46DE Creativity assignment year 1

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The Trade Fair and the competition

In your market, you are not the only player. You need to know who would want to stay at your hotel and you also need to know who your true competitors are – the ‘comp set’. So now it’s time to pay extra attention as to how your hotel positions in the market and the way you would promote, sell and distribute your hotel. A very important Trade Fair is coming up. Ms. Jill Jandal has strongly suggested the Emerald Forest should participate. This is not only a good opportunity to the present your hotel to the press, industry and potential guests; it’s also the place where you can closely observe your competitors’ commercial efforts. Trade fairs have a long history of onsite presence; examples of important events include ITB Berlin, WTM in London or the Dutch Tourism Expo. With Covid19 mostly behind us, face-to-face networking and industry live-events are back in combination with integrated social media platforms as part of digital marketing: a hybrid approach. Social media has not been fully capitalized by the Bergmans so far. The original hotel has a limited social media profile whereas Christina, Jill and other staff members are active on their 'private' accounts. Clearly, these inconsistencies, the lack of proper digital marketing and adequate social media footprint could be seen as a great opportunity.

Situation

Check recent developments and how Emerald Forest Hotel has been doing so far. Don’t just copy that or upgrade it: you have after all developed your own strategy. Also include information you learned the last days about the location and what has been happening in the media. Remember back to the tips and tricks from the exchange on "Story telling for press officers."
So be sure the way you plan to integrate and use social media matches your strategy. Social media are used for:

• communication with your clients
• eavesdropping' on your clients
• checking the competitors
• digital marketing
• reviews as a separate thing

The Trade Fair has four goals:
1. Presenting your new hotel
Who are the visitors? At this fair, you will have to present your company to the press, to the general public, to your competitors and just anyone else visiting the fair.

2. Competition analysis
The Fair is THE most important opportunity to have check out at all the other teams in your city: what are they up to, what can you learn from them, what are ideas you can use as well? So split up your team and take notice of all your competitors. You might need this information for adjusting your strategy! The Trade Fair gives you good impressions of what your direct competitors in your city are up to. So, have one of your team members walk around and make an overview or rather a competition analysis.

3. Adjusting your strategy
Important is to get a good impression on the plans of all other teams, so you can adjust your strategy to this.

4. Creativity
As there is a Creativity competition: your performance at the Trade Fair by presenting yourself in a consistent and creative way contributes to this creativity mark.
The coaches will be visiting your booth and ask questions. They will evaluate your performance and this will be of influence on your marks for the Game as well as your occupancy rate. Always keep your booth occupied, but have one (or two) checking out the competition and collecting information for your Strategic Analysis!

• The Trade Fair will open and close sharply scheduled
• Have a short presentation of max. 2 minutes ready
• Make clear arrangements on who is doing what (roles, answers, presenting, screensharing e.g.)
• Be very creative and active
• It is handy to prepare some form to use at the Trade Fair. So while some team members are working in the booth, others should visit the competitors and immediately work on this assignment.

Goal

Your Team File year 1 Business assignment (strategy e.g.) has to be ready in plenty of time before you can make decisions on the Trade Fair. Beware that you also have to reflect on the Trade fair and observe your competitors, do a competitor analysis, as this is part of your decisions in this year as well. This assignment is not just about generating some mindless marketing and sales blurb! It might be a good idea to divide the tasks - all the while making sure your deliverables are going to be coherent! In the end your Trade fair presence contribute to better marketing communication and, in the end, it should also bring a measurable result. And, it should also give you insights into the plans of the competitors.

Task, deliverable

• Organise a booth
• Prepare a short max. 2 minutes presentation and act
• Attract potential customers
• Written assignment: Reflect on your performance on the Trade Fair and make an overview of your competitors.

A - Reflection on your performance on the Trade Fair

• What were our goals on the Trade Fair?
• What were the roles of the different team members?
• Who were your target groups?
• Do you think you were successful in what you set out to do? Could you give examples of this?
• How does this effect your hotel?
• Did you try to be creative in your booth at the Trade Fair? Could you cite some examples if you were (or not)? Do you think creativity is important?
• What would you do differently next time and why?

B - Competition analysis based on the Trade Fair

• Make a competition analysis for your hotel.

In competition models, such as Porters Five Forces Model, competition can be seen on several levels. You are free to choose any structured way of doing a competition analysis but be sure there is a model behind your choice.
Our choice as a model to use to structure competition analysis, would be looking at three forms of competitions.

1- Generic competition on time and money.
How many people do travel, what is the average income? What do they spent their income on? What are the consumer's sentiments? Consumers can only spend their money once and their time as well. Use realistic figures from Germany (!) and for instance Ingolstadt!

2- Specific competition on alternatives.
If people decide to spend their money on leisure they can choose for a stay in a hotel, camping ground, friends and relatives etc. In the business market the alternatives are less logical. Try to use some realistic figures from Germany and for instance Ingolstadt!

3- Selective competition your direct competitors: so the consumers choice for a brand.
Do tourists choose staying in a hotel, the other hotels offering practically the same products are the most likely competitor, the competition is now mostly on brand and product specifications. Now look especially at your city Amstelburg. This is what you do at the Trade Fair, and only for your own city!

Assessed elements

The trade fair:

• Is the booth appealing?
• Is the presentation original?
• Is the hotel staff friendly and proactive and responding to individual requests?
• Have there been follow-up activities?

The written assignment:

• Is the link to the strategy clear?
• Is there a link to the information you learned about the location?
• Is the presentation clear?
• Are the question answered in a professional way?
• Is the competition analysis logical and based on theory as well as experiences?

Handing in your assignment

• Hand in your competition analysis as a document. Upload it somewhere in the cloud.
• Be sure that your posts and video are made publicly visible.
• Copy the link (only the link, not the document or content) and put it in your Team File before the deadline into tab Year 1-2-3-4, cell D47
• Be sure the file is freely accessible without logging in or anything, just the click on the link should open it!

Additional reading and references

• IP
• Hotel and marketing trends
• Competition
• Trade show tips
• Tips for virtual Trade Fairs
• More ips

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