Paradores de Turismo Marketing

1. Problem statement

Paradores de Turismo is a publicly funded limited company in Spain positioned as a hotel chain in leisure segment with 86 hotels (each with average 62 rooms) across Spain, that showcase buildings located in nature reserves and in historic places, such as castles, palaces, convents and monasteries away from urban centers and promotes local businesses, food, décor, culture etc. By the end of 2002, Parador was planning to expand by 12% capacity and need a new marketing strategy for 2003 to re-launch and increase market share.

2. Situation analysis

In order to complete the situation analysis, we took a detailed look at the 4 C’s (See Appendix 2-1) and summarized below.

Context (Market Analysis – Market Size, Value, Segments) key points:

• Spain retains the #2 spot in tourism (leisure segment) – and futures seem like it will continue to do so with 61% foreigners and remaining 39% with Spaniards and a growing Spaniard trend by about 2%. In 2002, Spanish resorts have shown an accumulated 1% RevPAR increase. This fact, given the difficulties experienced by the Spanish tourism industry in 2002, is a merit: a 17% fall in the number of German tourists, higher discounts on competitor’s prices and the imposition of the Eco tax, together with the controversial tourist policy of the Balearic Government.

• With regards to international tourists, British & German continue to dominate at 32% and 27%. Outlook shows a downward trend especially for German tourists with Turkey and Croatia offering 20% cheaper destinations. USA and Sweden shows a downward trend also. Foreigners continue to prefer sun, sea and sand destinations in Balearic and Canary islands accounting for 38% of stays in 2002.

• The Spanish islands have been very affected by the negative impacts previously mentioned, with a 2% decrease of RevPAR. Mainland Spain, with a 4% increase of RevPAR, has offset the poorer performance of the Islands.

Company analysis, competitors & and...