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A literature review of research on small hotels found that "SMEs tend to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term objectives due to time constraints (Beaver and Harris, 1995) and prefer action rather than planning (Moriarty 2007:295). Their strategic marketing tends to be less formalized than large enterprises as well. "SME's have the advantage of having closer contact with customers and are more flexible, responsive to change and more innovative than most larger firms. They rely significantly on word-of-mouth for promotion" (Moriarty 2007:295). They lack the resources for formalized, large-scale marketing research and brand loyalty membership programs.

The researchers attempted to classify the interview responses based upon Carson's model of activity. However, because so many responses lay between Carson's scale of "little or no marketing" and "implicit or simple marketing," the researchers created an additional category of "inexpert marketing" to more effectively assess the responses (Moriarty 2007:300). "The additional category of "inexpert marketing" is a level of marketing between non-marketing and implicit marketing. The firm whose level of marketing planning is 'inexpert' has some understanding of the relevance of marketing and attempts to carry out marketing effectively, but does not have the required knowledge or experience to do so successfully" (Moriarty 2007:300). Inexpert marketers have a vague knowledge of size, location and possibly competitors, but little understanding of how to engage in segmentation, versus implicit marketers which do engage in some segmentation, and the sophisticated marketing of larger firms. In contrast, "the inexpert marketing hotel does not keep customer records because they feel that they know their regular customer base well, and converse on a first name basis with them. The hotel however does not know how many customers have used their hotel and previous customers are never contacted" (Moriarty 2007:308).

The lack of sophistication of small hotels in their marketing efforts is interesting, but the sampling size is somewhat limited -- not only is it small, but it was also concentrated in Wales. The extent to which this can be generalized to hotels in other areas remains questionable. Also, there is the question of if this lack of sophistication is a transitory phenomenon, given more and more small businesses are developing websites and using the Internet to engage in inexpensive marketing and advertising. Finally, there remains the question as to whether the refinement of Carson's model would be applicable to all industries, or simply to the hospitality industry. The article suggests the need for further research, as to the question of whether more sophisticated marketing could benefit small-to-medium hotels.