FACULTY OF TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGMENT

DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM

TO : MR E. BANDA

FROM :

NAME REG. NUMBER

TIMSON ZGAMBO
RODRICK KATETE
PRECIOUS CHIGUMULA
MSEPA MZUMARA
DYSON SIKOYA
ALINAFE KAYUWE
BERTHA BANDA

COURSE CODE : BTHM 4803

COURSE TITLE : PUBLIC RELATIONS AND CUSTOMER CARE

TASK : PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN FOR GRAND PALACE

DATE DUE : 9TH JULY, 2019

GRAND PALACE HOTEL

PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN AIMED AT REPUTATION REPAIR

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The past three years have not been easy for Grand palace Hotel. This is so because of the rumors
that ex-employees and some customers have been spreading that the hotel provides poor services.
This bad news which has spread so fast has completely damaged the hotel’s reputation putting
Grand Palace on competitive disadvantage on the market. The PR practitioners for Grand Palace
have been left with no any other option but to conduct a reputation repair campaign. The campaign
has been advocated to achieve the organization’s objectives and to contain the situation thus
avoiding losing our valued and loyal customers. This two-month long campaign is targeting
customers, ex-employees and current employees of Grand Palace. The campaign, aimed at
motivating current employees, changing customer attitudes and improving sales will cost Grand
palace K470, 000. By conduction this campaign the PR practitioners have identified problem and
also they have undergo a research to find out from the publics’ themselves. To add on that, the
objectives, key messages, strategies and evaluation plans to overcome this problem will be
implemented. Finally the budget and the schedule on how the campaign will be conducted have
been included.

CHAPTER ONE: SITUATION ANALYSIS AND PROBLEM STATEMENT

1.1.Overview of the client

Grand Palace Hotel is a 3 star hotel facility found in Mzuzu. Its’ star rating, positions it as the top
hotel of the northern region of Malawi with Sunbird Mzuzu rated as a 2 star hotel. The hotel was
opened in 2014 amid calls by tourists that Mzuzu needed facilities to provide competition to
Sunbird Mzuzu Hotel. According to the then Mayor of Mzuzu City, William FyopoMkandawire,
hotel services could only improve in the region if more service providers came into play (Chavula,
2014). Grand Palace Hotel has 57 guestrooms, restaurant and bar, outdoor swimming pool, fitness
center and conference center to mention a few.

The hotel is majestically located along the M1 road, a few kilometers from the city center of Mzuzu
just next to Toyota Malawi building. Facing it on the other plateau top is the new National Bank,
the Reserve Bank and the Northern Region Water Board. This location provides Grand Palace with
the first opportunity to service travelers using the M1 from the country’s capital, Lilongwe. Grand
Palace is probably the best facility in the northern region looking at the angle of modern facilities
and its glamorous décor.

1.2.Statement of the problem

Despite having started in 2014 as a promise of world class hotel services, the hotel has lost its vibe
lately. Grand Palace has apparently lost the support and goodwill of some of its important publics
including customers and ex-employees. These customers and ex-employees (henceforth referred
to as “public”) are actively propagating unfavorable publicity citing Grand Palace as a hotel with
very bad services. The reputation of the hotel has been damaged extensively, mainly on social
media, and this needs to be repaired. Some customer reviews on Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are
really discouraging (check Appendix A). Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are probably the world’s
most preferred hotel booking sites from where many travelers make their decisions when choosing
a hotel. These bad reviews are easily shared among travelers going to Mzuzu City, thus Grand
Palace has lost some customer base simply because of this bad publicity. Due to this negative
publicity, some potential customers are convinced that Grand Palace is not the best hotel to be
accommodated in Mzuzu and these bad stories spread really quickly. Some ex-employees spread
news that Grand Palace is very bad in handling employees. These disturbing news is affecting
sales and occupancy levels in the hotel.

However, Grand Palace has not launched any formal attempt to clear this bad publicity. But
launching this campaign may help to clear misunderstandings between perceptions of customer
service that Grand Palace has at present with the customer’s expectations of best service. Hence,
the campaign will restructure attitudes in public regarding the hotel and this will help to regain the
lost support and goodwill. Potential customers will understand Grand Palace fully and reduce the
impacts that these social media rumours have on public attitude to Grand Palace. This public
relations campaign aims at repairing this broken reputation.

1.3.SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is a tool used to understand and summarize current situation of a particular
organization. The elements of strengths and weaknesses outline things that the organization can
have control over and easily alter to get desired results (Theaker, 2004). Using the SWOT analysis,
the organization can easily identify areas of strength on which to base a public relations campaign
and areas of weakness to improve. This analysis also outlines opportunities to take advantage of
in order to improve public understanding and repair broken reputation. The threats give
organizations platform to strategize on means of reducing or offsetting the impacts of these threats.

Strengths Weaknesses
 Only 3 star hotel in northern region  Lack of awareness campaigns to repair
 Modern facilities reputation
 Conveniently located along the M1  Limited public relations budget
from capital city  High staff turnover
 Easy-to-navigate and informative
website
 Social media presence (facebook,
twitter)
Opportunities Threats
 Potential for increased customer  Bad publicity on leading hotel booking
participation in service delivery platforms
 Potential for increased social media  Increased bad publicity spreading by
presence (instagram, whatsapp, ex-employees
snapchatetc)  Rumours of poor service delivery
 Open public media such as newspapers
and radio

1.4 Profile of target publics

1. Grand Palace potential customers

The target publics of this campaign are Grand Palace potential customers which are business as
well as leisure tourists both domestic and international. This public was selected because Grand
Palace offers their product and service to various customers like fishing pond for leisure travelers,
conference rooms for business travelers just to mention but a few. These publics were included
because they positively contribute to their day to day sales.

The target customers utilize social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and
website to obtain information. Some customers obtain information from Trip Advisor and
Hotels.com. Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are probably the world’s most preferred hotel booking
sites from where many travelers make their decisions when choosing a hotel. Based on this media
patterns, various social media platforms will be utilized throughout the campaign.

2. Ex-employees

This campaign also targets former employees who are spreading bad rumors about the
organization. Grand palace hotel values employees who are willing to work extremely hard to the
satisfactory of guests while meeting the stakeholders’ expectation. This implies that all employees
who do not work towards these objectives are relieved of duty with immediate effects.

3. Current employees

Grand palace tries the best to satisfy guest expectations through highly motivated and trained
employees. Under this category, both current and potential employees are key stakeholders for the
growth of the hotel.

2. THE CAMPAIGN-THE PLANNING PROCESS

While gathering information from target publics around Mzuzu City, the PR team noticed that
there is a quality service gap and also the public is actively propagating unfavorable publicity
citing Grand Palace as a hotel with bad services. Some customers have cited that Grand Palace
offers food that is all spices, that we have no backup generators in case of electricity blackout,
poor treatment of customers (www.tripadvisor.com). But the fact that some customers have rated
Grand Palace highly may mean that we are not that bad but rather need some organizational
restructures and improvements. The reputation of the hotel has been damaged extensively, mainly
on social media, and this needs to be repaired. These bad reviews contribute to loss of some
customer.

To fill this gap various social media platforms will be used throughout the campaign to notify the
public about the excellent services the hotel is offering and also the change and improvements.

3. OBJECTIVES, STRATEGIES AND KEY MESSAGES

Objective 1
I. To provide continuous training, morale and motivation to our employees.
Key message: We care for our employees. Your innovation, hard work and presence make Grand
Palace
Strategies
 Encouraging our employees to have their positive comment on social media, trip Advisor
and other forums
 Employees will be given refresher quarterly training to update their skills and knowledge
 Employees will be treated with respect, involving them in decision making and will be
awarded for good work
 Provide fringe benefits to departmental managers who performs well
 Embrace organizational structure i.e. departmentalization (work to be performed at
departmental levels)

Evaluation

 Achieving at least 90% of our employees’ positive comments and participation on various
platforms
 Employees feedback and their contribution in decision making will also determine the
success of the campaign
 Provision of awards and benefits for good performance
 Introduction of refresher training programs
 The hotels system flexibility

Objective 2

I. To change customer attitudes towards Grand Palace

Key message: Grand Palace is for customers, your expectations count. Let us know where you
need us to improve.

Strategy

 Sending one time Grand Palace newsletters to existing customer emails to align
customer expectations of service
 Taking immediate action when something goes wrong (such as offering
complementary services)

Evaluation

 By the end of this campaign we expect at 85% positive comment from our customers and
also 60% retained customers.

Objective 3

II. To increase profit by 20% through increasing sales volume

Key message: we have improved our products and services to match customer needs while we still
offer personalized services, to give value for customer’s money.

Strategies

 Direct marketing will be used to communicate to the potential customers by using

different media platforms.
 Bundle pricing strategy which will attract more customers

Evaluation

 By developing mutual relationship with our customers and the continuous communication
process on various media platforms like social media, websites, internet, radios and
newspapers.

4. SCHEDULE:
AUGUST, 2019
SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY

1 2 3
Launching
customer and
employee
survey
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Employee
information
and
empowerment
sessions
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Social media
launching
campaign
18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Press release

SEPTEMBER

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SARTADAY

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Launching
social media
campaign
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Employee
empowerment
sessions

15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Launching
Newsletters
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Finding out
media advisory
and fact sheet

5. BUDGET FOR PR CAMAPAIGN FOR GRAND PALACE HOTEL

ITEM AMOUNT UNIT COST TOTAL COST

Press release for 3 Mk20,000.00 Mk60,000.00

the campaign
Press release for 1 Mk0.00 Mk0.00
the information
sessions
Poster for the 500 Mk300.00 Mk150,000.00
campaign
Poster for 500 Mk300.00 Mk150,000.00
information
sessions
Social media 1 Mk5000.00 Mk5000.00
Newsletter(email) 1 Mk5,000.00 Mk5,000.00
Contingency Mk100,000 Mk100,000
money
Total cost of Mk470,000.00
budget

6. EVALUATION PLAN

After reputation building campaign, a research will be conducted at grand palace hotel with similar
methodology to the previous research of the campaign. The research will help the public relations
committee to know if the goals and objectives which were set have been accomplished. The
campaign will also measure its effectiveness, by comparing the results of the second research from
the results of the initial research. Additionally, we will add questions on how the employees and
the consumers heard about the opportunity to participate in the campaign and what really
motivated them to participate in the service delivery.

The options will consist of various tactics used in this campaign, in order to identify the tactics
that were most successful and least successful. Therefore, tactics will be evaluated individually to
determine their level of success.

CONCLUSION

The research shows that the number of employees and customers with complaints on poor
employee management and poor service quality for the customers is low. So this campaign was
used to build the reputation of grand palace hotel by bringing out a positive perception to its
employees and customers. The primary goal for this campaign is to ensure that employees are
happy and are able to love what they are doing in order to offer quality services to customer and
customer satisfaction. The strength of this campaign is that the operations will be at low costs with
the budget as low as MWK 470,000 will be used to focus only on the employees and its actual
customers and this can be so by selecting tactics that will put both employees and customers into
practice. A potential weakness of this campaign is that not every customer or employee will be
able to participate in the campaign but only those with access to the tactics chosen, which can
make the campaign not to have the appropriate information. Therefore, this campaign was
designed to build a strong relationship between the management, the customers and the employees,
and if executed properly this campaign could have a positive impact on grand palace hotel.

References

Chavula, J. (2014). The Grand Palace: Mzuzu’s newest hotel inside out. The Nation Online,
October 9, 2014.

Theaker, A. (2004). The public relations handbook (2nded.). London: Routledge.