Promotion Campaign Report For Central Station Hotel Of Sydney

You are to write a Promotion Campaign report addressed to the Management team for approval of a Conceptual Idea and Expenditure.

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of business. Marketing also comprises some vital aspects and promotion of the business or product or services is one of them. Every business should give importance on promotion campaign to improve the business performance (Grosbois, 2016). Purpose of this report is to make promotion campaigning for Central Station Hotel of Sydney. Being the marketing manager of this organisation it is the vital responsibility to make the report based on some important aspects. Before making the report it will focus on the organisation and will provide vital information about the firm. After that it will discuss about campaign strategy of the firm along with the target market of the same. The campaign strategy also has some objectives and the report will discuss the same to make the report in an effective way. Market competition

Central Station Hotel has been established in the year 1887, and since then it has undergone huge changes in its business approach and the services it used to provide to the esteemed guests. The name itself signifies the locational aspect of the property as it is strategically situated in the neighbourhood of the new Central Railway Station (Centralstationhotel.com.au, 2017). It is a heritage property having the architecture of the erstwhile era and that of the modern times. The main attraction of the property is its strategic location amidst Central Station, Sydney CBD, Surry Hills, Chinatown and Darling Harbour. Central Station Hotel offers an exquisite view from the balcony of its property, and the property is also known for its excellent hospitality for its esteemed guests. The organisation mostly focuses on guest service which is the core of their business policy.  Guests are the centre of their universe, they have some golden rules, and all the staffs and members have to follow these rules to retain the positive reputation of the hotel.  They also focus on staff retention along with customer retention, as they believe that experienced staffs are an asset for the business.

Market competition is very high in the hospitality industry. The trend of tourism has increased in this present world; this is also one of the reasons behind the high level competition in the hospitality sector. In this regard, it is important to focus on a promotional mix of the organisation to gain more customers from the market (Khan, 2014). In this present time, Central Station Hotel is facing the problem of customer retention so that they have to set promotional campaign to address this particular problem. Promotional mix is one of the 4Ps of marketing mix which is concerned about sales promotion, advertising, personal selling, and public relation. In order to increase customer retention, Central Station Hotel has to focus on the public relation. It will increase the trust level of customers on the firm, which is one of the vital aspects of customer retention. Under this promotional strategy, the organisation has to include free publicity (Davari & Strutton, 2014). In this regard, Central Station Hotel should use the process of press release to make publicity about their refurbishment and newly renovated rooms, which will increase the level of attraction among both existing and new customers.  Existing customers will feel more interested in visiting new rooms of their favourite hotel brand. It will affect positively on retention rate of the customer as it influences them to visit this place again and again.  They also have to use the process of advertising to retain old customers. In this process, they have to send direct mail or brochures and catalogues about new facilities of the hotel to existing customers.

Campaign Strategy for the Firm

Every promotional campaign is concerned about a specific target market. This promotional campaign also has a target market from which it will attract customers for a revisit. In this present time, Sydney is one of the most favourable tourist spots among both domestic and international tourists (Wong & Wickham, 2015). In this regard, the primary target market of this promotional campaigning is those tourists who are willing to visit Sydney for leisure tourism. The strategic location of Central Station Hotel would definitely attract the tourists to stay in there for easy transit. New rooms of the hotel also will provide the facility to enjoy this view privately, so that it will attract young age customers who are willing to spend time together. Based on this concept customers between 25 to 35 years age group is the primary target of this promotional campaign strategy.  

Sydney also has the reputation as a vital business place of the country, and the factor of globalisation also has increased the importance of this place in the business world (Jakada & Gambo, 2014). For this reason business tourists also the target market of this promotional campaign. The hotel has facilities for business tourists they also have mailed to all the existing business tourists who have visited this place as a border. Revisit by existing business tourism also will increase the rate of customer retention. In this segment people between 40 to 55 years old customers are preferable as most of them have to power to take a decision on behalf of their respective organisation with which they are working.

Promotional campaign of the hotel has selected to overcome the issue about customer retention. This is the vital objective of this promotional strategy. However there are some other objectives on which this strategy will focus (Rinaldi & Beeton, 2015). The objectives are as below:-

• Through this promotional strategy, Central Station Hotel will increase awareness among all the business tourists about their new facilities like Wi-Fi access for all the business tourist.
• Depending on this promotional campaign the hotel will increase their revenue collection from new rooms by 5% within the end of 2017.
• They also have the objective to increase the customer retention rate of the hotel by 10% in 2017 by delivering email or catalogues about new facilities for both business tourist and leisure tourists.
• It will also increase the rate of staff retention as the success of this promotional campaign will increase the reputation of the hotel into the market, and all the people like to work with reputed organisation rather working with unrecognised brands (Telfer & Sharpley, 2015). In this way, it will increase the rate of employee retention by 2% at the end of 2017.

According to the view of Singal, (2015), market competition in tourism and hospitality industry is very high. It has also observed that factors like geopolitical turmoil, natural disaster and the global economy have affected the trend of tourism and hospitality industry in last decade, However, in this present time, the trend of this industry has increased due to the positive effect of globalisation. Implementation of technology and innovation in tourism and hospitality industry has increased the level of competition. Customers like to have speedy services regarding hotel booking, event booking, and so on, and online presence of hospitality organisations fulfils this demand of customers. Therefore, innovation is important to face market completion. It has observed that implementation of internet technology has increased the positive trend of tourism by 12% during 2011 to 2016, which is also the evidence that competition has increased in the hospitality industry (Sigala, 2017). Market size of tourism industry also has increased by 2% every year from last five years. The major competitors of the industry have faced growth in their business near about 8% (Becerra, et al., 2013). Central Station Hotel is also one of these major competitors of the market. In this regard, this hotel has to focus on their growth strategies to face this growing competition. Effective marketing strategies also have affected on market competition in the hospitality industry. Proper marketing of hotels of Sydney has attracted customers from both domestic and international market; it also has increased the level of competition by increasing the ratio of customers for this industry.

Target Market

Communication is considered an important aspect of the smooth functioning of the organisation especially when it is dealing with the customers on the first hand. So it is quite necessary for Central Station Hotel to understand the fact that which mode of communication channel would be effective in reaching out to its guests (Robertson, 2012). It would be favourable for the hospitality organisation like Central Station Hotel to communicate with the customers effectively on the likes of –

Video – The video messages have the engagement level of 40-70%, and it is basically about the presentation of the services that the hotel could provide to its potential guests. The videos need to be of a shorter duration to keep intact the interest of the potential customers (Bansal & Taylor, 2015).

Posters – In this regard, the engagement level is in the range of 20-50% as it visually engages the attention of the customers on a particular message. It would be better to communicate through posters when Central Station Hotel runs some exciting offers and promotions (Hollensen, 2011).

Newsletters – The engagement level is from 10-20% and is used to communicate the mass audience to provide a general information regarding the services provided by Central Station Hotel.

Mails – The emails serve to be an inexpensive form of communication to address a wider customer segment, and the engagement level could run from 5% to 30%.

Table tents – The table tents could be provided to the guests visiting Central Station Hotel. These are smaller in size, and there are high chances that the guests could give it a miss owing to their busy schedule and the engagement is also as lower as 5% to 20%.

Source: (Pfeffer, et al., 2014)

The communication aspect to be made strong, Central Station Hotel need to have shorter duration videos, specific content posters and newsletter to be in place. The message towards the guests should be kept simpler to make it understandable to a wide section of people. But with the passage of time, the organisation needs to look beyond the traditional aspects of the communication channel to that of the emerging trends in the social media (van Osch & Coursaris, 2013). It would be very beneficial for Central Station Hotel to reach out to its targeted customer segment through the likes of the blogs, websites and tweets through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Communication Objectives

It would definitely be an effective communication process as there would be a scope for the customers to communicate with the organisation and in this way, they could learn about the expectations of the guests. This sort of two-way communication would be helpful in collecting the customer feedback which is quite crucial for the purpose of customer relationship management (Keegan & Green, 2017). It is because the kind of guests visiting Central Station Hotel is quite efficient with the use of smartphones and seems to be active on the internet and social media platform. So they could be rightly tracked on the social media platform to collect their feedback on the organisation.

The concept of key performance indicators (KPI) is an integral part of the hospitality industry to measure the elements of accommodation, food and beverage and profitability aspect of the organisation. It is because accommodation is a primary concern in the hospitality industry and is applicable for Central Station Hotel as well to generate maximum revenue for the organisation (Han, et al., 2011). Accordingly, the KPI for Central Station Hotel has been the following:

Occupancy rate – The occupancy rate in Central Station Hotel serves as the most important metric for the organisation as it enables to measure the proportion of rooms that are being filled by the guests at a given point of time.

Occupancy % = Rooms occupied / Rooms available

Average daily rate (ADR) – It is the simplistic metric to determine the average rate for the occupied rooms (Kandampully, et al., 2015). It apparently examines the performance of the particular organisation though it does not take into account indicates the wholesome performance of the property.

Average daily rate = Total room revenue / Total rooms occupied 

Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) – It is an important metric as it provides an insight how well the hotel property is operating indicating at what extent Central Station Hotel could fill up the available rooms at the average rate. The metric takes account of the empty rooms as well. 

RevPAR = Total room revenue / Total rooms available

Cost per occupied room (CPOR) – This particular metric determines the efficiency of the property on the basis of the sold rooms. CPOR takes into consideration the sort of expenses like fixed and variables to ascertain the profitability of each room in the Central Station Hotel property. This particular indicator is being used by the owners and managers of Central Station Hotel to track the efficiency of the property and increasing on its level (Nam, et al., 2011).

Types of Communication Channel

CPOR = Total gross operating profit / Total rooms available

Customer satisfaction – It is the most important indicator for which the guests strive for as the customer satisfaction level for Central Station Hotel would imply a sustainable approach (Bansal & Taylor, 2015). It would have a significant impact on the property for making favourable changes to suit their requirements.

Central Station Hotel has been working on the matter of improving the customer relationship as the customers prove to be the sole bread winning mechanism for the organisation. To implicate the customer relationship program for the purpose of enhancing brand loyalty and retaining the customers. It is seen that Central Station Hotel would take relevance of the social media marketing would be cost efficient (Hollensen, 2011). But the organisation would take the relevance of the press release and promotional materials for the purpose of retaining the customers by Central Station Hotel. Accordingly, a budget worth AUD 20,000 has been affixed to contemplate the marketing objective in favour of the organisation.

Conclusion:

It is concluded that Central Station Hotel would overtly take the help of the promotional mix of marketing focusing on the aspect of public relations. The retention of customers would play as the most important strategy, and the aspect of direct emails and brochures would be quiet helpful in this process. Sydney would be the target market for the organisation, and they would focus on the age group of 40-55 years of people. The market competition has been at its highest owing to the globalisation aspect, and so the organisation would take help of a competitive communication aspect like that of social media marketing. A promotional budget has been affixed worth AUD 20,000 to implicate the marketing process for gaining a better ground in the competitive market. It is an effort on the part of Central Station Hotel to retain the customers by taking relevance of the customer retention process in the competitive market.

References

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