Introduction
A century ago, on 31st May 1919, in Taxes, Conrad Hilton had started the company. In 100 years span, the Hilton hotel became one of the prime Hotel Chains in rapidly growing hospitality chains on the global scenario. Presently, the company offering services over 570 locations with 5,100 properties containing 838000 rooms across the world (3.hilton website, 2019).
The Hilton hotels company is awarded as the preeminent hospitality services provider in the world. For the last 100 years company has been delivering high-end hospitality across the globe (Hilton website, 2019). Company serving as 14 outstanding brands including Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Curio Collection by, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Canopy, Tapestry Collection Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, and so on. On the worldwide frame, the company is also identified for its strongest loyalty programs (upgradedpoints website, 2017).
This report discusses the target market and positioning, which include targeted clients of the company as per demographics, Geographic, Behavioural patterns. This report also analysed the marketing mix of the company and discusses the seven marketing mix aspects which are commonly known as 7Ps, are the product, price, place, promotion, physical evidence, process and, people.
To get a better understanding of the company position, the report covers a SWOT analysis of the company revealed the strengths and opportunities of the company, which gives competitive advantages to the company. The report gives an insight into the weaknesses and threats of the company to recognize them and overcome them to grow the business in the competitive business era.
Target Market & Positioning
Target marketing refers divided a market into various segments and focusing on a key segment by putting efforts to attract the customers from the particular segment and customized the products and services as per need and demands of that group of people.
Whereas, market positioning defined as a process to influences the perception of customers for a product. In marketing strategy, the company creates an image of the brand name in customers’ minds for product and service (Corporatefinanceinstitute, 2019).
Targeting marketing strategy of the Hilton hotels company discusses methods that the Hilton hotels adopt to trade its products and services to a more specific group of people rather than dealing with any group of people.
To understanding the targeted group of people or customers market is segmented into five major categories are, Demographic, psychographic, geographic, geo-demographic and behavioural. This segmentation of the market helps the company to be more specific and particular towards its customers. It helps the company to develop a better understanding of customers’ needs, recognizing the business opportunities, build new market strategies and study the company’s weaknesses and strengths (Mark, 2017).
Demographic segment and social-economic
The Demographic and social-economic segment of Hilton Hotels mainly focuses on the income of customers, economic and social status and personal life cycle. The targeted group of the customer of Hilton is middle and older aged business persons, people with high income and belongs to superior social status. The company targets individuals that follow a luxury lifestyle. The company provides the products and services accordingly to customer’s wants and charges premium prices (Hilton , 2016).
Geographic Segment
As Hilton provides services on the global platform, thus the company has to perform accordingly. It includes targeting territory, state, region, and religion and offers the products and services accordingly (Gillian, 2011). For instance: In Kabul, which is an Islamic city, offers food and cuisine as per Islamic regulation. In addition, the company chooses the locations which have high tourist attractions.
Psychographic segment
This market segmentation examines the values, feels and behaviour, personalities, and lifestyles of customers. Hilton Hotels Company focuses on the individual who is ambitious to express premium status and achievements by residing in a luxury room offered by the company (xotels website, 2019).
Behavioural Segmentation
The company divided the market according to customer status, occasion, customer loyalty, etc. and provides products and services as per the demand. For a better understanding of the customer’s needs company stay connected with the customers through various activities like feedback on behalf of their stay experiences in the Hotels.
Marketing Mix Strategy
A marketing mix is an act by the company or management team to increase the companies’ profitability by maximizing the selling of the company’s products and services. In product sectors, there are four areas where the company can put affords to maximize the sale. They are, product, place, price, and promotion know as four Ps of marketing. Chai simplified the marketing mix concept as “keeping the right product in the right place at right price at the right time” (Chai, 2009)
In the service sector, there are three more key areas added as physical Evidence, people and partners (Annmarie, 2019).
Marketing Mix of Hilton Hotels comprises 7Ps of marketing that is Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Process, People and Physical evidence.
Product
Hilton Hotels is a larger chain of Hotels that offers premium rooms for high experiencing stay, Restaurants for food and drinks, cafes for tea and coffee, and bars. Hilton Hotels provide full services including leisure stay, business meetings, weddings, events and banquet facilities with additional services like swimming pools, food, and beverages, gyms, gift shops, etc. (Hilton website, 2019).
Place
The Hilton Hotels Company has 5,100 properties in 103 countries worldwide. The presence of the hotels involves both the traveller’s delight and business destination globally. Hilton has the hotel properties on vacation spots on coastal regions, hill stations, etc., as Hilton Hotel and Resorts for travellers as well as near airports for business professionals. The company’s distribution strategy heavily depends on and information technology and online platform. To enrich customers’ stay experience company focuses on selecting the surrounding like Beach- sides, peace, calmness around, etc (John, 2019).
Price
As targeting high-income group of people and maintaining the standard of the services company adopts a premium price policy. Hilton Hotel deliveries only five stars and four-star client services with the experience of a luxury stay (siaminteract website, 2019).
Promotion
The Hilton Hotel company is a well-recognized brand in the hospitality sector for years. Under the promotional strategies, the company has various tie-ups with Payment Banks, restaurants and food providers. Apart from this company promote itself through premium magazines and different customer review websites (Ahsan, 2014).
Physical Evidence
The company has a presence and a great spread of its properties worldwide. The company has tie-ups with various websites and hotel booking chains to increase the reach of the company in the market. Besides the tough competition in the hospitality market, the Hilton Hotel company able to successfully maintain its presence in the market.
Process
To holding customers’ loyalty, the company is maintaining its services, skilled and trained staff, and market image.
People
In the hospitality sector, the Hilton Hotels company is considered as one of the top management companies internationally, in terms of system and process. The flow of the services to the customers is consistent. Which increasing the company’s revenue and establish a leading position in the market.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is a great strategy for the development of a business. It is a study done by the managers to recognize the strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organization related to business. Strengths and weaknesses exist in the company itself and business managers can control these two-element to grow the business. Whereas, opportunities and threats belong to the external environment of the company and managers do not have much control over them. Managers can use the opportunities and minimize the threats (Noah, 2018). This report carried out the SWOT analysis of the Hilton Hotel Company.
Strength
Strong Financial status: Hilton Hotels Company generated $ 8,906 million in the financial year 2018. This figure proved strong in financial terms. This helps the company expand into new products (Hilton Report, 2019).
Renowned Brands- Over the year Hilton Hotels Company successfully established a brand. Customer trust and brand recognition are a must in the hospitality industry. The company has 51000 properties across six continents (3.hilton website, 2019).
Outstanding performance- Hilton has created proficiency at penetrating a new market and gaining success over there. This helped the company to develop a new revenue source. The Hilton Company always performs as per standard.
Reliable Dealer Community- In the company, such culture has developed where dealers of the company not only promote the company’s products and services but also spend in training the sales team to be more effective in explaining the maximum benefits of particular products to customers.
Skilled Workforce – The Company provides training and earning programs regularly to create a highly-skilled workforce. This effort not only creates skilled employee but also it motivates them to deliver more satisfactory performance.
Highly satisfied customers – The Company is dedicated to customer satisfaction and believes in developing strong customer relationships. The company always ensures about the product and services provided to the customer are up to standard and expectations.
Weakness
Dependency on properties – Hilton Company has a lack of company own properties. It is highly dependent on the other inn properties.
Limited market share – Though the company has good brand value, still the company has a limited share.
Government policies – As the company delivers its services on the global platform, it experiences operational difficulties on the balance of different government policies and parameters.
Shortage of product range – The Company has a small range of the product and services sold by it. Hence the absence of the vast product ranges reduces the customer’s choices which triggers them to switch and end up giving an advantage to a competitor.
Inadequate financial planning – The company does not have proper and effective financial plans. There are huge gaps lies within the company’s current assets and liquid assets ratio. If the company sets proper financial plans, the company’s cash will be used more effectively.
Low Research and development investment – The Company has found that there is a low investment in research and development as in the compression to other rising companies in the hospitality industry. Although the Company is investing more as the industry invests in Research & Development, yet, not as much as other key players in the industry are spending on research and development. (fernfortuniversity website, 2019).
High Attrition Rate – The Company is experiencing difficulty in retaining employees and having a high turnover. The Lack of retaining the workforce in the company leads to financial stress in the form of the replacement cost.
Opportunities
Australian Market- Australian economy is one of the biggest economies in the world and it is most appealing to pursue goals and expand tourism business
Acquirements of local inns- There are some opportunities lies to accuracies local hotels which will be helpful to cut local competition and advancement of ready customer foundation.
Digitalization- Digitalization, and arrival of technology is an advantage by the company. it helps to company to maintain customers’ loyalty. It also helps the company to differentiate pricing strategy in the market.
The lower inflation rate, Relaxation in new government policies, New taxation policies, targeting customers from the online channel, stable free cash flow and new trends in customer behaviour are some other opportunities that are helpful to the company to opening up in the new market for the Hilton Hotels Company.
Threats
Rivalry- There is a very high competition in the hotel industry. Accor, Abode, Adina Apartment Hotels, Best Westen, Clarion, Country inn, Crowne Plaza, Hilton Hotels are the top market players which are giving threatening competition to the Hilton company.
The high salary expectation of employees- Expectation of the employees for the high salary leads to dissatisfaction in the employees which again results in financial stress in either increasing the weight of compensation or replacement cost.
The arrival of new companies – The industry already has a vast variety of market players; the arrival of new companies gives a threat to the Hilton Hotels Company.
Above discusses, SWOT analysis of the Hilton Hotels Australian, drowned an outline about the market position of the company. The study discussed the area in which a company has some loophole which may lead the company’s growth negatively. The study also gives a look at some aspects which may be helpful to improve the company’s profitability.
Recommendations & Conclusions
The study has been carried out to understand market position and strategies for Hilton Hotels, Australia. It has been analysed that the target customer segment of the Hilton Hotels company to offer its product and services is prime class professionals and people who belong to the upper socio-economic class. To reach the targeted customer the company provides customized services according to region, behavioural patterns, religions, choices and demographic profile of the customers.
Marking mix Analysis of the company shows that the company offers products and various services including leisure stay, business meetings, weddings, events and banquet facilities with additional services like swimming pools, food, and beverages, gym, etc. for travellers and business persons both. This study also figured out that the company a great reach of properties worldwide to retain customer loyalty.
SWOT analysis results that the company holds a very strong financial position with higher cash flow which gives a push to the company to expand the business and be a leader in the industry. Strong Financial status, Renowned Brands, Outstanding performance and highly skilled workforce, build a strong position of the company in the industry. Although there is some weakness of the company like Dependency on properties, Limited market share, Government policies, etc. yet company is holding leading position for years.
This study precisely elaborates on the company’s position in the market, but there are some loopholes of the study which need future research on the subject. This study based only on secondary data that is available on the website. An empirical study can also be done for a more depth understanding of the company.
Bibliography
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