is made in the initial design of the website can be corrected. Through the ‘contact us page’ on the website, clients can register their grievances without any fear of factorization. The page can be used to obtain enquiries and determine the number of clients who visit the website (Linen and Gary 68). The enquiries and mails received through the website are forwarded to the concerned department for action to be taken immediately.
The website method of marketing provides a marketing tool that is available all the time. The availability is ensured by making sure the website is online for 99. 99% of the 366 days in a year. The website pages are divided according to the hotel’s locations. Pages are provided for the Kenya Hilton hotel and individual pages for the United State Hilton hotels. Use of such criteria in marketing is aimed at ensuring accuracy of the information required by clients. Clients who are looking for a hotel in Nairobi will not be charged the same amount as that of the hotel situated in New York.
Agents and companies providing tour services are allowed to link the website on their pages as a marketing tool. Linking of the website creates traffic to the website by people who are looking for hotels. The optimization of the website has been carried out to improve on accessibility. Optimization eliminates the need of customers memorizing the Universal resource locator (URL) of the hotel to access its home page. Customers can find the hotel by simply typing its name on any search engine tool like Google and Bingo.
Social media has gained popularity with more than one billion of the world’s population using the service. One of the popular media is Backbone, which marked he point of having more than half a billion users in 2011. Such information on social media makes it an attractive tool for marketing the Hilton hotel and other players in ten tourism sector (Broadcasting Ana Frances / I en Hilton note NAS TA advantage of the media and started marketing through it. Marketing is done by placing adverts through the social media companies. The adverts provide the link to the hotel website for interested customers.
The social media marketing provides the meaner of restricting where the advert can be seen and the age group of people who can see the advert. The restriction will eliminate wastage of promotion money on people who are not potential customers to the hotel’s services. The social media companies provide data on the number of views an advert has received. The information is used to compute the popularity the hotel is gaining from the advertisement. The hotel has its own twitter account. The interested customers can see tweets that contain details of the different status of the hotel.
The twitter account allows customers to provide feedback on satisfaction of the services received. The hotel has created a Backbone page, which is universal and accessible by those interested in the hotel’s services. The Backbone page allows customers to make comments on updates made by hotel’s information technology department. The Backbone page creates a market because customers tend to trust information provided from fellow independent customers on a product. Customers who have spent the night at any of the Hilton hotel destination normally provide the assessment information.
The two pages, twitter, and Backbone are linked to the organization’s website in the form of icons. On clicking the icons, one is redirected to the company’s Backbone pages and twitter accounts. The use of broadcasting and print media in marketing the products of Hilton hotel has taken deep root. Adverts are booked in independent televisions and radio stations in different countries all over the world. This form of promotion has problems in the coverage area, which is limited to the region served by either the radio station or television station (Broadcasting and Frances 45).
To improve on coverage, adverts are placed in companies that offer satellite television and online TV services. The satellite television stations are expensive in hosting adverts and time slots for the adverts should be chosen carefully. The adverts are placed between sessions of popular games, after the news and after popular television programs. One of the satellite station used is the DUST, which is popular in Africa for providing viewers for sports. Providing adverts in such a station will attract clients who are taking sports tourism as a hobby.
The station has channels that are famous for movies. Their customers provide one of the largest markets at the moment. The print media involves placing adverts in newspapers and magazines in different countries. This mode of marketing has challenges in coverage because most swappers only serve their home nation. The print media is used during the peak tourism period in Africa. Adverts are placed in newspapers like the New York Times in the United State. Placing of adverts in such papers targets the up market citizens who can afford the hotel’s premium services.
This group of people has a high probability of taking holidays leading to the necessity of providing them with information on free hotel spaces. I en pricing strategy NAS Eden employed In marketing ten Hilton note. It Involves setting different prices for products in different locations. The hotels in Africa have different prices from those in developed countries like the United State. The pricing separation is done during the peak and off peak tourism periods. The hotel prices are set high during periods like December.
This period sees tourists moving in huge numbers from Europe or the United States headed to Africa. The prices of accommodation of the hotels in Kenya at this time will be set high. The high prices will not discourage customers from making a booking because of the few hotels available and the large number of clients. This decision is made using the forces of emend and supply. The principle states that when the demand of a product is high, prices of the product tend to go high while all other marketing factors are held constant (Smith 27).
The constant factors are supply for hotel spaces available within the market. Use of the economic factors in determining prices has been applied in setting prices for the African and United State markets. In Africa, the factors of production are cheap making it a requirement for the product to be cheap. The factors of production include the huge readily available market to work in the hotel business in Africa. The cheapness in labor and other things like electricity, water bill, and security reduces the cost of operation for the hotel.
The hotel has tried to keep cohesiveness between what is marketed and what it can provide. This is ensured by having readily available information on the individual free hotel rooms and cooking for the customers. The hotel managers monitor the marketing avenues being used to eliminate chances of misuse. The provision of pictures in the website improves on the image because of confidence created among potential customers. The feedback system created through the call center in each toll location and on the ‘contact us page’ on the website offers critical information.
The data can be used in implementing corrective measures to the problems arising from marketing before they become catastrophic (Rogers and Stuart 212). The affordability of the different modes of marketing used ensures return on investment. The return on investment is enjoyed by having a large number of clients visiting the hotel because of the marketing done through the websites, social media, and the print media. The data on the number of clicks on adverts provided through the social Edie allows the hotel to make a decision if the social media mode of advertisement is valid.
In a recap, the modes of marketing employed by Hilton Group have shown success. The tools used for evaluation shows success like the number of clicks on the website are rising with each successful day. The business adapting to the information technology by advertising on Backbone and twitter provide for chances of massive growth in the future. The pricing strategy of charging high prices in destination like Europe and lower prices in Africa is one of the decisions that has led o occupancy of the different hotels no matter their location.
References Broadcasting and Frances. Principles of marketing. Harrow: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2006. Print. Handlers and Manuel. Marketing Strategy. Mјenhance: GRIN Average Comb, 2008. Print. Linen and Gary. Principles of marketing engineering. Victoria, B Radiator Fuddling, Z / Print. Rogers Ana Stuart Marketing strategies, tactics, and techniques : a handbook for practitioners. Westport, Coin: Quorum Books, 2001. Print. Smith, P. Strategic marketing communications : new ways to build and integrate communications. London: Kananga Page, 1999. Print.