Abstract
Wits Beach Hotel’s strategic plan was developed to enable it to improve its performance in four areas. These include financial value, customer value, internal business operations, and learning/ growth. The company’s strategic objectives aim at improving its profitability, employees’ skills, application of information technologies, customer value, and marketing initiatives. In order to improve financial performance, the company will adopt cost leadership and horizontal integration strategies.
The company’s marketing initiatives will focus on improving customer retention and creating brand awareness in order to improve customer value. In addition, the company will use advanced information technologies and training programs to improve its employees’ knowledge and skills. The strategic plan will be monitored and controlled by reviewing the achievement of its objectives and the relevance of its strategies on a regular basis. Wits Beach Hotel will comply with all labor laws and regulatory requirements in the industry. It will also establish a private charity foundation to improve its corporate citizenship.
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strategies and tactics that Wits Beach Hotel will adopt to achieve its strategic objectives, measures, and targets. According to the company’s balanced scorecard, its strategic objectives focus on improving performance in four areas. These include the financial aspect, customer value, internal business processes, and learning. The company expects to improve its competitive advantage in its industry by implementing appropriate strategies to realize its strategic objectives.
Strategies for Achieving the Objectives
Cost Leadership and Horizontal Integration
Wits Beach Hotel’s strategic financial objectives are to increase shareholder value and to reduce operating costs. These objectives can be realized if the company adopts a cost leadership strategy. According to Sadler (2003, p. 54), a cost leadership strategy involves being the lowest cost producer in an industry. Thus, Wits Beach Hotel will implement new tactics to reduce the cost of providing its services.
For instance, it will invest in energy-saving technologies, obtain its supplies from local producers, and outsource non-core business activities in order to reduce operating costs. Low operating costs will enable the company to reduce the prices of its products in order to increase sales (Sadler, 2003, p. 56). This will enable the company to increase its market share by 4% and revenues by 10% annually.
Wits Beach Hotel will also embark on horizontal integration through mergers and acquisitions in its industry. By merging with or acquiring a competitor in the industry, the company will increase both its market share and revenue.
Adaptive Organization
One of Wits Beach Hotel’s strategic internal business process objectives is to improve economies of scale. The company can achieve this objective if it is able to adapt to changes in its business environment. An adaptive organization uses policies that promote speed, flexibility, and change to respond effectively to unexpected challenges, threats, and opportunities (Pearce & Robinson, 2009, pp. 112-180).
Thus, the company will adopt a flexible hiring policy to enable it to vary the size of its workforce in response to fluctuations in hotel bookings. The resulting reduction in redundancy will enable the company to improve its economies of scale. As the cost of providing the services reduce, the company will be able to reallocate its funds to activities such as advertising in order to increase its annual revenue by 5%.
Marketing Strategies
The company’s strategic objectives for improving customer value include enhancing its brand image and customer loyalty. Moreover, the company expects to improve its marketing and revenue from card offerings. In order to improve brand image, the company can use its marketing communication initiatives to increase awareness about its products (Sadler, 2003, p. 96). Thus, Wits Beach Hotel will use advertising, public relations, and exhibitions to improve its brand awareness score by at least 10 points.
Customer retention will be achieved through two promotional activities, namely, loyalty programs and discounts. The aim of the loyalty programs will be to reward customers for regular visits to the hotel. This will involve issuing more loyalty cards that enable customers to earn points that they can redeem as cash prices and free meals. By issuing more cards, the company’s revenues will increase as customers purchase its services regularly in order to earn more rewards. Customers will be eligible for discounts of up to 25% on their next visit to improve their loyalty.
The company will expand its market share by positioning itself as a luxury hotel that offers superior services at affordable prices. In this regard, the company will adopt a penetration pricing strategy to improve customer retention and to increase its market share. The penetration pricing policy involves charging low prices in order to attract and retain new customers (Thompson, Gamble, & Strickland, 2006, pp. 96-215). Thus, it will enable the company to achieve its target of improving its market share by 5% in the next five years.
Information Technology and Professional Development
Wits Beach Hotel’s learning and strategic growth objectives include staff optimization, increased use of technology, and improving the knowledge and skills of the workforce. The company will adopt advanced information and communication technologies to automate its operations and to improve its employees’ knowledge and skills in the following ways. First, the company will automate its supply chain by developing a business-to-business e-commerce platform that will enable it to transfer documents and share transaction information with its suppliers. This will improve efficiency in procuring supplies (Sadler, 2003, p. 89). Similarly, business processes such as billing, booking hotel rooms, and provision of customer service will be automated through web-based enterprise management systems (EMS).
Second, the company will establish an online knowledge management system to enable its employees to create and access the information they need to improve their productivity. For instance, a database that contains information on how to develop different food recipes will enable the company’s chefs to prepare the best meals for the guests. Generally, the knowledge management system will improve employees’ competency and confidence in executing various business processes by accessing accurate and relevant information (Sadler, 2003, p. 136).
Professional development and training programs will be introduced to improve employees’ knowledge and skills. This will involve implementing on-the-job and off-the-job training programs. On-the-job training will be conducted at the company’s premises to enable employees to acquire practical skills while adding value to their employer. Off-the-job training programs will be offered by external organizations such as universities to enable the employees to acquire new knowledge and skills. The company will pay the fees for the off-the-job training programs to encourage its employees to participate in them.
Monitoring and Controlling the Strategic Plan
Reviewing the Outcomes
The success of a strategic plan is indicated by its outcomes (Sadler, 2003, p. 218). Thus, the outcomes of the plan have to be reviewed periodically during its implementation to detect any emerging problems. In this regard, the expected outcomes of Wits Beach Hotel’s strategic plan will be evaluated in every quarter of its financial year. The evaluation will shed light on the extent to which the strategic objectives and targets are being achieved. If the targets and objectives are being achieved, the management will acknowledge and reward the employees for contributing to the success of the strategic plan. However, failure to meet the targets will be an early warning sign for the company to review the effectiveness of its strategic plan and the strategies used to implement it.
Milestone Reviews
Milestone reviews will involve a full-scale reevaluation of the relevance of the objectives, strategies, and tactics defined in the strategic plan. This will enable the company to take into account the implications of the changes that might occur in its business environment. Milestone reviews will be necessary for two situations. First, the strategies and objectives will be reassessed if the company is underperforming despite implementing the strategic plan. Second, unexpected changes in the external environment, such as a financial crisis, may render some of the objectives and strategies irrelevant (Sadler, 2003, p. 223). The rationale of the milestone review is to enable the company to determine whether it should change its objectives and strategies or to continue implementing them.
Changing the Strategies and Tactics
The strategies and tactics will be changed if they are found to be irrelevant or ineffective in facilitating the achievement of the strategic objectives. The rationale for changing the strategies will be to get the plan back on track. Specifically, new marketing and operations strategies will be formulated and implemented to achieve the plan’s strategic objectives. Moreover, the strategic objectives and targets will be revised if they cannot be achieved because of unforeseen changes in the company’s business environment. For instance, achieving a 5% increase in annual revenue might be impossible during a recession. In this case, the target will be revised to make it achievable.
The methods discussed in the foregoing paragraphs will advance organizational goals financially and operationally in the following ways. First, reviewing outcomes provides the information required to implement a performance-based reward system to encourage employees to achieve the targets set in a strategic plan (Thompson, Gamble, & Strickland, 2006, pp. 125-250).
For instance, if the employees’ compensation is tied to the plan’s targets, such as increasing revenue by 5%, they will improve their performance in order to increase their earnings. Second, milestone reviews will enable the company to align its strategies to changes in its business environment in order to achieve its goals. Third, changing the strategies and tactics will enable the company to improve its financial performance by adopting effective strategies.
Addressing Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues
The legal issues facing the company include Kenya’s labor laws that require employers to compensate their employees in the event of an accident at the workplace (COTU, 2014). Wits Beach Hotel will comply with this law by establishing a safe work environment. Furthermore, it will purchase insurance policies to compensate employees for any injury at the workplace. Employers are also required to contribute to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) to cater to their employees’ survival after retirement. The company will comply with this law by making monthly contributions to the NSSF.
Regulations in the hospitality industry require hotels to operate efficiently, to avoid causing a nuisance to the community, to serve safe food, and to operate in a clean environment. Wits Beach Hotel will comply with these regulations by conducting its entertainment activities in soundproof rooms to avoid causing noise pollution. The company will also maintain high food safety standards and cleanliness.
The ethical issues facing the company include polluting the environment and contributing to global warming. Wits Beach Hotel will address this challenge by adopting green technologies such as using solar heaters and recycling water to avoid polluting the environment and accelerating global warming.
Improving Corporate Citizenship
The company will improve its corporate citizenship by establishing a private foundation to help it raise and use the money to finance various charitable activities in the local communities. The foundation will work with the local communities to identify the challenges that need to be addressed in order to improve the lives of the locals. Generally, the foundation will focus on addressing social issues such as education, healthcare, and poverty.
Conclusion
Wits Beach Hotel has developed a strategic plan to enable it to improve its competitive advantage. The objectives of the strategic plan include increasing the company’s revenue, market share, shareholder value, and customer value. Thus, the strategies adopted to achieve these objectives focus on reducing operating costs, adapting to changes in the industry, use of IT, and creating brand awareness. The strategic plan will be monitored and controlled through periodic assessment of its objectives and strategies.
References
COTU. (2014). Kenya labor laws. Web.
Pearce, A., & Robinson, R. (2009). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Sadler, P. (2003). Strategic Management. London, England: Kogan Page.
Thompson, A., Gamble, E., & Strickland, J. (2006). Strategy: Winning in the marketplace: Core concepts, analytical tools, cases. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.