Online Integrated Marketing Communication Hilton Essay Example

brands such as ; Conrad, Doubletree by Hilton… And many of Hilton's properties are franchised to independent operators and companies. This business practice has proven successful in rapidly expanding the various Hilton brands to markets all over the United States.

For instance The Hampton Inn brand is virtually 100% franchised with the minor exception of a few properties that are corporate managed for various reasons. All franchised hotels are regularly inspected by a Quality Assurance Team to enforce brand standards and consistency. When we look at the loyalty programs of the company ; Hilton HHonors is Hilton's guest loyalty program in which frequent guests can accumulate points and airline miles by staying with the various Hilton family of brands.

The Hilton Honors program is one of the largest programs of its type with over 30 million HHonors members. Similar to frequent flyer programs there are various tiers of membership which guests can reach depending on the amount of stays and points accumulated annually, the higher the tier the more benefits members. And by means of having these membership, it is possible to have special promotions and discounts. Another significant issue is According to Careerbliss.com, Hilton Worldwide ranked the first Happiest Companies in America for 2012 got score 4.36 from 1 to 5. The survey looked at job reviews from more than 100,000 employees such as characteristics like work-life balance, company culture and reputation, and the relationships employees have with their bosses.

Vision

The vision of Hilton is to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality. Mission The mission of the company is to be the preeminent global hospitality

company - the first choice of guests, team members, and owners alike. Company Values When we look at the corporate values of Hilton it can be seen as they have been saying ; Hospitality - We're passionate about delivering exceptional guest experiences. Integrity - We do the right thing, all the time.

Leadership - We're leaders in our industry and in our communities. Teamwork - We're team players in everything we do. Ownership - We're the owners of our actions and decisions. Now - We operate with a sense of urgency and discipline.

Preparing a market segmentation is necessary and important step for realizing an online communication campaign. Before doing this, we need to divide our desired market into the groups according to significant consumer characteristics attributable to the market, that means we have to make market segmentation. Customers for the hotel industry include tourists as well as business travelers. Tourists may be further categorized into low-medium income groups and high-income groups as the income of a person will determine the kind of hotel he or she chooses. For instance, people with high income are more likely to stay in an upscale luxury hotel, which a person with a low-medium income may not be able to afford.

At this point we should say that as Hilton we divide our target market into two and primarily focuse on high-income leisure travelers and business travelers. For our market segmentation, we can say that since we are appeal to the people with high income level, and it’s related to the demographic characteristics we should talk about the demographic segmentation. Demographic segmentation is about personal characteristics

of age, gender, income…etc. We have determined our target market as the people who are over 30 years old with the high income level. And this determining suits to both our business and leisure travelers.

Another issue for us is behavioral segmentation ; for Hilton as well as other products is based on buyer behavior in acquiring the product and we have to consider the usage occasions (pleasure, business), rates (weekly, monthly), and also the customer loyalty. It means that firstly for the occasion we can say that, in order to be sold of a room of Hilton there should be occasions. There sould be meetings or seminars so that they are going to come to Hilton or for the leisure traveleres there should be designated time for traveling. The other thing that we need to consider is benefit sought. And we have divided our market based on the benefits they seek within our product. It is possible to say that, since the business travelers do not have enough time to pass at the hotel during a business trip beyond congresses, they seek generally bed & breakfast.

They also seek meeting and conference services if there will be an organisation at the hotel. And the central location of our hotels will gain importance at this point, business travelers need to be on the center points of the cities and close to city center. For our leisure travelers, we can say that, they are the tourists who have enough time and money to travel, and since they are the city touists that visit the main attractions of the cities and then go back to

Hotel for staying, they will seek both location and also leisure. The attractiveness of our restaurants, bars and entertainment facilities will be wanted by them.

When we look at the characteristics of our target market with all details, we can say that our business customers are the ones travel for meetings; they travel for conferences; and they travel to make deals. And the function of a business traveler of Hilton is simple; a person traveling for job.These are the people who are not usually traveling for fun and the enjoyment of it. And business customers of Hilton are usually very used to travel. They do it a lot. And that makes such travel very routine for them. They are usually over 30 years old, presenting a short-staying guest profile, well educated and luxury and comfort seeking customers.

While casual travelers will often appear out of their element or even excited by the prospect of going somewhere new, they are only hoping to go somewhere quickly. Thus, their priority for choosing Hilton will be central location. People who travel would prefer Hilton hotels to be located near major airports in the city. And we can also highlight transportation and transfer services on the online communication campaign in order to attract them.

For the business customers of Hilton, we can say that they use the technology so much. They are usually on call, sending and checking e-mails, writing reports..etc. So, they will be the ones who make online reservations through our online reservation page. For that reason, in order to catch their attention, we need to create an attractive web page for Hilton, and

also effective and quickly working online reservation system. They will also seek the technological devices and facilities as wifi and projection machine for presentations, we should also mention them on our web page. We have to take all of them into consideration for our online marketing communication campaign.

Another characteristics of the business customers of Hilton, they are the ones who spend a lot. They are not price sensitive and all of their expenses will be covered by their companies. And when we look at the spendings, they are usually high compared to leisure travelers since they are generally in a hurry, they do not mind having an open-buffet breakfast even just for coffee and croissant, they do not give importance to pay to breakfast 30 Euros or more. And we do not expect them from a business traveler to be trying to assess his or her travel budget. Their costs are most often covered by a company credit card which means spending money is very easy for them.

When we look at the leisure customers of Hilton and their characteristics, we can say that, they are the ones who are being motivated for having fun and entertainment, exploring and visiting a new destination. So it is possible to see that the travel motivations of our leisure customers are different than the business customers. And we call them as ‘city tourists’ which means that they are visiting the city, making a tour when they come to the destination and also want to be close to the city’s main attractions. And when they are on our web page, they are going to look for

the central location and easy access to the main points of city in terms of transportation. So we should highlight our characteristics of being centrally-located facilities.

The function of a leisure customer of Hilton is simple, a person traveling for pleasure which is the one way of relaxing from everyday life. And many of them will tend to have a lower stress level because they take time to relax and have fun, unlike our business customers who are constantly working. Our leisure customers are the people over 30 years old, again educated and have a vision, knowledgeable tourists and showing a high-income tourist profile.

Our leisure travelers know the best places to go because they read travel magazines and watch programs about traveling. They tend to have other friends who are just as interested in traveling and share their experiences as well. They travel as much as they can afford to. It means that the experience is really important for them and they will be the ones who are going to be a part of word-of-mouth marketing. And since this is a vital issue for us, we have to make them happy during their stay and focus on experiences and beautiful moments while preparing our online communication campaign.

Another issue is, our leisure customers are the ones who spend money on accommodations, restaurants and more just for fun. They will be again spend more like our business customers. For instance they will have the time to experience our spa and wellness facilities; they are going to seek high quality and they do not hesitate to pay Euros for a fine-dining restaurant of

our hotel. It means that they do not look at the prices so much since they are at Hilton for pleasure and they want to enjoy their vacation. So we are going to consider these issues while preparing our online communication campaign as putting forward high quality and luxury service.

Another issue is where we are going to focus in terms of geography? We have decided to locate in big cities for our hotels, because we know that all big cities have to see and travel many facility such as museum, city tours something like that. Modern tourist facilities are available in big cities. First is the point that when they come to big cities to travel, wherever they want to go they can reach there easily. Second is the point that big cities have international standards. For example big cities are going to have transportation better than small cities. Also many of costumer care of safety, they prefer a hotel where locate in big cities. All our location is going to be easily accessible and provide the customer with a feeling of safety upon their arrival and exit.

Our hotel that is located near major attractions means less hassle and more fun for vacationers. Our hotels are going to run shuttles to and from popular sightseeing destinations, or will provide walking maps if it is possible to get to places on foot. Travelers to big cities should not miss out on hotel rooms with stunning skyline views. Particularly if its vacationer first time in a large city like izmir or istanbul, vacationers will enjoy being able to look out over the bustling

city vistas after a day on the town. On the other hand we considered to locate hotel in big cities for our business customers. Because big cities always have lots of organizations such as business seminars, meetings something like that and they have to go these organizations. If we locate in big cities, when they come to our hotels, they can stay at night, they can wake up normal hours to attend their meeting it’s like waking up at home.

After that they can attend easily and safety their meeting. Lastly when we look at the expectations of customers, when they are buying products, accommodating at Hilton? What is their motivation? As mentioned before, our target market is customers with high income, high life standard and consequently high expectations at our products. Our guests expect particular, extraordinary standard in every kind of issue. We reveal both, high technology standard on our webpage and high standard in our hotels. Such as luxury furnishings, delicious meals made of high qualified ingredients and remarkable service. Furthermore consumers are looking for exceptionally offers. Offers like packages for city trips, which include a kind of adventure or recreation. What are the guests’ motivation? What is our overall communication objective? Our guests motivation to choose Hilton Hotel or the webpage of Hilton Hotel is that they can rely on our high quality in every kind of field.

They are looking for luxury, we are offering luxury! They can be sure to do on the on hand their business in a luxury atmosphere with particular circumstances and on the other hand find time for recreation and adventure. We really care

our loyal guests since we know that there are some people, in other words, loyal guests of Hilton Hotels & Resorts, acting as brand ambassadors, and they prefer Hilton brand whenever and wherever they go. They are attached to the brand, its hospitality, its service. So, our aim is making all customers as guests, especially loyal guests and we want them with us for years, for a life time.

The issue that we highlight on this project, the base of the online integrated communication campaign is “customer commitment and loyalty.” We will use the marketing tools for make them loyal and feel attached to the brand. Consequently, it is possible to say that while making market segmentation for Hilton Hotels and Resorts, we have used demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation that includes benefit sought and geographic segmentation. And our overall communication objective is customer commitment and loyalty.

The Advertising tool in marketing has a lot of influence on Costumers decisions. It consists of all types of media, for example television, print, radio, online advertising and every other kind of advertisement which aim is to appeal the target markets attention. In the following assignment we will concentrate on online advertisement of HILTON.

Hilton is having a lot of different campaign to implement their display and banner Ads. For example, it is sponsoring MSNBC’s mobile platform through display banners and rich-media advertisement. Also it is taking over MSNBC’s entire mobile site today using both 300x250 and 300x50 ads. Furthermore Hilton invented a campaign with the goal of improving the conversion efficiency and existence of their online activities. The name of the campaign is: “Hilton Worldwide:

re-targeting in market prospects.” Hilton is serving over 800 million advertisements a year.

To improve the efficiency of these advertisements Hilton partneres with Web Liquid, because a research says that 56% of the users name “visiting a site on the past” as the most important reason to book from a specific brand in the internet. To reach this aim, they installed key pages within the booking process of Hilton.co.uk was enabled to catch users behavior. In the following I will show the results of the before mentiones campaign:

1. 73% increase in click-through-rate (0.20% to 0.30%) 2. A reduction of 2,700% on the number of impressions served to generate a booking 3. 96% increase in average revenue per impression served 4. 0.45% increase in average revenue per booking.

In my opinion Hiltons campaign about Map advertising is pretty well. You can choose between different point of views, you can find every hotel in the world and the way to go there, too.

Rich Media Ads are Pop-Ups, Interstitials and Video Ads. Their advantage is that they are more eye-catching and memorable than standard banner ads. A huge disadvantage is that rich media applications can, because of their dynamic movement to gain the viewers attention, be seen as annoying for the internet user.

As we analyzed email ads of Hilton that Hilton has a strong email system which means sending email ads or info message to customer automatically or manually. Although they have lots of customers, they care of their each customer's message. There are two way to contact between hilton and its customers; one of them is customer can send a

email message directly via website of Hilton, another way is when any customer reserve a room at hilton hotel, reception clerk takes her/his email address, and then Hilton email system started sending message in a periodically time. General purpose of Hilton email ads is informing to customers about promotions. Some facilities, features are collected for special days such as christmas, some holidays and then this promotion is showed to customer with email ads. Besides, sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of Hilton with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty.

About internet communication and ad department of Hilton Hotels know that search engine marketing is a very popular communication tool and also very useful. By putting messages on search engine platforms Hilton reaches customers when they type certain keywords in these search engines. Generally these keywords are included brands of hilton hotels and some specific hilton hotel in a city, not for all hotels. For example we found that hilton created a search engine ad; when people search any hotel in istanbul via www.google.com you could see some ads and information on google’s web page about hilton hotels in istanbul. Result of this, hilton got gaining traffic through search engine efforts on hilton web page. Also hilton expands their customer volume with new customers from coming search engine ads.