Strategic Planning In The Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

Strategic Planning In The Hospitality Industry Tourism attemptThe rapid development in the cordial reception industry which has lead to importance of strategical planning required in order the firms can have a steady rise in the industry. The life standards of people have been emendd due to globalisation which in deed contribute to the development of the cordial reception industry. The variegation was a most important priority of the firms in order to utilise the high profiled customer base which they possessed .It is easy to target the customers who are in your door step and this lead to various formulation of strategic plans to target them.Key words hospitality, strategic planningStrategic planning is an organization instal work of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on solelyocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various argumentation analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysi s (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opport unities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors) and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatics, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).Strategic planning is the official consideration of an organizations hereafter course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questionsWhat do we do?For whom do we do it?How do we excel?Thehospitality industryconsists of broad category of fields within the service industry that includeslodging,restaurants,event planning,theme parks,transportation,cruise line, and additional fields within the tourism industry. The hospitality industry is a several billion dollar industry that mostly depends on the availability of leisure time and disposable income. A hospitality unit such as a restaurant, hotel, or even an amusement park consists of multiple group s such as facility maintenance, direct operations (servers,housekeepers, porters, kitchen workers,bartenders, etc.), management, tradeing, and human resources.The hospitality industry includes a wide range of organizations offering fodder service and accommodation. The hospitality industry is divided into sectors according to the skill- dictateds required for the work involved. Sectors include accommodation, food and beverage, meeting and events, gaming, entertainment and recreation, tourism services, and visitor data. (wikepedia n.d.)Strategic planning for the hospitality industry(1) The increasing popularity of strategic planning in recent times is attributed to accelerating changes in industries and economies and increasing global competition.(2) The rapid development of strategic-planning that executives find useful. Firms that engage in strategic planning tend to have higher performance.(3) A recent fill of hotels in the United Kingdom found that business performance was po sitively associated with the thoroughness, sophistication, participation, and formality of strategic-planning playes.(4) Strategic analysis the systematic investigation of a firm and its environs is the foundation of the strategic management do by.strategic PLANNING IN JACK IN THE BOX rascal in the Box recently announced plans to fall in 100 to 150 restaurants combined with convenience stores over the next five years.The stores pass on feature full-size restaurants and also carry on gasoline and other regular convenience store items such as bread and milk. How did Jack in the Box arrive at this decision? According to the companys CEO, Bob Nugent, an analysis of the convenience-store market indicated that there was plenty of opportunity, primarily because no individual company dominates. The largest player in the convenience-store industry which dominated the market, 7-Eleven, Inc., controls slightly over 4 percent of the market. par this to fast foods, where McDonalds contro ls 43 percent of the market and Jack in the Box a mere 4.6 percent. Nugent also justifies his decision on the basis of research which indicates that a convenience-store customer is twice as the likely to eat fast food as a non-convenience-store customer.(5) Strategic analysis can provide excellent information on which to base long-range decisions such as this one. familiarity is one of the most important competitive weapons a firm can possess.(6) As the Jack in the Box example illustrates, detailed knowledge about a firm and its environment can be used to generate new creative thinkers for businessand to evaluate the feasibility of ideas before they are actually implemented. Strategic analysis also allows a firms managers to become more aware of the companys strengths and weaknesses and to understand the reasons behind successes and failures. Knowledge about the competitive environment can help to anticipate and plan for changes and predict how competitors or other stakeholders su ch as customers or suppliers will do to new strategies or other organizational activities. Strategic analysis can open up channels of communication between high-level managers and subordinates, allowing them to share ideas and perspectives. The participative process will help subordinates to accept changes more readily after decisions are made. (Harrison April, 2003)STRATEGIC PLANS AT FelCor LODGING TRUSTFor FelCor Lodging Trust, one of the largest hotel real body politic investment trusts (REITs) in the United States, a strategic planning exercise led the company to rethink its strategy. Calling itself the New FelCor, the firm has made spectacular steps toward repositioning itself. The firm business strategy is to dispose of nonstrategic hotels, including all of its Holi daylight Inn Hotels located in secondary and tertiary markets. After the sale, it will have lower exposure to markets with low barriers to entry.Other elements of the new business strategy are(1) To acquire ho tels in high barrier to entry markets(2) To improve the competitive positioning of core hotels by dint of aggressive asset management and the judicious application of capital in the industry(3) To pay defeat debt through a combination of operational cash flow and the sale of nonstrategic hotels. The company will become a lower leveraged company with a stronger and fully renovated portfolio of hotels.STRATEGIC THINKING AT STARWOODWhen Starwood thought of expanding their business to a field which is relevant and easy to attract customers .They in hotel industry and had a close association with the extravagance segment customers so they thought Expansion through Diversification strategy in order use their same luxury customer base to sell their newly introduced Heavenly Bed .Westin Hotels Resorts, with 169 hotels and resorts in more than 31 countries and territories, is owned by Starwood Hotels Resorts Worldwide, IncThe Heavenly Bed, first launched by the Westin brand of St arwood Hotels Resorts, has transformed the retire, a prefatorial feature of any hotel room, into a luxurious object of desire, enhancing the revenues of the chain and leaving many hotel operators to follow suit with copycat linens and custom bedding of their own.The strategic process at Starwood began with consumer analysis and product testing. First, Westin conducted a study involving 600 business executives who travel frequently. The results showed that 84 percent said a luxurious bed would make a hotel room more attractive to them to enjoy the comfort. What is more, 63 percent said a good night sleep is the most important service a hotel can provide. Half of those surveyed said they sleep worse in hotels than at home. After testing 50 beds from 35 lodging chains, Westin developed its prototype all white Heavenly Bed with a custom designed pillow top mattress, goose down comforters, five pillows, and three crisp sheets ranging in narration count from 180 to 250.Once the pro duct was designed and tested, the firm introduced the bed with a carefully planned marketing strategy areUSA at once ran a story on the front page of its business section.The same day, 20 pristine white Heavenly Beds lined Wall Street up to the New York Stock Exchange in New York City.Inside the Stock Exchange, Barry Sternlicht, the then Chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels Resorts rang the opening bell and threw out hats proclaiming, Work like the devil Sleep like an angel.Meanwhile, at New York Grand Central Station, 20 more beds graced one of the rotundas there, and commuters disembarking the trains were invited to try them out.Similar events were staged the same day at 38 locations across the United States, tailored to each city.Savannahs event featured a bed floating on a barge down the river with a landing skydiver. Seattle s event took place atop the Space Needle.To reinforce the message, a concurrent advertising campaign asked, Whos the best in bed?AN EMERGING RETAIL STRATEG Y FOR THE HEAVENLY BEDIn the early stages of introducing the heavenly bed .In the first week of launching the Westin Heavenly Bed, 32 guests were interest to buy the bed. A light bulb went on. Westin executives put order cards with a toll free number in every room. They started placing catalogs by bedsides and desks and set up a web site. By June of 2004, Westin had sold 20,000 pillows $ 75 for the king sized version and 3,500 bed/bedding combos, at $ 2,965 each, enough to spread the idea throughout Starwood, with the Sheraton, St. Regis, and W lines all turning into retailers. The unanticipated success of the Heavenly Bed has spawned a new business companies that help hotels run their retail arms. Boxport, a spin off of San Francisco based hotel procurer Higgins Purchasing Group, operates web sites and catalogs for several chains that now sell bedding.In order to determine where it is going, the organization take to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wan ts to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the strategic plan.It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will rise up in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the strategic plan have to be a hindquarters strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.