5 RESEARCH FINDINGS
5.2 First Phase: Hotel Companies’ Competitive Action Profiles
It was necessary to compile competitive action profiles for each researched hotel company, as a way to unravel the competitive landscape of the Finnish hotel in-dustry and serve as a base from which to start constructing the interviews. This section discusses the seven competitive action profiles created from the 107 doc-uments collected.
As explained in chapter 5.1, the competitive actions found in the docu-ments were categorized using the Gioia methodology. The profiles were built on the list of 7 aggregated dimensions shown in TABLE 2. Thus, the competitive action profiles showcase the proportion of the competitive actions used by each hotel company based on the number of occurrence. The competitive action pro-files are illustrated in the pie charts below. FIGURE 4 presents a general overview of the competitive actions found among the studied hotels. FIGURES 2 to 7 view the individual profiles of each hotel included in this study.
The competitive action profiles are different, but some actions are more frequently used (See FIGURE 1). The most common actions found were improv-ing product/service (technological improvements/innovations) with 35% and marketing (branding, brand affiliation, awards) with 24%. Additionally, market expansion/market entry and CSR activities were popular actions with 18% and 12%, respectively.
FIGURE 4 - Competitive Actions categorized in Aggregated Dimensions of all seven researched hotel industries combined. Three of the seven actions dominate the competitive landscape, occupying about three quarters of all competitive actions: Product improve-ment (35%), Marketing (25%) and Market expansion (18%).
Popular actions that are under the ‘improving products’ category include hotel renovations, technological innovations (e.g. online check-in and check-out service), and other technological improvements (e.g. applications). The ‘market-ing’ category represents publications about winning awards and branding. All in all, the announcements of competitive actions are positive topics that aim to at-tract both new and existing customers. For example, the corporate social respon-sibility (CSR) actions, such as acquiring a sustainability certification are nowa-days increasingly desired by customers, but also attract other stakeholders like partners and shareholders. The publications relating to financial decisions (2%, see FIGURE 1) were about potential increases in stock prices, likely to attract shareholders.
12 %
2 %
35 % 18 %
24 % 2 %
7 %
Competitive Actions
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic) Financial Decisions (Revenue
management/pricing strategies)
Improving product/service (Technological improvements/innovations)
Market expansion/market entry Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
New product/service Partnerships and Clustering
Next, the competitive action profiles for each hotel and the interview ques-tions that the profiles generated are given. This discussion begins with Hotel company 1, followed by Hotel companies 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Two different competitive action profiles were created for Hotel Company 1 (see FIGURE 5 and FIGURE 6) because it operated and published separate an-nouncements for two hotel brands. Moreover, the profiles were different from each other, which justified keeping them separate. However, the questions cre-ated from the profiles were ultimately combined, since the interviewees repre-senting Hotel company 1 worked in positions that affect both brands. Profile 1 for Hotel company 1, shown in FIGURE 5, reveals that 34% of their online content involve branding, which lead to the interview question “How has rebranding of [Hotel Company 1] affected the business?”. Second biggest (with 33%) involve product improvements, such as renovations. Thus, it became evident to ask about how the room renovations affect the business, and whether there is a clear in-crease in demand after the renovations are done. In Profile 1 only 11% address market expansions, such as new hotels acquisition and hotel expansions. 22% in-volves CSR-related actions, such as Green Key certificates and getting rid of plas-tic straws. Hence, the question “Why are CSR-practices, such as acquiring the Green Key certificate, important for business?”. Profile 2 for Hotel company 1, shown in FIGURE 6, show an astounding 66% of their communicated actions in-volving product improvements. Another 22% is related to branding under which several publications are about awards. This resulted in asking about the im-portance for hotels to participate in awards. 9% of the publications are about mar-ket expansions, and only 3 % to CSR.
FIGURE 5 - Hotel Company 1 – Competitive Action Profile 1
34 %
22 % 11 %
33 %
Hotel Company 1 - Competitive Actions (Profile 1)
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic)
Market expansion/market entry.
Improving product/service (Technological
improvements/innovations)
FIGURE 6 - Hotel Company 1 – Competitive Action Profile 2
The competitive action profile for Hotel Company 2 is the only profile that includes all seven competitive actions listed as Aggregated Dimensions in this study. This finding can be the result of Hotel Company 2’s generous amount of announcement or the transparency in their activities. According to the 30 an-nouncements collected online, Hotel Company 2 has used all 7 of the competitive actions’ distilled in the 1st Data Structure in the ratio as shown in FIGURE 7. The largest component of these actions related to product improvements, which rep-resent 26% of the competitive actions. Several of the product improvement an-nouncements were about technological improvements, thus a question was added to the interview about how the technological improvements affect the business. Additionally, 19% referred to market expansion, 16% to CSR, 16% to branding, 10% to clustering, 7% to pricing strategies, and 6% to new products and services. Based on this competitive action profile, the individualized ques-tions surrounded the most used competitive acques-tions: Market expansion and CSR.
22 %
66 % 9 %
3 %
Hotel Company 1 - Competitive Actions (Profile 2)
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
Improving product/service (Technological
improvements/innovations) Market expansion/market entry.
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic)
FIGURE 7 - Hotel Company 2 – Competitive Action Profile
As shown in FIGURE 8, Hotel company 3 focused 37% of their online pres-ence on branding, 27% on partnership efforts, 18% on market expansion, and 9%
in both improving products / services and CSR. Public recognitions and awards made up the largest component in their announcements. This resulted in the in-dividual question of “How important are public recognitions and awards for [Hotel Company 3]”. Additionally, there were a few announcements about their new hotels, showing that they are expanding their market presence. Thus, a ques-tion was made about the importance of market expansion.
FIGURE 8 - Hotel Company 3 – Competitive Action Profile
Hotel Company 4 is not based in Finland, and entered the Finnish market in 2016, thus the respective amount of publications within Finland is limited in
7 % 10 %
16 %
26 % 6 %
16 % 19 %
Hotel Company 2 - Competitive Actions
Financial Decisions (Revenue management/pricing strategies) Partnerships and Clustering
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic) Improving product/service (Technological improvements/innovations)
New product/service
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
Market expansion/market entry.
18 %
37 % 27 %
9 % 9 %
Hotel Company 3 - Competitive Actions
Market expansion/market entry.
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
Partnerships and Clustering
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic)
Improving product/service (Technological improvements/innovations)
relation to the Finnish-based companies, resulting in 5 documents gathered. Con-sequently, the competitive action profile created for this company is limited. As FIGURE 9 shows, 40% of Hotel Company 4’s competitive actions are about im-proving existing products. Looking more closely, they even had an announce-ment about conducting a customer survey for product/service developannounce-ment.
Thus, a question was asked about this: “A big customer survey was conducted by your company in the summer. Why is it important to include customers in the product/service development?”. The rest of the publications are 20% each about marketing, market expansion, and CSR. This finding resulted in questions about the importance of CSR-practices and market expansion. Furthermore, since this hotel company has operated in the Finnish market for only a few years, they were also asked about their views and experiences about operating in Finland.
FIGURE 9 - Hotel Company 4 – Competitive Action Profile
Hotel Company 5’s competitive action profile’s validity is limited due to the small amount of publications. Only 6 official announcements were found from the company’s web pages. The small amount of data can be explained with the young age of the company and overall having only little announcements pub-lished. According to the limited data collected online the hotel company’s main competitive actions relate to the aggregate dimension of strong market expansion in the form of acquiring new hotels, corresponding to 83% on Chart 3. Partner-ships and clustering make up the other 17%. Since market expansion was the central competitive action, the individual question for this hotel company’s rep-resentatives was: “Other than increasing the offering and reaching other loca-tions, how has the opening of new hotels affected your company/business”.
20 %
40 % 20 %
20 %
Hotel Company 4 - Competitive Actions
Market expansion/market entry.
Improving product/service (Technological improvements/innovations)
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic)
FIGURE 10 - Hotel Company 5 – Competitive Action Profile
The competitive action profile’s validity of Hotel Company 6 is limited because there were only 10 official publications related to the company. As shown in FIGURE 11, the competitive activities were 50% about branding and marketing activities such as advertising existing products. Publications about winning hotel awards and good performance in TripAdvisor also played a role in this. This resulted in the question “How important are public awards, such as TripAdvisor's Best Hotel?”. Additionally, 30% of activities pertained to CSR ac-tivities and 10% to partnerships and improving product /service alike. Thus, the individual questions included also questions about the CSR practices, and the importance of taking steps to expand the market.
FIGURE 11 - Hotel Company 6 – Competitive Action Profile
83 % 17 %
Hotel Company 5 - Competitive Actions
Market expansion/market entry.
Partnerships and Clustering
10 %
10 % 50 % 30 %
Hotel Company 6 - Competitive Actions
Improving product/service (Technological
improvements/innovations)
Marketing (Branding, Brand Affiliation, Awards)
Partnerships and Clustering
CSR (Environmental, Social, Economic)