Tourism and Hospitality Management

Question:

Discuss the tourism organization, scenario and SWOT analysis?

Answer:

Tourism organisation

The tourism organisation that is chosen for this assignment is The Berkley Hotel (Maybourne Hotel Group), London.

Scenario

The Berkeley is a deluxe five star hotel located in the Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, London. The Maybourne Hotel Group currently manages the hotel group. However, apart from The Berkley Hotel the Maybourne Hotel Group also manages other two hotels within London. These two hotels include The Cannaught and Claridge’s. Famous British architent Brian O’Rorke have designed the building in the year 1972. The Hotel features a rooftop swimming pool and it is the first hotel in the United Kingdom that introduced air conditioning facility for its customers. They believe in mixing the heritage with the modern art of living. The Maybourne Hotel Group has renovated the Berkeley with lawn in the green splendour of Hyde Park. The Hotel provides its customers with famed Blue Bar and Michelin starred dining in Marcus. It also provides its customers with Bamford Haybarn Spa facility (O’Connor 2010). Adding to this the Maybourne Hotel Group provides its customers with an experience of design of different hotel themes based on the needs of different market segment. Although these hotels are under one corporate umbrella, they operate under different brand names. Some of the different themes include luxury accommodation, family residential and glamorous interiors (Mumford and Mielke 2010).

Most importantly, the Berkley Hotel is very much family friendly and the employees of the hotel are all well trained experts. The management team of the hotel is very much expert in handling every situation and they are very much flexible too. Since, The Berkeley Hotel is under the Maybourne Hotel Group it has a competitive edge over other hotels as it recognises the returning guests and provides them with personalised service. The working staffs and employees of the Hotel is very much motivated and are expected to have “the ability to create a magical experience” as the company puts it. Moreover, the company focuses on extracting the best out of its employees by setting a feedback mechanism and setting the best performer as the “exceptional role model”. This provides immense competitiveness among the employees and everyone delivers their best performance (Zhang, Ye and Law 2011).

SWOT analysis

1 Strength

• High Brand Recognition

The Berkeley is a deluxe five star hotel and it is under the management of Maybourne Hotel Group. The group and management of Maybourne Group has good reputation within England and the United Kingdom. The hotel mixes the Victorian tradition with modern culture and for this reason many of the contemporary visitors has higher preferences for this particular hotel compare to its competitors. Adding to this, the Hotel has a history and a heritage that dates back to the year of 1897. All these vintage and traditional factors contribute immensely towards high brand recognition for the Berkeley Hotel (Jones 2014).

• To improve the experiences of the customers the company is focused on implementing technical innovations to its business

The Hotel has installed various innovative technologies to serve its customer with the best possible lodging experience. The rooms are studded with gadgets like High definition televisions (HDTVs), MP3 docking station, and high-speed wireless internet access. However, the Hotel has also installed various other high tech technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Guest sensors.

• Good employee retention –

The Hotel has currently 150 hotel staffs and they are well trained and experienced. They are very much customer friendly and the management of the hotel relies heavily on them. For this reason, the company is well known for its employee retention attribute.

• Good reputation –

The Hotel enjoys good reputation among its customers for providing them with the best possible lodging experience. Moreover, the Hotel also provides discounts for honeymoon and other family occasion packages. This has also resulted in retaining its faith among its wide array of customers.

• Experience in the tourism and hospitality sector –

The Hotel shares an experience of more than 110 years in the sector of Tourism and Hospitality. This provides immense popularity and customer faith towards the Hotel (Mitchell 2012).

2 Weakness

• Less global expansion –

The Maybourne Hotel Group is only located within London with three Hotels which include The Cannaught and Claridge’s and the Berkeley. Hence, the group has less global expansion and it lags behind its biggest competitors like the Marriot group and Hilton groups of Hotels.

• Too much expensive

The tariff rate for one room fare for one night varies between £335.56 and £559.26. This is too much expensive for most of its customers (Shoval et al. 2011).

• Operation are affected due to government policy and parameters –

The United Kingdom Government has recently raised the price of its taxes (VAT) to 20% of the total profit of the Hotel industry. The increase in taxation also resulted in the increase of the tariff rates of the Berkeley Hotel. This has also decreased the influx of visitors in recent times in The Berkeley Hotel (Zhang, Ye and Law 2011).

• Limited market share in spite of good brand recall –

Since the Maybourne Hotel Group has no expansion in the global market, the residents of the United Kingdom only know about its heritage and history. On the other hand, most of the visitors who come to visit London from non-European area tend to know little about the Hotel. For this reason, they mostly prefer for the well-known branded hospitality and tourism sectors like Marriot and Hilton. This is one of the factor contributes to the weakness of the Berkeley Hotel and for this reason the company enjoys limited market share in spite of having a good brand recall.

3 Threats

• Competitors –

Both the national and international brands of hotels those are located within London poses threat to Maybourne Hotel Group and the Berkeley Hotel. However, it is observed that most of the competition is dependent on the price factor and the hotel room rates. Some of the major competitors of Berkeley Hotel are 41 Hotel, Baglioni Hotel, The Bentley Hotel, Blake’s Hotel, Carlton Tower Hotel, Churchill Hotel, Draycott Hotel, Covent Garden Hotel, Langham Hotel, Marriott County Hall, Marriott London Park Lane, Marriott West India Quay, The May Fair, Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, The Trafalgar Hilton Hotel and The Waldorf Hilton Hotel.

• Entry of new domestic and cheap brands of hotels

For most of the middle class people the value of money matters heavily. Hence, most of the people who come to visit London prefer to stay in cheap hotels and lodges. This is a possible threat to the business of the Berkeley Hotels. Some of the cheap hotels in London are found to rent their rooms at a lower price of £27 to £35 (Shoval et al. 2011).

• Economic and political turbulence –

The recent terrorist activities in London like 7 July 2005 tube rail bombings, 29 June 2007 car bombings, 22 May 2013 Murder of Lee Rigby and 5 December 2015 man slaughtering in Leytonstone tube station have made a political and social unrest with the United Kingdom. For these reason many tourist has refrained themselves from visiting England in the recent timeline. This shortage of tourists and visitors imposes a major threat to the business of Berkeley Hotel and the Maybourne Hotel Group.

4 Opportunities

• Tradition and Digitization–

The company is a pioneer in providing traditional flavour with modern technologies to its customers. The company uses high definition televisions (HDTVs), MP3 docking station, and high-speed wireless internet access, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Guest sensors. On the other hand, the company displays the tradition and heritage of vintage England by preserving the architecture like Lutyens Blue, which was made by the famous Dublin architect David Collins (O’Connell 2014). Furthermore the building of the Berkeley Hotel is itself is a heritage site which was built in the year 1900 by the famous architech Richard D’Oyly Carte (Arrighi 2012). This unique conception of mixing modern culture with vintage customs is often provides enthusiast with an extra urge to visit the place. This is one of the major opportunities where the company can exploit further to increase its customer base.

• Expansion in Global Market and within United Kingdom

The company holds high potential in expanding its global market in other populous cities of the United Kingdom like Liverpool, Cardiff, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburg, Bradford, Portsmouth, Plymouth etc. Since the company provides best customer service it is expected that it would also receive success in the growing markets of China, India, UAE, USA, Australia, Russia and Malaysia. Hence, the factor of business expansion contributes to the opportunity of the company.

Conclusion

This research assignment would provide valuable and important information about the Maybourne Hotel Group and the Berkeley Hotels through the SWOT analysis. This analysis would help the leaders to understand the external and internal environment of Hospitality and Tourism Management Company. Moreover, the paper showed the strength of the company and highlighted the possible weakness and threats that the company is currently undergoing. However, the research paper also emphasized on providing ideas about the possible opportunities for the company and provided recommendation and implementation for further innovation.

Reference

Arrighi, G., 2012. The’D’Oyly Carte Pantomimes”: Complementarity and Innovation. Popular Entertainment Studies, 3(2), pp.31-44.

Jones, G.S., 2014. Outcast London: a study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society. Verso Books.

Mitchell, J., 2012. Up in the old hotel. Random House.

Mok, C., Sparks, B. and Kadampully, J., 2013. Service Quality Management in Hospitality, Tourism, and Leisure. Routledge.

Mumford, C. and Mielke, T. 2010. Hotel CEO Turnover in 2009. HVS Executive research, London, dostupno na: http://www. hvs. com/staticcontent/library/nyu2010/Journal/Articles/CEOTurnover. pdf (15.07. 2010.).

O’Connor, P., 2010. Managing a hotel’s image on TripAdvisor. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 19(7), pp.754-772.

Shoval, N., McKercher, B., Ng, E. and Birenboim, A., 2011. Hotel location and tourist activity in cities. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4), pp.1594-1612.

Zhang, Z., Ye, Q. and Law, R., 2011. Determinants of hotel room price: An exploration of travelers’ hierarchy of accommodation needs. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 23(7), pp.972-981.