Marketing Plan For Thomas Holidays Group: SWOT And Pestle Analysis

Background of the Company

Discuss about the marketing plan helps the firm Thomson Holiday Group to run the business successfully and smoothly in the competitive market.

A marketing plan is defined as a blueprint or a comprehensive document that structures the marketing and the advertising efforts of an organization for the coming year (Hollensen 2015). The marketing plan describes the activities of the business that are involved with the accomplishment of specific goals of marketing within a particular time frame. Therefore, it can be said that marketing plan is a vital factor for running any business successfully as it helps to identify the target market of the business, to identify its competitors, to set measureable and specific goals and also to map out a strategy in order to reach the target customers of the organization (Philip 2016). This report seeks to develop a marketing plan for the company Thomas Holiday Group. This plan will mainly focus on the application of the theoretical framework like SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, McKensey 7s model and Pestle analysis as these will provide practical information regarding the situation analysis of the firm. Ansoff Matrix and marketing mix strategies will also be applied in order to analyze the competitive advantages of the firm.

The organization Thomas Holidays Group was established in the year 1965 by Roy Thompson, who belongs to a lower middle class family. This organization is considered as one of the renowned travel operators in the hospitality industry. Thompson established the travel agency based on some effective business policies and strategies (Wilson and Gilligan 2012). The implementation of these effective policies and strategies lead the business to run in a successful path. Therefore, the owner decided to expand his business across the world in different multinational organizations. The organization Thomas Holidays Group was able to fulfill the demands and perceived needs of the customers by providing satisfactory services to them. This was possible for the firm because they implemented various innovative marketing techniques, strategies and also performed the situational analysis of the organization (Hutt and Speh 2012).

In any industry, competitors and the rivalry play an important role as the revenue, earnings and the profit percentage of an organization depends on its competitors. The organization Thomas Holidays Group also faced various challenges from its competitors, though it was running successfully and was maintaining their competitive advantage in the competitive market. The primary competitors of the firm that put adverse effect on Thomas Holidays Group include Dive Quest, Expedia UK, Ampersand Travel and carrier holidays (Weinstein and Pohlman 2015). In the tourism industry, to provide cost effective holiday destinations to its customers is the most important factor and to provide quality service is the essence and the secret for the firms (Liu, Kasturiratne and Moizer 2012). As the political and the economical environment of the country UK is in favor of the tourism industry, Thomas Holidays Group has to face various challenges regarding its competitors. The reason is that a simple unsatisfactory factor might shift the customers of the organization towards its competitors.

Competitors of Thomas Holidays Group

Customers are the most important factor for any business, as the sales, earnings and the proportion of profit earned by a firm depends on them (Peters et al. 2013). Therefore, the management department of the organization Thomas Holidays Group mainly put priority to its customers in order to satisfy them by providing best quality service and also to earn more. Thus, the marketers of the firm keep updating its customers regarding new offers of holiday packages and serve the consumers’ interest by providing best available services. The company provides higher importance to the feedbacks provided by the customers and as per requirement the management of the firm takes immediate step in order to solve the matter (Orriols-Puig et al. 2013). The primary customers of the firm Thomas Holidays Group is composed of bachelors, family members, marries and unmarried couples, high school students, college students and retired persons.

The firm Thomas Holidays Group has a strong brand value and it provides astonishing services to its customers at best price. Thus, the company has a strong market share. At present, the market share of the firm is 13% that is much higher than the market share of its tough competitors (Nunkoo, Seetanah and Sannassee 2014). The reason behind this is that the marketers of the firm Thomas Holidays Group perform the market research successfully and as per the collected data, the management of the organization has implemented the strategies of marketing. This implementation of various relevant strategies has leaded the company to earn a huge amount of profit in the year 2011 and 2013 and even in 2014. Thomas Holidays Group has received an award in the UK for providing the best service (Jolibert et al. 2012).

Figure 1: Market Share of Thomas Holidays Group

(Source: Jolibert et al. 2012)

The brand value of the organization Thomas Holidays Group has helped the firm to gain more loyal customers. The trust of the people regarding the firm’s best quality service helps to achieve the competitive advantage in the competitive market (Morgan 2012). The service of the company Thomas Holidays Group is incomparable to the other companies, starting from the arrangement for the best hotels to the arrangement of the best transport facility. According to a recent survey organized by the most popular tourism magazine, about 65% of the total population voted that the major competitors of Thomas Holidays Group like Expedia UK, Dive Quest provides better services but Thomas Holidays Group provides the best service (Kotler 2016). In addition to this, staffs or the employees of the particular organization, especially who directly comes in contact with the customers of the firm are extremely well mannered and well behaved. The management of the firm is such that they provide quick responses to all the queries raised by its consumers (Gustavo 2013). Therefore, the customers become influenced and get satisfied by the services provided by Thomas Holidays Group.

Consumers of Thomas Holidays Group

Macro environmental analysis

Political Stability – Thomson Holidays assist travelers in their travelling pursuits, and therefore its business operations are spread internationally. Thus, it is important to consider these factors when framing the marketing policies of the brand. Different countries shall have different political environments (refer to appendix 1). As such, there would some environments that would not be suited to the business growth and prosperity of Thomson Holidays. In addition, the taxation rules shall be different as per the rules and regulations of various nationalities (Mariani 2014). The trade union strength would also differ as per the prominent culture and background of in various nationalities.

Economic – The business cycle of Thomson holidays is a pertinent attribute that has to be taken into account while framing the marketing plan of Thomson Holidays. Each company has different business cycles, and thus operational polices must be made to adapt to the market condition (Gustavo 2013).  Each country has different inflation rates, and therefore the prices of goods shall vary as per the nature of the market. Keeping this attribute in mind, the travelling prices should be structured accordingly to attract newer consumers towards the brand. The unemployment levels in a particular country determine the purchasing power of the common public in the country (Morrison 2013).

Sociological – The demographics of a particular county is largely influences the business growth and prosperity of a country. In addition, the lifestyle choices of the people determine the tourist demand of a particular country (Mason 2015). The propensity of social issues in the country can prevent the inflow of tourists in a particular tourist destination. The acceptance towards foreign tourists among the common public is a strong influence on the potential of a tourist destination (Raj and Griffin 2015). A friendlier attitude towards the people visiting the place can result in a large inflow of sales revenue of a travelling entity.

Technological – Advanced technological mechanisms can assist Thomson Holidays to enhance profitability with limited time and resources. The government investment in the field of technology would not only help Thomson Holidays but also other brands operating in the hospitality services. These shall decrease the operational expenses of the brand to a large extent (Kavoura and Stavrianea 2014).

Environmental – The environmental issues related to production may hamper the environmental balance of the organization. Therefore adequate measures should be taken to solve such problems which can harm the brand image of Thomsons Holidays. According to (autho), environmental protection procedures should be implemented to prevent such an outcome

Market Share

Legal – Thomson Holidays should conform to the existing laws and regulations of the country. Thus, employment and competition law should be adhered to ensure there are no legal complications. The brand can also follow foreign trade regulations to facilitate global business opportunities (Goodall and Ashworth 2013). The consumer protection legislation ensures that the consumer protection rights have been protected, so that improper consumer perception does not harm the business.

In the context of the hospitality industry and Thomson Holidays, the porters five forces is explained below

Supplier power – Suppliers of Thomson Holidays have benefitted substantially in the recent years. On the other hand, Thomson Holidays has gained adequately through its supply power (Hassan Zainal and Mohamed 2015). It’s suppliers have provided the necessary resources and manpower that might have helped the brand to achieve global standing in the last few years. 

Buyer power – The brand has a positive brand perception among consumers that has enabled the brand to build a successful business model in the present decade (refer to appendix 2) In this regard, it can be said that the brand has enjoyed a successful brand loyalty over a period of time which can be largely attributed to the purchasing power of its buyers.

Competitive Rivalry – there is intense competition in the hospitality industry. As such, these can pose a major threat to the market positioning of Thomson Holidays in the global market.

Threat of Substitution – Substitute brands has been striving hard to take the place of Thomson Holidays by offering attractive pricing policies to the o consumers. Thus, the brand shall have to consider these factors while framing the marketing policies of the organization (Getz 2013). In addition, Thomson Holidays would have to offer price concessions to consumers to retain the existing market of the brand.

Threat of New entry – The brand shall have to look for options to negate the threat of new entrants in decreasing its market share. Thus the brand would have to consolidate its existing position in the global market

Strategy – Effective marketing policies with the focus on the consolidation on the existing state of the company.

Structure – The whole group is divided into several teams, with each group being responsible as well as accountable to the tasks assigned.

Systems – Thomson Holidays follows a hierarchical structure, with orders coming from the Top management.

Shared Values- The organization follows moral values and principles that helps consumers with identifying with the brand. Honesty and transparency are the core foundations, on which the organization stands.

Values

Skills – The staffs posses potent hospitality skills that help the organization to match with the demands of the global market.  As such, superior customer skills are required to match the demands with the prominent hospitality entities of the world (FitzPatrick et al. 2013).

Staff – The staff of the organization is recruited from various backgrounds, culture and nationalities. This brings a fresh perspective to the daily business functionalities of the brand.

Style – The organization possesses a structured style which daily business functionalities are performed with utmost sincerity and accuracy (refer to appendix 3). This is one of the reasons due to which the firm has achieved considerable reputation and growth in the global tourism industry.

Their market shares are – Expedia UK (17%), first choice (12%) and Thomas cook (31%).

SWOT Analysis

The   following is the SWOT analysis of Thomas Holidays 

Strength – The strength of the organization can be measured in term s of the sales revenue of the organization in the existing financial year (Page 2014). The substantial brand loyalty of the organization can be also counted as among the strengths of the organization.

Weaknesses- The weaknesses of the organization are- the external market threats, the presence of substitute brands in the market (refer to appendix 4) Besides this, the instability in the inflow of tourists to various countries has substantially reduced in the recent times due to the presence of global warming in the country.

Opportunities – Thomas holidays can identify further market opportunities in various tourist destinations around the world. It can create business tours, adventurous tours and recreational tours around the world.

Threats – The emergence of newer brands are the primary threats in the organization. Also, the tourism industry is extremely vulnerable to the external elements in the organization (Vitouladiti 2014). Thus, these two attributes must be considered as potential threats around the world.

The following are the important challenges that the brand would have to face in the coming years

Market stagnation – The market stagnation can pose a threat to the business sustainability of the brand. The tourism industry has stagnated in the global market due to the lack of exciting tourists hotspots that are available in the global market. Recently, tourists prefer making travelling arrangements alone rather than taking the assistance of a tourist company.

Intensive market competition – The hospitality and tourisms industry operates under constant market competition. It is also extremely changeable subjected to the external market environments. Thus, this can be a major concern to the business sustainability of Thomson Holidays.

Environmental Analysis

Instable consumer demand – The lack of tourists in the off season can be a major issue for the business growth and development of Thomson Holidays. In the tourisms industry consumer demand cannot be predicted due to the difference in tourists visiting a place differs in various years. Thus, this leads to instability in the sales revenue of an organization (Maggon and Chaudhry 2015).

The tourism industry consists of consist of small and medium private and public enterprises. According to Peñaloza, Toulouse and Visconti (2013), there are around fifty tourist industries operating in Britain at the moment.

The top competitors of   Thomson   Holidays are – Expedia UK, first choice as well as Thomas cook

Their   market shares are –   Expedia UK (17%), first choice (12%) and   Thomas cook (31%).

The organization Thompson Holiday Group intends to plan a unique marketing plan by implementing which the firm can run successfully and profitably. The marketing plan of the firm is composed of effective strategies that help Thompson Holiday Group to achieve its objectives. The goals of the firm Thompson Holiday Group are primarily set in order to increase its proportion of profit margin and also to increase the productivity of the firm. The company intends to enhance its productivity from the global perspective and also aims to increase the profit margin by providing satisfactory service to all its global customers (Frochot and Batat 2013). The aims of the firm Thompson Holiday Group can be categorized according to the SMART objective as follows:

Specific – To increase the business globally in the tourism market by providing various services. Therefore, the firm intends to increase its market share by 5% by end of 2016.

Measurable – The aim of the firm is to expand its business to a large demographic area by implementation of various tourism services. Therefore, it can be measured as per its position in market as it shows whether the aims have been met or not. The firm intends to increase its market share by 5% that is measurable (Ashworth and Goodall 2012).

Attainable – The firm should assess its marketing potentiality and capability in order to ensure that the objective is achievable. Thompson Holiday Group is a leading company in tourism industry, so it has the ability to increase its market share.

Relevant – The management of the firm should analyze its competitors, employees, business resources and the present condition of tourism industry to ensure its ability to achieve its goals within a specific time that is by end of 2016. The objective is relevant and can be obtained by the firm by performing better.

Time bound – Every objective should have a deadline in order to achieve the goals set by the firm. Thompson Holiday Group intends to achieve its target of increasing its market share by the end of 2016.

The management of Thompson Holiday Group would apply a mixture of demographic, geographic and psychographic segmentation strategies in order to earn more.

The firm should select its target customers based on sex, age, gender and income. On the basis of these demographic factors, the organization should make various types of holiday packages in order to attract more people and to increase its revenues.

Depending on the geographic segmentation that is based on regions and states, Thompson Holiday Group should arrange for various holiday packages as the preference of the target people depends on their livelihood and the region of living.

Thompson Holiday Group can segregate its target customers based on the personality characteristics, lifestyles and social class. This segregation is termed as psychographic segmentation, where the firm should offer the holiday packages according to under low and premium pricing strategy (Pike and Page 2014). The company should make the packages by keeping the social and economic status of the customers in mind.

Targeting is an important factor for any business, especially for the tourism industry as based on the target customers, various holiday packages have to make by the marketers as per their preferences in order to increase the revenue and the profitability of the firm. Thus, Thompson Holiday Group should keep in focus its target customers like married, newly married and unmarried couples, retired peoples, bachelors, high school students and college students and accordingly adventurous, business or educational tours to be set.

Thompson Holiday Group is considered as the leading company in the tourism industry as by providing unique, satisfactory and best quality service the particular company has gained its higher position in the market. The responsive and empathic approach, after sales service, quick response of the employees to any query made by the customers, promotional campaigns, to aware the customers about the new holiday packages and offers are the key factors for positioning its services and products (Sun, Ryan and Pan 2014).

The marketing mix strategy is implemented by the firms in order to promote the services and the products of the firm in the competitive market. A typical marketing mix is composed of 4P’s (appendix 5), though Thompson Holiday Group implemented the modified marketing mix that is composed of 7P’s, as the tourism industry mainly focuses on the excellence service and production in order to meet the demand of the customers. The factors of the marketing mix are discussed below by implementing which Thompson Holiday Group can frame its aims.

The product strategy in tourism industry indicates the complex strategies of providing various tourism services like physical resources, services and activities. The holiday destination is considered as the main factor of attracting customers. Therefore, Thompson Holiday Group makes various types of holiday tours based on demographic, psychographic and geographic segmentation, and also based on the demand of the customers (Balmer 2013). The holiday packages of Thompson Holiday Group are made for various types of customers like – married, newly married and unmarried couples, retired people, bachelors, high school students and college students. Therefore, different types of trips like honeymoon trips, adventurous trips, educational and business tours are made by Thompson Holiday Group in order to attract various customers of all genders, sex, ages. The value is added to Thompson Holiday Group as it is comprised of complimentary food supply, medical assistance, various offers and amusement programs on travel packages.

Price is the main factor for any business. Thus, Thompson Holiday Group implements various strategies of pricing in order to attract customers from both middle and upper class of the society. The other reason for implementing various pricing strategies is to match with the changing demand of the customers and high competitive market. Thompson Holiday Group also decides the prices of each package depending on the types of holiday destinations and duration of the trip. Therefore, it can be said that the company implements both the low pricing strategy and premium strategy to appeal the mass.

Thompson Holiday Group provides the services in such a convenient way that all the customers of the firm can easily get access to it. The company Thompson Holiday Group belongs to a tourism industry, thus here the customers travel a long distance in order to acquire the satisfactory services provided by the firm. The particular organization might disclose the information regarding various holiday destinations in the company websites, social media sites, holiday campaigns and trade fares.  

The promotional campaigns are the important factors as these help to earn more customers and also help to increase the profit margin of the firm. The promotional activities at regular interval make the consumers aware of all the products, services and the new offers provided by the firm. Therefore, it can be said that promotion is the mean of communication between the company and its customers. The promotional activities of Thompson Holiday Group include – advertising, personal selling, public relations and viral advertising (Evans, Stonehouse and Campbell 2012). The other media of promoting the company include banner ads, brochures, hoarding, billboards and many more.

In case of tourism industry, people in the marketing mix indicate both the employees of the organization and the customers. In Thompson Holiday Group, the well behavior and the quick response of the employees attracts the customers, on the other way, identification of proper customers is also an essential factor as the customers bring in revenue and profit of the firm. The marketers aim to attract people of both the middle and upper class society by providing various holiday destination packages. Thompson Holiday Group provides services to various types of customers including married, unmarried and just married couples, retired people, families, high school students, college students and bachelors.

The tourism industry is a business composed of long and complex process. There Thompson Holiday Group maintains a systematic procedure in order to perform business smoothly and successfully. The firm provides information regarding its offerings to its customers through the company websites and social websites (Konu 2015). The company might also ring up its existing customers in order to inform about the new offerings of holiday destination packages. The marketers take active part in conveying the services and the messages to the customers.

The particular organization should provide the physical evidences of the services it provides during the trips by uploading the photographs, videos of the successful trips in the company websites. These physical evidences would help to promote and advertise the company itself and will also attract the customers.

Ansoff’s matrix

The Ansoff’s matrix indicates the four factors of any business, these include – market development, market penetration, product development and diversification. All these four factors equally play the important role in the tourism industry (Chathoth 2014). In the organization Thompson Holiday Group, the mangers of the firm plan for the future growth of the business by implementing the Ansoff’s matrix. The risk factors related with the implementation of the four factors of Ansoff’s matrix have been discussed in the appendix 6.

Market development – The target market and the target customers of the company are achieved. Situational analysis is performed systematically for better understanding of the company and the competitive market.

Market penetration – Innovative strategies and the best quality services provided by the firm Thompson Holiday Group attracts more customers. Better holiday destination packages are implemented (Woo, Kim and Uysal 2015).

Product development – Various types of travelling packages are provided to the customers in order to attract them.

Diversification – Alternative business strategies are planned by the marketers, so that if one fails, the other strategies can protect the business.      

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that the marketing plan helps the firm Thomson Holiday Group to run the business successfully and smoothly in the competitive market. The marketing strategies implemented by the firm provide utmost importance to its customers in order to attract more. By providing quality service and quick response to the queries of the customers, the company has earned a mass of customers. Thus, the market position and the market share of the firm have also increased.

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