Operations heavy and marketing light... or vici versa

What occurs when an organisation puts a heavy emphasis on operations and is less focused on marketing? One would usually see a ‘see-saw’ swing type operation. I.e. the administration of the business practice would change rapidly and repeatedly from one position, situation, or condition to another and back again. Take a hotel for example; when occupancy and profits is positive, the tendency is to take the foot off marketing. When occupancy and revenues drop – due to various reasons including guest complaints, it would then focus all its attention on marketing, That’s when the  customer is inundated with special offers, discounted rates, the ‘one-for-one’ deals, etc. – all for the wrong reason (except of course when it is off-season).

Brands are sometimes guilty of focusing too much on operations and less on marketing. Branded hotels all posses a set of standards (Standard Operating Procedures), known as SOP’s to ensure the quality, consistency and integrity of the service they offer. Together with the Minimum Quality Standards (MQS’s) guidelines, all standards regarding the property signage, guest service procedures, the maintenance of fixtures, furniture and equipment (FF &E), food production, procedures for purchasing, hiring, providing details on a specific line of supplies, among a plethora of details covering the operations of the hotel, can be strictly adhered to. All well and good, however, the best bed or the finest amenities alone cannot deliver the promise of fair market share.

Most hotels fail to have a proper understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats compared to the other properties in their ‘competitive set’. This leads to poor management in the marketing of the hotel. Weak market segmentation, target markets not properly identified and ineffective communication and promotion of the hotel’s offerings are some of the issues that go unresolved.

Marketing heavy and operations light

‘Say-do-gap’ is a much talked about phrase in the world of Behavioural Economics. ‘Say-Do- gap’, also called the intention-action gap, is when people tend to say one thing, but do another. What happens when marketing communications tell customers what to expect from a brand and yet the customer experience with the brand is way below expectations? Let’s illustrate this with the following; you are checked-in by an unfriendly hotel receptionist, given a twin-bedded room instead of the room with a double-bed, and, after eventually getting the desired room-type, your bags finally arrive an hour later. All this, with nary a single word of apology from this hotel that prides itself by claiming, “Be pampered from the time you arrive until you leave”. Would you use this hotel/brand again? - Very unlikely. What you have here is a huge ‘gap’ between the hotel’s words and its actions.

For those who stay in hotels frequently, noise, it seems, is moving right up the ‘annoyance agenda’ There was this resort hotel which had a serious problem with noise due to design and build ‘cut backs’ on costs. The doors were not adequately soundproofed; walls between rooms and corridors were thin-resulting in many guest complaints been posted on TripAdvisor. Every such negative ‘post’ was replied to by the hotel manager with a scripted “we are sorry to hear of your complaint and whilst we will be taking immediate steps to rectify this problem, we thank you for bringing it to our notice.” Sad to say, this went on for quite some time. This beautifully located hotel which marketed itself as ‘a peaceful getaway’ was conning its customers. As a result and over time, it found it difficult to build a base of loyal and happy customers and was soon on the slippery slope of business failure.

Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier

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