Strategy and planning for hotel management

Hotel Strategy

The first strategy is to promote the spa at the Watermark Hotel. The spa is a key strength and competitive advantage of the hotel. Many new hotels have spas in them, but few hotels have exceptional spas, something the Watermark has. A great spa can help attract both business travellers looking for a break after a hard day at work, and recreational travellers looking to relax (Minnini, 2007).

Spas, like hotels, are differentiated by their branding. Customers identify with the branding of a spa and will seek out this branding when they travel (Borgman, 2011). This means there are two options for the spa at the Watermark. The company can continue with its current branding, which is linked to the hotel, or it can find a spa branding partner, which has an international name in the industry. Such a deal would allow the Watermark to license the spa premises, have a better spa brand, and leave its management to focus on running the hotel and catering side of the establishment. It is recommended that the company focus on building the strength of its own spa brand, so that it becomes known throughout Australia.

The objective of this strategy is to increase domestic visitors by 15% in the next year, and by 30% in two years. There are several reasons for the focus on domestic visitors. The first is that there are more tourists flying through the Gold Coast Airport and increasing flights (NW Star, 2012). There are no currency exchange problems with Australian customers, but flight connections to Surfers are good. The strategy aims to increase brand awareness among Australians for the Watermark Hotel and Spa in this time period. In addition, the strategy aims to increase consumer desire to visit the spa as well, something that is part of the consumer buying cycle (no author, 2012).

The strategy will be focused on the region between Byron Bay to the south, Sunshine Beach in the north and Toowoomba in the west. This area has over 3 million people. There will also be secondary promotions in major cities with good air connections to Gold Coast, such as Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne.

The marketing strategy for the spa will feature two main components. The first will be an Internet strategy that seeks to gain exposure. This will be conducted mainly within the Gold Coast-Brisbane area. The strategy will utilize a number of different social media features like Twitter and Facebook to promote specials to people who have signed up for alerts. These specials will help to bring in traffic on slower days, and to get people from the area to take a spa weekend at the hotel.

The second part of the strategy will focus on a promotional and advertising strategy. The promotions will be for things like long weekends and will focus on tie-ins with other businesses, like the hotel restaurants, and providing transportation from the airport for guests. This is the marketing that will be focused on out of state domestic visitors, who will be encouraged to book luxurious weekends away, taking advantage of the flight options from a number of different Australian cities.

These strategies will hopefully build the brand's reputation and help it differentiate itself from its major competitors in the area. These competitors, as noted, reduced the pricing power that the Watermark has. Only building a strong brand that consumers associate with high quality will encourage consumers to spend more on the Watermark.

The target market for the strategy goes beyond geography, however. The service will be targeted at couples aged 40 and older, who have the means to afford the spa services and even the flight that accompanies it. These consumers are professional and well-educated. They may or may not have family, but the spa weekend will be marketed as a getaway, implying that the kids will have to stay elsewhere, if there are kids. These are not the elderly either -- they are modern people who are aware of the Internet and use it regularly, so will be reached by a social media strategy.

The strategy will be measured in a few ways. One of the objectives is to create exposure, so one measure will be surveys done around the area and Australia to determine the change in brand recognition pre- and post-strategy. To find out how much reach the strategy has, it can be determined how many more people are aware of the Watermark and how many more people are interested in visiting.

The second measure will be more blunt -- increased revenues. When customers check in, we can ask how they heard about us. As well, coupon codes can be used to identify what deals a customer is using and how the customer heard of the deal. So a deal can have a different code for Facebook, Twitter or the email list. That would tell us not only if the deal was popular but what is the best way to reach different types of consumers in the future.