W Taipei is one of a brand of Starwood Hotels Resorts Worldwide, which is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world. According to HOTELS magazine, Starwood Group was the seventh-largest hotel group in the world in 2010, and they own 1041 hostels as well as 308,736 rooms around the world. The Starwood Group engages in the global hotel and resort operations, and the enterprise located in New York, which employs 145,000 employees. They mainly located in the luxury and high-end market segment. Its brands include St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Four Points, Aloft And Element.

The W Hotels experience began with the W New York, which opened its doors in December 1998. An instant phenomenon, its success drove the development of more than a dozen new properties in colourful destinations – including Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Seoul – in an unprecedented two-year span. W Hotels is a contemporary, design-led lifestyle brand and the industry innovator with 41hotels in the most vibrant cities and exotic destinations around the world. Inspiring, iconic, innovative and influential. W Hotels provides the ultimate in insider access, offering a unique mix of cutting-edge design and passions around fashion, music and entertainment. W Hotels offers a holistic lifestyle experience that is integrated into the brand’s sensibility through contemporary restaurant concepts, glamorous entertainment experiences, stylish retail concepts and signature spas. With more than 12 years of proven success, W Hotels is on track to reach more than 50 hotels by the end of 2012. W Hotels have been announced for Paris, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Bangkok, Athens – Astir Palace, Verbier, and Taiwan, which will be introduced in this report.

W Taipei is located on the No.10, Sec. 5, Zhongxiao E. Rd., Xinyi Dist., Taipei City 110. A considerable number of high-class and high-rise buildings stand in the vicinity of the hotel. Near the Taipei 101, the place converges the art, culture, and performance, provides W Taipei unique and elegant lodging environment. Transportation is very convenient and it only takes just few minutes for customers to walk from the hotel to the MRT station. The theme of W Taipei applies the concept of “natural electrified” to symbolize the balanced combination of high technology and natural environment.

Hotel Name /Item

W Taipei

http://images.1111.com.tw/oad/54935738.jpg?2011/10/2%20%E4%B8%8A%E5%8D%88%2007:04:42

Room picture

Hotel vision statement

Mix of vibes and elements that mingle to create a welcoming and social gathering place.

Hotel mission statement

W Hotel consistently exceeds their guests’ expectations in terms of the products and services they provide to their business and leisure travellers.

W Hotel strives to create an experience that is responsive to their guests’ needs by using the information customers entrust them with responsibly.

W Hotel committees to respecting customer’s privacy and adhering to the principles of applicable data protection and privacy laws throughout the world.

Rooms

405 suites

Price

8300 dollars per night↑

Target customer

1. Leisure tourist

2. Business traveller

3. MICE customer

Feature

Innovation design、Technology、Arts

Local Distinguishing Feature

W Pillow Menu

Whatever/Whenever

Luggage Forward

PAW

However, due to the competitive environment in hotel industry in Taiwan, W Taipei faces some challenge.

Strategic marketing planning can be seen as a fundamental activity for a company, which means that find attractive opportunities and developing beneficial strategies that specifies a target market and related marketing mix (Perreault, 2008). Kotler and Keller (2009) pointed out that a strategic marketing plan involves laying out the target markets and the value proposition that will be provided, which is based on the analysis of the best market opportunities. It plays an important role for a company that is a management tool to help the organization does better work and understand how to compete with their competitor for the future (Qin, 2012). It is just like a vehicle helping firms should use to set their vision, determine the strategies required to achieve that vision as well as the selected strategies, and build alignment to the vision and strategic direction according to different levels of the organization. However, each company has different situation and challenge, so strategic planning is hard to do well, which is a complex work including forecasting and scheduling, where complexity prevails. The strategic planning elements makes extremely dynamic and seemingly random because of its complexity which seems to be the causal effect of turbulence (Patnaik, 2012). Due to every organisation is different; therefore, there is no set process or template. But it still has some principles to follow and adapt to the specific context.

According to the book of Marketing Management, it provides a strategic planning process which consists of several steps such as business mission, SWOT analysis, goal and strategy, programme formulation and implementation formulation, as well as feedback and control, respectively (Kotler, 2009). A simplified view of the strategic planning process is shown by the following figure:

Figure 2: Strategic planning process within a business unit

Source: Adapted from Kotler & Keller (2009)

In the first step, a strategic marketing plan should begin with a mission. Company needs to define its specific mission within the broader company mission (Kotler, 2009). A clearly mission statement can provide company more specific in terms of value and the primary focus of the organization (Hitt, 2009). Many managers and master usually find their different departments, and even different groups in the same department, having different goals, often with heavy results, simply because the company has not defined the boundaries of the business and the way they want to achieve (McDonald, 2006).

The next step is SWOT analysis, overall evaluating a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It’s an approach to monitor the external and internal marketing environment and help managers to formulate an appropriate strategy (Daft, 2012). Organization can track trends and important developments and any related opportunities and potential threats through monitoring environment (Kotler, 2009). The internal analysis covers primary issues like company’s objectives, strategy of marketing, performance analysed, and structural features. This analysis can keep companies’ marketing aims connected with companies’ mission and changing consumer and outside environment (Fifield, 2002). Furthermore, company can realize what parts of the value chain does the firm do well and what part of performance does poorly, and improve it (Hitt, 2009). The external analysis helps company to know the competitive pressure, economic growth and stability, and the development of the social culture (Wu, 2007).

After company has finished an environment analysis, it can proceed to formulate specific goals and strategy for the planning period. For instances, there can be advertising objectives, maximize sales revenue and maximize market share (McDonald, 2006). Within an organization there is a series of goals of different kinds and on different levels. There can be objectives and strategies at all levels in marketing (Hitt, 2009). A popular and effective tool to formulate business-level strategy is Porter’s competitive forces and strategies. A company could find a competitive advantage against these forces through differentiation or cost leadership to distinguish firm’s product and services from other competitors (Poter, 1980). The other useful tool such as BCG matrix, shows business growth rate and market share, which provide four type for a corporate portfolio (Daft, 2012). This matrix helps firm formulate a better understanding of how different strategic business unit contribute to overall company. It also prescribes the preferred distribution of cash and other resources among company (Griffin, 2008).

Appropriate strategies only can work if they are implemented correctly; therefore practicable tool must be formulated. Although different businesses have different alternatives depending on the situation they faced, there still exist generic strategies that can be applied to a wide range of company. The Six Silent Killers of Strategy provides company a tool to recognize barriers and overcome them by altering and fine-tuning various aspects of the firm to increase execution (Daft, 2012).

The final step emphasizes the need for constant evaluation, because the market environment changes faster. Moreover, it is more vital for a company to do the right thing than to do things right. The most successful organizations excel at both (Drucker, 1973). Therefore, according to the feedback and outcomes, firm might consider whether strategy should be adjusted or not (Hitt, 2009).