SERVICE MARKETING

ASSIGNMENT- 01

TAJ HOTELS RESORTES AND PALACES

- HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

ASSIGNMENT BY:
NAME: RAHUL DEY SARKAR

SYSTEM ID: 2017006611

NAME: RESHAB DUTTA

SYSTEM ID: 2017003736

BBA-MARKETING- “V”

3rd YEAR- SECTION-A

ABOUT TAJ HOTELS

Taj Hotels is one of India’s leading chains of luxurious

Hotels. It was founded in the year 1903 by Jamsetji
Tata, founder of Tata Group. It is not only present in
India but has various chains internationally. It is a
public company which is listed as Taj Hotels Palaces
Resorts Safaris. It is originally named Indian Hotels
Company Limited (IHCL) and Branded as Taj Hotels. It
has it’s headquarter at Express Tower, Nariman Point,
Mumbai. The group has 99 hotels around the world.
The first Taj Hotel was opened at the Apollo Bandar,
Colaba Mumbai. It is named as “The Taj Mahal Palace
Hotel”. As the trading name suggests, Taj Hotels does
not include just hotels but also includes resorts, palaces,
and Safaris. It provides impeccable and quality service
and lives up to its status as a luxury brand amongst
Hotels. The brand faces heavy competition from players
like Hyatt, Oberoi and the like.
TAJ HOTELS MARKETING MIX (4 Ps)
Product:
The product strategy and mix in Taj Hotels
marketing strategy can be explained as follows:
Taj Hotels is one of the leading hotel chain based
out of India. The Taj Hotels brand consists of 90+
hotels and resorts in India and around the world as
a part of its marketing mix product strategy. It has
80+ of them in India and 10+ in countries outside
India like Singapore, Malaysia, USA, UK,
Maldives, etc. While the brand was mainly into the
hotel business, it forayed into various other areas
later. Taj Hotels opened its first resort in 1974 at
Fort Aguada, Goa. Around the same time, they
tried an entirely different idea. They started
converting Indian palaces to Hotels to give them
an authentic royal touch. Some palaces which were
included in the Taj Hotels were Lake Palace in
Udaipur, Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, Falaknuma
Palace in Hyderabad and Nadesar Palace in
Varanasi. The hotels come under three main
categories – Luxury, Business, and Leisure. Also,
there are three names that the Taj Hotels operate
under in India, namely Taj, Vivanta, and Gateway.
The hotels live up the luxury status it has and it
can be seen in the atmosphere on the premises, the
services they offer, the amenities in the rooms, the
common area.

Price:
Below is the pricing strategy in Taj Hotels
marketing strategy:
Taj Hotels caters to a group of people who have
refined and luxurious tastes in their travel and
business. These are the premier group of hotels
aimed at providing an unmatched and unique
experience to their guests. They are priced higher
than the hotels in the same category. Taj Hotels are
the market leaders in the sector and have gained a
name worldwide. Their target customers include
the upper middle class to upper-class individuals.
The brand is known for luxury, excellence, quality,
leisure and hence follow premium pricing strategy.
The three sub-brands of Taj, namely Taj, Vivanta,
and Gateway have different levels of service and
luxury where Taj is the highest and Gateway being
the lowest among the three. Taj is the flagship
brand which provides the highest level of luxury
service, Vivanta being the contemporary luxury
brand and Gateway the mid-market brand. It is
aimed at providing service to the upper strata of
the society. It is just not the service that the brand
charges you for but the experience.

Place:
Following is the distribution strategy of Taj
Hotels:
In India, Taj Hotels are present in many states like
Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, Goa, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Delhi, Madhya
Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir. Outside the
country, it is present in places like South Africa,
Zambia, Bhutan, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Dubai(UAE), UK, and the USA.
Taj Hotels started with building hotels in the
metropolitan cities and with the expansion in
business and the change in demographics and the
tourism and hospitality market, it expanded its
services in the secondary cities in India.

Promotion:
The promotional and advertising strategy in the
Taj Hotels marketing strategy is as follows:
Since Taj Hotels are a luxury brand, it heavily
relies on advocacy. Word of mouth publicity is
what is of utmost importance and the customers
tend to be loyal to the service. The promotion for
the brand includes the prime locations of the
Hotels, Resorts or Palaces. It always chooses the
best amongst the lot and provides the best for their
customer. Although there might not be many price
slashes like the other ones in the sector, it has
some price difference between the on and off-peak
seasons. Taj Hotels have a membership for the
group of Hotels and provides promotional offers to
their loyal customers. They are also involved in
TV advertisements, Direct Marketing and Social
Media advertisements. It also provides training to
individuals who are not well off.
Since this is a service marketing brand, here are
the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix
of Taj Hotels.

MARKETING COMMUNICATION

Marketing communications are those techniques

that the company or a business individual uses to
convey promotional messages about their products
and services. Experts of marketing communication
design different types of persuasive
communication and send it to the target audience.
Service quality in the hospitality industry becomes
one of the most important factors for gaining a
sustainable competitive advantage and customers’
confidence in the highly competitive marketplace,
and therefore service quality can give the
hospitality industry a great chance to create
competitive differentiation for organizations. It is
thus considered as a significant core concept and a
critical success factor in the hospitality industry. A
successful hotel such as TAJ delivers excellent
quality service to customers, and service quality is
considered the life of the hotel.

Service quality consists of three dimensions:

physical facilities, staff, and materials. It also
divided into two aspects: functional quality and
technical quality. A similar approach argued that
service quality includes three dimensions:
functional quality, environment, and technical
quality. Another approach confirmed that service
quality has five dimensions namely: assurance,
reliability, empathy, tangibility and
responsiveness.
Customer satisfaction is the internal feelings of
every individual which may be satisfaction or
dissatisfaction resulting from the assessment of
services provided to an individual in context to
customer’s anticipation by an organization Hotels
are continuously trying to improve the service just
to satisfy their customer because higher customer
satisfaction will leads towards customer loyalty.

The most important concept of customer

satisfaction is accepted all around the world is the
expectancy disconfirmation theory. This theory
was presented by Oliver, he said that satisfaction
stage is the resultant of the distinction between
anticipated and supposed performance.
Satisfaction will be encouraging when the actual
level of services or products is better than the
anticipated (positive disconfirmation), whereas
(negative disconfirmation) when the product or
services level is lower than expected.
Physical Evidence
The architecture and the whole structure of The
Taj hotels is well designed, also to ensure that the
customers get elated . The Taj in Mumbai has an
ancient looking architecture which connects with
traditionalism in customers. The rooms are state of
the art and have been made to ensure maximum
comfort affordable to the specific targeted
customer. The uniforms of all the employees are
exquisite and enhance the image of hotel. The
various sections of the hotel are made to attract
customers and go with the brand image of the Taj.

People
Taj has various professional people to handle its
customers and to give a high service to its
customers like:

Skilled person

Professional person
Personal Agents

Technological person

Travel agents

As the Taj has employed enough professionals for

serving its customers so there are less chances in
its service glitches.
These are the main processes that all hotels
perform but in case of The Taj many more
processes are there as variety of services are
offered to its customers which make them happy.
Courier, Child care, Laundry, Pet, Internet, Travel
desk, Babysitting, Wake-up call, Barber shop,
Boutiques, Currency exchange, In room telephone
service, Express check -in and out, Florist, Front
desk 24 – hour, Gift shop, Maid service.
Taj is serving its customers to its best and it is able
to achieve 5-star ratings from a long period. But in
this era all have to apply marketing strategies to
attract customers otherwise the competitors will
not leave a single chance to grab market share. The
strategies used by taj as explained above are
successful in attracting customers as well as
positioning it as a high class service delivering
brand with luxury. Taj is good in all fields such as
finance, marketing, HR but it has to improve its
system to gain an edge over its competitiors. Taj
can improve in the area of system as system of an
organization can also be its core competency and it
can also serve better if the internal system is good.
Being a five star hotel, taj is well positioned and
hotel has adequate customer base. Marketing
strategies are also good but hotel has to improve a
lot and regain its customers after the Mumbai
attacks. In whole its service is good.

THANKYOU