NATIONAL ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL VU NGOC MINH DONG BUSINESS SCHOOL ENHANCING MARKETING MIX AT SPRING FLOWER HOTEL E-BBA 4B Bachelor of Business Administration in English (E-BBA) Thesis Student: Vu Ngoc Minh Dong Class: E-BBA 4B Supervisor: MSc Nguyen Thi Thu Trang HA NOi - 2016 HANOI, 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, this thesis and the internship period are integral requirements for graduating the Bachelor of Business Administration in English program (EBBA), Business School, the National Economics University. Furthermore, they are remarkable proofs indicating my entire knowledge and experience that I have been taught by professors and learned by myself, and also demonstrates that I have enough skills and ability to work in reality. Through all the subjects of the course for nearly 4 years, I have gained a lot of knowledge about the business administration and the economy which is totally helpful for my career in the future, especially in marketing field. Therefore, I would like express my sincere thanks to all lecturers of NEU Business School; especially to my prime supervisor, MSc Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, who not only taught me many necessary lessons about marketing art but also did gave me many helpful advices and guidance during my internship period to complete this thesis.
Last but not least, I also highly appreciate the contribution of my family and so do my classmates who always stay beside me and have made my university life become unforgettable. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS.3 LIST OF TABLES.4 LIST OF FIGURES. Data collecting method. Data analyzing method.11 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical framework of Marketing Mix.1 Definition of marketing.1 General definition of marketing.2 Definition of tourism marketing.3 Definition of hotel marketing.2 Marketing Mix and its components.1 Definition of Marketing Mix and its importance.2 Components of Marketing Mix.18 CHAPTER 3: Analyzing the marketing mix of Spring Flower Hotel.1 History and general description.3 Marketing mix at Spring Flower Hotel.4 Achievements and shortcomings of Marketing Mix at Spring Flower Hotel.59 CHAPTER 4: Recommendations and solutions to improve Marketing Mix for Spring Flower Hotel.1 Development strategy of Spring Flower Hotel.2 Marketing objectives of SFH (2016-2020).2 Solutions to improve marketing mix for SFH.71 2 ABBREVIATIONS Spring Flower Hotel: SFH 3 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Elements of Marketing Mix.1 Traveler’s rating by Agoda between SFH and main competitors.2 Business performance of SFH from 2014 to 2015.3 Residential products of SFH.4 Average rate of customers’ satisfaction about the residential product.5 SFH’s room price in November, 2015 (high season).6 Distribution channel in number.7 Customers’ assessment about physical evidence’s factors.57 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.2 Concept of Marketing Mix for service.3 Product Life Cycle.1 Hotel’s organizational structure.2 Essence Hanoi Hotel’s room.3 Angel Palace Hotel’s room.4 MK Boutique Hotel’s room.5 Spring Flower Hotel’s room.6 Spring Flower Hotel’s customer sources in (2014-2015).7 Factors influencing SFH’s price policy.8 Customer’s assessment about product’s price.9 Distribution channel of SFH.10 Proportion of resources providing customer in 2015.11 Customer’s assessment about the distribution channel.12 Average score rated by customers about staff performance.13 Service process of SFH.14 Customers’ opinion about the process’s steps.56 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam, is one the most favorable places with many potential resources such as sightseeings, historical culture to attract not only domestic tourists but also foreign ones.
This advantages have opened up the chances for many enterprises running service business, especially hotel business. Spring Flower Hotel is a new hotel established in 2014, which has many strong points such as location, human resources to become a successful enterprise in Hanoi. However, as there are more and more competitions that the hotel has to face, SFH has to find a more rational way to improve and reinforce the hotel’s operation and marketing activities. In fact, though marketing mix plays an important role in a business, the hotel has not still considered carefully about it.
Therefore, there are a lot of shortcomings that need to be resolved and improved in the hotel’s marketing mix. The objective of the thesis is to study about marketing mix at Spring Flower Hotel to propose some critical suggestions for a better marketing mix To understand the theoretical framework of marketing mix To analysis the current marketing mix of SFH To propose solutions and recommendations for the hotel to improve the current marketing mix Of the thesis conducting process, secondary data from books, internet will be collected. Annual reports from the company also are collected. Partly from those ones, primary data in form of survey from the hotel’s targeted guests and the in- depth interview’s questionares are collected.
Then, analysis made from current situation is combined with data to propose suitable solutions for the marketing mix at Spring Flower Hotel. Besides that, thesis will analyze the current situation of marketing mix at Spring Flower Hotel by assessing the hotel’s factors: Product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence. In addition, product and people would be considered as the most important elements deciding the success or failure of the hotel’s marketing mix. Then, the author will indicate the achievements and shortcomings that the currnet marketing mix has brought to SFH.
6 In the last chapter, the author will recommend the overall goals in the future and also some solutions for each element of the marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence to enhance and improve Spring Flower Hotel’s marketing mix.1 Rationale: Along with the rapid increase of the economy’s development, living standards of people also improve and enhance. Tourism gradually becomes an indispensable need of a significant part of the population. Furthermore, it becomes an important economic industry for potential locals having tourism resources. Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam, is one the most favorable places with many potential resources such as sightseeings, historical culture to attract not only domestic tourists but also foreign ones.
Thanks to these strengths, in recent years, Hanoi has made great progress. The hotel and restaurant systems are increasing constantly in their scale and quality of service. Therefore, the revenue derived from the business also increases remarkably. On one hand, this benefit brings development opportunities for tourism businesses; but on the other hand, it has made the market competition in the supply of products, traveling services become more aggressive.
Spring Flower Hotel is located on the center of the Old Quarter (the heart of Hanoi) with 27 rooms and complete service support system accompanied. For many years, Spring Flower Hotel is proud to be considered as a truly reliable destination, offering high quality of accommodation services for luxury travelers all over the world to Hanoi. However, this hotel always has to face the factors threatening its business: the number of tourists to Hanoi fluctuates wildly, highly seasonal tourism, length of stay of tourists in Hanoi is too short compared to other provinces. Meanwhile, the competition becomes more and more intensive as many premium hotel projects have been invested and put into operation in recent times having the same or better quality of infrastructure and competitive rate such as MK Boutique Hotel, Hanoi Angel Palace Hotel, Essence Palace Hotel,… The marketing mix is a critical component in the development of marketing plans and strategies for hotel business.
The marketing mix encompasses all of the elements impacting an organization’s ability to successfully take its product and services to market which are product, price, place, promotion, people, process and 8 physical evidence. The combination of these components would decide the success or failure of an enterprise; especially in the hotel business industry. However, putting theory into practice is very difficult. Vietnam just only switched to a market economy since 1996 which means setting up a proper and effective marketing strategy is quite new and not easy.
The time is too short for Vietnamese enterprises to gain experience. In the case of Spring Flower Hotel, it is even more difficult as this hotel was just established 2 years ago and the operation scale is fairly small. In fact, there are only 2 staff working in the marketing department who are also in charge of sale and selling tours activities. Therefore, at the moment, the marketing mix of SFH is highly ambiguous and not operated properly.
In term of finding the most rational solution for the hotel, Thaicom company which is the owner of Spring Flower Hotel, has to propose efficient strategy from the stage of understanding the customers’ need, providing services and creating positive impression about the product and service. Moreover, the hotel have to improve and reinforce the recent service consecutively in order to keep in touch with familiar customers and attract potential ones. All these efforts depend on the ability of exploiting the resource elements of the company. Therefore, the research that provides effective marketing mix will help Spring Flower Hotel achieve business goals through marketing efforts.
As a result, I have chosen the topic: “Enhancing marketing-mix activities at Spring Flower Hotel” as my graduating thesis of the major business administration.2 Research objectives: The thesis focuses on following objectives: To understand the theoretical framework of marketing mix To analysis the current marketing mix of SFH To propose solutions and recommendations for the hotel to improve the current marketing mix 9 1.3 Research questions: To satisfy the research objectives, the research is conducted to seek for olutions for following questions: What are the theoretical framework of marketing mix? What are the current marketing mix at SFH? How to improve the marketing mix of SFH? 1.1 Research process Primary data Secondary data Survey In-depth The hotel’s The Interview report market’s report Current situation of Spring Flower Hotel Solutions and recommendations enhancing marketing mix at Spring Flower Hotel Figure 1.1 Research process Source: Author 1. Data collecting method - Secondary data: The secondary data is derived from either external sources such as books, articles, journals or internal ones such as annual reports, official documents, brochures. - Primary data: 10 In-depth interview: is conducted with the general manager of Spring Flower Hotel who take responsibility to administrate all of processes in the hotel. He will give information about the hotel’s current plan and fact helping the author to know clearly about the hotel’s situation.
Surveys: This survey is conducted with 70 customers staying at the hotel. The questionnaires were asked directly to customers through a paper sheet. Data analyzing method The survey’s result would be aggregated and processed by Excel programme. The in-depth interview’s result would be aggregated and then analyzed, assessed through comparing on table.
Research scope: - Research object: The current Marketing Mix in Spring Flower Hotel - Location: the survey is limited in current guests staying in the hotel - Time: The thesis will concentrate on the hotel’s operation and its marketing mix from the opening year 2014 to the recent year 2015. While the information of the secondary data is collected from 2014 to 2015, these of the primary data is collected currently (November, 2015). Research structure: The thesis is structured into 4 main chapters: - Chapter 1: Introduction - Chapter 2: Theoretical framework of Marketing Mix - Chapter 3: Analyzing the marketing mix of Spring Flower Hotel - Chapter 4: Recommendations and solutions to improve Marketing Mix for Spring Flower Hotel 11 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical framework of Marketing Mix 2.1 Definition of marketing 2.1 General definition of marketing There are many definitions of marketing, even though all of them refer to one identical idea. The American Marketing Association offers the following formal definition: Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have values for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.F Pyle, “Marketing is that phase of business activity through which human wants are satisfied by the exchange of goods and services”.
In addition, the most universal one would be stated by Philip Kotler. It comprises the marketing of either business or society.