Developing Digital Marketing Strategies to attract family customers. Case study: Holiday Club Caribia Turku

Abstract

Today’s digital marketing has become an essential element of any hotel business. The rapidly growing role of digital marketing has impacted the way hotels promote their offerings to current and potential customers. It does not only build brand awareness, but it can also increase sales, grow businesses, and engage more customers. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the digital marketing plan for social media platforms of Holiday Club Caribia Hotel, Turku, Finland, to attract the family customers. The findings of my study will hopefully inform the hotel with some practical recommendation or solutions for improving the current flaws in the digital marketing strategies to attract family customers or may introduce something new. In this thesis, I adopted a qualitative methodology, which will evaluate the hotel’s position and its compatibility in today’s digital age, including: the analysis of the online presence: What are the current social media channels that hotel uses? Are social media channels designed for family-oriented customers such as website, Facebook and Instagram? What are the drawbacks in cur-rent digital marketing strategies on social media and how can hotel improve those? Semi-structured interview was conducted with the hotel marketing person, and surveys were con-ducted with some family customers. Benchmarking (going through the social media channels and of other companies with similar services), website analysis. Carrying out external and internal analysis of hotel by using the SWOT analysis and gaining theoretical know-how (publications). The results of the research will help the marketing team of the hotel, and it will also make a strong hotel online presence. Academically, my research findings can help future researchers in building further conceptual ideas regarding the digitalization of marketing strategies from the hotel business perspective.