Marketing Plan For InterContinental Hotel In Muscat

Internal and External Environment Analysis

Marketing is one of the most relevant aspects of the business, which needs to be planned as per the external and internal environment. The report will include various models to assess the external environment that is PESTLE analysis, and the internal environment through SWOT analysis (Adam & Kotler, 2014). The marketing plan will be prepared in the report, considering one of the organizational cases for better understanding.

The Hotel InterContinental in Muscat, founded in 1946, with the initial launch by pan American world airways as InterContinental hotels as one of their international hotel brands. The brand initial setup was in Brazil, which the brand tends to expand across the globe with customer service excellence as USP of the brand. The company is willing to market itself and establish the brand as one of the world’s leading hotel brand, for which the company is undergoing a major change for a year (ihg, 2019).

For analyzing the internal environment of the company that is the initial aspect to be considered, while preparing the marketing plan for Muscat InterContinental.

Political factors of Oman will be considered for analyzing the external environment for the hotel. These factors include political stability of the nation, which affect the business in the nation. Considering Oman, the political stability index indicates that it is neither too strong nor weak, which means that it is not the treat for the company (theglobaleconomy, 2019). Some other aspect of this environment would be corruption level, and control of the corruption in the country. Considering the control of corruption index, it seems to be decreasing and not stable since many years, which indicates that that the political environment of the country could be the threat to the business (theglobaleconomy, 2019).

The company business depends on the economic factors of eth nation. For instance the GDP growth, which reflects the consumption level in the nation. Taxation policy of the nation, and inflation in the nation which will eventually affect the business. From the figure, it can be said that, considering the last few years, the GDP is constant or decreasing, which means the opportunity for the company in the nation does not seem to be increased (theglobaleconomy, 2019).

Figure 1:( Source: (theglobaleconomy, 2019)

Moreover, the inflation rate of the country can be calculated on the basis of the consumer price index, which is between 2-3 in 2016 and 2017, which majority of the company tries to keep for reducing the risk for the business.

Product and Pricing Strategy

Culture plays a relevant role in conducting business. The major ethnic groups found in the nation are Arab, South Asian, Baluci, and African. Considering the religion, Muslims are found the maximum. This is the reason the company has to consider the culture, their lifestyle for targeting potential customers in the nation. For InterContinental hotels, the food, taste preference, the ambiance could be so as to attract these people to a greater extent (cia, 2019).

The country is not as technologically advanced country as some of the western countries. However, the technological updating is necessary for the nation, and the company can gain advantage through integrating technology to the business in the nation (Tari, 2015).

These factors include laws followed in the nation, for instance, the employment law, consumer protection law, which will affect the business in the nation. The rule of law index can indicate if the society abides by the law or do not consider the laws to a large extent. The country according to the statistics does not have an average of 0.47 point at this index from 1996 to 2017, which is not so high neither to low (theglobaleconomy, 2019).

These include the major climate change in the nation, water, and air pollution, which the company has to consider before investing in the nation. Considering the recent environmental issue in the nation increases in soil salinity, limited freshwater, which the company must consider during CSR (indexmundi, 2019).

The market segmentation for InterContinental hotel in OMAN, the target market would be the closest to the traveling aspects of the nation that is the airports. The company is targeting tourism as a potential customer. Another market that the company can target would be the business travelers, this would help the brand to increase the database. The company can provide the facilities that will make the dealing and the business conferences possible in the hotel (Doole & Lowe, 2008).   

The objectives of the marketing plan include

1. Increase in sale of the service by 10 percent by next year – through this marketing plan, the company would like to target new segment and can be measured through visible growth in the sale of the services by end of the financial year
2. Increase in brand awareness within next six month and customer satisfaction till next year- this plan would be liable to reach out to maximum customers and increase the brand awareness, which can be measured through the visits of people on social networking that is through social media marketing included in the plan, the company can observe the number of views, like and feedback from the customers (Tari, 2015)

After analyzing the internal and external environment of the company, the major recommendation for the company includes:

1. Products strategy – the recommended strategy for the company regarding the product and service offered to the customers include the product innovation and product differentiation, this could include the increase of facilities for the company. For instance, a business conference facility, kids room, pool for travelers to enjoy(Chung, 2015)
2. Price strategy – the recommended pricing strategy for the company would be premium pricing, the company is targeting the premium customer and providing high-quality service, for which the company must keep the prices high and premium. The reason being the company is providing high-quality services, and through its high price the company prefers to create brand positioning as the premium service brand (Aksoy, 2018)

Figure 2: (Source: (Aksoy, 2018)

1. Place strategy – considering the placing, the location is important to plan, which is recommended to be near the airport for the business travelers as potential customers and near the popular tourist places to provide leisure tourism services. Moreover, the company can expand business through placing a various number of the hotel in various places to target maximum customers  (Hu et al., 2016)
2. Promotional strategy – the company is recommended to have intensive promotional activities like sponsoring the events, hoardings on road, membership system for special offers for regular customers, advertisement through television and radio, and printed form through the newspaper, journals, and pamphlets. The company could also hold various events like crockery competitions to create brand awareness(Gong & Yi, 2018).

Moreover, the company must use modern promotional tools like social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing through popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to interact with the customer and increase the customer satisfaction. Another aspect in this strategy that the company could have to adopt considering the increase in digitalization, that is a link up to the various tourism companies like trip advisor, and various other travel agencies like Cox and Kings (Finne, 2017).

Promotional Mix Strategy

To monitor and control the marketing plan implemented would be

• Total quality management – this is to ensure that the service provided to the customers are the best quality service and up to the benchmark(Alegre & Marimon, 20188)
• Customer feedback – the customer is now able to contact and provide feedback online and offline, which the company can control in case of any dissatisfaction factor observed by the company through their comments
• Sales figures – keeping the track over the sales figures of the company, as the objective is to increase the sales, in case of any decrease in sales figure are observed, the cause of the deviation must be found and fixed regularly, so the controlling is not to be done after a particular period (Birasnav, 2014)

Conclusion 

From the report, it can be concluded that the Hotel InterContinental in Muscat, would like to have a marketing plan in order to increase the sale of the brand by 10 percent by next year, and increase brand awareness and customer satisfaction within next six months. The marketing plan initiated by identifying the internal and external environmental factors of the company. According to which the product strategy recommended to the company include product differentiation and innovation. The price strategy would be the premium strategy, and the company can include the location to be near the airport and near the tourist places for targeting leisure tourism and business travelers. Moreover considering the promotional strategy, the company can use various promotional tools like traditional tools like an advertisement, sponsorship, and events. Moreover, digital tools can be used like social media marketing, email marketing and connecting to the travel agency brands like trip advisors, and Cox and Kings.

References

Adam, S. & Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Australia: Pearson Australia.

Aksoy, S., 2018. Applying Ansoff’S Growth Strategy Matrix To Innovation Classification. International Journal of Innovation Management, p.1850039.

Alegre, I. & Marimon, F., 20188. Quality management systems in European social service organizations: A survey of EQUASS Assurance pioneer adopters. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 35(2), pp.354-72.

Birasnav, M., 2014. Knowledge management and organizational performance in the service industry: The role of transformational leadership beyond the effects of transactional leadership.. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1622-29.

Bull, J.W. & Sitas, N., 2016. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem Services, 17(1), p.99.

Chung, T.L., 2015. The role of listening in e-contact center customer relationship management. Journal of services marketing, 29(1), pp.49-58.

cia, 2019. the-world-factbook. [Online] Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mu.htmlhttps://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mu.html.

Doole, L. & Lowe, R., 2008. nternational marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation. Cengage Learning EMEA.

Finne, A., 2017. Communication-in-use: customer-integrated marketing communication. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), p.445.

Gong, T. & Yi, Y., 2018. The effect of service quality on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and happiness in five Asian countries. Psychology & Marketing, p.472.

Hu, M.Y., Krush, M.T. & Agnihotri, R., 2016. Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, p.172.

ihg, 2019. home. [Online] Available at: https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/us/en/muscat/mscha/hoteldetail.

indexmundi, 2019. oman/environment_current_issues. [Online] Available at: https://www.indexmundi.com/oman/environment_current_issues.html.

Tari, J.J., 2015. The effects of quality and environmental management on competitive advantage: A mixed methods study in the hotel industry. Tourism Management, 50(1), pp.41-54.

theglobaleconomy, 2019. Oman/gdp_current_local_currency. [Online] Available at: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Oman/gdp_current_local_currency/.

theglobaleconomy, 2019. Oman/wb_corruption. [Online] Available at: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Oman/wb_corruption/.

theglobaleconomy, 2019. Oman/wb_political_stability. [Online] Available at: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Oman/wb_political_stability/.

theglobaleconomy, 2019. Oman/wb_ruleoflaw. [Online] Available at: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Oman/wb_ruleoflaw/.

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