With the combination of antique style in the historical city, the hotel is successfully obtaining an occupancy rate of 45% in off-peak season, and 65% in peak season. However, along with the host of 2nd Youth Olympic Games during the mid of 2014, the developing trend has shifted towards western area (IL & Huh, 2012), which is not only redirecting the chosen destination for guests, but also intensify the competition in local region. As a way of marketing, the hotel administration decided to launch and further utilize the hotel website to maintain or even upgrade the business level.Business background Jeanie Hotel is a 36-floor hotel with 288 guest rooms, this traditional is well-equipped with all 4 star's business and recreational service facilities.
However, the standards will not stand out as the advantage for the hotel for the future business growth. The major competitive concept for Jeanie Hotel is to use its traditional Chinese style designs on interiors, facilities, decorations (sample pictures attached as below), activities and tourism combination packages.Since Nanjing has been ten regime capitals along Chinese history, the promotion origins for local tourism are coming from its reserved long-time scenery, stories and other cultural features, aside with the environmental surroundings (Yang, 2009). The highlighted tourism concept is not a way of ignoring the business purpose of customers who will stay in the hotel, but to strengthen the point of penetration to differentiate Jeanie Hotel with others in the metropolitan area.
However, partially because of the market failure, the development has reached a bottle neck.The executive office would like to deep functioning the existing website with the power of social media, to promote the suppositories in order to boost the hotel development. Business Goal With popularizing of the website, the fundamental goal is to increase the occupancy rate, it is though operable through various channels. For example, times of enquiries for the hotel, visiting amount on website, the time of daily exposures on media (paper, online, TV or social), the contracted tourism agencies, etcetera.
Through three phases that each last for six months, the ideal result for the rate will increase 5%, 10%, 10% for both off-peak and peak seasons to 60%/80% and 0%/90% respectively. There will be indefinite but expected formation of repeat customers. Website Goal Since the new marketing strategy is specifically and extremely linked with hotel's official website, the business goals can be detailed and linked down to the website performing outcomes. From a starting point, the basic of new website should be designed in corresponding to the traditional Chinese feature for the hotel without losing its authenticity and online convenience.For example: For homepage visiting, the website currently has an average of daily 1800 viewing amount.
At the end of three phases, the number is expected to exceed 10000 per day exclusively, which means the figure is unique that is not transit through other tourism agency websites. For social media, it is nowadays a well-developed communication tool, it is not rare for a business using Backbone account or twitter to promote itself or to communicate the customers. For Jeanie Hotel, since the official account has not officially set up, the outcome could yet to be anticipated.However, the future number of forwarded posts, hash tagged twits or comments can be viewed as details for determining the successfulness of the website.
Competitor Website Analysis As has been pointed previously, Nanjing as a provincial city, has great amount of tourism resources, which indicate the intense competition in hotel industry. There are two selected hotels' website will be evaluated, in comparison for Jeanie to select and to avoid the advantages and disadvantages in website design. The major problems will be specified and the details will be concluded in the table. Sheehan Holiday Hotel (Retrieved from: http://www. Zoophyte.
N/at/Main. Asp) The first selected hotel is Sheehan Holiday Hotel, a pre-5-star hotel that located Just ext to the hosting location of Nanjing 2nd Youth Olympic Games Stadium in Jeanie district, Nanjing. It could be a major competitor for Jeanie Hotel in promoting its business. The left top is the logo and on the right is the booking number for two sub branch.
The lower tags are specified purpose entries for news, rooms, functions, employment etc. , and it is quite clear and accessible for users. The pictures in the middle are scrolling and displaying the details of the hotel about the hallway, dining area, function rooms and guest rooms.The reservation area is located at the right OTTOMH with the hotel exterior on top. The first appearance of the website is clean, but it is also easily to be determined its purpose for Chinese tourists, because there is no link for viewers' to change to an English version. In another word, the size of potential target customer is shrank.
Jingling Hotel (Retrieved from: http://www. Jingliest. Com/Chinese/index. Asps) Jingling Hotel is a successful business model in Nanjing hotel industry, which the brand has been stood for decades, and number of derivative products have conducted.As can be seen, the website page is not only focusing on its accommodation. There is not much difference for the main feature of the website design between the two, but the first thing need to be noticed is that Jingling hotel's website add the link to English version, which is an important factor and indicated its international visitors.
However, what the second is, the website is intended to include whole areas of business from Jingling Hotel, which make its basic been hard to locate. The tags on top mainly focused on history, brand, social responsibility and investment etc. Which is not easily accessible for individual customers in reserving their accommodations. A brief table for the two is then formulated as follows: Advantage Disadvantage Sheehan Hotel 1 . Viewable room rates; 2. Tags are clear and in detail; 3.
Facilities and functions are included. 1. Language limitation; 2. Small fonts; 3.
No specific aspect for itself. Jingling Hotel 1. Simple but pointed designs; 2. Well-covered relevant information; 3.
Videos are included; 4. Language option. 1 . Too broad information cover; 2.
Lack of feature updates.Target Audience The new website is ideally targeted to those individual customers, especially tourist, but the identities for those customers vary. As the individual visiting purpose to Nanjing is mainly relates to it Chinese characteristics, so the age group can be identified as middle aged adult or older, who are self-financed, well-educated. However, the involvement of social media tools are also important to attract youngsters, who may not have a high rate of actual purchase, but can influence their relatives' decision making, and could be considered as word of mouth to promote Jenny's business.
Tourist groups and convention purposes could not be ignored, but their visit may not be frequent as the individuals. To make sure noticing the importance, the tags and links need to be well-exposed and easily accessible. And the marketing division need to maintain communications with tourism agencies and possible companies and organizations. Use Environments Scholars have evaluated the variables of online purchase behaviors (Vazquez ; Xx, 2009).When it relates and involves with large amount of money flow, it is possible for customers to view when on the move (most likely outdoor, using portable devices), but to purchase when stabilized (at home or office, so the percentage of home-based personal computers). Therefore, the website need to be designed based on Android, SO, and Windows platforms.
Because of the multiple platform applications involvement, it is hard to feature and apply to all the possible user behavior, but the design starting point could be targeted mostly into Internet Explorer (IEEE for Windows), Safari (SO), Maxilla Firebox etc.Last but not the least about use environment, since the viewing behaviors have determined with higher percentage on mobile devices, the highlighted features about the hotel, promotions and packages with others need to be spot on and user friendly. User Tasks The potential customers are available in retrieving relevant information they quested from the homepage. Under multiple international languages selections, the detailed tasks have listed but not limited as following: 1 .
Make room enquiries; 2. Make event enquiries; 3.Make dining enquiries; 4. Make facility enquiries; 5. Historical features in the city or surrounding neighborhood; 6. Enquiry about travel packages; 7.
Up-to-date international/national/local news; 8. Bookings; 9. Real time customer services and enquiry response; 10. Contact information. Any enquiries are available to reserve. With the development and evaluation on customer feedbacks, the website covering scope will sure be simplified.
Website Contents As has been stated, the homepage need to be clear and eye-catching.First, hotel logo and name are placed in the middle top of the entire page, and will not fold up when users scrolling down for more information and the language choosing option bar will also be placed on the same fixed page. Similar with selected competitor websites, there will be task tags on top of the hotel images, the categories can be broken up into About Hotel, News Centre, Room Types, Facilities, Dining, Explore Nanjing, Employment, and Contact Us. There is also a concept to adopt flowing window for immediate response on customer enquiries, but the idea will definitely need to be discussed about its feasibility.
At the bottom right of the page, there will also be a plug-in map application (most likely to cooperate with Baud instead of Google) in providing attraction locations and real time traffic information. Development Tools For editing the text content, Microsoft Word will be using and Adobe Photos for image editing, Perez for slides organizing. In these graphic design software, Photos needs to be at least CSS edition and the requirement for permanent Perez account is essential to eliminate the commercials. And this is the reason for the link with online video websites.For purchasing, Taboo and Papal plug-ins will be adopted, and their commission rate will be further discussed.
Website Content Storyboard A simple, draft construction of website link is presented as the storyboard. Website Template Design The following are some suggested template that provided by candidate designer, some of the working pieces present the request of Chinese-character, and some of them were focused on the surrounding environment. Process Analysis The new website will be categorized into different components and tags as discussed fore, and each contained tasks will be responsible for relevant divisions in the Hotel.For example, travel packages and booking bundles will be linked directly to marketing and reservation division; customer feedbacks will send directly to public relationship division and forwarded to relevant case representatives; News and updates will be tasked to secretary department; the priority for real time customer enquiry and response will be the front desk since they are familiar with up-to-date information, and then it will transfer to secretary department. Marketing TechniquesThe contracts that have mentioned previously with numbers of different organization and agencies will be one way to promote. Social media also has the advantage for online promotion activities.
TV commercials are important in on-air business, and discounts for loyalty customers will also be applied. Conclusion After detailed explanations on Jeanie Hotel website launching plan, with united staffs in the hotel, the executives are confident to achieve the goals they have set, and the scale will be expanded to outer regions for welcoming customers around the world.
