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Executive Summary
The current paper dwells on the social media marketing initiatives established by Holiday Inn Express located in Adelaide, Australia. The given micro-analysis shows that the organization does a great job converting its follower interaction into an increased number of visitors. Nevertheless, there are channels that require more attention from the management, as YouTube and Twitter could also become an important factor in the companys success. IHG is obviously threatened by the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it does not stop the hotel from keeping an eye on the competition and making the best use of technological advancements. Overall, IHGs competition is rather unlikely to catch up unless the hotel is going to deploy a questionable marketing strategy that would kill the companys marketing drive.
Introduction
Holiday Inn Express (IHG) is one of the best hotels in the region of Adelaide, Australia. Its main rival is the Ibis Hotel. Both these facilities show strong signs of competitiveness and care for their customers, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current paper serves as a detailed analysis of these hotels marketing performance. A thorough strategic situation analysis was performed to find the key strengths possessed by Holiday Inn Express and how the hotel manages to make the best use of its competitive advantages if any. The PESTEL analysis and an in-depth review of social media presence allowed the researcher to establish the key benefits of performing situational analysis and creating a roadmap for innovation intended to help the organization outrun its competitors and capitalize on the strengths mentioned in the SWOT. This paper is a highly detailed description of why Holiday Inn Express firmly leads the competition and what could be other potential ways of enlarging the gap between the hotel and its closest rivals.
Strategic Situation Analysis
Micro-Analysis
The overall digital marketing performance of IHG can be described as an average-powered asset that helps the organization to communicate with its potential customer base while also retaining the existing loyal visitors. The hotel does a great job posting varied content on social media while receiving a great deal of feedback on Instagram and Facebook. The company does not often resort to approaching influencers for marketing, but the overall digital strategy looks rather relevant, as the majority of initiatives established by the organization are in line with the needs of potential and existing customers. IHGs website is relatively outdated, but it still drives conversions and allows for decent targeting. The companys customers are predominantly young and willing to communicate with the organization via social media. Such tactics prove that IHG knows how to operate its follower base and create conversions.
As for the main competitor, the author of the current paper chose Ibis because the two models of approaching customers and establishing the brand are relatively similar. Tactics picked by Ibis management are marginally different, as the organization tries to post on social media more often. There is a smaller number of individuals on social media that are following the latest Ibis updates, but the conversion rates are just as high as in IHG. This is an important finding because it shows how successful Ibis could be if the management chose to focus on the idea of targeting more customer segments instead of favoring the younger cohort of visitors. The lack of strategic partnerships with Booking.com, TripAdvisor, or any other similar organization does not seem to bother Ibis, as the hotels mere presence in online listings of holiday aggregators seems to be enough for them.
Macro-Analysis
In order to complete the macro-analysis of IHG, it would be crucial to implement the PESTLE analysis first to gain in-depth insights into the potential advantages and disadvantages of the hotels strategy.
The most important point about the political sphere of IHGs activities is that there are no subsequent factors affecting the hotel on either short- or long-term scales. The management should carefully monitor the existing state of affairs (Rogers, Lee, and Yan, 2015). It is necessary to ensure that the company would be able to respond to any instant changes in the countrys political environment.
The economic perspective makes it evident that Australia is highly dependent on the impact of oil prices. Owing to the COVID-19 situation, one might also point out the role of GDP in the hotels growth or decrease in sales (Shadmi et al., 2020). Each of these factors equally influences the ability of IHG to respond to competition in a timely manner.
Within the framework of the social sphere, IHG does a great job adhering to the issue of cultural differences. The company flexibly follows new lifestyles and demographic changes, as these elements represent the values that contribute to IHGs success the most (Unurlu and Uca, 2017). The issue of COVID-19 cannot be overlooked as well because it affects interpersonal interactions, too.
From the technological point of view, the hotel is completely prepared for competing against the strongest rivals, as IHG supports digital bookings and never hesitates to utilize the Internet to update information about its new features. As it may also be hypothesized from the micro-analysis, the company does not have any problem communicating its objectives and vision via social media (Patiar and Mia, 2015). Ultimately, IHG has the ability to utilize big data analytics to personalize its services.
The inexistence of legal issues, on the other hand, might be possible in the case where there would be no travel restrictions. The lack of overseas visitors is a devastating scenario (Roy et al., 2020). This is why IHG should take care of its COVID-19 response in order to ensure that country-wise, the organization is not going to experience any legal troubles regarding its activity.
Ultimately, IHG does a great job of creating environmental space for itself. One of the best initiatives deployed by the organization is the water risk assessment (Nimri, Patiar, and Kensbock, 2017). It allows the company to resort to the most sustainable business practices and also appeal to an even bigger number of potential customers.
SWOT
Conclusion
Based on the information collected within the framework of the current marketing analysis, it may be concluded that Ibis Hotel does not present a decent threat to IHG due to the lack of unwavering online presence and a significantly smaller number of followers. This also supports the idea of performing a situation analysis, as it might generate additional insights into how the hotel should approach its customer base in the future. Nevertheless, it may be recommended to IHGs marketing unit pay more attention to some of its social media assets because of the growing reliance on technology and the huge influence of social media interactions between brands and their existing and potential customers. Given the information collected throughout the research process, it may be concluded that Twitter and YouTube have to be approached by IHG in a much more responsible way.
The high follower count available to the hotel represents a strategic asset for the company that should be utilized in a smart way in order to generate even more conversions. Knowing that Ibis, for example, as one of the key IHGs competitors, does not have as many followers as IHG, it makes it even more interesting to follow the trend of how an increased number of posts from the hotel could help it gain more traction in the social media field. In order to gain an additional upside, the IHG management might want to establish a YouTube channel as well in order to publish facility-specific videos and attract visitors from all over the globe. This would make Australia a more popular tourist destination overall and increase the hotels online presence significantly. This project proves that IHG yet has a lot of challenges to address, but its overall standing is much better than any other hotels presence in the region.
Reference List
Dhaoui, C. (2014) An empirical study of luxury brand marketing effectiveness and its impact on consumer engagement on Facebook, Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 5(3), pp. 209-222.
Nimri, R., Patiar, A. and Kensbock, S. (2017) A green step forward: eliciting consumers purchasing decisions regarding green hotel accommodation in Australia, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 33, pp. 43-50.
Patiar, A. and Mia, L. (2015) Drivers of hotel departments performance: evidence from Australia, Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 14(3), pp. 316-337.
Rogers, D., Lee, C. L. and Yan, D. (2015) The politics of foreign investment in Australian housing: Chinese investors, translocal sales agents and local resistance, Housing Studies, 30(5), pp. 730-748.
Roy, S. K. et al. (2020) The antecedents and consequences of value co-creation behaviors in a hotel setting: a two-country study, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 61(3), pp. 353-368.
Shadmi, E. et al. (2020) Health equity and COVID-19: global perspectives, International Journal for Equity in Health, 19(1), pp. 1-16.
Smith, A. N., Fischer, E. and Yongjian, C. (2012) How does brand-related user-generated content differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), pp. 102-113.
Unurlu, C. and Uca, S. (2017) The effect of culture on brand loyalty through brand performance and brand personality, International Journal of Tourism Research, 19(6), pp. 672-681.
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