It_Doesn’T_Really_Matter_What_Business_You_Are_in,_Planners_Outperform_Non-Planners.”_Smith,_B.D._(2003)

1.0 INTRODUCTION. This assignment examines the citation “it doesn’t really matter what business you are in, planners outperform non-planners.” Smith, B.D. (2003) in relation to marketing planning at the Hotel paradise located in Ghana. It initially explores the definition of marketing planning, its advantages, disadvantages and reasons for its practice. It then proceeds to an examination of the hotel’s background, its activities and then evaluates its marketing planning activities. Section two then makes recommendations on its marketing planning activities and ends with a conclusion. OUESTION ONE. 2.0 WHAT IS MARKETING PLANNING' Marketing is the management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably. CIM (2001). “Marketing planning is the structured process that links the mission, organisational and business strategy to marketing decisions and actions as you research and analyse the marketing situation, markets and consumers, develop marketing direction, objectives, strategies and programmes for the targeted customer segments, decide ways in which to support marketing strategies through customer service and internal marketing and then implement, evaluate and control marketing programmes to achieve the desired objectives”. Wood, B.M. (2004). These plans are documented on a market plan that summarises the market situation and explains the marketing plans and agendas that will support the accomplishment of the business and organisational ambitions. “Marketing plans often starts with the customer and works it way round to the business”. Bull, G. (2002). It also contains plans for individual products, lines, brands, channels or customer groups and these days they are consumer and competitor orientated and done on a constant bases in order to fall in line with modern and frequent changes as well. Kotler and Keller (2008). 2.1 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES MARKETING PLANNING. Chances to satisfy customers and shift an organisation towards to its goals makes marketing planning important. Also, possible threats to marketing can be discovered through the same process. According to Dibb and Simkin (2008), marketing planning is done because: 1. It hinges on core analysis of trends, customers, competition and capabilities. 2. It develops strategies, which targets the best most rewarding customers. 3. Its resulting strategies concentrate on the organisation’s real perceived advantages in its markets. 4. Its action programmes as ‘marketing mix’ help ensure the implementation of theses strategies. 5. And resources concentrate on achieving these plans. In addition to the above, marketing planning can have some disadvantages like: 1. the development of faulty marketing planning decisions form poorly analysed data. 2. unrealistic financial projections from wrongly interpreted data and 3. the Identification of weaknesses in business skills. The absence of marketing planning creates difficulty in guiding research and development as well as new product development; it is therefore an important activity within every business. 3.0 HOTEL PARADISE BY THE SEA. The Hotel Paradise is a two star hotel that was built in 2002 by a group of three businessmen with a great interest in the tourist and hotel industry. This hotel is located along the Gulf of Guinea coast in the western region of Ghana, West Africa. It is situated at 140 kilometres west from Accra, the capital of Ghana and 50 kilometres from the Ivory Coast boarder. Hotel paradise is closely situated to many Ghanaian tourist attractions like the ‘Nzulezu’ stilt village where people live in houses built on the water surface, famous forts like fort Antonio and fort Grootfriedrich (1683), the vast mangrove vegetation, the ‘Ankasa’ tropical rain forest reserve where different monkeys can be spotted, the famous Ankobra River, the stony ‘Boboasi’ island and many others. There are also many seasoned storytellers who know all about the history of the famous Axim village. 3.1 ACTIVITIES. The Hotel paradise is mainly targeted towards the attraction of tourists from foreign countries and it provides a hybrid service mix. Its mission statement is to be one of the best tourist hotels to create a relaxing and adventurous experience for tourists and ensure a memorable stay in a warm tropical beach setting and also create a high level of customer loyalty. It has thirty reasonably priced guest rooms composed of ten single rooms and twenty double rooms. It and provides its guests with air-condition facilities, ceiling fans, televisions, DVDs, hot water facilities, refrigerators in some rooms, internet facilities, a restaurant which mainly serves foreign dishes to suit tourist taste, baby sitting facilities and a children’s play centre, laundry services, phone services, a mini African attire shop and a safe private beach. In addition to this it has recently introduced drumming and dancing lessons and horse riding for visiting tourists. It also has twenty trained, and well-motivated members of staff who wear the traditional Ghanaian attire as uniforms at all departments of the hotel. It also advertises its services in local newspapers, tourist magazines as ‘Awaaba’ (means ‘welcome’ in the local language) and the ‘Ghana review international’, which is also targeted towards tourists. It has also staged some television advertisements as well. 3.2 MARKETING PLANNING AT HOTEL PARADISE. Hotel paradise provides a service, which is defined as the production of an essentially intangible benefit, either in its own right as a significant element of a tangible product, which through some form of exchange satisfies an identified need. Palmer, A. (2005). Through hotel paradise’s activities, it can be depicted that their marketing plan involves the attraction and retention of tourists in the hotel. This is due to where the hotel is located which is a famous tourist attraction and the services provided which is mainly targeted towards tourists for example, a restaurant which prepares a large amount of foreign dishes to suit the taste of foreigners and more. It is also trying to be competitive in a way by differentiating itself from other nearby challengers by recently introducing drumming and dancing lessons and horse riding in addition to its services. Another attempt towards differentiation is the Hotel staffs’ traditional uniforms and the provision of services by well-trained workers to create customer satisfaction. It also has plans to maximise profits by providing services to tourists who are likely to pay for services in foreign currency. Another marketing plan is the offerings of cheap rooms and services and at the same time create good quality service and adventurous experience to guests. It also plans to be abreast with technology by installing Internet services and DVD facilities within the hotel. The advertising of its products is mainly based on tourist magazines and a few local newspapers and television adverts. Its online advert is poorly informed. It has included a safety plan within its business by employing a lifeguard to ensure the safety of all tourists who use the beach at all times. 3.3 EVALUATION OF HOTEL PARADISE’S MARKETING PLAN. It can be noticed that hotel paradise has done a level of SWOT analysis on its business. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis was developed through the works of Albert .S. Humphrey by the Stanford research institute from 1960-1970. It was developed to help explain the reasons for corporate plan failure. SWOT analysis has been defined as by Weihrich (1982) as “the process of analysing organisations and their environments based on their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. External factors are classified as threats and opportunities and internal factors are also classified as strengths and weaknesses of an organisation. “Conducting a SWOT analysis helps clarify the current position of an organisation and its operating environment”. Ordiorne, G (1985). Through its usage, management have been able to develop improvement plans for their businesses from the results of swot analysis conducted. Trends in the external environment as political, economic, socio cultural and some technological (P.E.S.T) issues have been examined in hotel paradise’s plan. Ghana has been a politically stable environment for many years and more tourists keep visiting tourist sites, so they have noticed hotel business within this area as one of their strengths. Political instability threatens business operations through rigid government laws, for example, westerners found it extremely difficult entering the tourist and hotel industry in Russia due to challenging property ownership laws, complicated taxation issues and highly dynamic government laws. D’Annunzio-green, N (2002). This hotel also offers affordable prices to its customers, which is crucial in times of ‘credit crunches’ as being experienced now. A long recession in Japan caused people to cut down on holidays. Wood, B. M. (2004). Therefore reasonable prices will come handy to everyone of late. The socio-cultural trend perception of this hotel doesn’t look very attractive, because more people are now leaving alone and tend to travel alone and the hotel has only ten single rooms to offer which is not good for the increasing number of single people these days. Hotel paradise has also considered some technological advancement and incorporated Internet facilities within the hotel that make it more marketable. Taskmaster technologies limited, a specialised supplier of computer systems had great success in its business when it capitalised on two major trends in the 1980s,wich were the increasing use of VCRs and increased usage of computes at workplaces. It then opened new video rental shops and supplied offices with a modern cost and time effective computer software developed by themselves for businesses which was annually renewable and also had a help line support for installation and training on it. Brooksbank, R. (1999). But, despite the above, the technological aspect of their plan isn’t satisfactory. Recently, most hotels produce detailed advertisements on their business through the Internet and provide online bookings and other services online, but this hotel lacks them. Strengths are features of an organisation that helps it achieve its goals. Based on the hotel’s internal audit, it can be detected that it has the strength of attracting tourists due to its strategic location; this is a good resource to the hotel. It also has trained workers to deliver quality service to its customers which is reasonable priced and comes handy in these days of depressing “credit crunches.” “Factors which prevents an organisation from achieving its objectives are known as a weakness.” Wood, M (2004). It can be noted that this hotel lacks a variety of services in its plan to properly satisfy its customers. There are no organised transport services to pick up guests from the airport to its hotel or tourist sites, no online booking services, no diverse traditional cultural entertainment, far distance car rental services, restaurant foods are dominated by foreign foods ignoring the fact that some tourists would be interested in Ghanaian food and no evidence of any promotions within their marketing planning. It also has a low market share due to stronger competing hotels nearby. Another weakness is that marketing research doesn’t seem to feature much in its plans. For example, it has less single rooms to offer, but lately more people are leaving and travelling on their own. Also more people are now booking services online since it is more convenient, therefore they haven’t researched properly on these areas. Segmentation is the process of partitioning markets into groups of potential customers with similar needs and/or characteristics who are likely to exhibit similar purchase behaviour. Weinstein, A (2004). Segmentation in their plan can be detected by the provision of both single and double rooms to suit the needs of singles and couples. Also child care and play centre provisions have been made for tourists with children. Customer characteristics could be segmented by family size, demography, lifestyle and preferences Fleisher and Bensoussan (2003). Targeting in hotel paradises plan is mainly based on tourists coming to visit the Axim tropical beach and various heritage sites. Looking at its activities, it differentiates itself by focusing on reasonably priced service provision for tourists mostly. It has also positioned itself in an area of ‘adventure’ as prêt a manager for example, differentiates its sandwiches by using the positioning of “made freshly daily”. Positioning here is used to create a distinctive position for a service marketed in the minds of customers. Wood, M (2004). Although this is the case, the hotel hasn’t researched on how targeted customers perceive their services and competitors within their marketing plans. It can be perceived that the hotel’s plans for growth are the new additions of horse riding, African drumming and dancing lessons and the mini African clothing shop. This is an expansion within the existing market. Marketing strategies, programmes and support in marketing plans include the usage of marketing mix or integrated marketing activities. This is practiced to create, communicate and deliver value for customers. Kotler and Keller (2007). They look at solutions, information, value and access (S.I.V.A) of products and services to customers and are composed of product, price, place and promotion. McCarthy and Perreault (2002) and they are used in coordination with each other. Borden, H.N. (1964). These 4 P’s have now been replaced by the 4 C’s, which are convenience, cost, communication and customer needs and wants. This was developed by Lauterborn and Kotler and brought forward by Phillip Kotler. Marketing mix is now consumer oriented. The 4c’s that shows radical change are customers, competitors, companies and channels. Since hotels offer services in addition to tangibles, three more marketing mix variables have been added. These are people, process and physical evidence. Hotel paradise’s price (cost) strategy is the offering of low priced services. It also promotes (communication) itself through tourist magazines and local newspapers, few television advertisements and some online adverts. Its place (convenience) strategy is the hotels nearness to the beach and other rich tourist sites and its product (customer needs and wants) strategy isn’t very attractive due to unorganised transport services, far car rental facilities by the hotel and poor detailed advertisements. Its ‘people’ strategy is good because workers are well trained and motivated to produce satisfactory services to customers. Booms and Bitner (1981). ‘Physical evidence and presentation’ plan seems all right but still unsatisfactory in some areas. The ‘Process’ plan, which is how the user gets hold of the service, is poor because customers have to struggle and find their own transport like taxis and more to the hotel and tourist sites. Management within the hotel haven’t put out plans for measuring its performance and evaluation of its business since noting of that sort is evident within its activities. QUESTION TWO. 4.0 RECOMMENDATION TO MARKETING MANAGER. Since Socio-cultural trends of today haven’t been considered within the marketing plan, it will be good if management could consider slightly increasing the number of single rooms within the hotel since they will be not enough for the many people who are travelling alone nowadays. For example, in production, SEICO, a famous watch manufacturer considered trends in their marketing planning and realised that youth of that time had an interest in watches as accessories so they altered their marketing strategy from producing the same kind of watches and began producing and promoting fashionable mobile phone wristwatches for youth which became a success. During the marketing planning external analysis process, management must consider how quickly innovations evolve and spread plus how technology influences customers, suppliers, distributors and most importantly marketing. The absence of on-line hotel booking facilities and poorly detailed on-line advertisements could lead to the hotel’s downfall in the future and wouldn’t be able to challenge its competitors since people are now technologically inclined. Customers now seek evidence of service quality by looking at communication materials for example; therefore hotel paradise should be able to ‘tangibilise’ the ‘intangible’ even though intangibility is one of the service characteristics. According to Michael porter, rivals can enter the market making the industry more competitive. Best, R (2000) Therefore management should be abreast with technology. The internal weaknesses within the hotel like the lack of special promotions maybe during seasons as Christmas for example, scanty entertainment activities, no consideration of segmentation in the hotel’s restaurant (no local food choices) and room facilities and no car rental services should be improved upon. Some of these could be expensive to provide, but management should look at their financial capabilities and implement what they think will make them more marketable. When a hotel renders a service, it is part of that service. This is called inseparability, therefore if service is unsatisfactory, the hotel as a whole will be seen as unattractive or poor. More research should be done by management on its market share, service demand and customer satisfaction on both tangibles and intangibles. ‘Service blue’ print detects service process, points of customer contact and a customers experience of a service, this supports “zero defects”. Zeithaml et al. (2006). Research can also be done by viewing facts and figures from information already collected for another purpose. This is called secondary research, which is cheaper. Wood, M. (2004). Primary research can be done by giving out questioners and providing suggestion boxes for customers to answer about their experience and things they think needs to be improved upon at the end of their stay. Hoffman and Bateson (1994) stated that customer satisfaction can be done directly by personal interviews and questioners then indirectly by tracking and monitoring sales, records, profits and complaints. In respect to the issue of segmentation, not every tourist will be interested in eating his or her home country’s food whist on holiday. Some would prefer swimming in a small pool rather than on the beach and others would prefer more variety in entertainment other than horse riding and African drumming and dancing. Therefore they should properly analyse consumer needs, categorise consumers with similar needs into market segments, segment (of hotel’s marketing effort) becomes target markets, select target market and then take a positioning strategy which differentiates hotel paradise from competitions in the tourists eyes. It can add secondary service features for differentiation like loyalty reward programmes for example. There should also be a balance in quality of both tangible and intangible goods. Positioning should involve a strategic manipulation of the firms marketing mix variable products Parasuraman et al (1988) and based on criteria which is meaningful and desirable from the customers’ side yet competitively distinctive. Keller (2003). For example Ryan air positioned itself as a low cost no frills airline. According to Wood, M (2004), positioning is a driver behind all marketing mix strategies as well. The hotels marketing plan for growth is fine, but more can be done depending on the hotels financial capability. There are six approaches to growth, these are penetrating existing markets, expanding within the existing market, adding new markets, offering existing products, modifying existing products and offering entirely new products. Andreason and Kotler (2003). Ansoff, I (1957) also found market penetration, product development, market development or diversification. They could consider building another hotel in the city exclusively for businessmen or go into car rentals and tour operations as well. Also they could include live African music concerts, movies, ferry rides, banquet halls and mini bars. Their place strategy is all right since it has good characteristics to attract adventurous tourists. Management should consider promotions within the business. Customers tend to prefer hotels with promotions. Promotion activities like discounts on early room bookings, a discount for longer stay, small free gifts, free transport to hotel from airport could be practiced. Involving staff in beneficial community service in local events can also form good public relations. Performance measurement helps in the forecast of marketing programmes on future turnover, profits made, market share and more. It is important to decide eon what and how to measure, for example EBAY by looking at the number of registered users and the gross monetary value of auction sales and income it earns on each transaction. Wood, M (2004). Measurements can be done by looking at guests’ turnover and profits made per year. After implementation of plans, evaluations should be made to check progress towards its goals. Results should be analysed and corrections made where needed. 5.0 CONCLUSION. It has been discovered through recent studies in the United Kingdom and United States of America that most companies don’t utilise a comprehensive marketing plan. Greenly, G.E (1985), this is because there are a lot of obstacles in its preparation and implementation. MacDonald. (1989). But for a business to be successful, it must be done and done properly. Researchers believe it is a good practice because it benefits organisations at all times. MacDonald. (1992). It gives companies a competitive advantage and increases their profits and turnover. Abratt and Higgs (1994). Both tangible and intangible products should create customer satisfaction and well-planned internal plus external-marketing processes will make the plan succeed. This can be created by well-motivated and committed staff that will make the plan a success. Ames and Hlavacek (1984). Therefore the citation by Smith, B.D. (2003) “it doesn’t really matter what business you are in, planners outperform non-planners “is absolutely valid, therefore if Hotel paradise is able to improve its marketing plan, it will rise from a second star hotel to a five star one and its perceived service will not fall below its expected service. It could therefore become like the famous Ritz-Carlton hotel which has done its marketing planning exceptionally well. REFERENCES. BOOKS. 1. Ames, B.C and Hlavacek, J.D. (1984) Managerial Marketing In Industrial Firms. New York: Random house. 2. 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