HOSPITALITY

SERVICES
MARKETING
Hospitality Marketing
• Is marketing efforts directed towards the
increase of revenue in the hospitality
industry.
• It takes a look at how segments of the
industry, such as hotels, restaurants,
resorts and amusement parks utilize
marketing techniques to promote their
products or services.
The 4 P’s of Marketing
• Product – refers to an item or items a business
intends to sell.

• Price – refers to how much the product is likely to

cost.

• Place – refers to distribution of a product

• Promotion – refers to the integrated marketing

communications campaign.
Services Marketing Concept
- An organization should anticipate the needs and wants
of consumers and satisfy these more effectively than
competitors.
- The Marketing concept highlights the following:
• Identification of market or target customers
• Understanding of needs & wants of customers in the
target market
• Developing of products or services according to needs
and wants of customers
• Satisfying their needs better than competitors
• Doing all this at a profit.
Services Marketing Concept
• It centers on market orientation – wide generation
of market intelligence pertaining to current and
future customer needs, dissemination of the
intelligence across departments, and
organization-wide responsiveness to it.

• Marketing orientation can be achieved with

market research, contacting surveys, or
interviews with the help of customers to identify
their needs and preferences.
Marketing Concept vs Market Concept
• Marketing concept is a business philosophy
that holds that long term profitability is best
achieved by focusing the coordinated
activities of the organization toward
satisfying the needs of a particular market
segment(s).
Marketing Concept vs Market Concept
• Market concept is the generation of appropriate
market intelligence pertaining to current and
future customer needs and the relative abilities of
competitive entities to satisfy these needs.

• It is the integration and dissemination of such

intelligence across departments and the
coordinated design and execution of the
organization’s strategic response to market
opportunities.
Different Concepts of Marketing
Societal
• Production concept Marketing
Concept
• Product concept
• Selling concept
• Marketing concept Product Marketing
concept Concept
• Societal marketing
concept

Production Selling
concept Concept
Production concept
• Those companies who believe in the
philosophy think that if the goods/services
are cheap and they can be made available
at many places, there cannot be any
problem regarding sale.
Product concept
• Those companies who believe in this philosophy
are of the opinion that if the quality of goods or
services is of good standard, the customers can
be easily attracted. The basis of this thinking is
that the customers get attracted towards the
products of good quality.

• Companies direct their marketing efforts to

increasing the quality of their product.
Selling concept
• Those companies who believe in this concept
think that leaving alone the customers will not
help. Instead there is a need to attract the
customers towards them.

• They think that goods are not bought but they

have to be sold.
Marketing concept
• Those companies who believe in this concept are
of the opinion that success can be achieved only
through consumer satisfaction.

• In other words, they do not sell what they can

make but they make what they can sell.
Societal marketing concept
• This concept stresses not only the customer
satisfaction but also gives importance to
Consumer/Societal Welfare.

• Under this concept, it is believed that mere

satisfaction of the consumers would not help and
the welfare of the whole society has to be kept in
mind.
 Product marketing vs Services marketing
• Product – selling
something that
consumers can
obviously touch.
Physical demands
apply here

• Service – selling
something completely
intangible. You are
selling relationship
 Marketing a Product

Marketing a product comes with loads of benefits,

especially if your marketing strategy itself is on
point.
Versatility

• Selling through different variety of ways.

Some would be through email blasts,
media outlets like facebook, twitter,
instagram
 Creative cost cuts

• Utilizing strategies that saves you from

eating up front costs. Examples would be
the usage of digital media and giveaways.
 Trust

• Consumers tend to trust what they know.

Consumers understand the general process, but
service sellers simply do not have this
advantage. Following through with delivering a
good product to customers is entirely dependent
on you.
 Imagery

• People respond quickly to what they see and

another advantage you have over service sellers is
that you always have something to show your
potential customers. Once you have satisfied
customers, free marketing from them come into
play as they will post to social media photos and
products from you.
Niche

• By being able to target a specific group of

customers, you do not waste precious
resources or money on unsuccessful selling
strategies. In short, by marketing to your
niche, you guarantee yourself success.
Challenges of Marketing
a Product
Up front costs
• Inventory and forecasting the future of your
products is costly no matter how you look at it,
and it is completely necessary.

• You may run the risk of not selling out and

therefore loosing on any profit

• Risks are given when being an entrepreneur, but

costly risks can sink your ship fast.
Gambling with Market strategy
• Any market strategy is a gamble, but you have to
be sure as a product seller that you make your
risks small, because when a marketing strategy
fails, you always take a pretty big financial hit in
the process.
Storage and Manufacturing
• Even once you manage to set up an organized
space for manufacturing and storing your
inventory, the beginning is always tough.

• Planning for costs on a successful bussiness to

widen your space can be difficult and sometimes
success comes along faster than we expected.
Marketing a Service

intangibility inseparability

variability perishability
Special characteristics of
Services Marketing
Seasonality and demand change
• Different seasons of the year
• Different months of the year
• Different times of the week
• Different times of the day
Intangibility
• Cannot be seen or touched, products need to be
experienced.

• Marketing intangibles create issues for the

service provider. The challenge for marketers is
how to supply information in a way which will
encourage customers to select their offer.
Perishability
• Unlike physical products which can be stored in
warehouses and can be used for the future,
services cannot.

• The challenge here is how to handle the services

(stock) with a fluctuating demand pattern.
Inseparability
• Customers have to be present to consume the
hospitality product.

Ways to manage the dilemmas of inseparability:

• Ensuring that customer section are harmonious
• Ensuring the operations system is suitable for the
market demand that is proposed.
• Embracing booking policies that are suitable
• Arranging powerful queuing systems
• Training staff efficiently.
Variability
• Human interactions cannot be standardized, and
thus it really is hopeless for service companies to
deliver and entirely non-changeable experience.

• The difficulties arising out of variability is

considerable.
Interdependence
• Products of the service industry is interdependent
on each other.

• Destination marketing organizations work closely

together with tourism authorities and local
government to promote demand for tourism in
their own particular area.
Supply exceeds demand
• The hospitality industry is frequently described as
fragmented industry with low barriers to entry.

• When supply exceeds demand the competitive

environment becomes more extreme, and price
competition can affect all companies’
profitableness.
High fixed costs
• Hospitality businesses are labor, capital and
energy intensive.

• The costs don’t change, they’re fixed regardless

of the number of customers using the
assumptions.
Benefits of Marketing a
Service
Exponentially lower costs
• With no materials needed to be made or
preordered to create a stock, selling a service
slashes all the financial investment associated
with physical goods by a substantial amount.
Customization
• In the service industry, you can customize
services specifically to what your customers want
or need.

• Customizing the specific services to the market

trend’s needs ensures that you can also market
your services at a price point that fits your own
business needs and at the same time, models the
pricing that customers pay.
Competitive set upperhand
• For service sellers, staying competitive
particularly within pricing is much easier to do
than it is for product sellers, as your upfront
physical costs are slim to none.

• This allows you to offer any type of service.

Word of mouth & Repeat customers
• Word of mouth has always been and still is
possibly the strongest way of marketing there is
in this world and securing yourself a handful of
happy, repeat customers is a sure ball to win.

• Satisfied repeating customers will be your bread

and butter as a foundation for a successful brand.
Limitless reach
• There are no bounds when it comes to where or
who your customers are.

• With the advancement of today’s technology, you

can sell anything to anyone at any time of the
day.
Challenges of Marketing
a Service
Marketing the Intangible – trust
• When you offer something that no one can touch,
you have to market an idea, a rapport, and lots of
times, free work in the form of preliminary, “good
faith” amount of time.
The taboo of New
• The virtual newness od the entire concept. While
selling services is without a doubt gaining
momentum now, it can still take potential
customers a bit to warm up the idea.

• This is quite a big challenge when trying to

market a service, as the whole idea of selling a
service in itself can really be against you in the
first place.
Returns
• You cannot please everyone. However, when you
are selling a service opposed to a product, you
are putting in time and energy into something on
an intellectual level.

• If the customer is not satisfied, you will not be

able to get your time and energy back.
Niche
• We can say that specifically the entrepreneurs
are our niche, but that world has no face, name or
age. Again, it is the whole world that you are
selling to.

• When you have no niche to focus on, it becomes

increasingly difficult to come up with an effective
market strategy, as you have no specific sector to
target.
A bad rap
• When selling an invisible service, you will run into
plenty of “haters” who completely disregard your
services by using general and quite damaging
labels.

• You will have to anticipate this not only early on in

your service business ventures, but throughout its
lifespan.
Diminishing demand
• Everything has a shelf life, and unlike product
sellers, restocking a new service on that shelf is
not so easy.

• If you cannot adapt, then your business will not

survive.