ChapterV

MKT MAG The Marketing Plan

Isaac, Jorge, Alex y Álvaro AKA Los Polluos CastÍllora MKT Solutions S.L SPECIAL NUMBER

MKT MAG

El Cortijuelo: Our election Hello and welcome to this digital publication called MKT MAG. In this special chapter, we’re going to see what is a MKT Plan, why is this so important and to find out if our MKT Plan is good we have chosen El Cortijuelo, a Spanish hotel where we are going to try to apply this MKT Plan. Let’s see about El Cortijuelo -Category: Rural Hotel -Places: 25 in total -The Cortijuelo Hotel has 4 independent rooms, 1 per 2 persons, 1 per 5 persons, 1 per 7 persons and 1 per 10 persons.

-Services: The Cortijuelo offers horse riding, bike riding, guide in Montefrio where you can enjoy one of the best hearing of the village that was acclaimed as one the best landscape in the world by National Geographic, trekking, balloon rides, pets welcome, barbecue grill, table tennis, beer tap, swimming pool, solarium, wood stove, fireplace ( per independence home) , kids zone, heating, snack bar, veranda, gardens, car park.

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It is located 30 km to Granada in a little village called Escoznar like 25 minutes from Granada by car.

18293 (Granada) GPS: Lat 37.24010, Lon -3.84370

The segment are, families with children, groups of friends, unmarried partners they has so segment broad cause of houses capacity. (2) (5) (7) (10) Tripadvisor, Booking, Airbnb, Escapada rural, Homeway, Rentalia, are the main web pages that El Cortijuelo is announced and a couple of them it has 5 stars following the views of the clients.

We are going to focus in the Cortijuelo low season, January and February, because we need to fight with the high season of Sierra Nevada, and people who go to the Ski resort prefer stay in Pradollano near to the snow, than 40km away from SN.

The MKT Plan The marketing plan is a key tool for companies.It’s crucial to convert into a competitive company or improve your sales and profitability.In this chapter, we will see a example of Marketing Plan in a Travel&Hospitality company.This one is a special example located in Granada called “Hotel El Cortijuelo”.This enterprise has been run all its entire life by Caba’s Family in a rural environment The MKT Plan is divided in different points.These points will be applied to “Hotel El Cortijuelo” but these points could be applied to a different company even in a different sector.

Let’s see them briefly:

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1. Mission statement: Your principal Goal. It can be about promotion, sales.. for example Get a increase in sales 2. Product / Service descriptive statement: What can be offered,location, 3. Situational analysis 4. Market Characteristics: It could be a brief description about your competitors and your opportunities and threats 5. Timeline of Mission Statement 6. Strategy ( 4 P’s of MKT and 3 Tourist P’s [People, Packaging and Process] 7. Channels 8. Budget 9. Control

After that, let’s know some reasons abot why it is important a MKT Plan:

Reasons • Need to know your goal, why are you doing a plan of marketing • How much is it coast because the money on a business is limited. What are your budget which you are going to spend the cash, like crusade in Facebook or in accurates places or something like that.

• Know about the period of the campaign when it starts and ends considering your budget.

• -To identify the threats, guess the opportunities, fortify the weakness, improve the strength)

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Comparation We choose the marketing plan of CitizenM Hotels

to know how to proceed.

We consider it very necessary because we are novel people in this kind of procedures.

We have chosen this one because this hotel chain got increase their Facebook fans 4x in 12 months and reach the top of TripAdvisor.

Here is the URL:

http://c15097288.r88.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ReviewPro-CaseStudy-citizenM.pdf CitizenM focus their marketing strategy in the Social Media like Facebook. They know that the number of followers can lead to number of future customers. Because of that, the increase of Facebook fan is very important for them.

They use different strategies like publishing interesting information in social media, involving guests in creating content (uploading photos, comments, opinions‌), encouraging guests to leave online reviews, responding online reviews. In short, the marketing strategy of CitizenM focus in a direct communication with their guests and followers.

El Cortijuelo uses a direct communication with guests via Facebook too. The hotel promotes in special offers in January and February only for Facebook followers only.

The company encourages guests to upload photos, videos, opinions, etc‌ and shares their visit experiences with the rest of followers and future guests.

Competitors and Our MKT PLAN Competitors: In general the competition of el Cortijuelo are hotels with more or less the same prices and capacity. Like Gran Capitán, Las Chorreras, Juan Peña Hotel.

Looking at this 3 websites El Cortijuelo has a really competitive advantage, which is be able to hire separate their houses compared with the other thay can’t hire the complex independent. It means that if a client comes to El Cortijuelo and is interested in hire per two persons we can to it; on the others, those clients need to let the whole complex.

Both El Cortijuelo and las chorreras use direct marketing on the sames web pages, showing the telephone number and the e-mail crearly.

And here is our MKT Plan:

Main Objective: Increase the sales in our low-season (Jan-Feb), from 20% occupancy rate to 80%.

Secondary Objective: LGTB engagement.

Tertiary Objective: Struggle with Sierra Nevada (major threat in low season).

Actions for main one: -Involve the whole region inhabitants in the restoring of the Íllora Castle and Cistern, the Aqueduct… to get propaganda and to try to develop a new tourist destination. We can do a crowdfunding crusade to avoid to spend so much money of our budget.

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-Organise tours to Montefrío to get the selfie with the Castle scenery (National Geographic). We need to show the hidden side of our province like alternative option. For those who has been in Granada and seek new places.

-Create a blog with interesting contents where the prospective customers feel the need to lodge in “El Cortijuelo”.

-Improve the social network profiles and promote the staff social media actions.

Actions for secondary one: -Offer free weekends to LGTB tour-operators. https://www.iglta.org/tour-operators/ http://www.twobadtourists.com/gay-tour-operators/ -Develop of the ethnographic history of the housing units: the tobacco leaves process.

Actions for the tertiary one: -Try to get an agreement with CETURSA: forfait discounts, class, materials…

-Snow lovers so calm rest.

We have a yearly income of 75.000€ (208€daily income). Due to this, we are going to assign the ten

percent (7.500€) to the marketing plan.

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On line activity: 3.000€ (40%)

Off line activity: 1.500€ (20%).

Events: 1.875€ (25%).

DM: 750€ (10%).

Market Research: 375€ (5%).

On line activity: We´re going to release two crusades in Facebook & Instagram because we think that these are the optimal social networks. The main campaign is going to be focused on the restoring of some reminds like the Íllora castle or the aqueduct. With virtual recreations, quizzes and action calls we will try to release this idea. The same way with the second one that will be the promotion of offers in Forfeits and equipment hiring to get the lodging of those who seek Sierra Nevada.

On the off line section, the money is going to be allocate fifty-fifty amid radio ads in Cadena SER and in a billboard that we can lay out near to the A92 highway in owner family grounds.

Maybe, 1.875€ is not enough to trade fair booth hire in FITUR´18 but we can contribute with the Commerce Chamber of Granada and with the provincial council to play part in the Granada official booth. We need 300€ of the budget to send Álvaro to the “Campo de las Naciones” with sandwiches and lodging in a youth hostel. We need to meet with the important international tour operators to attempt get an agreement.

We´ll print brochures to drop off mainly in FITUR but in the TIC´s of Granada and Málaga.

The lower amount of money is going to be allocate in research of the competitors and in the market to know if we are in the right way.

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More abour our MKT Plan We can observe our action plan in the develop of the budget allocation but we reaffirm the requirement of involve the nearby people and the same staff to release our lodging offer funneled by anyway because we have no much money.

Furthermore we need to have presence in the province tourist activities, the work in the background sometimes could give us more results than another income way.

At last, we have set the main goal in to increase the sales in the months of Jan and Feb from 20% to 80% (mínimum).

We´ve sundries options to control our marketing action plan. The easier way is hiring the services of a quality control company like ISO. So, if we have a short budget, we need to sleeve up and find other paths. For instance, the main tool that we can use really, are the comments of the social media channels. The feedback of our FB & IG crusades will be the fastest possible response that we can obtain.

Compare the incomes with the previous year earnings is other option, but we´ve to wait for the sells. The deadline (we put it in the March month, after our low-seasson) is other monitoring way, if we don´t get the goal in this countdown, we will change the plan.

El Cortijuelo is aware of the climate change. By that, we´ve an agreement with the Escóznar municipality to provide us of several containers to classify the rubbish. And we make our guests accomplices of this policy and this act improve their awareness and the image of our business.

The billboard is going to be placed in grounds that don´t disturb the sceneries of the region neither the visibility of the highway drivers.

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