AN ASSIGNMENT

ON

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT & LEADERSHIP- Case Study

Student ID: S225126

Contents
Introduction:..................................................................................................................................3

1. SWOT and PESTEL analysis................................................................................................3

SWOT analysis:..........................................................................................................................3

PESTEL analysis:......................................................................................................................4

2. Analyzing influence of PESTEL factors and SWOT..........................................................4

3. Comparing and contrasting various styles of leadership....................................................5

4. Recommending leadership style for “Premier Inn”............................................................6

5. Commenting on responsibility, response and obligations of Premier Inn........................7

6. Reflection report.....................................................................................................................8

Conclusion:.....................................................................................................................................8

Reference:.......................................................................................................................................9
Introduction:
Business environment elucidates the surrounding where the business functions are operated.
Business environment reflects the operation of a business and a business is highly depended on
the environment within which it runs its operations. Leadership in business refers to the capacity
of leading by an entrepreneur or business. Without proper leadership quality a business may fail
to achieve an estimable fruition. These two components are highly responsible for successful
exertion in a business. The report considers “Premier Inn”, one of the biggest budget hotels in
UK to solve case problems and questions.

1. SWOT and PESTEL analysis

Premier Inn, one of the leading hotel business operating in UK, owns seventy-five thousand hotel
rooms in their business. Here is the SWOT & PESTEL analysis of this company.

SWOT analysis:
Strength: The acquired fame of Premier Inn is one of the strengths of this company. Their
premium services and strategy of customer management is highly responsible for this. Another
strength of this company is its large capacity by establishing large amount of rooms for their
customers.

Weakness: High competition is one of the weakness of this company because many large hotels
are already extant in the market and continuously developing their services. Sometimes they get
huge number of booking and cannot able to serve all customers which is another weakness
(Sarsby& others, 2016). For example, when a customer wants to have rooms but they already
reached the limit of their room numbers.

Opportunity: Premier Inn has strong brand value over time as they provide premium services to
customers. Their effective marketing strategy is another opportunity because they strategically
able to attract their possible customers.

Threat: Sometimes the company is not able to serve their all customers and gets bad reputation.
In contrast, due to lack of tourist they fall in shortage of customers and face loss. Like now in
COVID-19 situation they face shortage of customers.
They manage their customers through different type of offers and services like free dinners or
breakfasts and maybe a complimentary drink or even arranging lottery among customers to
provide presents. They care about their integrity which is why maintaining image is a must and
the company does that by changing or coloring interiors and Cousens and building high quality
rooms with a lot of space.

PESTEL analysis:
The company faces various political impact. For example, the current COVID-19 situation is
putting embargo on tourism thus the company faces loss of tourist customers and facing bad
times. But is acquires enough profit from last few years before COVID 19. The current economic
condition of UK is not good enough because of the outbreak. People are becoming thriftier
gradually. Because of the increment in cost structure of the society, it puts large impact on this
sector (Zhan& others, 2019). Premier Inn owns proper technological infrastructure like dynamic
websites, databases etc. Premier Inn highly maintains environmental factors by controlling waste
management and other components. The company maintains health factors strictly by managing
their services properly included in legal factors.

2. Analyzing influence of PESTEL factors and SWOT

The components of PESTEL highly emphasizes on the opportunities and threats of Premier Inn
company. As the company has strong brand value it requires proper customers to serve for the
increment of their current value in the market. But because of the embargo on tourism in any
environmental disaster this activity is hampered highly. As people are becoming more
enthusiastic in finding low cost budget everywhere the marketing strategy is providing slow
fruition rather than before for Premier Inn company which was an element of their opportunity.
The technological factors provide a unique opportunity to the company as they have high
technological infrastructure and they maintain proper database management of their customers
(Brookes& others, 2016). But environmental factors sometime create threat for the company as
there is a large number of customer volume there, there happens many incidents that creates
contradiction to the environment. The company may fail to convince or control all of their
customers activities that creates environmental risk. Legal factors are successfully maintained by
Premier Inn as they are following and ensuring healthy environment and provide full support that
creates an opportunity for the company. For example, they are providing healthy food and
ensuring best quality and safety for their customer so that they don’t have to face any health
haphazard. Same alike other components too. In these ways, the PESTEL factors are influencing
the opportunity and threat of the company.

There remain several strengths of Premier Inn like they have the largest capacity, their acquired
fame, premium quality service etc. This strength of the company is able to negate their existing
weakness and threat highly. The weakness of the company is mentioned in task 1 which are their
high competitor volume and limit of order. As the company is providing the best quality services
to their customers and ensuring to fill the overall demand of their customers it can make good of
the loss they face through their weakness and threats. For example, their competitors are also
increasing the quality of service and attracting new customers who are already the customer of
Premier Inn but as the company holds their quality, they are not facing any loss. This can recover
the threat that is affecting their opportunities. Their brand value, one of their opportunities helps
them to attract new customers which helps them to recover the loss they made through their
weakness and threats. As they are increasing and ensuring quality services to the customers
which is their strength, they can easily negate their threats and weakness affecting their
opportunity, in these ways.

Some of the PESTEL factors that helped the company to build the image that they possess right
now is economic, environmental and technological factors because first they focused on the UK
economy and invested where the economy is rising fast and created an environment where
people would be attracted to their overall environment and finally used technology to reach their
highest peak by building easy payment, easy booking and better facilities.

3. Comparing and contrasting various styles of leadership

Leadership styles elucidate the way in which a leader provides direction to the people, create
new plans for them and accomplish it. There are multiple types of leadership styles like
authoritarian, democratic, laissez-faire, strategic style etc.

The “Democratic style” of leadership is fully dependent on the decision of the leaders based on
the employees output from the exertion in business. Leader discuss and take opinions from
employees and analyzing them properly the leader finally takes the decision. In this way all
parties have the right to take part in providing their opinion to their leader. For example: In a
company, the owner takes the opinion from their employees about their performance and quality
of their services for customers (Lindgreen & others, 2013). And finally, he makes the decision of
how to make it in a better way. This style is highly effective in business. In contrast of
democratic style, the “Autocratic style” does not support feedback from any employees and only
leaders take the decision at their own will. There is no chance to provide any opinion to the
leader in autocratic style of leadership. For example: in a company, leader takes the decision of
not providing any extra service to their customers without taking any consultation from anyone.
This type of leadership is not actually good for a company or business. In “Strategic style” of
leadership, leaders create overall balance and ensure high output from business activities. This is
sometimes considered as ideal style for bringing the whole system into a stable format. In
contrast of autocratic style, the “Laissez-faire” style of leadership, leader plays little role in the
operation of business and leader fully depends on the employees for its operation. Leader highly
trust on his employees and employees have the full control over the operation of business. For
example: the owner of the company X appoints some employees and provide them the access of
all activities without monitoring them.

In “Premier Inn” company, the democratic style of leadership exists which is really effective for
this company. The owner of the company takes consultation from everyone to make their service
better and employees become more motivated and enthusiastic in their activities in this way.
Although the owner takes the final decision it is highly necessary to get the opinion from the
employees who has the direct connection with the customers. And when employees get the
opportunity to take part in the decision making, they grant their position more positively and
their effectiveness also rises. The overall quality of the company will rise as they are identifying
customers need properly. So, “Democratic style” of leadership is highly suitable for the budget
hotel company “Premier Inn”.

4. Recommending leadership style for “Premier Inn”

Premier Inn is one of the largest hotel company in UK, serving their customers for more than
forty years. From the critical analyze of leadership styles, the “Democratic style” of leadership
will be the best suitable leadership style for this kind of business. In democratic style the leader
makes everyone of the company involve in making his decision by consulting and gathering
opinions from employees. Serving customers in the best way is the ultimate key to estimable
fruition for premier inn. For this purpose, leader has to be conscious about the development and
need of customer service and quality (Giltinane& others, 2013). The employees serve the
customers directly and they know best the satisfaction rate of their customers. The involvement
of employees in taking leader’s decision is highly important for this purpose in Premier Inn. For
example, the owner of the company wants to develop the quality of food of their hotel. So, it is
needed to know the current feedback from the customers and leader gets that information from
the employees who directly handle customers. After taking the information, leader takes the
decision of how to develop their food service. Therefore, proper consultation is needed to get the
best feedback from customer. Thus, the democratic leadership is highly recommended for
‘Premier Inn’ company.

5. Commenting on responsibility, response and obligations of Premier Inn

Premier Inn, a UK based hospitality service, providing their service at a low cost and operating
their operations in more than thirty countries. Premier Inn has designed their services in such a
way that it includes various environmental and social advantages. Considering the customer’s
economic condition, Premier Inn tries to reduce the expenses of their customers through point to
point strategy and they are being treated their customer with the best service at a lower cost. As
Premier Inn takes their customers into a gorgeous world with a beautiful environment, it even
reduces the cost of their customers. Considering the health factor and environmental factor,
Premier Inn tried to reduce the rate of water pollution in a large manner (Sen& others, 2019).
They have already diminished the rate by 18 percent from the year of 2000. This has put a great
positive impact on the environment and on society. The health factor of society people is also
highly connected to this. Premier Inn plans to reduce their charges for the betterment of their
customers. For this purpose, they always like to create effective ways to use the polluted water in
somewhere else so that the fare also diminishes in a large amount. They use better materials in
their rooms to make it comfortable for their consumers. It increases their social image brighter
day by day. In maximum hotel services, high volume of wastage occurs through food service or
others. Premier Inn maintains their waste management in an effective way that they offer no free
food service and the whole system is run through a systemic process and everybody follows rules
and thus the amount of waste decreases at a large number (Rodrigues& others, 2019). This
highly puts a positive impact on the environment by reducing wastes. They maintain the
environmental factors strictly because when the number of wastages increases like unwanted
plastic, ploy, papers etc. the environment becomes nastier and more uncomfortable. This is an
estimable strategy for this company from the environmental perspective. Therefore, beside doing
business they are considering other social and environmental factors highly and they are
planning to make it better for overall society and environment by taking various measures in
recent years. Premier Inn is trying to develop new aircrafts that uses less energy and does less
emission in air to make the environment of sky fairer and cleaner. They run various social and
environmental campaigns to inspire people to perform and maintain proper responsibility. This is
highly audible exertion for an airline company to make such things for the society and
environment. They designed their whole activities in such way that it takes less time and
equipment for overall setup which helps people to save their energy and time. This also works
same in reducing wastes. Thus, the company is maintaining proper responsibility to their
customers, society and environment.

Corporate social responsibility is maintained strictly within and outside the company as they care
about both their workers and people related indirectly with the company. The company even has
built a old people’s home and orphan’s home and even entangled with some charity which is
definitely a good side of the company. They even try to minimize their carbon emission and
water and air pollution in their kitchen.

6. Reflection report
Several things have been discussed above on multiple topics like business environment,
leadership, SWOT analysis etc. The above discussion reflects many aspects of a business and left
many things to learn from it. I have learned multiple elements from doing research to make these
all discussions. First, several aspects of PESTEL are discussed and it identifies the impact of
external environment on a business. It shows how much a business is dependent on the external
environment and how the components of PESTEL influence business activities. I also learn from
the discussion that; it is highly necessary to learn how to balance and cope up with the external
environment. A recent incident can be a good example for this like in COVID-19 pandemic the
economic, legal factors are highly influencing businesses around the world. From the SWOT
analysis I have realized how a business have to maintain development to increase its strength.
Although the analysis is not descriptive enough, but it indicates the primary elements that a
business has to consider to increase its performance. It will be a great learning for me when to do
a business like it. The leadership types are discussed well and it shows how much effective
leadership is necessary to accomplish a successful business. I have come to know various types
of leadership style that will help me to analyze, compare and select the best style suit for my
future business. Not all types of leadership create effective impact on business (Giovanelli&
others, 2018). There are some types of leadership styles which is commonly effective. When
doing research about the leadership style I have come to know what qualities should a leader
cherish to make the business run more successfully. From the discussion, I personally like to be a
democrat leader who prioritize the opinion of the employees. It will inspire me to be more
friendly with my employees in future that will lead me to sustain a friendly and positive
environment within my business. From the analysis of Premier Inn, I have learnt that how much
is important to be cautious about social and environmental facts when doing business. Although
all things are explained in a brief format but the discussion focuses effective facts about
everything and holds a great learning for future individuals who is going to start a business. And
this will be highly beneficial when the learning will be applied practically.

Conclusion:
Business environment and leadership both are two of the most influencers in a business. The
discussion shows how much effective leadership can help a business to grow faster and how
much important is the external environment. When a company is able to maintain all these things
properly, they achieve an estimable fruition from their business activities. As the environment
and society are highly interconnected to business, these elements have to consider largely to
ensure a favorable condition for society and environment.

Reference:
Sarsby, A., 2016. SWOT analysis. Lulu. com.

Pan, W., Chen, L. and Zhan, W., 2019. PESTEL analysis of construction productivity
enhancement strategies: A case study of three economies. Journal of Management in
Engineering, 35(1), p.05018013.

Islam, M.A., 2017. SWOT Mix and PESTEL Analysis: Effective Tools of Risk Management of
Leasing Companies. The Millennium University Journal, 2(1), pp.1-18.
Bowie, D., Buttle, F., Brookes, M. and Mariussen, A., 2016. Hospitality marketing. Taylor &
Francis.

Giltinane, C.L., 2013. Leadership styles and theories. Nursing standard, 27(41).

Du, S., Swaen, V., Lindgreen, A. and Sen, S., 2013. The roles of leadership styles in corporate
social responsibility. Journal of business ethics, 114(1), pp.155-169.

Rotondo, F., Corsi, K. and Giovanelli, L., 2019. The social side of sustainable business models:
An explorative analysis of the low-cost airline industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 225,
pp.806-819.

Rodrigues, M. and Rocha, V., 2019. Easyjet-airline (Doctoral dissertation).