INTRODUCTION

Strategy plays a very important place in today business environment. Those organizations without strategic plan are in risk to be taken by those companies that do have one in place.

According to Johnson, G., et al, strategic management is likely to be concern with long-term decisions and direction of the organization, with the core activity of such organization and the way by how the organization can achieve the correct positioning in order to obtain competitive advantage.

The chosen organization to be analyzed by this report has been Travelodge. As a way to fully understand how to implant business strategies and how to differentiate the types of strategy; we will first cover the business context of such organization. We will fully explain their strategic approach and services analysis.


BACKGROUND

In terms of quality Travelodge offers “no frills” standards rooms with all the basics customers need for a good and comfortable night sleep at a cheap price. Its facilities offer an acceptable level of quality and include regular bathrooms, TV, coffe/tea facilities, vending machines and cafe bar (). However, a secret investigation carried out by the bighospitality.co.uk pointed out that the cleanliness standard of its rooms is very faulty, despite of the fact that Travelodge claim to offer a reliable level of quality to its customers.

According to Slack et al, customers will accept a service of a lower specification quality if the price is low. Therefore, customers believe that the quality of Travelodge services is in accordance with their value-based approach, which defines it in terms of cost and price.

Travelodge achieves internal quality by:

Providing employees with an in house four weeks “Sleep Tight” training program in line with its “Sleep Manifesto”, covering sleep issues, noise policies and time-delivery reorganisation ()

Offering competitive salaries, benefits and development opportunities to its staff – fast track management program – ()

Creating “Loco Awards”, prize that rewards employee’s suggestions about operational effectiveness improvement ()

On the other hand, Travelodge facilities and services include standard rooms with king size beds, WiFi, tea/coffee making facilities, rooms for disables – subject to availability-, drinks and snacks vending machines, bar cafe with breakfast and evening meals such burgers and pizzas, drinks, and in few occasions meeting facilities. Moreover, they are normally located close to external facilities such as public parking, as well as close to amenities such as shops and restaurants, within major business routes, cities and airports ()

Basics such as toiletries, dryers, bath maths or teapot are not provided and also, the amounts of towels are limited. However these are available at the reception if needed.

Travelodge also offers a dependable website for the booking of its rooms and mobile booking services. Rooms are available for booking 12 months in advance. Their online services count for a 87% of bookings, therefore they are highly dependable of their website. In order to focus on their core strategy, they outsource the management of its website to ATENDA. This supplier has enabled Travelodge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week availability and support of its website (Atenda.net)  

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They also offer extra services such as breakfast, dinner, WIFI or late check out, both online and face to face, in order to meet customer’s expectation. Therefore, as it can be seen, they are highly aware of customer´s particularities.

In order to raise flexibility of their services among customers, there is the possibility to book flexible rooms that may be cancelled or amended until the date of arrival with not additional charges. Moreover, the company also operates a relocation policy; thus if a room is unavailable on arrival they will either provide a room in another hotel or the ...

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