34EE Creativity assignment year 0

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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.

An online Trade Fair is coming up, and Ms. Jill Jandal has strongly suggested the Emerald Forest should participate. This is not only a good opportunity to present your hotel to 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 offline; examples of important events include ITB Berlin, WTM in London or the Dutch Tourism Expo. Quite recently, online experiments have started popping up. It shows that especially today, online contacts, and social media play a crucial role in our lives. In tourism and hospitality, the impact is huge. Social media has been a bit neglected by the Bergmans so far. The original hotel does have a social media profile. And Christina and Jill and other staff members are active on their 'private' accounts. However, there seems to be no coherence or logic.

Situation

Check how Emerald Forest Hotel has been doing online so far. Don’t just copy that or upgrade it: you have after all created your own strategy. So be sure the way you plan to use social media matches your strategy. Social media are used for:

• communication with your clients
• 'eavesdropping' on your clients
• checking the competitors
• marketing
• reviews as a separate thing
• adding thing to the hospitality products
• ... etc.

All these qualities can be used to set up an ultimate campaign performance on the Trade Fair.

Goal

Your Team File preparations have to be ready in plenty of time before 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 year two. 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! Deliver an improved plan using social media, with concrete choices. In the end this should contribute to better marketing communication and, in the end, it should also bring a measurable result. Create the ultimate campaign to beat the competition!

Task, deliverable

In the preparations, you made a Facebook business page as well as a 2nd Social media channel. Check once again what your measurable goals are, and aim for an even better result.

• Create at least five posts on both accounts, supporting your strategy.
• Be creative in the type of posts, the target audiences and the content you upload (beware of IP!)
• Try to get a decent number of followers or reads, views or comments on these posts.
• Upgrade the information on your social media on the tab ‘Preparation’.
• Prepare a 3-minute video, promoting your hotel and offering an invitation to react online. This video will be shown in the Online Trade Fair.

Be sure the accounts are public and include the links on the tab ‘Preparation’ in your Team File.
At least two members of your team should be present and attending your online booth during the entire fair. This ‘booth’ will be your promotional material, your video and an open chat-box. Your fellow students, coaches and other staff members will visit you and discuss your concept and strategy.

Assessed elements

• Is the link to the strategy clear?
• Is the presentation clear?
• Is the explanation clear and measurable?
• Are the question answered in a commercial way?

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 Competition on creativity: you 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 channel 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 both occupied, but have one (or two) checking out the competition and collecting information for your Strategic_Analysis!

Online version of Trade Fair

• The language to be used during the Trade Fair is English, the setting is an international Trade Fair.
• The Trade Fair will open and close sharply scheduled
• Have a short presentation of max. 3minutes ready
• Make clear arrangements on who is doing what (roles, answers, presenting, screensharing e.g.)
• Be creative

Year 01, part 1 in combination with the Trade Fair

But this time it is a crisis situation and all events are cancelled. You need to come up with innovative solution how to present your hotel's exposition over the web and how to achieve the very same goals that you have for trade fair. During the Trade Fair we advise your teams to have one or two members checking out the competition. This is of use for your gameplay but also needed for this part.

Strategic analysis of the competition
This part should hold two major elements.

A - Reflection on your performance on the Trade Fair

• What were our goals on the Trade Fair
• What went right and what went wrong?
• How does this effect your hotel?
• What would you do differently next time and why?

B - Competition analysis based on the Trade Fair

• Make a competition analysis for your hotel.
  

This should consist of three parts:

Theory on competition
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 used to structure competition analysis, would be looking at three forms of competitions.

• Generic competition on time and money.

How many people do travel, what is the average income? What do they average spend their income on. What are the consumers sentiments? Consumers can only spend their money once and their time as well. Use realistic figures from Estonia (!) and for instance Tallinn! The example is from another country and competition.

Example of general and some specific competition.

• Specific competition on alternatives.

If they decide to spend their money on leisure they can chose 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 Estonia and for instance Tallinn!

• Selective competition your direct competitors: so the consumers choice for a brand.

Do they choose for a hotel, the other competitor 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 on the Trade Fair, and only for your own city!

The example is from another country and competition.

Example of overview direct competitors.

Of course explanations on this table is needed.
Is is handy to prepare some form to use on the Trade Fair. So while some team members are working in the booth, others should visit the competitors and immediately work on this assignment.

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 public
• Be sure anyone with a link can access posts and video without any login (!)
• Put only the link in your Team File tab Year 0, D32 Extra information

Additional information

• Social media
• Website
• Social media now in use by Emerald Forest Hotel
• IP
• Hotels and social media trends
• Social Media Trends 2020
• Hotel and marketing trends
• Competition
• Trade show tips

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