Background of Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd.
Discuss about the Hotel & Hospitality Management of Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd.
The essay deals with the Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd, an international hospitality brand popular for hotels, resorts, and spas. It is well established in America, Africa, Asia, and Middle East. It is rooted in Singapore since 1994 (Ho and De Meyer 2017). The aim of the essay is to identify and discuss the overall business strategy adopted by the Banyan Tree up to 2006. On comparing with the present strategies the essay discuses if the previous strategies were employed, it would have led to success of the business or not. Further, the essay considers if the new strategies need to be employed in view of the current hyper-competitive environment.
Leadership that had been shown by Ho Kwon king had been truly seen to mesmerise the present day leaders. This is mainly because in the old generation, leaders primarily focused their leadership tactics on safe practices. They used to follow the trend that are contemporary and rarely used to take innovative strategies in their leadership. It was seen that in the years of the said leader, most of the marketing strategies to complete in the market sphere was mainly based on lowering the cost of the products as well as the services for the consumers. At that time, it was mainly seen that lowering the cost through low cost production services used to attract consumers. However, he believed that this couldn’t be the main formula as consumers may not be always satisfied with low cost hotel but may also look for newer innovative things of pleasure. Therefore, at that time only, he tried to implement many new features in his hotels other than low cost rooms and services. It can be stated that his creative and innovative thinking was not only appreciable at that time of his foundation of the hotel but such ideas of innovation should also be practiced in the modern days by nay leaders who want to make their names n the hotel industry (ENZ and Farhoomand 2018).
Two decades back only, the concept of transformational as well as charismatic leadership as well as management styles were not very common. Autocratic leaders used to call the shots and their style of management was strict. They used to provide very little scope of suggestions and feedbacks from employees. They determined their own decisions to be the last decisions that the employees just need to follow. However, in the era only, Ho was found to be quite different and therefore his of team and the culture of the workplace that he proposed to follow was quite different. It was seen that he was high on his emotional intelligence and considered his members as families who need to work together for achievement of goals and aspirations. It was seen that he would care for the emotional, mental, physical and financial needs of the workers that made them feel included in the organisation. As a result, the dedication that they gave towards the work had made the organisation reach the zenith of success. What the hotel industry leaders are trying to do now was achieved by Ho many decades back. Even the present day leaders can take ideas from the way he developed the work culture as well as mission, vision, and his team s that they can also become successful like Ho’s organisation (Ho and De Meyer 2017).
Overall Business Strategy of Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd.
Branding was one of the most important arena that the leader had focused on. He was very particular about the target audience and therefore his clear goals and objective helped in developing of a brand image that were associated with luxury pools and spas. This branding attracted consumers who wanted romantic, luxury, intimacy as well as rejuvenation. Even the sister brand that was launched also had the same branding consistency and very little dilution was made in the branding arena. Though the cost was, lower that attracted the younger generation with lovely interior decorations and similar other services, ho did not allow any dilution of the branding and wanted this to be the only source of marketing and branding. He was always concerned on the fact about more innovations could be introduced without creating nay dilutions in the branding. Therefore, he promoted the spa service and started providing training sessions to 500 therapists until other hotels started taking support of their services. These helped in not only more profits but developed the brand image without resulting in any loss of branding. Such innovations in branding could be followed by present day leaders to get more successful organisational achievements (Hung et al. 2013; Vervain . n.d).
The current study focuses upon BANYAN TREE which is a luxury hotel chain rioted in Singapore and operates all across USA, Canada, Australia etc. They offer wide packages of travel comfort for travellers across the world. Additionally, the spa and recreation centres ensure that is affluent with visitors throughout the year. However as mentioned by Clapp and Rowlands (2014), being a part of global tourism the BANYAN TREE has to be increasingly aware of their corporate social responsibilities. As mentioned by Grayson and Hodges (2017), the corporate social responsibilities could be defined as the value based products or services provided by a business organization. The BANYAN TREE chain of rejuvenation reports would host multilingual guest across vast cultural dimensions and borders three to four times a year. The additional number of guest put huge amount of pressure on some of the infrastructural resources such as increased use of air conditioners which emit huge amount of chlorofluorocarbons s which has a capacity of damaging the ozone later of the atmosphere. Therefore, the BANYAN TREE needs to be increasingly sensitive towards its CSR responsibilities such as reducing the carbon smoke and emissions alongside reducing the waste generation. The hospitality activities often result din the generation of huge smoke and soot particles. Some of the activities which had been implemented by the business organization earlier such as installing biological waste water treatment system at BANAYAN TREE BINTAN which could help recycle the waste water for irrigation purposes. The directors and CEO at banayan tree had always been conscious of taking the larger part of the environment into consideration while making decisions (banyantree.com 2018). Additionally, the earlier efforts undertaken by BANYAN TREE such as using the contribution from guests for supporting conservation activities such as marine conservation and child education has made them emerge as an organization with huge philanthropic contributions. Therefore, based upon some of these activities taken BANYN TREE can emerged as a global philanthropic partner. Therefore, prolonging some of these activities s top present day could give the company a competitive advantage over others. Additionally, undertaking activities such as installation of filter or chimneys can help in reducing the concentration of smoke or soot particles.
Leadership and Work Culture of Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd.
BANYAN TREE charged high end rates for all its rooms which included resorts, hotels and spas spread all across Indonesia to Maldives. As mentioned by Lock and Seele (2015), BANYAN TREE believed in its brand image and market positions for attracting the maximum rates of customers. The revenue was derived from hotels and resorts with ownership interests. The customers at the spa units were provided 10-15% of the revenue collected. These were provided in the form of royalty points which helped in attracting more customers. The in-house project divisions supervised all renovations, alternations etc. However, as mentioned by Sethi et al. (2017),the additional charges availed per room, could result in loss of brand royalty in the long term. Hence, the strategy needs to be replaced with cost effectiveness.
Considering the high competitive environment it can be said that the current factors affecting the industry are the political, econ0mic, social and technological factors. The Banyan Tree is well established in the South East Asian region however, incidences like Bali tourist bombing have affected the tourism industry. Its establishment in the China is also affected by the quasi-democratic/socialist government (Upadhyay et al. 2017). The business is also affected by the economic fluctuations. In South East Asia low employment and volatility is observed. The currency fluctuations and the economic policies keep changing in China. Upto 2006 there was greater focus on the adults travelling the hotels. But currently the economic climate is changing. More corporations are promoting the corporate retreats. The adults are travelling as the group of friends. There is more focus now on the group travel and couples having less children. Thus, the business is impacted by the social trends. Upto 2006, there was less investment in the Internet and the various software platforms or digital marketing. But presently there is greater focus on the strategies for increasing the future booking and predicting the seasonality. The Banyan tree presently focuses more on the alterations necessary in technology for continuous service. Therefore, previously used strategies will now no more be able to fetch success for the company (Lin 2015). The company needs to taken into considerations the various political, economic and technological and social trends in which it is established. There may be 70 spas, 77 retail, galleries, 36 resorts and hotels, and three championship golf courses in 28 countries. It is not recognised globally.
It can be concluded from the essay that the strategies that were used upto 2006 are not advantageous for the company in present competitive environment. It is recommended that the company can go for global marketing campaign. The company must further focus on its combination of the luxury and affordability and brand new eco-friendly accommodations. The company must focus more on the China for its popularity and ubiquitous. To sustain the present level of competition, it must overcome the weak communication model and increase its range of prices. It must avoid the limited use of the local resources and focus more on environmentally sustainable. It must avoid being selective of guest. It must go for all-inclusive cruise packages. Further, considering the present trend and attraction for cruises, the company must go for potential expansion into water, more specifically cruises, while considering the eco friendly nature. The company must also focus on the high-end tourist intermediaries such as travel agents (Upadhyay, Vadam and Mohan 2015).
References
banyantree.com 2018, banyantree.com ,Available at : https://www.banyantree.com/en [Accessed on 10 May. 2018]
Clapp, J. and Rowlands, I.H., 2014. Corporate social responsibility. The Essential Guide to Global Environmental Governance. Routledge: London, pp.42-44.
ENZ, C., and Farhoomand, A., 2018. Banyan Tree: Sustainability of a Brand During Rapid Global Expansion. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/product/banyan-tree-sustainability-of-a-brand-during-rapid-global-expansion/HKU774-PDF-ENG
Grayson, D. and Hodges, A., 2017. Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make corporate social responsibility work for your business. Abingdon:Routledge, pp. 104-224.
Ho, K.P. and De Meyer, A. eds., 2017. The Art of Leadership: Perspectives from Distinguished Thought Leaders. World Scientific.
Hung, K., Zhang, H., Lam, C., Yang, G., Pang, D., Chen, Z., Li, J., Yang, F., Yan, L., Wang, C. and Deng, Y., 2013. Managing state-owned hotels in China: The challenges and remedies. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 22(7), pp.752-769.
Lin, I.Y., 2015. Marketing Global Luxury Spa and Wellness Trends, Experiences, and Challenges. In Handbook of Research on Global Hospitality and Tourism Management (pp. 185-202). IGI Global.
Lock, I. and Seele, P., 2015. Analyzing sector?specific CSR reporting: Social and environmental disclosure to investors in the chemicals and banking and insurance industry. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 22(2), pp.113-128.
Sethi, S.P., Martell, T.F. and Demir, M., 2017. Enhancing the role and effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports: The missing element of content verification and integrity assurance. Journal of Business Ethics, 144(1), pp.59-82.
Upadhyay, A., Vadam, C. and Mohan, S., 2015. Sustainable Operations in Hotel Industry. In 26th Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Annual Conference.
Upadhyay, A., Vadam, C., Kumar, V. and Garza-Reyes, J.A., 2017. International Operations, Innovation and Sustainability. Lulu. com.
Varvarina, D. and Sule, S., Banyan Tree Holdings. Retrieved from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/44518798/Banyan_Tree_Holdings_Analysis.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1526119158&Signature=ht7Dgs9vP8uf6Hwjjgr9Jcf0j%2FY%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DBanyan_Tree_Holdings_An_In-depth_Analysi.pdf
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