Market Research - Hotel

Marketing Research Assignment

Executive Summary

This report concluded that customers travelled as couple and families are most satisfied with the service they were offered whereas business travellers find the hotel average. Specifically, amenities along the service of reception staff have been the major issues leading to customer’s dissatisfactory. The recommendation for the client’s hotel would be to provide professional customer services training to the staffs. Apart from that, electronic key system must be maintained and upgraded to prevent future complications. To remain highly competitive, the hotel must modernise and provide a wider range of hotel and room amenities to increase room values.  

Table of Contents

Executive Summary        2

Hotel Context        4

Research objectives, method and sample        5

Objective        5

Data Collection Methodology        5

Sampling Techniques        5

Quantitative Section        6

Demographic information respondents        6

Analysis for the criteria        6

Qualitative section        9

Coding Frame        9

Analysis        9

Recommendations        10

Appendices        11

Appendix A: TripAdvisor Hotel Links        11

Appendix B: Coding Frames        12

Hotel Context

The client hotel is The Kimpton Muse Hotel, whereas the competitor hotel is The Trump Soho Hotel. They are both 3-stars rated hotel located in the Midtown Manhattan of New York City, United States. Among this region there are another 114 luxury 3 star hotels, as shown in Figure 1, therefore this area is competitive for the hospitality industry. Manhattan is the most luxurious part of New York City, where big names attraction such as the Central Park and the Empire State Building is located. Not only this area is popular for tourist because of the famous venues, but it is very well known for business travellers to visit the area as many large multinational organisations are situated in the busy neighbourhood of Manhattan.  

[pic 1]

Figure 1: 4 Stars Hotel in New York (Source: TripAdvisor)

Research objectives, method and sample

Objective

This report analyses the current operations and its impact on customers from client hotel. The qualitative and quantitative data collected from TripAdvisor website would be analysed and transform to useful information which would be used to give the client hotel marketing recommendations. This will help Kimpton Muse Hotel increase their competitive advantages against the competitors. The objectives for this research are as following:

• Identify the main issues for customers’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction
• Identify the service rating difference between the client and competitor’s hotel
• Create strategies for client’s hotel to improve overall quality of service.

Data Collection Methodology

This report uses both quantitative and qualitative secondary data collected from TripAdvisor website and this method was used for both client and the competitor. This data is the actual review of customers sharing their experience when using both hotels’ services. By linking both quantitative and qualitative data, the information gathered will more balanced by eliminating the limitations from using only one type of data. Hence, the evaluation from the analysis will be more accurate and improved.  

Sampling Techniques

The sampling technique used for gathering quantitative data during this research was the systematic sampling. Meaning that among a large amount reviews, one random review was picked as a starting point and then subsequent reviews were picked using a constant interval between review taken. In this case, the total amounts of reviews were 3000, hence with a sample size of 100, every 30th review was selected. However, for the accuracy of the analysis in this report, only reviews with a set of more than 4 criteria rating was chose.

From the 100 samples taken for the quantitative data, 25 of those were selected for the qualitative data. The sampling technique used for qualitative data was purposeful sampling, therefore, trip types were classed into 2 purposes: Leisure and Business. Leisure purpose included couple, friends and family, whilst solo and business reviews were classed as Business purpose. 18 samples were taken for leisure because it included a more types of trip and 17 were selected for business purpose. Figure 2 below shows the data sample chose.

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Figure 2: Qualitative Data Sample

Quantitative Section

Demographic information respondents

Figure 3 presented the demographic information of respondents in relation to the types of trip. This figure shows that most of the respondents had their stay with family (40%), 23% were business travellers, another 23% of the visits were from couples, following by travellers with friends, accounting for 16% and only 8% of the respondents travelled solo.

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Figure 3: The demographic information of respondents – types of trips

Analysis for the criteria

Under each review, there are six criteria for customers to rate their stay. These include value, location, sleep quality, rooms, cleanliness and service. Below will be the comparison for each criterion between the client and the competitor using average criteria rating in Figure 4 and standard deviation for each criterion in Figure 5.

Hotel Value

According to the research, client hotel has a slightly lower value of 3.12 comparing to the competitor. However, the standard deviation is higher, meaning that the data points are spread over a wider range of value, as the lowest point was rated at 2 whilst competitor’s lowest point was 3. Furthermore, not many correspondents rated the value.

Location

As previously mentioned, location was rated the highest (over 4.5) for both hotels. The result show that the average rating was very familiar, this is because the distance between the hotels was just 1.3 km. It was mainly rated by respondents that travelled for leisure and since many attractions were nearby, the ratings were unsurprisingly high.

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