Introduction

Describe about the Marketing Plan of Travelodge?

Introduction

Travelodge was founded in the year 1985 and has currently become the biggest and independent hotel chain throughout the United Kingdom as it possesses more than 560 hotels and over 40,000 rooms diversified across Ireland, Spain, and England. The entire hotel chain provides employment to more than 11,000 people across maintenance, guest services, and construction services (Travelodge 2021). Travelodge has extensive expertise in offering training initiatives and career support in various hospitality aspects too. One of the primary objectives of the hotel is to offer accommodation services to its clients that are competitively priced in nature. The hotel takes pride in itself as it pursues ambitious development initiatives and the same can be witnessed with its expectations of inaugurating new 150 sites in the upcoming eight years and making investments of more than £100 million for updating their overall infrastructure. It must be noted that the hotel currently has a debt of £1 billion that had resulted in the disposal of its 49 sites, thereby reducing the debt burden to £350 million (Travelodge 2021).

Marketing plan

In relation to the marketing environment of Travelodge, there are various aspects that must be given due consideration. Firstly, the staff remuneration is a powerful legal factor that plays a key role in contributing towards the final prices of rooms. The reason behind this can be attributed to the fact that the hotel group heavily depends on its 11,000 employees so that the consumers can be taken due care of and all the 560 branches can be operated effectively. Further, minimum training and wages of the staff on significant laws like Credit Card Order 1990 and Data Protection Act 1998 also comes at a price. These prices can be influenced and can maximize than some customers are ready to expend that becomes a threat to development.

Travelodge has also invested in few latest technologies like websites and applications. Bookings, payments, and reservations can be easily made through such apps and websites. This provides an opportunity to align with the current market trend. There are various internal environment factors that positively influence the organization and vice-versa. Factors like objectives, mission, physical and human resources, technological abilities, etc can easily affect an organization (Apple Store Preview 2018). Some of these factors also affect the business operations of Travelodge like technological abilities and organizational resources. Travelodge employs more than 11,000 employees to cater the needs of their clients and rigorously trains them with assistance to their career development and personal development objectives. This can be considered as a strength because such business model necessitates maximum interactions with fellow humans. Further, some front-line roles comprise of maintenance, support and construction. Moreover, £100 million was also allocated to the upgradation of more than 30,000 rooms that brought more than 40,000 new king size beds in order to align with the current market trends. This paves a path for Travelodge to stay one step ahead of its rivals (Travelodge 2021).

In terms of technological abilities, the IOS mobile app of Travelodge is sub-standard in nature and therefore, has not attained sufficient attention from the development team. Nevertheless, there are very low reviews on the app, which is not a good indicator (Apple Store Preview 2018). Hence, this can be considered as a weakness as it creates opportunities for rivals to fill the gap because more than two-third of all reservations and bookings are done online.

Marketing strategies

Marketing strategies at Travelodge also plays a key role in describing its marketing plan. For instance, positioning concept can be explained as how a service or product can be differentiated from that of other rivals in the eyes of a consumer (Kotler, Armstrong & Opresnik 2018). This comprises of identification of target market, how to reach them, and what are they purchasing from the stores, who are the prime rivals, etc. These approaches include but are not restricted to product pricing and quality approach. Nevertheless, through this, a brand can associate itself with the product’s quality category, thereby resulting into maximization of prices to the cover the cost of better quality of such service or product. There can be mass categories of products wherein the organization commits to the least standard of quality for a lesser price.

In relation to product pricing approach, Travelodge primarily utilizes such measure by providing competitive prices of £5 per room throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom. Therefore, positioning is very crucial as it assists Travelodge to ascertain which market niche must be filled. Overall, product quality approach is more beneficial for Travelodge because of the prevalence of financial resources. For instance, recently, £100 million was allocated by it towards the modernisation programme. Further, there are published financials that depicts the capability of Travelodge to develop its market. Another factor is the credibility attained since the year 1985 when the first outlet of Travelodge was opened at Barton, England. The next factor is the market position wherein being the largest hotel brand in the UK, the consumers can attain a fresh category of premium services and products under the brand Travelodge Pro. The present targeting aspect can continue to remain stagnant targeting the consumers seeking value with premium category targeting the more noticeable that want premium five-star hotel services and also ready to expend high prices for the same. Thus, this can assist the hotel in establishing a below line marketing strategy that is required to be implemented for every segment and one holistic for value and premium customers.

Considering the aforesaid discussion, it can be said that Travelodge did not always pursue a smooth ride as it had massive levels of debt within its organizational structure. This occurred in the year 2008 when the capital markets froze. Around 49 sites had to be liquidated so that the overall debt burden could be reduced to around £350 million from £1 billion. This was under the Dubai ownership and after the same was transferred to Goldman Sachs, the present CEO and head of Singapore was hired. This new and fresh management was driven by a mission to turn the table around by positioning an effective management team and investing £100 million so that the hotel chain can be modernized. In the year 2017, a growth of seventeen percent was witnessed that report a figure of £500 million that was greater than the twelve percent average in the entire UK industry. This made Travelodge the fastest growing and developing hotel chain in the entire market. This illustrates its positioning strategy that continued to remain targeted towards the product pricing approach. However, Travelodge needs to concentrate on various environmental factors like technological abilities related to its IOS mobile app that has failed to match up to the expectations of the market users.

References

Apple Store Preview (2018) ‘Travelodge Hotels iOS Mobile App’ Retrieved from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/travelodge-hotels/id978132900 (Accessed: 8 December 2018

Kotler, P., Armstrong, G. with Opresnik, M. O. (2018) Principles of Marketing. 17th ed. London: Pearson Education

The Telegraph (2018) ‘Travelodge has ‘complete makeover’ as it focuses on families and businesses. Retrieved from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/leisur e/11414356/Travelodge-has-complete-makeover-as-it-focuses-on-families-andbusiness.html

Travelodge. (2021) About. Retrieved from: https://www.travelodge.co.uk/