Online Booking And Reservations Company - Myassignmenrthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Online Booking And Reservations Company? Answer: Introduction Technology has advanced much in the recent decades and companies from across the globe have also made a significant shift to carrying out their businesses via the internet using the tool website. Booking.com is one of these companies. Booking.com is a leading hotel reservations website that is owned by Priceline.com, though it operates separately as a business unit. The company got established in 1996; its headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands; it is a public company that is classified in the industry of information technology (Inversini and Masiero, 2014). This paper is an analysis of Booking.com and it will delve in the companys service marketing strategies with regards to the 7 Ps of the marketing matrix as well as issue recommendations on the same. Booking.com is currently, and has been for the last decade, very successful and its effective promotional strategies have contributed much to this success; it, however, can still enhance its products farther through a number of ways so as to put competition at bay. The 7 Ps Marketing Mix of Booking.Com Booking.com, just like other companies is subject to the 7 Ps that it must consider carefully when marketing, promoting, and selling its services. The 7 Ps stand for: product, place, price, promotion, people, processes, and physical evidence. The main reason as to why people seek a company and acquire interest in it is due to what it has to offer them. The first P to get discussed in this paper is, therefore, product. Product The product of a company is that which consumers expect to get from a company; it should fit the task for which the customers want it for and it should work accordingly (Lovelock, 2011). The product offered by Booking.com is that of booking accommodations for clients from across the world, in various destinations worldwide. The company also serves as an advertising platform for the various properties into which the accommodations are booked. These properties include and are not limited to luxury hotels, hostels, smaller B/B property, and budget hotels. Booking.com, hence, connect customers to the properties and properties to customers. As a recommendation, Booking.com should also include in its listing for every property a list of the adventures, activities, and sites that a booker gets a chance do and experience while at the respective property. This move would ensure that the partner properties improve on the recreational activities available to their customers for an even better experience which would subsequently raise the rating of Booking.com. The other thing that is of importance in the marketing mix is where the product is found and accessible to the consumer; this makes place the second P to get discussed. Place Place allows for ease in the availability of the product to the consumer and expands the knowledge that people have on a brand (Constantinides, 2006). Booking.com being an online booking company allow for online dealings with clients. The customers get to inquire and hire the services of Booking.com via the companys online portals and the payment is made electronically. The images below show portals through which clients make payments: Figure 1: Customer chooses property Figure 2: Customer chooses preferred room Figure 3: Customer entered details on preferred choices Figure 4: Customer fills payment details and finalizes booking When a property gets loaded on Booking.com, the same is also loaded on more than 5000 affiliate sites; these sites have direct rate and availability connectivity and so customers can make their bookings through them (Barrow, 2016). Booking.com together with these other affiliate sites focus only on the accommodation sector and do not delve in listing events or attractions as product on their sites. Booking.com has partnerships with sites such as Ryanair, RDS Dubin, and Irish Ferries as the accommodation partners. The partnerships make the accessibility of the services of Booking.com even more sufficient to its clients. A recommendation that the company would use in this light is to make it even more possible to book via mobile phones through the booking apps that the Booking.com has recently put to effect. The other important consideration is the value of the product; price, thus, is the third P. Price Price as an element of the marketing mix is very vital. The product of Booking.com ought to represent a good value for the money that the clients are expected to pay in return. Clients should be happy to pay for the product given its value. Clients in this case refer to partner hotels and other properties. Booking.com pays itself through a commission on the revenue made by a partner hotel once successful booking is done through the company. The firm, Booking.com, charges a minimum 15% commission fee on every booking made at a participating property (Gsslin and Lane, 2015). The exception to this is whereby the participating properties provide a booking button plug-in which provides that for bed and breakfast owners, they can direct all their bookings to Booking.com; in this case, the commission rate that applies is 0% (Firmenich et.al., 2012). The partner properties with Booking.com are also allowed access to an extranet where they have a chance to raise commission payable by them to Booking.com. The increased commission in turn puts them on a higher ranking on the site and this enhances their revenues (da Silva e Cruz and da Ascenso Marques, 2014.). There is also a programme available at the site for those properties considered as preferred partners and it allows a property to commit to giving an allocation of rooms to Booking.com and as well pay an enhanced commission of 18% (Fernndez-Barcala, Gonzlez-Daz and Prieto-Rodrguez, 2010). The figure that follows shows the statistics of Booking.com in terms of growth in the number of visitors, which directly results from the companys pricing strategy. Figure 5: Statistics The recommendation to the pricing strategy at Booking.com is that properties that are located in destinations that are still developing tourism wise, yet have a bright future ahead, should get considered. They should pay a lesser commission and still get more visibility to raise their awareness and boost their growth. With this preferred program, a partner property is guaranteed greater visibility and ranking on the Booking.com website. Next to the pricing strategy, the other vital aspect of the marketing mix is making the product known as much as possible and to as many people as possible; promotion, thus, represents the fourth P in the mix. Promotion Promotion can get undertaken through one or more of the key communication tools that are public relations, advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and social media (Yacouel and Fleischer, 2012). The tools put across the companys message to the right audience in their most preferred manner, whether it informs them or appeals their emotions. Majority of the marketing spend made by Priceline Group goes to Booking.com. In 2015, the amount spent by Priceline Group in online advertising was $2.8 billion and the amount used in offline advertising dropped by $280 million from what was spent in 2014 (Gustavo, 2013). Booking.com markets its products through performance advertising whereby they engage consumers by answering their questions in the most perfect or most detailed and the most granular manner. This approach not only converts customers onto the booking.com platform, it also makes the loyal customers. The company does so by clicking on Google and working with Bing among other search engines to find customers seeking bookings and accommodations and they engage them from there. The company also promotes its products through the channel of strategic partnerships with other affiliate sites which spreads the visibility and knowledge of Booking.com (Skift and Rijvers, 2016). There is also the use of search engine optimization, SEO, technique which generates traffic to the companys site; the company also acquires traffic to its site through the use of price-comparison sites. Aside from performance marketing, which is a low-funnel communication method, the company also engages in mid-funnel and more upper-funnel modes of communication. In this, they do offline advertising which they piloted in the U.S in 2013 (Murphy, Chen and Cossutta, 2016) and consistently they are venturing into other markets across the globe. For four years now, Booking.com has been doing the traditional marketing communication in their efforts to make the companys name a household name in travel. A recommendation to this is that the company should enforce the use of more email marketing, social media, and awareness through customer service at their partnering properties. The people vested with running a company determine its success or failure and so the fifth P under discussion in t his paper is people. People The people aspect of the marketing mix refers to the individuals that a company relies on to run it from the front line up the ladder to the managing director (Ivy, 2008). These people are important because they are as much a part of the business as the product or service that the company offers. Booking.com has over a million active properties around the world and these calls for excellent management and staffing. Every 24 hours, approximately 1,200,000 room nights get booked via Booking.com across 220+ countries that partner with Booking.com worldwide (Liu and Zhang, 2014). To be able to handle the needs of all its customers, loyal and prospective, Booking.com has 187 offices globally and a task force of 13,000 talented personnel (Bloomberg, 2017). A recommendation to this aspect is that the management at Booking.com should always be willing to listen to staff from all levels and in all destinations to ensure smooth running of the firm. How the customer receives a service or product from the said people is another important aspect of a companys marketing strategy; at that processes is the sixth P in the marketing mix. Processes Processes refer to how the service gets delivered to the customers upon paying for it; customers should get exactly what they pay for and nothing less (De Albornoz et.al, 2011). At Booking.com, the clients come in the form of the owners of the partner properties as well as the people who book accommodations through the site. As for the property owners, their properties get to be listed accordingly given the commission paid by them to Bookings.com. The service to them, thus, gets delivered through listing and visibility on the companys site as well as other affiliate sites. This ensures that the company gets a chance to garner as much revenue as it deserves. As for the bookers, the service is delivered to them through the rightful allocation of the room booked. Bookers on Booking.com do not get short-changed by getting assigned to the wrong property or destination. A recommendation to these is that partner properties should be given a lowering on their commission payable if when their destination is experiencing a dry tourism season. The effective processes by Booking.com not only ensure trust but also quality referrals by the satisfied clients and in turn revenue boost for the company. It is important to prove the delivery and compensation of these products and services even when they are intangible. Hence, physical evidence is the seventh P in the marketing mix. Physical evidence At Booking.com, upon successful booking the booker receives a booking confirmatory email. The client can then show it alongside other booking details from the website in soft copy or a printed hard copy for evident at the respective propertys reception. A receipt then gets issued by the property to the customer. The receipt is the one that shows the itemized bill including taxes, rates, incidentals, and fees. A recommendation to this is that Booking.com should get even closer working ties with the partner properties so that a client would only need to present to the property the card they used to pay and all the details of the booking would instantly show. That way there would be no need of other forms of evidence. Conclusion Booking.com is no doubt one of the leading online travel agencies in the world for the last decade and counting thanks to its effective service marketing strategies. These strategies are in the areas of the 7 Ps of marketing mix as discussed in this paper. The Ps: product, place, price, promotion, people, processes, and physical evidence have all been effectively handled at Booking.com. There are, however things that the company can do to enhance its products farther as seen in the recommendations made under each strategy References Bloomberg, (2017). Company Overview of Booking.com Limited. 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