Introduction
Hilton Hotels Corporation is a famous international hospitality company, the primary products, and services of which are hotels, resorts, and vacation ownership properties. According to fortune.com, Hilton Hotels ranks 338 on the 500 lists of fortune companies (1). The corporation owns and manages more than 6,000 properties around the world (Bates, 2). The company is known for such hotel brands as Hilton, Conrad, Canopy, LXR, Tempo, Tapestry Collection, Embassy Suites, Signia Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, and Hilton Grand Vacations, among others (Bates, 2).
The company provides services and products for people who have business trips and leisure travels. Hilton Hotels offer its customers extra services such as bed and breakfast, conference accommodations, and family full packages. To evaluate the company’s corporate-societal relationships, one should identify its primary stakeholders, examine the impact of the external environment, and assess its performance.
The Impact of Primary Stakeholders on the Financial Performance of Hilton Hotels
Hilton Hotels’ primary stakeholders are investors, owners and developers, guests, clients, suppliers, international organizations, community members, industry, and policymakers. Each of these stakeholders may affect the company’s financial performance both positively and negatively. They can use their economic, legal, informational, and political power and vote if they need to decide something. For instance, the shareholders may require the corporation to include Corporate Social Responsibility performance as one of the measures to award senior executives (Noonan, 3, p. 15).
Consequently, the company will need to invest more money in the development and implementation of corporate social action. Hilton Hotels should consider ethical, social, and environmental concerns and integrate them into the corporate strategy. Thus, if the company opens a new hotel in a new country, it should consider its culture, traditions and beliefs, safety, environmental sustainability, and other issues. To control the implementation of all these corporate social responsibility acts, Hilton Hotels will have to hire additional employees, which will lead to extra expenses.
The second way stakeholders can influence the financial performance of Hilton Hotels Corporation is by boycotting. Thus, customers, investors, and suppliers may boycott the company’s products and services due to various reasons, negatively affecting its financial success. Even though the company promotes diversity and inclusion, some of its staff members or customers may be biased and demonstrate animosity towards a cultural, religious, or ethnic group. Consequently, potential clients may organize boycotts to address the problem and coerce Hilton Hotels to change the situation. According to Yu, boycotts may significantly decrease “tourists’ visit intentions,” which, in turn, may lead to financial failure (4, p. 2). Moreover, investors and suppliers may also boycott such a situation, and the whole business will suffer.
The third way stakeholders can affect Hilton Hotels’ financial performance involves political and legal power. The tourism and hospitality industry is usually associated with high levels of emissions and other environmental sustainability challenges (Khatter, 5, p. 2). If Hilton Hotels produces too many emissions or harms the environment in any other way, policymakers and community members will require the company to change its policies and make them more environmentally friendly. Such changes may be expensive, especially if the hotels or resorts are old. Moreover, stakeholders may sue the corporation for damaging the community properties or building a hotel in the wrong place, and the company will need time and money to address the conflict.
Two Critical Factors in the Organization’s External Environment that Can Affect Its Success
Various external factors can influence the Hilton Hotels Corporation’s success. Some of these factors include customers, politics, competitors, the economy, and the weather. For tourism and hospitality spheres, the weather is of high importance because it is one of the customers’ main priorities. If the weather is unfavorable, tourists will plan their vacation in some other place but not at Hilton Hotel, even if it is perfect. At the same time, if the hotels or resorts are situated in favorable climate conditions, customers will be more likely to visit them and spend their money there. One can see that the weather is a critical external factor influencing the company’s success because the corporation cannot control this external factor.
Customer satisfaction is another critical external factor influencing the hotels’ financial success. According to Mubiri, if a hotel wants to remain competitive, it will have to “track the levels of customers’ satisfaction” (6, p. 10). In the modern world, customer demands are rapidly changing, and if a client like one product today, they will change their preferences tomorrow. The era of the internet and digital devices has changed the clients’ position in the hospitality and tourism business.
Today, customers can control sales processes and choose out of thousands of possibilities, which means that each hotel should track the new tendencies and adjust to satisfy the consumers. Moreover, the rise of middle-income customers and female consumption power influence the hotel business too. Hilton Hotels Corporation should research, recognize, and accept customers’ demands if it wants to stay financially successful in the future.
The Company’s Biggest Success to Respond to COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected all hotel businesses worldwide. At the beginning of the pandemic, most countries locked their borders and did not allow tourists to visit them. Today, the situation is changing, but many hotels and resorts are still shut for international tourists. Hilton Hotels Corporation “faced a global crisis” and was forced to close its hotels and furlough employees during the pandemic (Kilgore, 7).
At the same time, despite its financial losses, the company did not give up and used this period to reload and introduce some innovations to its customers. For example, the corporation launched the Hilton CleanStay standard of disinfection and cleanliness, created remote working options, expanded its partnership with American Express, donated rooms for medical professionals, and participated in other activities and innovations (Hilton, 8). Hilton Hotels demonstrated an ability to adjust to global changes quickly and continued its growth even in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. This social issue positively influenced the company’s performance and stimulated it to develop and invent something new instead of giving up.
Conclusion
The relationships between corporate social responsibility, the external environment, and stakeholders are interrelated and interdependent. The company’s stakeholders directly affect its financial success and performance. Environmental factors are essential to the hotel business because the hotels are primarily aimed at leisure tourists whose decision to travel depends on the weather conditions. Moreover, various social issues affect the company’s performance too. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic became the reason for financial crises for many hotels. However, it stimulated Hilton Hotels to expand and create new products and services, making the corporation even more successful than earlier. One can conclude that the organization’s success always depends on both external and internal factors. The company will need to balance the relationships between stakeholders, corporate social responsibility, and the external environment if it wants to succeed.
References
- Fortune. 2020. Web.
- Zed Bates. 2020. Hilton 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report. Web.
- Antonia Noonan. 2017. Hilton Hotel Worldwide: A Case Study Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility and Stakeholder Management. Web.
- Qionglei Yu. 2020. Tourism Boycotts and Animosity: A Study of Seven Events. Web.
- Ajay Khatter. 2021. Stakeholders’ Influence on Environmental Sustainability in the Australian Hotel Industry. Web.
- Joleen Bizi Mubiri. 2016. Customer Satisfaction in Hotel Services. Web.
- Tomi Kilgore. 2020. COVID-19 Hit the Hotel Industry Hard. Here’s How Hotels are Pivoting in the New Reality. Web.
- Hilton. 2020. In a Year Like no Other, Hilton Grows to Milestone 1 Million Rooms and Responds to Pandemic with Innovations for Guests, Positive Impact for Communities. Web.