Target segment
We can point out the target segment of Caravella hotel is the people who are businessman, mostly foreigners with high salary (>3000 USD) and will stay in the hotel from 1 to 3 days. They travelled a lot and have their high requirement and deserved to have the best service during their stay.
Marketing mix analysis of Caravelle hotel based on the 7Ps’ model
Product – Service in the hotel
Being one of the best hotels in Vietnam, nowadays, Caravelle is one of the best 25 hotels in Asia, so, what makes the fame and truth in Caravelle from their customers? The answer would be their fully perfect service with the most modern and convenient for the customers during their stay.
The target segment of Caravelle is the group of people who can pay for the product but they have a high requirement, then the quality of service must be outstanding.
Caravelle divides their products into 2 groups: the first one is “VIP rooms” on Signature floors (for VIPs) and the other one is “Deluxe rooms” (not on the Signature floors, for normal businessman). These 2 types of rooms can adapt basic requirements that are: secure for resting, working and entertaining with some similar necessary services:
- Securities guard 24/24
- Rooms services 24/24
- High-standard laundry service
Customers not only enjoy direct services when renting a room but also can use other services like gym, swimming pool, conference room (for 700 guests at the same time).
Prices
Time for checking in is 14:00 (2pm) and checking out is 12:00. The price is in the USD with 5% service fee and 10% of VAT. Extra fees are between $45 and $75.
Places – all places and channels that are related to the hotel.
19 Cong Truong Lam Son, District no.1, Ho Chi Minh city
The real location of the hotel has an irreplaceable in distribution channels, this is where customers book their rooms, and this is also the only place where they can use those services provided by the hotel. Therefore, a good location can catch customers’ attention and help them with their decision.
The hotel located right in the central of Ho Chi Minh city – the biggest city of Vietnam with many historical sites, shopping malls, bars, clubs, economic and trading centers of this city, which is just 8km from the Tan Son Nhat International airport. Therefore, during their stay in Caravelle, customers can be satisfied with all needs from shopping, entertaining, travelling or working.
Website
Website is where customers can book their rooms quickly and convenient, therefore, the design of website must attractive and friendly with the user is one of the most important factors.
The website of Caravelle has 3 languages for their main customers: English, Vietnamese and Japanese. Moreover, the appearance and content of website was rated as 5/10 by Google based on the convenience and effectively for the user.
Social network
Facebook and Twitter are two of most popular social networks in Vietnam and all over the world. Therefore, Caravelle used them as a channel to exchange information with their consumers. By using this way, costumer can find news about the hotels as well as giving their feedbacks about for the service at the hotel.
Promotion
Commercial on media networks
One of the most effect tools to bring the hotel’s image closer to people in the society both in Vietnam and all over the world is using online marketing. By appearing on all websites, blogs or forums about travel and tourism, as well as online booking pages (for examples: thodia.vn, vinaboooking.vn, agoda.vn, etc…) Caravelle is now well-known with either Vietnamese people or foreigners.
Public relation activities
Knowing the psychology of majority when there is a president or celebrity come to stay in one hotel, it means that the hotel has good service and very famous, therefore, Caravelle have been use a lot of relationships, conveniences and service qualities to have many famous customers like president of the US, New Zealand, Chile or celebrities like Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. They also take part in in many activities like the Earth hour, or 3R campaign for a good image of an environmental friendly hotel with excellent services.
Customer relation
Since 2010, the hotel started the customer care program named: “Caravelle Heritage club membership” for their frequent guests and had a lot of participants. After becoming the member of Caravelle Heritage club, those customers can have bunches of benefits from the club like: having checking in time before 11:00 am and the checking out time can be extended until 16:00 (4pm); free domestic calls; free voucher for dinner on their birthdays, etc…
(Carravelle entrance during the Earth hour)
People
Another important “P” in Marketing mix campaign is People. There are 403 employees working in this 5 star hotel under this graph
Similar with other 5 star hotels, hiring and using employees requirements of Caravelle are quite high and tight in order to have the best crew for the best service.
Skills
- Fluent in English
- Good communicating skills, accuracy and enthusiastic
- Dynamic in solving problems.
- Work organizing abilities.
b. Knowledge:
- With the receptionist: Trained about reception skills. Having basic knowledge about accounting, transaction, statistic, marketing and IT skills. Can speak 2 languages (English is compulsory).
- With other departments: Having basic knowledge about the applied job, fluent in English and some other special requirements.
- Knowing about historical sites, tourist attractions, and other landscapes of the city, some other services in and outside of the hotel
- Knowing some customs of other countries (main segment of the hotel)
c. Uniforms:
Uniforms of employees in Caravelle has the modern design of Western Europe and Asian beauty with dark colors for a luxury but welcomed feeling for customers
Customer rating for Caravelle
Deserved for money 8.0
Location 9.5
Employees 8.6
Condition/Cleaness 9.0
Room standard 8.7
Food/Meals 8.4
Physical evidences
The hotel includes 2 blocks (9 floors and 24 floors), looks quite huge right in the middle of Ho Chi Minh city. The space around the Caravelle is quite clear and pretty cool with nice view in front of the Opera house of the city. The surrounding streets are big and clean, therefore visitors can have a walk around the nearby area. The hotel has 2 gates with the main gate on the Lam Son road, with a big parking. Another gate directly leads to the Boutique Lounge of the hotel with many shops.
Rooms are well-designed with a small but opened space, luxury furniture and modern applicants in every room.
The conference rooms’ area has different type of room (based on sizes and facilities)
The eating and entertaining area with restaurants, lobbies, bars, health clubs, spas, swimming pool and casino are ready for serving customers the best product.
Process
Before coming
Customer can book rooms at Caravelle through many channels, like directly at the reception, on the phone, using mail (even email) or fax.
Some rules about check in and check out at Caravelle:
Check in time: at 14:00 (2pm)
Check out time: at 12:00
Customer who comes to the hotel on Friday or Saturday and has 2 nights of staying can extend their staying until 18:00 (6pm).
Coming
The receptionist will check the availability of customer’s booking and fill in the checking form of the hotel, with the information from their passport or national ID card. After that, customers will receive their room number, key and other services’ coupon (breakfast, massage…)
The room attendant will transfer guests’ luggage and them to their room.
During their stay
With the 24/24 service, customers can request at anytime. At the moment, Caravelle is now having these services for their customers:
- International calls
- Postal services
- Spa
- Restaurants
- Information and booking point for other services like restaurants, airline tickets, train tickets, etc…
-Laundry
Room cleaning hour is from 7 to 10 every morning.
Checking out and after leaving
Staffs at the cashier and reception will coordinate together to finish the payment of customers. Caravelle accepts both the cash payment and card payment (American Express, Visa/Mastercard, Dinners Club or JCB, etc…)
After leaving, customers will receive the thank you letter from the hotel.
=> End of the process.
Conclusion and recommendation
After analyzing the marketing activities of Caravelle hotel using the 7Ps’ model, Caravelle is a good hotel based on customers’ rates, physical facilities and services as well as having a professional marketing campaign. They used all 7Ps in their marketing activities and somehow have a lot benefits from these functions.
Hereby, I would like to give some advices for the marketing mix activities of Caravelle hotel.
Product
In order to adapt all requests of target customers, in those rooms with the area are above 60m2, they should have the working area. Caravelle is now concentrating on other factors: like coffee table, kitchen and forget about the working area, while the main segment are business people. It needs to be designed with the high privacy, where they can focus on their works and not being distracted from other facilities like TV or stereo.
Place
Website
With the advantage that the Google page rank of is much higher than other hotels’ website, then they should use this strength and develop it using upgrading and updating information frequently on the website.
On the other hand, Caravelle should synchronize those languages are being used on the website.
Social networks
With the strong development of social networks, Caravelle should remain and develop their social networks’ channels (Facebook fanpage or Twitter account) and pay attention to synchronize the language for their customers.
Promotion
Even the hotel has a big investment in the website () and it can be said that is one of the most successful website about the professional, the hotel is not really focus on promoting activities for the website while one of the most effectively way is using the Google AdWords.
While searching for the keyword “hotel” using , we cannot see Caravelle on the first page, but other competitors like Sotifel, New World or Hotel Continential, etc…
Similarity, while searching for “Hotel in Ho Chi Minh city”, we also could not see Caravelle on the first page, but others competitors.
References
Books:
Armstrong, Gary and Kotler, Philip (2007). Marketing: An Introduction (8th Ed). Pearson Prentice Hall.
Dibb, Sally, Simkin, Lyndon, Pride, William, Ferrell, OC Marketing Concepts & Strategies. Cengage Learning
Articles:
Bayes, Robin. Travel Weekly Australia. 10/7/2011, Issue 170, p15-15. 1/2p.
Rogers, Mark. CARAVELLE HOTEL. Travel Agent. 10/13/2008, Vol. 333 Issue 8, p36-36. 1p.
Website:
Retrieved 1 December 2012
MyVietnam.info. Retrieved 1 December 2012.
. Bsc.com.vn. Retrieved 1 December 2012.
(in Vietnamese). mofahcm. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
Ho Ngoc Anh – BATTM 2012 Page
Number from SmartTravelAsia.Com voting in 2011