Assignment on

Marketing Communication for

Tourism and Hospitality

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Contents
Answer to the question no. 1...................................................................................... 1
Answer to the question no. 2...................................................................................... 2
1.

Print Materials:...................................................................................................... 2

2.

Advertising:.......................................................................................................... 2

3.

Sales promotion:.................................................................................................... 2

4.

Public relations:..................................................................................................... 2

5.

Sponsorship:......................................................................................................... 3

6.

Internet:............................................................................................................... 3

Answer to the question no. 3...................................................................................... 4

Setting the objectives.................................................................................................. 4
Timeframe and budget................................................................................................ 4
Choosing a market segment.......................................................................................... 5
Finalizing the marketing strategies and communication mix..................................................5
Implementing the planning and strategies.........................................................................5
Monitoring and evaluating of the progress........................................................................5
Marketing communications plan for Premier Inn...................................................................5
Answer to the question no. 4:..................................................................................... 8
Answer to the question no. 5.................................................................................... 10
Integrated Marketing Communication.............................................................................. 10
Monitoring and evaluation............................................................................................ 11
Market Research:..................................................................................................... 11
Response Measurement:............................................................................................ 12
References................................................................................................................ 13

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Answer to the question no. 1

To complete the given assignment, Premier Inn is selected as the organization to be used for
answering all the parts.
Premier Inn is a leading brand of hotel chain in UK. It occupies the largest portion of Whitbread
and provides 70% of its annual profit to Whitbread. It started its business in 1987 with the name
Travel Inn. It continued its operation until 2004 when it was renamed after Premier Lodge
was acquired by Whitbread. (Endpoint, 2012) It got its present name in 2007 when Whitbread
went to the rebranding of its hotels. Now it has become a huge chain of 650 hotels having 50000
rooms within UK. It brings its services to the footstep of customers as 75 out of every 100
persons can get a Premier Inn hotel within 5 miles of their position. It has been considered as the
fasted growing hotel business company in UK and it is now considering expanding its operation
more by increasing the number of rooms to 65000 by 2016. (Whitbread, 2012)
It has been awarded as the Worlds Leading Budget Hotel Brand in 2012 and as the Leading
Economy Brand in Europe in 2008. It builds its brand as the top most economic hotel of the
entire UK and the world. One can spend a night at any Premier Inn hotel only for a minimal
amount of money. It operates with the mission to serve its customers with all the facilities they
want from the company to make it the best hospitality brand of the world. With superior
customer care and high quality services it already obtains the brand preference of many
customers worldwide and the awards it won are the evidence of it. Its wide range of hotel makes
its services available to almost every customers who want a hotel room and thus makes its brand
most memorable. It sets its brand as a hotel that provides guaranteed good nights of the
customers. With its money back guarantee it induces people to consider Premier Inn as the first
choice. (Atos, 2011)
As a hotel company of hospitality sector it provides accommodation services mainly. It provides
various types of rooms from economic one to business class and even rooms of luxury class. It
not only provides with rooms but also other facilities which make it a premier hotel. Its services
includes free Wi-Fi facility, Free viewing of TV, Breakfast and other meals facility, online
booking facility, bar and restaurants, swimming pools, Gym etc. Besides, it also provides early
booking or cancellation facilities, group booking facilities and other supporting services. It has
increased the customer satisfaction and rate of customer retention with its superior quality and
services like its free children breakfast facility, friendly customer services, beautiful
surroundings, attached bathroom with every room, modern bed rooms, speedy check in and out,
easiest payment methods, self-check facility, mobile apps etc. Its wide availability also add value
to its services. (Whitbread, 2012)

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Answer to the question no. 2

Communication mix describes the extent to which an organization uses different tools of
communication to make the customers known about the value provided through product or
services and to build relationship with customers. (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012) For a hospitality
organization the elements of communication mix and strength and weakness of each element are
described below:
1. Print Materials: The widely used tool of communication is printed materials. All the
companies in hospitality sector use this tool for communicating its value proposition and
to reach its customers. The printed materials include stationary, brochure, food lists, in
room information materials, flyers, Newsletters etc. All these materials are in printed
form and most of the company spend large portion of their communication budget in
producing these materials. The most effective side of these printed materials is that these
are attractive as these have lots of color and information in much detail. It can serve the
communication purpose for a longer of time as customer can keep these materials for a
longer time. But there exists some weakness too. This tool is expensive not in terms of its
production cost. People mostly throw away these materials and sometimes these losses
the usefulness for the time sensitive data it contains which cannot be updated instantly.
(Bowie & Buttle, 2004)
2. Advertising: This is the form of communication which is non-personal and the
organization needs to pay other parties to communicate through this tools. Organization
has to present its services or communicate any message to the potential customers
through visual or audio medium e.g. Television or Radio. (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012)
Advertising can be done by using many media like Magazine, Newspapers, TV, Radio,
Banner, Billboard etc. Advertising can create good positive feedback for the organization
as it can inform the customer very quickly and effectively. This the strong part of
advertisement. But the weak side is, it is expensive and until the advertisement is too
attractive people will forget the message conveyed through advertisement or even can
provide negative feedback. So it is very challenging.
3. Sales promotion: This tool is used by many organizations to obtain a short term positive
effect on its sales which can increase the regular sales level. It is also helpful to attract
customers and gives the organization opportunity to retain these customers. Its effect on
the sales is considered to be the most influencing strength of it. But the effect is for short
term and the promotional tool may reduce the sales when it is conceived by the customers
wrongly. These are its weakness.

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4. Public relations: This tool is used mainly to maintain better relation with customers and
other stakeholders. Communication with this tool is not involved higher cost but still is
very effective. When any press media covers some operational activities of the
organization or covers any activities that communicate the value by itself, that can be
called public relation. Its low cost feature and ability to reduce negative opinion make it
one of the major communication tools. But it can also give negative results when
customers fail to understand the message. Besides it is mainly use when organization tries
to maintain its goodwill in case of any crisis and thus organization has relatively little
opportunity to control the content, time and audience of the information communicated.
5. Sponsorship: This is now a popular tool of communication. Organizations get
themselves attached with some big events through sponsorship. As these events are
generally some highly popular events, organization can get the attention of huge amount
of potential customers. Sponsorship is effective as people learn about the message the
company is conveying very easily when they come to these events. It can also increase
the reputation of the organization. Weakness of this element of communication mix is that
it is generally very expensive. Besides, organization has little opportunity to
communicate customers in details in this method.
6. Internet: The present era of technology has made the internet a strong element of market
communication mix. From children to adult all are now involved with internet in one or
other ways. Internet has given lots of flexibility and wide range of facilities in
communication. Web banner, classified ads, pop-up screen etc. are some ways of giving
advertisement through internet. Further organization can communicate their valuable
information to the customers by their community pages e.g. in Facebook, twitter.
Effectiveness of this tool is that organization can get the facilities of all previous tools
altogether in this single tool and it can get to both the individual customers and customer
groups. Weakness is that bad practice by many parties in internet has make the medium
less reliable to customers and thus it fails to accomplish the objective of communication.

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Answer to the question no. 3

Marketing communications plan is the aggregate of all the strategies taken by the management of
an organization to promote the products, services or image of it. The organization tries to convey
some messages to the targeted customers groups to aware them or to make them loyal to the
organization. In order to do so, it takes some communication campaigns through
communications planning. (McCabe, 2009) A marketing communications plan includes the
following steps: (Bowie & Buttle, 2004)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Setting the objectives the marketing communication

Outlining the timeframe and budget
Choosing a market segment to focus on
Finalizing the marketing strategies and communication mix
Implementing the planning and strategies
Monitoring and evaluating of the progress

These steps construct the structure of the marketing communications plan. All these steps are
explained below:
Setting the objectives
First and very important step of communications planning is to set the objectives or motives or
purposes of the marketing campaign under planning. These objectives are important because the
following steps and all the activities will be done based on fulfillment of these objectives. These
are in turn set to achieve the broad marketing objective of the organization. These objectives can
be classified into three broad category learn, feel and do. In the first category the company tries
to make people aware of the company or its product or brand. In the second category it tries to
create a positive feeling or believe about the company and its product or service. Finally in Do
category objective, organization tries to focus on inducing people to be involved in the real
purchase of the products or services of the organization. (Bowie & Buttle, 2004)
Timeframe and budget
The company needs to determine the timeframe for this marketing campaign which will tell
about the time limit within which each of the objectives should be achieved. This can work as a
controlling mechanism. Timeframe gives much detail instruction to the parties under the
responsibility of implementing the communications plan. Most of the times, this is done for a
shorter time period e.g. 5 months or 1 year. But long term objectives are also set and timeframe
can be longer.

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On the other hand the management also needs to make a budget of the marketing
communications plan. Without budget the campaign can be uncontrollable. Budgeting involves
the identification of the amount of fund needed to conduct the promotional plan and also the
determination of the allocation of this fund. There can be many approaches to prepare this
budget, but the mostly used method is percentage of sales.
Choosing a market segment
All the communication campaign is not targeted to all the customers of a specific organization.
Many times organizations target a single or multiple groups of customers to whom the message
of the communication campaign is conveyed. It is always important that the information to be
communicated through the campaign must be communicated to the most suitable customer or
customers at the most suitable time. (McCabe, 2009) Choosing the right group will help the
company in achieving the objectives as well as help the company to avoid large loss of
unsuccessful marketing campaign.
Finalizing the marketing strategies and communication mix
In this step, the detail marketing plan is made through choosing the appropriate strategies for the
communication and the communication mix for the campaign. Depending upon the strategies in
this stage, management adjusts the budget and time frame of the campaign also. How the
campaign will communicate the planned message to the audience, how the result of this
campaign will be measured, which Medias to used and in which extent, etc. are some of the
issues determined in this level.
Implementing the planning and strategies
Strategies taken will have no value until these are implemented properly and according to the
plan. Success of every plan depends on its proper implementation. Implementation phase thus
must be completed carefully as it is critical for the achievement of the objectives of the
communication campaign.
Monitoring and evaluating of the progress
Finally the progress and activities of the communication campaign must be regularly monitored
and evaluated. Any error identified must be solved instantaneously for ensuring better
accomplishment of the marketing campaign.
Marketing communications plan for Premier Inn
Here we have taken a hypothetical case of marketing campaign by Premier Inn.
As a market leader of hotel business Premier Inn has already gathered huge reputation and has
won several awards for its superior performance and cost leadership. Its wide availability is also
a great factor of its success. But it has found out that for being a large hotel company many
people think it is only expert in accommodation services. This means people are not fully aware

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of its high quality restaurant services and other services, like countrys best swimming training
program held by the hotel. Finally, for the upcoming Wimbledon 2013, many tourists will come
to the UK and many of those will have a visit in many tourist places of UK. Premier Inn wants to
grab most of those tourists to its hotels by making them aware of the superiority of the hotel.
The marketing objectives of the communications plan are:
1. Making 50% of the people of UK aware of the high quality restaurant service of the hotel
within the next 2 months.
2. Making all of the customers of Premier Inn aware about its high quality restaurant service
within the next month.
3. Making the Swimming training program popular in all the regions of UK within next
three months.
4. Communicating the superior services of the hotel to all the potential customers of around
the world who are planning to watch the Wimbledon 2013 and capture more than 50% of
these viewers.
To accomplish the above objectives the company will target three types of audiences. Firstly, it
will target the people who want to watch the Wimbledon 2013 as well as want to get a view of
different places of UK. Secondly, it will target the customers who want to learn swimming within
the time spent in the hotel. And finally the customers either existing or potential who want to
have high quality restaurants for their meals.
Premier will use several communication tools for achieving its objectives. These are:
1. In its website, a separate page will be opened which will address all the information about
its restaurants and the dishes available in these restaurants. Pictures of the food items and
the facilities will be shown there to attract people.
2. A Facebook page will be open on the restaurants of Premier Inn where new dishes and
new food prices will be updated. Customers will also able to comment about the quality
of the restaurants which will work as promotional tool.
3. A competition will be held at different schools of UK where students won the
competition will be able to attain the swimming program of the hotel with 2 days
accommodation facility.
4. A commercial advertisement will be made on the Wimbledon 2013 and the attractive
places of UK along with the facilities of the Premier Inn hotel to attract people to visit
UK and to take the service of Premier Inn.
5. Wimbledon 2013 will be sponsored by Premier Inn to get higher media coverage.
6. Facebook ads will be made to let people know about Premier Inn and its services.
7. In different website of recipes, advertisement will be placed about the restaurants of the
company.

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The company will follow the timeframe given in figure 1.

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Figure 1: Time frame of marketing communications plan

A simplified budget of this marketing communication plan is given in the following table:
Items
Costs
Brochures and other printed materials
1000
Commercial Advertisement
10000
Web ads
2500
Facebook ads
1000
Radio
1,200
Newspapers
500
Billboards
500
Sponsorship
400000
Competition
12000
Total Cost
416700
How the communication campaign will be monitored and evaluated is described in the following
answers.

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Answer to the question no. 4:

AIDA model is the abbreviated form of Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. (Wells, 2012) It is
mostly used for making a successful communication message and plan. For most of
communication campaign the target is to attract and aware the customers and potential customers
in order to induce them to purchase the products or services of the company. (Drypen, 2008) In
doing so, company first needs to get the attention of the targeted audience by its communication
mix. Then it requires building up the interest of the customers about the message that is
conveying through the campaign. If the endeavor of the company succeeds, customers will feel
the importance of the product and services and will start to love it. Finally, the companys
campaign will become successful when it will be able to generate the required sales or successful
in fulfilling the objectives of the campaign. (Kam, 2010)
The AIDA model is very much relevant to the campaign mentioned above for Premier Inn. The
whole campaign follows the model and the campaign will be successful if it is followed in the
phase of implementation. Firstly, in making people aware of the superior restaurants of the
Premier Inn, website, Facebook page and website ads are used. Facebook ads and other website
ads will help in getting the attention of the customers. As now a days Facebook become the
mostly used community site and a huge percentage of people use internet, these two media will
obviously work fine in attract people to read the message of the campaign. Through making
awareness among the customers, Premier Inn will be able to make them believe the superior
quality of its restaurants service. These ads will direct the customers who click those to the
website of the company. In the website they will be able to learn about the detail features of the
restaurant services and this information will create interest among these customers about the
message of the campaign. As the people will get interest they will continue learning about the
restaurants and at the same time will come to the information about other services and facilities
of the company. Link to the Facebook page of the company in the website and the Facebook ads
will bring these customers to the Facebook page where they will view the comments of the
existing customers and will get additional images and details of the services of the hotel. These
comments and additional information will induce the customers to believe the restaurant service
is superior in quality and they will feel desire to obtain the services. Finally, this belief and the
desire to have the services will make them to purchase the services and superior quality of the
restaurants will make them loyal customers of the company. So, all the four stages are completed
in the process of first task.
Secondly, in promoting the countrys best swimming training service provided by the company, it
will go for arranging a competition in the schools. In this swimming competition students will

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have to compete with the students of their own and other schools. 5 to 6 students will be selected
as the winner and these students will get the chance for participating in the training program to
develop their skill from a high specialist and will also get the chance to spend few days in the
hotel room with family. Through arranging the competition Premier Inn will get the attention of
the people about its swimming training program. People will learn about the program and thus
the ignorance about the other services of the hotel will be known to the people. When the
competition proceeds, its excitement will make people interested about the service and thus they
will try to learn more about the service. They will visit the webpage of the company and also
communicate with people working in conduction the competition program. The winner students
and their family will get the chance to enjoy the facilities and they will share their experience
with others ranging from relatives to the media. This will in turn work as the promotion of the
service and their shared experience will help in making people believe the program is the best
one in the whole country. Finally, as people start to believe the program as the best one, they will
ultimately be engaged in getting the service from the hotel. So, the marketing campaign will be
successful by causing actions.
And the final task is to grab the largest portion of the tourists who come to UK for attending the
Wimbledon 2013 and visiting the important tourist spots. The company will sponsor the event
which will provide it with great media coverage as whenever the name of the event is mentioned;
the name of the company will automatically be conveyed to the audience. As a result many
people will come to know about the company including the targeted tourists. This will work as
the tool of getting attention. Besides, the commercial advertisement will be shown on the TV.
This advertisement will attract the people to the campaign of the company. When the people will
get the commercial attractive they will watch it carefully and the attractiveness of the
advertisement will create some interest among them about the tour. People who plan to visit UK
will then consider the hotel to be selected for their accommodation alternative. They will gather
required information about the services and cost of the hotel. And the advertisement and the
companys website will provide them with lots of information which will make them to believe
about the superiority of the company. Features mentioned in the advertisement will also help in
making people believe about the quality and cost efficiency of the company. This will create the
desire for the customers. And finally this desire will turn into sales when the company will be
able to keep its reputation as well as its quality.
So in each case AIDA model has a close link with the success of the communication campaign.
Without using the model properly the efforts of the company will become vague. In the first case,
the advertisement in different websites and in Facebook must be made in such a way thus the
customers feel need to click on the ads. If the message on the ads are not properly constructed
and thus people do not feel any sort of attention the campaign will fail to bring the awareness of
the people and thus its superior service will add no value. Again, for making the swimming
program popular and successful, the competition must be arrange in a manner thus the students

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find it interesting to participate and the people find it worthy to give attention. Promotion of the
competition must be done in a manner thus people who want to get expert in swimming will find
it attractive. Finally the advertisement for TV commercial must be well prepared with enough
information about the companys facilities because that will attract the attention of the customers
to the company. In all case, the company also needs to care about the subsequent responsibility
of making the customers effort interesting, making them believe the message and inducing them
to get involved in action. If the company succeeds, all the marketing communication objectives
will be met.

Answer to the question no. 5

Integrated Marketing Communication
Company will not use only one or a few communication tools for conveying its message to the
customers. Instead it will use a variety of channels for its communication purpose ranging from
simple newspaper advertisement to extensive commercial advertisement in Television, from
simple web banner to constructing a whole new website. The company does these to
communicate better and to reach more people. In this modern age this is obviously a good
approach but the problem is these different medium is controlled or managed by different parties
or even different departments of the company. This creates a big question of coordination. For
making a communication campaign successful the information must be provided accurately and
consistently to all the customers. If the company fails to maintain this consistence, customers
may become confused which will hamper the image of the organization as well as will hamper
the profitability. To resolve this problem, the concept of Integrated Marketing Communication
evolved. This means the communication model where integration and coordination of the
elements of communication mix is carefully done to ensure the clarity and consistency of the
information about the company and its product and services. (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012)
This new type of marketing communication is certainly beneficial to all the companies which use
it. Integrated Marketing Communication or IMC reduces the chance of customer dissatisfaction
that can arise from the inconsistent messages. It ensure better coordination among the various
message the company convey as a result, each communication make the belief of the customer
stronger and clear. Integrated Marketing Communication also helps in planning purpose as the
information becomes available to all the departments working together. When Personal
Relationship department finds any information about the customer that will affect the structure of
other communication channel, in Integrated Marketing Communication system it can share the
information to the advertisement department which will create the message of the advertisement
in such a manner that successfully attract the customers. Further IMC provides much more
information to the customer through different communication tools which attract the customers

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by satisfying their information needs. Besides, it also saves huge cost which would arise to
manage different campaigns separately. (Dwyer & Tanner, 2002)
In the selected organization, i.e. at Premier Inn, Integrated Marketing Communication is highly
advantageous. According to the hypothetical communication campaign, the company plans to
meet four marketing objective using several marketing tools. These different tools are set up or
controlled by different groups e.g. website will be maintained by the IT department, competition
will be administered by the public relationship department; advertisement will be done by the
marketing departments etc. Without proper integration and coordination, these different parties
may convey different message to the same customers. This will create problem through creating
confusion among the customers about the company and its products and services. Again, as the
company is going to achieve three different types of objectives, proper coordination is required
to ensure no any activity is creating barrier in meeting other objectives. Besides, IMC helps to
reduce the cost through increasing efficiency of the marketing communications team of the
company. In an Integrated Marketing Communication model, people of different departments or
groups work together and they share their view and information not only for their own marketing
communication objectives rather for the strategies required to achiever other objectives. As a
result, the management can take much suitable strategies for communication. In the case of
Premier Inn, the team responsible for arranging the competition will also convey information
about customers view about the hotel and that can be helpful in determining the marketing
strategies for promoting the restaurant service of the company. And as the customers targeted in
the swimming training program can also belong to the targeted customer in restaurant service,
this information will obviously helpful. So, IMC is very important system for the organization to
take more strategic decision, to communicate the message more efficiently and to reduce the cost
through making the strategies successful.
Monitoring and evaluation
To avoid extra cost and efforts or work pressure, many organizations try to omit this phase of
marketing communication. But this is very important phase of communication as it helps in
ensuring the success of the campaign and accomplishment of the objectives. Monitoring is the
process of tracking all the progress and activities of the current campaign. This monitoring will
help in evaluation of the campaign success in terms of meeting the objectives. Proper monitoring
will ensure that communication strategies are implementing properly to achieve the objectives
and this will help to adjust the activities if any error is noticed. On the other hand, evaluation will
check whether the objectives are really met and how much. One thing is important in monitoring
and evaluation, that the current position of the company must be known to compare it with the
result after campaign and the objectives must be quantifiable for evaluation purpose. (McCabe,
2009)

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There are two popular methods for monitoring and evaluation procedure. First on is market
research and other one is response measurement. These are described below with reference to the
campaign described here about Premier Inn.
Market Research: the first method is market research and it can be done either by the company
itself or by the other parties appointed by the company. In market research the company will
conduct survey about the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. When the company tries to
introduce new brand to the market or to increase awareness of the market, it is helpful to use
survey to monitor and evaluate. This survey will find out how many people have come to contact
of the marketing campaign and how much it is successful in conveying the message and building
awareness. In our creative marketing campaign, the company has the objective to make people
aware of the restaurant service and swimming program. A market survey can be made where
people will be asked about their idea about these services and whether they take the services.
Percentage of people aware about the services will be easily identified which can be compared
with the current position to determine the progress and fulfillment of the objective.
Response Measurement: In this method direct action of the customer is measured as the process
of evaluation. Response from the customer is taken and measured to check the progress toward
achieving the objectives. Mainly from the sales generated after the campaign or numbers of
people communicate to the company to learn about the companys product is considered as the
parameter of evaluation. In our Premier Inn communication campaign case, it is planning to grab
the largest share of the tourists who come to UK for Wimbledon and visiting UK. Here the
response measurement can be finding out the number of booking made by different people for
that period and numbers of people enquire about the service of the hotel. Number of likes in
Facebook page can be another way to measure the response about restaurant service.

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References
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Endpoint (2012) Premier Inn: Promising you a warm welcome. [report] Endpoint.
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