Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
1 - Introduction
2 - Current Status of The Ambassador Hotel According
to The S-T-P Model.
2.1 Market Segmentation
2.2 Targeting
2.3 Positioning
3 - Marketing Mix
4 - Direct Channels
4.1 Contracts
4.2 Website
4.3 Partnerships
4.4 Issues and Recommendations
5 - Indirect Channels
6 - Social Media
7 - Conclusion
8 - Appendix

1
9 - References

Acknowledgements
For the successful completion of our report, we would like to express our deep gratitude to
all the people who give us help and advice. First and foremost, we are going to give our
appreciation to Cristina, the Sales Director of the Ambassador Hotel. She spent her time
replying to our e-mails, to answer our questions, and gave us a lot of valuable information
and instructions which keep our report going in the right direction. Secondly, we would like
to thank our Marketing lecturer, Brid McCarthy, she provided us with many useful advices
and guidance at every stage of writing the report.

1 - Introduction

In this paper, we will use the exploratory research method via in-depth interview. This
proposal examines the Ambassador Hotel in Cork and analyzes the issues and current
situation of their Corporate Business Marketing. After a clear analysis, we will come up with
suitable marketing strategies which outline how the Ambassador Hotel can improve the
quality and brand image to compete with other competitors.
We will collect information from primary data and secondary data. The secondary
data has been collected from magazines, newspaper articles, books, internet articles, and
journals. The primary data is based on the secondary data source. Besides, the primary data
includes fieldwork, internal reports and documents from the company website.

2
2 - Current Status of The Ambassador Hotel
According to The S-T-P Model
The segmentation, targeting and positioning model, which is both highly effective and
measurable, is one of the most widely used models to attract and retain guests in the
hospitality industry.
Ambassador Hotel has identified its most profitable guests, positioned the services
that best address their needs & wishes by taking this model and determine its marketing and
pricing strategies.

2.1. Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is the process of effectively targeting the most attractive or
appropriate segment based on services and products, generally divided into 4 groups.
The Ambassador Hotel's geographical segmentation strategy focuses primarily on its
proximity to Cork City center. For corporate customers, this means ease transport and
proximity to specific finance and meeting points.
The demographic strategy is determined by gender, life cycle stage, age, income,
social class and lifestyle. Ambassador Hotel categorized their services according to this and
focuses on middle-aged, middle-aged professionals.
Ambassador Hotel performs psychological segmentation independent of demography,
considering how customers feel and think. The nature of the psychographic division used by
the Hotel is based on the hotel's historical aura.
As for benefit segmentation, this is shaped by the advantages that Ambassador Hotel
offers to its customers. The classification of the guests according to their travel purposes or
reservation methods can also be examined in this context. Examples of benefits offered by
Ambassador Hotel to its guests include easy and convenient booking, time saving, parking
and a gym.

3
2.2. Targeting
After an appropriate market segmentation is carried out, the next step is to target the
specific market segment with the range of products that customers need. In other words:
Targeting is the focusing on identified segments, directing resources in this facet and taking
necessary action.
According to the data which shows the proportions of six different types guests
offered by Lady Di Federico, Ambassador Hotel has identified corporate business travelers as
one of its target groups after determining which guests will receive the most revenue for the
least resource. (Figure 1) Therefore, the Hotel has appointed a manager responsible for this
target group. Later, created promotions and started providing rooms and services tailored to
this target.

2.3 Positioning
Positioning is the implementation of the targeting strategy by creating the image that
the audience expects. For example, for business travelers in Cork, it is significant that the
Ambassador Hotel create the impression that the hotel offers a personalized guest experience
to make the hotel the best choice. Different services are offered for this purpose, such as the
introduction of meeting rooms, discounted group rates and so on. (Figure 2)

3 - Marketing Mix (4P’s)

It is imperative that Ambassador Hotel develops an effective marketing strategy to
maintain its current position and stay ahead of its competitors. Therefore, this section
presents 4P's effectiveness as marketing strategies for Ambassador Hotel. 4Ps include price,
product, promotion and place and describe the means of introducing a new product or service
to the market.
The focus product of this proposal is corporate guests. In this context, Ambassador
Hotel offers products and services to meet the individual needs of corporate business
travelers. However, there is no airport welcoming and transportation (pick-up) service at the
hotel, which is one of the most important aspects for corporate travelers. Besides, customers

4
can use the iron and laundry facilities at an additional cost, but this service should be
provided free of charge for guests attending meetings.
The value of Ambassador Hotel's services should match the perception of customers
satisfaction as in they are getting their money’s worth. The hotel has 2 different package price
categories; including dinner and without dinner, and the price difference is 30 Euros.
Companies may want to buy packages, including dinner, for convenience of billing, but we
can't say the same for individual customers. For example, in an interview with an Apple
employee who came from San Francesco to Cork for a company meeting, we learned that she
would like to have dinner by chatting with colleagues and exploring the city. (Firdevs
Abacioglu Interview, 2019). Each of the different price segments will benefit the customers
who visit the hotel, these options should be increased.
The place indicates the point where customers receive the services or products
offered. (Dogra and Ghuman, 2010, p.83). The Hotel's strategic location, proximity to the city
center are ideal for enhancing the customer's experience, which increases the chances of
getting as many customers as possible in Cork.
Promotion refers to all kinds of marketing communications used to make the product
preferred by people and to make consumers aware of their purchase. Hotels can do this in
several different ways. It is important that the hotel focuses on attracting new customers as
well as those who have already stayed. In our research, we found that the hotel has
shortcomings in this area. In the second part, we focused on promotion and made
suggestions.

5
4 - Direct Channels

4.1 Contacts
Ambassador Hotel provides two options of direct contacts: phone and email contacts.
Based on our experience, it takes a long time for the receptionist to answer the phone call,
What express a lack of interest on the customers or staffing problems. However,
Receptionists were very friendly and provided all the information needed. E-mail isn’t a fast
way to receive the information, but the customer will obtain it within one day.

4.2 Website
A website is the face of every hotel’s brand, which should have a decent look.
Generally, Ambassador Hotel’s website is bright, well-designed and easy to use. It has all the
necessary information about the hotel itself, weddings, bar & restaurant, description of
booking prices. Nevertheless, the website contains annoying pop-up windows, which might
spoil the customers’ impression of the hotel. As for the corporate business, Ambassador
Hotel includes special offers for them but the page with corporate offers doesn’t contain any
information, and it’s very hard for the corporate customers to find this information. It also
provides meeting rooms for corporate conferences. There are three different types of meeting
rooms to choose from and they can be modified. The corporate customer can choose the size
of the room and the type of different layouts of the fittings in this room. However, the
website does not contain enough pictures of meeting rooms and the booking price can be
discussed by direct contact only. For example, Clayton Hotel Cork provides clear
explanations of their meeting rooms, many pictures for each room and even 3D Tour to view
the rooms inside. (Clayton Hotel Cork City, 2019). Ambassador Hotel includes lots of
unnecessary information like distances from various destinations in Cork, which might be
reduced by simply replacing this information with the city map with marked destinations on
it. (Ambassador Cork, 2019). The mobile website is well-developed, but also has the pop-up
windows, it’s easy to use and book the room without any problem. However, as a regular
customer, the person might want to download specific Ambassador Hotel’s app which could
provide additional benefits and/or discounts. Unfortunately, the Hotel doesn’t provide this
function. Booking method is simple enough and allows the customers to confirm the

6
availability of rooms for the selected days, choose the desirable type of room and consider a
staying price.

4.3 Partnerships
Partnership with other companies/chains can play a part in the attraction of different
customers. Corporate customers, wishing to spend time in a quality restaurant, might come up
to the hotel, where this restaurant is located. Ambassador Hotel maintains the partnership
with McGettigans Cookhouse & Bar chain. (McGettigans Cookhouse & Bar, 2019). So, for
the customers who are staying in Ambassador Hotel are provided with special offers for the
dinner at the cookhouse. Moreover, customers who came just to eat in the cookhouse, will be
aware of the hotel, and it might make them decide to stay in the hotel in the future.
Partnership with city radio channels is important for the Hotel’s marketing campaigns.
According to the Sales Manager of Ambassador Hotel, they work closely with Cork’s 96FM,
the most popular radio station in Cork City, when they are promoting any of their products.
(Interview with Cristina Di Federico, 2019).

4.4 Issues and Recommendations

Firstly, Ambassador Hotel should manage quicker response for the phone calls, long
waiting time will definitely affect the customers satisfaction of the hotel’s service. Secondly,
the hotel should redesign their website by reducing annoying pop-up windows and adding
more pictures of corporate meeting rooms. Ambassador Hotel might implement technology
like 3D Tour to view the rooms like their competitor, this’s extremely useful for the
customers. (Clayton Hotel Cork City, 2019). Also, the hotel’s website will be less confusing
if they replace some of the information like nearest Cork’s destinations, with the city map.
Moreover, some of the pages don’t contain any information which is vastly confusing for the
customers. (Ambassador Cork, 2019). As an opportunity, Ambassador Hotel might create
their mobile application which can provide special offers to attract more customers and rise
people’s awareness of the hotel. Thirdly, Ambassador Hotel should expand their partnership
with other popular radio stations like RedFM or with television channels like RTE or Virgin
Media.

5 - Indirect Channels

7
 An indirect channel business means that a company relies on intermediaries or other
companies to put the costumer I touch with their service or product instead of selling the
service or product directly to their costumer. Regarding indirect channels, when asked,
Cristina told us that the ambassador hotel works with travel agencies and tour operators who
are mainly Irish but also have a few partnerships with foreigners’ agencies from the UK,
Germany and France. Which gives them the opportunity of geographically expand their reach
without needing to open new headquarters or pay to have their own people there, a
partnership with travel agencies is a good marketing idea. You have someone to sell your
product for you and you don’t need to be physically there or worry about the logistics. When
asked about the guests nationality, so we could try to measure how much reach the
Ambassador Hotel has, Cristina told us that they don’t track this data and so couldn’t tell us
but that she could confirm that their biggest percentage of guests were from Ireland, UK,
USA, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Netherlands and Spain. From what we could find
browsing around the internet, the hotel doesn’t utilize of any flash sale sites or meta-search
engines.

6 - Social Media
Nowadays, social media is hugely important part of marketing. According to the latest
statistics, the most popular worldwide social networks are following:

8
 Considering Ambassador Hotel, their website contains links to Facebook and Twitter
only. These are the most active pages that the hotel’s running. As Facebook is the most
popular social network worldwide, Ambassador Hotel has 17329 followers there, which is the
biggest figure from all of their social networks. (Facebook, 2019). On Twitter the hotel has
2104 followers. (Twitter, 2019).
As for the focus group, the hotel should consider the Instagram community.
Instagram is exceedingly widespread social network and advertisements of any limited offers
or special events will increase the number of the Hotel’s customers. Ambassador Hotel
already has an active Instagram page, however there’s no link on either of their pages. That is
why they only have 1580 followers on Instagram, which is another marketing issue.
(Instagram, 2019).
YouTube is one of the most significant considerations for Ambassador Hotel as well.
YouTube is #2 biggest social network in the world. Ambassador hotel’s doing weddings and
social events, which might be interesting for customers to see. However, the Hotel has no

9
videos of previous weddings or corporate meetings, so customers are unaware of the quality
of the events at the hotel. Ambassador Hotel already has a YouTube channel, but it is
inactive, has a terrible number of 5 subscribers and the last publication was 2 years ago.
(YouTube, 2019). This is a huge marketing issue. The hotel could record their biggest events
and upload on YouTube to increase people’s awareness of the advantages of running their
weddings and corporate meetings in this hotel.
Overall, Ambassador Hotel can improve their marketing by raising awareness of their
social networks. A good idea would be to give brochures with their social networks to all the
hotel’s customers and force them to stay in contact by introducing the advertisements of all
the events held in the hotel. Also, the hotel should expand to popular social networks like
Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc., and place the links on those to the hotel’s official website. For
example, Clayton Hotel includes links to 5 social networks on the website. (Clayton Hotel
Cork City, 2019). They are active in almost every social network which makes people aware
of the hotel and their special offers and events, which is a superb marketing example that
Ambassador Hotel should follow.

7 - Conclusion
After researching the Ambassador Hotel Health & Club history and their marketing
strategy, we believe that the hotel seriously needs to work on changing and improving their
marketing strategy. First, they need to work on how they market themselves, the name of the
hotel is Ambassador Hotel Health & Club but they barely have a gym and they have no sauna
or jacuzzi, no spa or body and face treatments so it’s a very misleading name, there are a lot
of complaint on websites about it and it cause unnecessary bad marketing to hotel. With that
done, the next step is remarketing themselves for a more corporate setting, as corporate
business, plus weddings and other events since the hotel structure seems more corporate than
romantic or kid friendly. They have enough meeting rooms to provide for a small city like
Cork per day, with the new Ambassador Bar it can add a plus, so the people who were
previously in the meeting can go and unwind at the bar, bringing additional revenue and that
way people will discover the hotel which can make them a costumer or just advertise the
Hotel to friends. Following the rebrand, there’ll be hopefully a bigger demand and a need to

10
improve their call and email response, no costumer wants to be waiting for the whole day for
an answer, the answer time should be a couple of hours maximum. Their website also needs
improvement, even though they have great offers for food at their restaurant, they are not
advertised on their website or any of the social media.
They have a numerous social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and
YouTube. But even though they are present in all those social media; they are not active on it.
They haven’t posted anything on their YouTube Channel in at least two years and their
Facebook and Instagram are equally inactive. Therefore, hiring someone to work exclusively
on their social media is must.
As it was previously established, although they may have some good deals for food,
tea-time and drinks, they are not advertised. They don’t post their deals on any of their social
media, so that’s a waste of opportunity on being out there and bringing in new costumers.
Looking forward, we believe with all the changes mentioned in this report, the hotel will have
an improved marketing strategy and therefore grow and be better known.

11
8 - Appendix
Figure 1

Figure 2

12
9 - References

Ambassador Cork (2019), ‘Ambassador Hotel & Health Club Cork’, Available from:
https://www.ambassadorhotel.ie/index.html [Accessed at 22,28,29 November 2019]

Ambassador Hotel Cork (2019) Company Presentation, Griffith College.

Cant, M.C., Strydom, J.W. & Jooste, C.J. (2009) “Marketing Management” Juta Publications

Clayton Hotel Cork City 2019, ‘CLAYTON HOTEL CORK CITY’, Available from:
https://www.claytonhotelcorkcity.com [Accessed at 25,28 November 2019]

Dogra B. & Karminder G. (2007), “Rural Marketing: Concepts and Practices” 1st Edition,
McGraw Hill Education, New York.

Domegan, C., & Fleming, D., Marketing Research in Ireland, (2003) Second Edition, Gill
and Macamillan.

Facebook (2019), ‘Ambassador Hotel Cork’, Available from:

https://www.facebook.com/ambassadorhotel.cork?ref=ts&fref=ts [Accessed at 30 November
2019]

Instagram (2019), ‘ambassadorhotelcork’, Available from:

https://www.instagram.com/ambassadorhotelcork/ [Accessed at 1 December 2019]

Ivc.es (2019) “How can you effectively manage an Indirect Channel Strategy?” Available
from :https://www.ivc.es/blogen/manage-an-indirect-channel-strategy [Accessed at 2
December 2019]

Johnson G, Scholes K, Whittington R., (2008), “Exploring Corporate Strategy”, 8th Edition,
FT Prentice Hall, Essex

McCarthy, E.J., Brogowicz, Andrew A (1981), “Basic Marketing : A Managerial Approach”

7th Edition, Homewood, Ill. : R.D. Irwin, Illinois

McGettigans Cookhouse & Bar (2019), “MCGETTIGANS COOKHOUSE CORK”, Available

from: http://www.mcgettiganscookhouse.ie/cork/ [Accessed at 28 November 2019]

13
Ross S. “Direct vs. Indirect Distribution Channel: What's the Difference? Available from
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052115/what-difference-between-direct-and-
indirect-distribution-channel.asp [Accessed at 27 November 2019]

Statista, (2019), “Most popular social networks worldwide as of October 2019, ranked by
number of active users”, available at https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-
social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ [Accessed at 30 November 2019]

Twitter (2019), “Ambassador Hotel Cork”, Available from

https://twitter.com/AmbassadorCork [Accessed at 30 November 2019]

YouTube (2019), “The Ambassador Hotel & Health Club”, Available from:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjql0JqXMygGegFQUCdbmXQ/videos?
view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0 [Accessed at 1 December 2019]

List of Interviews

Apple, Firdevs Abacioglu, 16 November 2019, Phone Interview.

Ambassador Hotel, 21 October 2019, Ambassador Hotel Headquarters, Cork, Ireland

Ambassador Hotel, Cristina Di Federico, 27 November 2019, E-mail

Ambassador Hotel, 24 November 2019, Phone Interview

14