Customer-Preferred Services at Sapphire Hotel: Marketing Research

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Background of the study

My research into trying to answer the question of what makes a potential hotel guest choose to stay or not stay at one of the Sapphire hotels started with finding out as much as possible from previous information what product attributes are sought by customers when choosing their accommodation.

First, the internal records of every sapphire hotel were an important starting point. Relevant data included the final books of entry for the last five years this being the balance sheet and profit and loss account. We then had a look at the day and month receipts of the various facilities such as the gym, information center, swimming pool, child care centers as well as the bills paid for additional services this being room service, laundry and limousine services. The day receipts were able to give a much clearer picture of the customer preferences for the year and any changes from season or any other factor including change of taste and fashion over the years.

Most significant though was the information we were able to analyze the customer database. Started two years ago has details of the characteristics and transactions of the customer detailing age, gender, preferences, residential address, marital status and comments or complaints by them. This gave us a individual picture of customers’ demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Additionally, government and state publications, periodicals and journals gave us additional information on population trends of different cities where we have hotels. Specific publications and past research studies on the tourism and hotel industry specifically with regard to customer preferences were also scrutinized. In order to find out more about our competitors, we decided to make use of internet resources specifically company websites taking note of their offerings for clients. Additionally internet data research companies provided relevant information relating to business and demography. Most interesting was the research website hotelbizclips.com that provides recent newspapers, magazines, reports and research papers with significant information on customer behavior and future trends.

In making an assessment of the secondary data that we collected we discovered a valuable source of new ideas that is become a prerequisite to collecting primary data for our research. It helped us define the problem and provided a better understanding of the problem.

The benefit of secondary data is that it offered savings or cost for it would have been very expensive to collect all this data. It was also a saving on time for it brought information from a wide area and from different sources. The information we were able to get was also accurate and reliable because a lot of it was from the government and research from reputable organizations. Yet the secondary data collected has its limitations by definition. It was collected from the past for a purpose other than the current research hence the problem of fit will occur.

Problem statement

To identify ways in which we can anticipate and have in place customer-preferred services and products at our hotel chain. Sapphire hotels wish to carry out business expansion and they have targeted to increase market but they have to know the important service. They have been growing market wise in the recent past, therefore at the moment the problem is which market segment that will increase revenue so that they can concentrate on it.

Research questions

What aspect of the current service are guests most pleased about and which are the most dissatisfied with?
What type of guest use the various services?
What benefits do guests seek from our leisure and premium services?
How much does the presence or absence of these services affect their decision to stay or not to stay?

Methods of data collection and measurement

Having reviewed the information that already exists we will use our present knowledge as a starting point to the search for new information. This enables further research on those areas that will provide benefits data. We should also ask ourselves the crunch question’ what would happen without the information to convince ourselves whether or not the research is valid.

Qualitative research

The collection of primary data on customer preferences at the Sapphire Hotel will start with a qualitative research so that we may have a clear idea about the marketing problem that we may have a clear idea about the marketing problem. A clearer design of a structure study will enable us to bring out a representative and quantifiable result.

Again we are able to get a basic feel of the problem and understanding of its depth before going ahead with the more analytical portion of the study.

Examples include individual and group interviews, case studies and observation. Quantitative research will give us a view of the range and complexity of hotel visitors detailing their activities and concerns. Things that cannot be directly observed and measured such as feelings thoughts and behaviors that took place in the past can only be obtained through qualitative research methods.

The sampled customers will be contacted through observations and the filing of a questionnaire. Employees and the management interview will be face-to-face interviews and some of them will be required to fill a questionnaire.

Quantitative research

The survey we intend to conduct has a principal advantage is that we will be able to collect a lot of data about an individual at one time. It is also versatile and can be employed in all kinds of settings and in any location. It is also easily used among different sectors from teenagers, young mothers and old-age pensioners. Surveys can be adapted to any research objectives, they will be designed to cover a wide variety of topics and subjects ranging from room service, customer comments on food or the gym.

This is often a search for information on attitudes of guests and potential guests towards our offerings.

The choice of data collection method may be personal interview, telephone interview, mail survey or email survey. Interviews may have the respondent and interviewer. Indirect contact as in the personal interview. This method is costly and is affected by the environment (mood of the respondent or interviewer, the time and the place) the advantage of personal interview is that it has a high response rate as compared to other methods of research.

When the fieldwork is complete and all data is collected they need to be tabulated and analyzed to obtain accurate and reliable information. This involves sorting the data into categories, counting and summarizing. Attitude measurement enables us to predict how guests will behave and also explain what they have done. An example of an attitude measurement method we intend to use is the Likert scale.

Designing the questionnaire

In designing the questionnaires a number of guidelines are followed;

Determine the kind of information required to carry the research. This is essentials it contains the objectives of the research.

Determine method of data collection.

Determine the nature of questions that is the contents of all questions.

Decide how to rephrase the questions.

Define the problem to address by the research.

Decide on the sequence of the questions and layout.

Sample questionnaire

Questionnaire asked to employees

The rationale behind this questionnaire is to collect data relating to the nature of the international hospitality industry, its market segment and its services. All data collected will be analyzed and used in the Sapphire hotels.

Furthermore, all data gathered will be kept confidential.

Questions: employees

How long have you been employed at the company?
What is your job function?
What tasks do you perform in carrying out your job function?
On average, how many customers do you interact with daily?
What type of services do travelers usually demand most throughout the year?
What market segments most demand swimming pool services, childcare services, catering, accommodation and residential?
What information to you give to customers regularly?
What problems do you encounter when serving customers?
On average, what is the total number of sales transactions you record on a daily basis?
Why do you usually take so long to transfer the sales information?
Do you encounter any problems in serving a customer using the current products?
What other products and services are sorts for customers which you do not have?
How long does it normally take to prepare for a customer?
What type of skills to you has?

The questionnaire asked to the customers

The rationale behind this questionnaire is to accumulate data relating to the customer views and opinions.

Questions: customers

How long have you been a customer?
Why do you prefer to patronize the hotel?
How often do you patronize the restaurant?
What type of products and services do you usually prefer?
What brand of products do you demand the most?
What brands do you want to be added to the offering of the company?
How effective and efficient is the management of the company?
Do you get the value for your money?

Sampling design techniques

A preliminary study will be carried out so as to formulate a sampling frame from where a sample will be selected. This will consist of the number of customers who visit the restaurant, the books of account, the website of other restaurants, the reasons why the restaurant is not performing very well. Systematic random sampling will be used to select the sample which will give at least 80% of the population.

Sampling is a limited number taken from a large group in order to test and analyze on the assumption that the sample will represent the whole group. We decided to take a sample from the airport entrance and the market centers as well as a specific sample of resident guests of sapphire hotels. This sample has to be well representative of hotel guests in major cities.

In selecting the sample, we identified our target population which was visitors to various cities and the best way to get to them before they mix with the general population was in the airport. The three main ways of selecting the sample were random sampling, quota sampling and judgment sampling.

The best-known method being random, sampling was our choice. It has two characteristics that make it very useful being that it is possible to calculate the levels of confidence and limits of accuracy. For the purpose of our study, we further used an alternative sampling design known as stratified random sampling. Here the universe or population is further subdivided into groups that are mutually exclusive but together include all items of the universe and secondly a simple random sample is chosen from each group.

The first step in drawing our random sample was to make a list of all members of the population also known as a sampling frame. We then decided to stratify our sample by geographical regions taking into account of population density. To improve the accuracy of the sample we further stratified the sample according to age, gender, social class and income levels.

Because we had different levels of interest in the views of members of all subgroups focusing mostly on business travelers. We used weighting as a means of achieving this enabling us to reduce the number of respondents from a large group and the results thereof were weighted up by this factor.

Limitation of the Study

This market research has certain constraints that will affect the results. This includes:

Time factor will render certain aspects not to be investigated in details because of the deadline period to finish this research.
The study assumes that effective and efficient marketing strategies are employed in identifying the market segments
My study also assumes that the many strategies that are applied by Multinationals and they are geared towards increasing market share and remain competitive.
The researcher is a student, he will be researching with the trust that managements will co-operate.
The research will be carried out by a full-time student thus having enough time for coverage of the topic.

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