Marketing

Marketing
Course Work
-Caravelle Hotel (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Spring 2011
Date: 25th, March, 2011

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank to Ms Do hoi Yen for replying our e-mail gladly and supporting us. This report has been made possible generally because of the help given by Ms Do hoi Yen, Managing An employee of marketing department of Caravelle hotel, therefore we would like to extend our admiration and thanks to Ms Do hoi Yen. Her rapid reply is as well as providing important information such as many types of promotional tools and history of the hotel. Her email was helping us so much. Caravelle hotel had aided in putting together this report.

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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................ 2 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 4 BACKGROUND ................................................................................................ 5 - History of hotel ................................................................................................ 5 - Stage of lifecycle ............................................................................................. 5 - Products and services it sells ........................................................................... 6 - Compare and contrast to theory....................................................................... 7 - Promotion tool ................................................................................................. 7 a) Advertising ................................................................................................. 7 b) Sale Promotion ........................................................................................... 8 c) Personal Selling .......................................................................................... 8 d) Public Relation ........................................................................................... 9 e) Direct marketing ................ ! . RECOMMENDATION .................................................................................... 10 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 11 REFERENCING ............................................................................................... 12 APPENDICIES ................................................................................................. 13

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INTRODUCTION
The author chooses to research about Caravelle Hotel which is in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The hotel is 5 stars hotel and it is located perfect place for business, shopping, entertainment and historical site. One of the benefits of the hotel is locating 8kilometres from international airport. 7 percentages of the guests are from domestic that use restaurant for meeting hall and 93 percentages of guests are from international. 80 percentages of the international guest visit Caravelle Hotel for business and the rest of percentages of the international guest are Vietnamese. Caravelle hotel has two restaurants, two bars, two lounges, a gaming club that is Las vegas style and international boutique shops. In addition, the hotel got Worlds Best Awards of Travel+ Leisure. The purpose of the course work is learning how the hotel is marketing their hotel and applies the marketing theory to realities. Therefore, we can realize that how the hotel is worked for marketing. The authors put some information of Caravelle Hotel that are history of hotel, stage of lifecycle, products and services it sells, compare and contrast to theory, promotion tool and the authors opinion and recommendation.

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BACKGROUND
History of hotel
Caravelle hotel is established in 1956, when the city was known as Saigon with different name which is Le cantinat belongs to Intercontinental. The reason why the name of the hotel is changed is Vietnam War in 1955. In 1976, Le cantinat is changed to Caravelle hotel. In 2002, Caravelle hotel hosted the cast and swaggered filming Graham Greene novel The Quite American, starring Michael Caine, Breendan Frasser. During the 1960s, Caravelle hotel was home to the Australian embassy, the New Zealand embassy, and the Saigon bureaus of NBC, ABC and CBS. On the morning of August 25, 1964, at around 11:30 am, a bomb exploded in room 514, on the floor occupied mostly by foreign journalists who were all our on assignment. Nine rooms were damaged; windows were blown out of several cars parked in the street and a number of people were injured without fatalities. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravelle_Hotel) After the fall of Saigon in 1962, the hotel was taken over and operated by the government and renamed the Doc Lap Hotel which is reborn individually hotel. And also, it remained until 1976, when the Caravelle name was launched again. Nowadays, the Caravelle hotel is famous for keeping the history of Vietnam between the tourists or customers who have stayed at the hotel.

Stage of lifecycle
By looking at the percentage of occupancy, which reached 70%-80% even during low season, Caravelle Hotel is at maturity stage of the lifecycle. They keep doing advertisement via famous magazine (e.g Saigon time, Cosmopolitan) , newsletter, and Internet to let everyone know about the hotel. Although its an old hotel, but mostly of the customers who stayed there will give a good impression about the hotel. Starting from the service, the room, the bathroom, the housekeeping, and bar.(Tripadvisor.com)

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Products and services it sells

Caravelle Hotel has 335 guest rooms and suits with whole view of Saigon River and Ho Chi Minh City. The floors and rooms are divided to non-smoking and smoking. In every single rooms, there are a bath tub, Wi-Fi internet and throughout the hotel, a LCD Television (movie channels are operating 24 hours), tea and coffee making facilities, a coffee/espresso machine, bottled mineral water and it replenished daily, a iron and a ironing-board and baby cribs upon request. LCD projector, welcome tea or coffee, choice of set or buffet lunch, note pads and pens, white board and markers, TV, video player, DVD player, Screen, Podium, microphone and laser pointer in the banqueting room and meeting room that are elegant and stylish function areas. In Caravelle Hotel, there are two restaurants which named Nineteen and Reflections, two bars named Martini and Saigon Saigon, two lounges called Signature and Lobby and a gaming club which named Club Vegas. The restaurant Nineteen is casual and cheerful. And buffet offered at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most of guests like the lively atmosphere of the restaurant. One of the citys most popular meeting places and it placed in ground floor. The restaurant Reflections is elegantly fine dining. It is placed in 3rd floor. And it is opened only for dinner. The Martini bar is adjoined Reflections restaurant. Local music band perform with piano, violin, guitar and saxophone every 19:00. It is placed in 3rd floor as the Reflections restaurant. The Saigon Saigon bar is in 9th floor so guests can watch the sun goes down over easily. The bar is one of iconic bar and live entertainment nightly. Signature lounge has great views of the opera house. Thats why guests enjoy tea or coffee and light refreshments with the perfect views. It is in 9th floor with the Saigon Saigon bar and bright and relaxed environment is the best. Lobby lounge is close-up view of the opera house. There are several leather armchair and Cuban cigar and liqueur. It is placed in ground floor. A gaming club, Club Vegas is operated like a casino. However, the guests really enjoy Club Vegas even the size is smaller than casino. It has international gaming tables and lasts slots. It is in 1st floor. In addition, Caravelle hotel has a small shop for guests shopping in the hotel. The guests can buy the products of Louis Voitton, Gucci and DKNY etc in the shop.

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Compare and contrast to theory

Giving out sales promotions undermine the image if exclusivity or prestige that you wish to associate with your product or company(Stettner, 2008), thus Caravelle Hotel must be able to balance their sales promotion so it will not give a negative impact to the image of the Hotel. A marketing strategy should be centered on the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal (ivythesis, 2009), as stated there, Caravelle Hotel has to think about customer satisfaction as the main goal instead of just advertising all the time. Because by giving a good satisfaction to the customers, they also can help us promote the hotel by word of mouth, which is sometimes more effective rather than public marketing, and moreover it is free. Every customer is VIP ( Caravelle, 1976). Caravelle Hotel has applied this quote since 1976. So for them, they will treat every customer like a VIP because all of the customers are important no matter he/she is staying in single standard room, suite room, or deluxe room. By giving a bad impression to just 1 customer, it may bring a big disaster to the company.

Promotion tool
Promotion tool is an important in marketing strategies. It could help the demands and suppliers meet each other in order to satisfy the demands of customer. Promotion tool could help the hotel have more benefits and prestige through the strategies of products, prices and allocations. It also considered as a tool for communication between the customers and the hotel in order to keep the relationships with the VIP guests and so does the new one. For the Hotel Caravelle Saigon, promotion tool is not only science but also arts. All the employees must be very creative, flexible and skillful during the marketing process to reach the target with the lowest outflow. The promotion tool of the Caravelle Saigon, like many other hotels, is included:

I. Advertising
Advertising is the paid for non-personal communication in order for Hotels marketing teams to bring the information of their products and services to the customers. According to Caravelle marketing team, advertising is considered as a major activities of promotion tool for attracting the attention from the customers, persuading them about the benefits of hotel products that could make them thinking about coming back and using the hotel services such as SPA, restaurants, bars, shopping malls etc. Using advertising method will being the push factor for hotel to meet the demands from their customers so that they may find interested in

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the hotel during their in-house period. There are many ways for advertising included newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc. The advertising method could bring huge profit for the hotel because of its advantages; using this method first the marketers must analyze their target market. Since the target market of the Caravelle is people with high standard life, the foreign businessmen, and Vietnamese who live outside country, the hotel marketer did advertising through television broadcast, famous magazine and even in the internet that YouTube is one of examples. Although advertising is a good method, its also have many negative sides for example ,the cost for doing advertising is expensive, besides that, its could be happened when the people who interested in these ads are not from your target market, it could be a very important influence to you hotel profit, services. When using advertising method through broadcast and radio, maybe the customers cannot go back to the important points in youre delivered information if they miss it. And normally people hardly pay attention on advertising, they normally doing something else while watching TV, listening radio or reading newspapers, so maybe the information that you want to deliver cannot go to your direct customers

II. Sale Promotion

Sale promotion is possibly considered as every activity could help increasing the benefits from customers through the short term promotion. Marketers normally use the sale promotion method when there are many competitors, when there are a lot of products or services that have similarities in quality, function and price. Understanding the role of Sale promotion, the marketing department of the hotel always promotes the customers many special services or packages every month. For example, they give the customers room promotion that stay for 3 nights, the guests will have 30% discount, or about the voucher on food and beverages the guests, especially the VIPs one will have many discount on food and beverages on the restaurants or bars during the time they stay at the hotel. Using Sale promotion for a long time could be both positive and negative. It depends on its attraction to the customer. If the customers find their interest in an old promotion, repeating the purchase from them may give some profit for the hotel budget. On the other hand when the promotion is devalued the brands in the eyes of customer, its now being a negative effect. According to the sale department of the hotel, Sale promotion could be separated into different kinds such as voucher, coupon, refund and rebate, gifts for the premium package etc

III. Personal Selling

In this method, the seller contact directly to the customer to persuade them using the services of the Hotel, the products is selling after the seller talks to their target customers face to face to by telephone. This method could help the marketing team to. Using personal selling method may help the hotel saving time talking to the potential customers. The employees can

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have more chance to know about the information of the services they going to sell to their customers, theyll be able to answer the question from guests and also have ability on satisfying customers demands. Personal selling is effective or not, it all depends on the talents of sellers, However, using personal method, the hotel may have to spend a lot of money for the cost, its would be many expenses in selling, because when the advertising cost can be up or down but the force size is probably harder to vary. Base on the financing report of the hotel, they have to spend more than $100 for one call. So that personal selling is also considered as the most expensive method in promotion tool. Thats also the reason why the Caravelle didnt use these tools for worldwide

IV. Public Relation

Public Relation is the process that we use to create a positive image and customer preference through third-party endorsement. Public relation provide many advantages for hotel , its also the cheapest way to do advertise the hotel to customer, moreover it is the most effective part of promotion mix, and also the most believable method since all the information is delivered form the third party. One example of the Public Relation in Caravelle Saigon hotel is the hotel invite the agent from many famous magazine such as Saigon time (the most famous English magazine in Vietnam), Business traveler, etc coming to the hotel and enjoys the upscale services. The result of this is Caravelle being the top hotel for businessman in Ho Chi Minh City, top 500 hotel of the world voted by Leisure+travel magazine. Moreover, participating in many social charity and activities such as, earth hour, or nearest the major sponsor for charity for Japan could help Caravelle have the sympathy from customers, its would be the good things for this hotel to spread out their brand name for attracting potential customers from not only domestic but also the international market However, using Public Relation can cause many disadvantages. First of all, its would be a risk of losing control during one event. For instant, in 1964, at 11:30 AM, a bomb exploded in the hotel, at that time, there are a lot of foreign journalists, luckily no one died but this bomb damaged 9 rooms and the hotel had to stop for such a long time then it had to change the name to Independence until 1975. One more things is that during an event, the ceiling of the hotel was suddenly collapsed it make 2 people hurts, and this situation has a bad effects on the hotel Caravelle income on 2008. So we all could see that, PR is the most effective method in marketing , its also could bring us many trouble if we dont organize it well, because if the bad thing happen during your event, you cannot control the information that spread out rapidly and its going to harmful for your products

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V. Direct marketing
Last but not least, the direct marketing is the system of marketing using one or many tools for advertising to know how the products might influence to the customers (US DMA) Using this method could bring many advantages such as Contacting the right target market Building relationship with the customers directly The marketing strategies of the hotel can be invisible The marketing team can also predict the result when using this method for advertising

There are so many ways using direct marketing method. Caravelle hotel usually sent newsletters for the customers directly to inform them about the promotion of the hotel for every month via email, telephone, sending catalogue, online marketing etc. In the direct marketing, all the strategies in non-public, the messages are usually sent to specific customer. Its an interactive marketing tool since it allow dialogue between the marketing team and the consumers, all messages sending can be altered base on the guests response. In 2009, there are more than 10000 emails that sent to the customers using direct method form Caravelle which brings huge benefits for the hotel income especially in January and February since it is New Year and Tet holiday

RECOMMENDATION
Appearing for more than 50 years, the Caravelle hotel Saigon still the most luxurious hotel all over Vietnam, by using effectively promotion tool for attracting the customers, the marketing team of this hotel is successful in bringing a large number of customers for the hotel in every year, which means that, the hotel could have giant profit from these marketing tool. However, not every marketing strategies is perfect, we also recommend them to change a little bit from their marketing plan Pay more attention on the domestic travelers, because, the Vietnamese also want to stay in a luxury hotel with upscale service for their vacation trip. During the time when conducting an important event, everything must be 100% under control so that it would be nothing wrong happen.

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CONCLUSION
Caravelle is one of the famous hotels in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Although it has a tough competitor of chain international 5 star hotel such as Intercontinental, J.W Marriot, Sofitel, Hyatt and Riverside, Caravelle still able to survive and outnumbered its competitor in winning the guests as we can see the occupancy rate reached 70-80% overall. By using better way of marketing, public relation and other related promotional tools, Caravalle will be able to attract more local customers. The continued use of effective various promotional tools will bring more beneficial to Caravelle. Moreover, it also can enhance the prestigious name of Caravelle.

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REFERENCING
1) http://www.facebook.com/caravellehotel?sk=app_7146470109 2) http://www.caravellehotel.com/ 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravelle_Hotel 4) http://vietnamhotels.net/ho-chi-minh-city/caravelle-hotel/ 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_American 6) http://www.quietamerican.org/ 7) http://www.quietamerican.org/introduction.html 8) http://www.travelgolf.com/departments/resortfeatures/asia/caravelle-hotel-ho-chi-minhcity-vietnam-6058.htm 9) http://www.vietnamtourism.com.vn/hotel/en/Caravelle_Hotel/ 10) http://lejournaldespalaces.com/index.php?title=The-Caravelle-Hotel-Iconic-Hotel-inSaigon-Goes-The-Extra-Green-Mile&id_actu=32833&home=actu_detail.php 11) http://seg.webcampus.co.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=26639 12) http://marketingcoffee.wordpress.com/category/marketing-canb%E1%BA%A3n/marketing-mix-4p/thuc-d%E1%BA%A7y-ban-hang-promotion/ 13) http://www.caravellehotel.com/images/newsletter/pressroom/caravellememoirs.pdf 14) http://www.caravellehotel.com 15) http://www.caravellehotel.com/pressromm/Cravelle%20is%20Vietnam%27%20Top%20Hote l.pdf 16) http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2009/08/compare-and-contrast-themarketing-strategy-of-two-different-products-or-services.html 17) http:// Tripadvisor.com 18) Philip Kotler, John T Bowen, James C Makens Marketing For Hospitality And Tourism, fifth edition, PEARSON, boston

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19) David Jobber, the McGraw Hill company, London, Principles And Practice of Marketing 4th edition. 20) Kotler, P. (2006) Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism. 5th Edition. USA, Pearson

APPENDICIES

CERTIFICATION OF SOP

CARAVELLE HOTEL OUTLOOK

THE MAP OF CARAVELLE HOTEL

A PORTCARD FROM CARAVELLE HOTEL

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ENTRY OF CARAVELLE HOTEL

A POSTER OF CARAVELLE HOTEL

MAIN TARGET MARKET OF CARAVELLE HOTEL

A POSTER OF CARAVELLE HOTEL 2

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