Marketing Approaches for Overcoming Increased Competition in the UK Assignment

Marketing Approaches for Overcoming Increased Competition in the UK Hotel Industry - Assignment Example However, in practice, problems are likely to appear when having to apply the market principles related to competition. The challenges set can be many, mostly related to the lack of effective marketing policies for ensuring the equal promotion of firms within each one of the market’s industries. At this point, the identification of the characteristics of the marketing environment is considered as critical in order to understand the needs of industries and organizations and to develop valid assumptions regarding the measures required for protecting competition. In accordance with Dibb and Simkin (2001) the marketing environment can be characterized as ‘those external trading forces that directly or indirectly influence and organization’s acquisitions of inputs and generation of outputs’ (Dibb and Simkin 2001, p.199). The marketing approaches appropriate for managing the increasing competition in a specific sector, the hotel industry, of the UK market, are rev iewed in this paper. Reference is made to the characteristics of the marketing environment, as described above, but also to the differentiation of competition, compared to the past, as mostly resulted by the high development of technology worldwide. The current status of the hotel industry in UK is also described aiming to show the ways in which marketing could help the industry’s firms to face competition, which seems to be continuously increased. It is made clear that marketing can highly support firms in the hotel industry against competition. However, it is necessary for the relevant plans to be designed and promoted using particular criteria, which are analytically presented below. 2. Hotel industry in UK 2.1 Characteristics and trends Hotel industry is one of the most important sectors of UK market. In accordance with Seaton and Bennett (1996) the strength of the industry can be related to its flexibility, meaning the availability of a wide range of rooms covering the n eeds of all visitors. It is also noted that ‘short – stay bookings’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315) which result to an important part of the industry’s profits, are carefully planned in hotels across UK ensuring that short-term visitors, which are most visitors in UK, are fully satisfied with the accommodation services provided across UK. In terms of marketing, reference should be made to the different approaches used by managers of hotels in UK in order to promote their enterprise. In this context, hotel groups are likely to emphasize on ‘brand through brochures’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315); on the other hand, ‘independent hoteliers tend to use price and market destination techniques’ (Seaton and Bennett 1996, p.315). The performance of the industry can be characterized as rather disappointing. In accordance with a recent report, in 2009, firms in the particular industry had ‘to freeze recruitment at a percentage of 2 5%’ (Prospects 2009); another 24% of firms in this industry have ‘cancelled their plans to employee new staff’ (Prospects 2009). The performance of the UK hotels from 2003 up to 2009 is presented in Graph 1, Appendix. Despite the market pressures, ‘106 new hotels (with a capacity of 11,800 rooms) opened in 2011’