Concept

The name ‘Hotel’ was derived from a Latin word called “Hospitium's”. The earlier hospitality involved accommodation these come to be known as "bins" which booked after by in keeps. In Britain these were called "Entertainment House". As people began mostly from place-to-place the hotel industry began growing. In New York "City Hotel" was the first hotel to house an elevate thus the trend changed from on ordinary husband establishment to a more organized booking system. 

Present Trends

The trend is the industry in classification closely under the basis of advancement in technology, marketing and sales, financial and the development is food and cuisine trends. The hotel industry is now concentrating as a segmentation as the market by contain certain types as customers which focuses as settle that enter exclusively for them, the concept as budget have is an upcoming one in India. The hotelier would like to offer a reasonable amount of good facilities after condition price and attention is a home way from home situation. 

Today, the hotel includes is making a reasonable programme in both public and private sectors. Independent chains are “The Taj”. The top has gives a new look to the hotel ring in India. Deluxe hotel might home attached very high degree of efficiency is international standard in catering services.

Types of Hotels

1. Boutique Hotels

“Boutique Hotel” is a term originating in North America to describe intimate, usually luxurious or quirky hotel environments. Boutique hotels differentiate themselves from larger chain or branded hotels by providing an exceptional and personalized level of accommodation, services and facilities. 

Boutique hotels are furnished in a theme, stylish and/or in an aspiring manner. Although usually considerably smaller than a mainstream hotel (ranging from 3 to 100 guest rooms) boutique hotels are generally fitted with telephone and wi-fi internet connections, honesty bars and often cable/pay TV. Guest services are attended to by 24-hour hotel staff. Many boutique hotels have on site dining facilities, and the majority offer bars and lounges which may also be open to the general public. 

Of the total travel market a small percentage are discerning travelers, who place a high importance on privacy, luxury and service delivery. As this market is typically corporate travelers, the market segment is non-seasonal, high-yielding and repeat, and therefore one which boutique hotel operators target as their primary source of income. 

2. Unusual Hotels

Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dent of unusual features of the lodging and/or its immediate environment: 

a. Tree House Hotels

Some hotels, such as the Costa Rica Tree House in the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, or Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya, are built with living trees as structural elements, making them treehouses The Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil is in the middle of the Amazon, on the Rio Negro. Bill Gates even invested and had a suite built there with satellite internet/phone. Another hotel with tree-house units is Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey 

b. Cave Hotels

Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia and the Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcon (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground. 

c. Capsule Hotels

Capsule Hotels are a type of economical hotels that are quite common in Japan.

d. Ice hotel

Ice hotels, such as the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, melt every spring and are rebuilt out of

ice and snow each winter. 

e. Snow Hotels

The Mammut Snow Hotel in Finland is located within the walls of the Kemi snow castle, which is the biggest in the world. It includes The Mammut Snow Hotel, The Castle Courtyard, The Snow Restaurant and a chapel for weddings, etc. Its furnishings and its decorations, such as sculptures, are made of snow and ice. There is snow accommodation also in Lainio Snow Hotel in Lapland (near Ylläs), Finland.

f. Garden Hotels

Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, includes Gravetye Manor, the home of William Robinson and Cliveden, designed by Charles Barry with a rose garden by Geoffrey Jellicoe.

g. Underwater Hotels

As of 2005, the only hotel with an underwater room that can be reached without Scuba diving is Utter Inn in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. It only has one room, however, and Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida, which requires scuba diving, is not much bigger.

Hydropolis is an ambitious project to build a luxury hotel in Dubai, UAE, with 220 suites, all on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, 20 metres (66 feet) below the surface. Its architecture will feature two domes that break the surface and an underwater train tunnel, all made of transparent materials such as glass and acrylic. 

3. Other Usual Hotels

• Residential

• Commercial

• Resort 

• International

• Floating

• On basis of standards and control (Approved, unapproved by Dept. of Tourism)

• On basis of stars (Facilities, quality, luxury aspects) 

Marketing Mix 

Product

While formulating the product mix for the hotel services, it is essential that catering management, restaurant and cafeteria management, management of bedrooms, management of conventional halls

are given due weight-age. The boarding services are considered to be an important part of product mix. In addition, the lodging services also become significant. Here it is essential that facilities like light, water, electricity, ventilation, entertainment, sanitation arrangement of bed, etc., are available to the guests. While formulating the product mix, the hotel organizations are required to make possible a fair mix of core and peripheral services. We can't deny the fact that as and when we talk about the services of hotel industry, our focus is on the tourism industry because from there we get profitable business. In addition, the industries and their executives also divert our attention since they help us substantially in getting the business. If we want to project our image as a leader, we have no option but to make the ways for innovation. We need broad-based information related to the local community vis-a-vis the foreign and domestic tourists. 

In addition, the information regarding the facilities available in the hotel would be related to both such as areas producing revenue and areas not generating profitable financial returns. The information regarding the details of competition are also to be collected regarding the various facilities made available in a hotel including the prices, profile of potential customers, such as age-bracket, sex. Type of group, place of employment, place of residence, mode of transport, room popularity, new guest, first choice, length of stay, any complaints and who made the booking. Besides, we also need information related to hotel activities, such as occupancy statistics, seat turnover percentage, number of empty days, pattern of sales in restaurant and bar or so. It is not to be forgotten that needs of the guests are the cornerstone of marketing analysis. An in-depth study of what the competitors are doing, implementation of unique selling proposition to fulfill the needs of customers, determination of objectives and the formulation of strategies, advertise a promise which is genuine and creditable and in which the customers can easily discern their own benefits can't be devalued in the very context. It is pertinent that we view everything from the customers perspective. The accommodation facilities available and the house-keeping draw our attention to improve the quality of services. While formulating strategic decisions, it is significant that we include in our product mix all the new services offered by our competitors. 

Not only the primary and auxiliary or core and peripheral but even the supportive services offered by allied industries divert our attention. The development process can't remain static. This necessitates a continuous effort for incorporating the he necessary changes in our service mix. The issue of concern here is how and what to incorporate? A sound product strategy is found a prerequisite for establishing a fair or positive image. Image is the way in which a hotel portrays itself. The factors like atmosphere, brand name, the status, type of people and corporate institutions patronising a hotel would be instrumental in building up a fair image. And the most important thing in the projection of a fair image is the quality of services and the behaviour of the front-line staff.  

Product Level

The fundamental level is the core benefits: the service or benefit the customer is really buying. A hotel guest is buying rest and sleep. 

At the second level, the marketer has to turn the core benefit into a basic product. Thus a hotel room includes a bed, bathroom, towels desk, dresser, and closet.

At the third level, the marketer prepares an expected product, a set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product. Hotel guests expect a clean bed, fresh towels, working lamps, and a relative degree of quietness. Because most hotels can meet this minimum expectation, the traveller normally will settle for whichever hotel is most convenient or less expensive.

At the fourth level, the marketer prepares an augmented product that exceeds customer expectations. In developed countries, brand positioning and competition take place at this level. In developing countries and emerging markets such as China and India, however, competition takes place mostly at the expected product level.

Differentiation arises on the basis of product augmentation. Product augmentation also leads the marketer to look at the users total consumption system: the way the user performs the tasks of getting and using products and related services.

Something should be noted product augmentation strategy. First, each augmentation adds cost. Second, augmented benefits soon become expected benefits and necessary points-of-parity. Today's hotel guests expect cable or satellite television with a remote control and high-speed internet access or two phones lines. This means competitors will have to search for still other features and benefits. Third, as companies raise the price of their augmented product, some competitors offer a version at a much lower price. Thus, along side the growth of fine hotels like Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, we see the emergence of lower-cost hotels and motels like Motel 6 and Comfort Inn, which cater to clients who simply want the basic product.

At the fifth level stands the potential product, which encompasses all the possible augmentations and transformation the product or offering might undergo in the future. Here is where companies search for new ways to satisfy customers and distinguish their offer. For instance, in an era when customers are demanding ever faster internet and wireless connections in the room, home theatre installed, etc. 

Price

The pricing decisions are beset with many problems. No doubt in it that fixing the hotel tariffs is just like pricing other goods and services. At the same time, it is also right to mention that the hotel professionals need more excellence while fixing the hotel tariffs since the services are found of perishable nature. In addition, the seasonal fluctuation in demand and increasing intensity of competition also complicate the task of professionals. They need world-class excellence while making strategical and tactical pricing decisions. It is in this context that we go through the problem of price mix. Managing relatively volatile demand around a relatively fixed capacity of highly perishable product supply is identified as one of the principal characteristics of the hotel business.

There are four elements in the strategic marketing response which accommodation supplier, make to their external business environment, such as planning the most profitable business mix of segments and products, deciding the position or image which each accommodation unit or chain of units should occupy, encouraging and rewarding frequent users of the services and developing marketing integration between units in common ownership (chains) or units in individual ownership (voluntary co-operatives). Strategic decisions are expected to generate a profitable mix of bookings and room-occupancy through the production and distribution of appropriately priced distinctive products which match the needs and requirements of identified segments.

We accept the fact that pricing menus and drinks in hotel food and beverage areas to obtain maximum sales and profits is a very complex subject. While formulating the pricing strategy, the hotel professionals are required to take into account a number of factors, specially the diverse nature and character of dishes, involvement of costs and spending power of the customers. We also need to consider the economic criteria, target average spends, target covers per meal period, current menu and drink prices. 

Pricing decisions are found important in both strategic and tactical sense. In the tactical sense, it plays an outstanding role. This is due to the inseparability and perishability of the hotel products. This is also due to the inability of the service engineering organizations to carry over unsold stocks as a buffer to cope with future demand as found in the goods manufacturing organizations. Also known as price deregulation, tactical pricing is found instrumental in promoting the hotel business. Experiences show that in the hotel industry, it is found to be a major selling tool. There are a number of ways for practising and benefiting from this tool: 

• Seasonal Discounts: Found applicable in the hotel industry. Customary to charge lower prices, specially during the off-season.  

• Trade Discounts: Found applicable in the hotel industry as tour operators and travel agents are offered discounts.  

• Special Discounts: In the hotel industry, we find special function room rates for overnight convention. 

Place 

It is only not sufficient that we have a product mix of world-class; it is not only significant that we promise the best, it is much more impact-generating that we bridge over the gap between the services– promised and service offered. The hotels and hotel companies have been found innovating their service mix but they also bear the responsibility of making it sure that the promised services reach to the ultimate users in a right fashion. It is against this background that we focus on the place mix of hotel companies. The hotel personnel and the travel agents are found instrumental in offering the services related to hotels. The front-line-staff, receptionists, inquiries, complaints and grievances redressal cell, the waiters, the porters, the doormen, the travel agents, the tour operators are found involved in the process. Of course, the hotel institutes and travel and tourism institutes have been educating and training the personnel keeping in view the changing needs and increasing expectations of the users, still we find cases where they generate a gap while processing the services which results into dissatisfaction vis-a-vis projection of a negative image. This makes it essential that we assign due weight-age to the processing of services. 

A sound distribution system is found significant to the development of almost all the organizations either producing goods or generating services. In the hotel industry, the distribution of services is mainly related to the transmission of information by the related persons to the ultimate users. As and when the bookings are made of a bedroom or a function room or of a restaurant, the confirmation is found essential. The transmission of information related to cancellation is also found important. We can't deny the fact that with the introduction of sophisticated information technologies, the task is made easier but the professionals operating and maintaining the technologies have also been found generating the gap. This makes it essential that hotels, offices of travel agents and the tour operators are well connected with computers, internet services. A number of factors are found influencing the distribution process, such as location, point-of-sale the cost of distribution, effectiveness of marketing resources, image of hotels and hotel companies, tactical strategy and the motivational schemes. 

For accomplishing the organizational goals or for bridging over the gap between the services– promised and services-offered, we need to innovate the distribution processes, helping us substantially in purchasing the hotel bedrooms, function rooms in restaurants, essentially through the chain of distribution. The hotels and hotel companies are here required to take a decision regarding a strong and efficient chain which maintains economy in the process and at the same time also minimizes the possibilities of distortion in the process. The choice of location is, of course, the most important business decision, Specially for proprietor-owned restaurants, guest houses and small tourist attractions. This is due to the fact that a well located small business can often be sure of an adequate now of customers to its catchment area. In this case, the consumers come to the producer directly and therefore, we find the distribution channels less significant. The selection of tour operators and travel agents is an important decision making area for hotels and hotel companies. 

If the hotels and hotel companies are well connected with the offices of the travel agents and the tour operators, the occupancy ratio can be increased. The tour operators buy a range of tourist products in bulk. This also includes accommodation facilities which is found relevant to the hotel industry. They also buy function rooms, specially for the organization of conferences, seminars, exhibition, sales contests or so. After buying a number of services and making them a lucrative package, the tour operators sell them to the travel agents. Here, the tour operators play a decisive role in promoting the hotel business. The distribution chain denotes the methods by which a product or services a processed from producers to the ultimate users. The middlemen are the link and if the link is strong, the service generating organizations find it convenient to increase the occupancy ratio. The middlemen are wholesalers buying hotel rooms in bulk and then selling the same to the retailers known as the travel agents. 

The tour operators are called the producers of services. The travel agents buy the services at the request of their clients and provide a convenient network of sales outlets which caters to the needs of the catchment area. Here we find three systems for distributing the services, e.g., two-level, one-level and zero-level. The three-tier distribution system is required to be managed properly so that the users expectations are fulfilled and the promised services reach to the ultimate users in a right way. It is in this context that the hotel management requires world-class professional excellence which would simplify the distribution process besides maintaining economy and making possible cost-effectiveness. 

Example: IRCTC started “E-Catering” having tie-ups with QSR chains like KFC, MCdonalds, etc. Now a passenger can order through website, toll free number or free SMS and the meal would be served at their berth. Payment can be made COD or through online transfer. The orders can also be cancelled 2 hours before delivery time. 

Promotion 

For successful marketing, it is not only sufficient that we concentrate on the quality of services but it is also impact generating that we promote our business in such a way that our prospects come to know about the quality to be offered to them as hotel customers. This focuses our attention on innovative promotional measures. It is against this background that we talk about the promotional measures. There are a number of components for promoting the business and it is hoped that a professionally sound employee would blend the different constituents in such a way that effects are proactive but the process of persuasion is cost-effective. 

The components like advertisement, publicity, sales promotion, personal selling, word-of-mouth promotion and telemarketing need due attention of hotel professionals. The success rate of a hotel is virtually coiled in the essence of transforming the occasional visitors into the habitual visitors because this helps substantially the process of increasing the occupancy ratio. The sensitivity is vigorously influenced by creativity. This makes it essential that the decision makers in the hotel industry make sincere efforts to formulate sound promotional strategy. We can't deny the fact that creation of awareness has a far-reaching effect on the formulation of promotional strategy. 

People 

This phrase is meaningful not only for the technologies but even for the people who manage them. It is against this background that the marketing experts the world over have been found making a strong advocacy in favour of an ongoing training programme for the personnel servicing the hotel companies. In this context, our prime focus is on the front-line-personnel working in hotels in different capacities. The receptionists, the porters, the house-keepers, the waiters and waitresses and even the doormen play an incremental role in promoting the business. The sales executives, the marketing managers, the senior executives bear the responsibility of managing the front-line-personnel in such a way that the promised services reach to the ultimate users without making any distortion. 

Of course, they are supposed to have proper education and knowledge regarding the services they need to offer but here, it is also important that we organize for them an ongoing training programme, refresher courses, capsule courses, lecture programmes, specially related to the behavioural profile. We find several cases to quote that even the five star hotels where the users stay with high expectations, a minor mistake committed by the receptionists or the house-keepers has resulted in a big loss. 

The front-line-staffing particular need to identify the changing levels of expectations of users and in a majority of the cases they virtually fail in doing such. A gap is generated between the quality- promised and the quality-offered. If the hotel personnel prove to be high-performers, personally-committed, professionally-sound, value-oriented, aware of the behavioural management; familiar with the aesthetic management; they can satisfy the users even if the sophisticated technologies develop a fault. 

This makes it essential that the hotel personnel are made available an ongoing training facility efficacious in enriching their professional excellence. The cases of menu fatigue, power interruption, mismanaged bedrooms, function rooms and restaurants, indecent behaviour of doormen, poor information to the receptionists and inquires can be minimized considerably if we assign due weightage to performance- orientation 

Physical Evidence  

• Location of the hotel  

• Hotel building  

• Hotel Bedrooms and other amenities  

• Hotel function room  

• Logo, Website, Brochures, etc. 

Process