Marriott is an International Company that is specialized in the hotel business. It is one of the top brands in the hotel industry and operates in more than sixty-five countries. It owns Renaissance Hotels and Marriott Hotels & Resorts. Its other services include corporate housing and managing golf courses.
In every industry there is competition. The competition is brought about by the struggle to have the biggest market share. The competition also leads to a lot of innovation to have the best services. Marriot Hotel also has a lot of competition. Its main competitors are the other ‘big’ players in the industry also known as the primary competitors. They include the InterContinental Hotels Group, Hilton Hotels, Carlson Hotels, and Starwood hotels and resorts. These are the companies perceived to give Marriot the toughest competition. They are regarded so because of their size in terms of market share, financial strength, and name recognition. These companies have enough capacity to hire highly qualified professionals who can run them well and ensure effective operation. Strong budgets that cater for proper and extensive marketing strategies are also a common phenomenon among these so-called ‘big’ players in the industry (Bromiley, Papenhausen, Borchert 179).
Name recognition is another major factor in terming these companies’ top competitors. They have an advantage over the ‘smaller’ players because of the weight their names carry. Clients will visit these hotels just because they have heard about them, or because of the prestige associated with dining or holidaying with these ‘big’ players. The primary competitors also offer tight competition because they offer most, if not all, of the services offered by the Marriott hotels. These may range from providing restaurants, meeting rooms, event hosting, and corporate services, to resort amenities like golf, tennis, and gyms.
The second group of competitors is the ‘smaller’ players; secondary competition. This group does not have as much financial power as the ‘big’ players. They have much smaller marketing budgets, are not known much and therefore do not enjoy the free marketing enjoyed by ‘big’ players in terms of name recognition. The ‘small’ players, however, are worth watching in unique locations and can cause quite some competition in these areas. Their strategy is to give specialized service that is mostly not offered anywhere else. Their clients keep going back for the unique services offered and offer some form of marketing by recommending the hotels by word of mouth to their friends and relatives. Customer relations are given focus here because the hoteliers want to develop a long-term relationship with their customers. Another strategy employed by the primary competition is maintaining high or acceptable standards of service while keeping the cost of the service as low as possible (Baum 76). This gives them an edge over the ‘bigger ‘players for the middle-class clients and the conservative rich and is enough to have them rated as1-3 star hotels. Some go into portfolio diversification so that they reduce their risk of making losses when the market goes down. A few examples of this category are universal Bryan’s Spanish cove resort, Buena Vista suites, and century hotel.
The third group includes small inns and cheap bed and breakfast lodgings. These are considered non-comparables because they only offer basic services and therefore offer almost zero competition to the Marriott Hotel. Their marketing budgets are small and have no name recognition as most of them are not known internationally
In conclusion, the Marriot Hotel has the primary competitors to watch in the industry and should work hard to keep a competitive edge ahead of them. However, the secondary competition also taps quite a percentage of the market share and has unique strategies that could be borrowed and used to tap a little more market share and improve customer satisfaction (Dowell 961).
Works Cited
Bromiley Philip, Papenhausen Chris, Borchert Patricia.”Why do service prices vary, or towards understanding the micro-structure of competition”. Managerial and Decision Economics Volume 23, Issue 4, 2002, Pages: 171-186
Dowell, Glen. “Product line strategies of new entrants in an established industry: evidence from the U.S. hotel industry”. Strategic Management Journal Volume 27, Issue 10, 2006, Pages: 959-979
Ingram Paul, Baum A. C. Joel. “Opportunity And Constraint: Organizations’ Learning From The Operating And Competitive Experience Of Industries”. Strategic Management volume 18, Issue 18, 1997, Pages: 75-98