The Elegant Resorts and Jet2 Company
- The Elegant Resorts and Jet2 Company
1.1 Introduction
The Elegant Resorts and the Jet2 are online Companies that have different marketing models. The companies sells similar commodities however, they package them differently. The companies’ marketing model is hitched on their client’s lifestyles and attitude. It is therefore necessary for the company to fully comprehend the buying behavior of the customers and even how they make their decisions. The basic difference between the companies is their pricing strategies. Jet2 uses a cost leadership strategy whereas the Elegant Resort uses a high price strategy entangled on high value services. Elegant resort emphasizes more on quality and classiness instead of prices. The companies have high levels of marketing similarities while at the same note they contrast greatly. The paper compares and contrasts the Elegant Resorts and Jet in terms of their marketing orientation.
1.2 The Elegant Resorts and Jet2 Company
Jet2 is a leisure airline company which flies clients to key holiday destinations based on seven UK and one in Spain bases since 2003. It is a subsidiary of Dart Group PLC. Its other operations besides carrying passengers are that it carries mails and cargos. It is a British company that operates from the Leeds Bradford Airport in England. It has a wide variety of travelling packages that complements its air travel such as insurance, car hires, and in-flight meals. The company packages its services as on a low cost model whereby it charges low prices. The prices are considered fair and cheaper compared to that of other airlines. Besides offering the air transport services, the company targets tourists’ services. It arguments its air travel services by taking its clients to popular holiday destinations using variety of aircrafts (Jet2, 2016).
On the other hand, the Elegant Resorts is a luxury travel and tour agency. It offers tourist destination to its clients that are tailor made to each and every one’s uniqueness. It boasts of almost thirty years experience and knowledge in the travel business. Unlike Jet2, Elegant Resort is just a travel agent. It targets the high end clients who have a taste of exotic and expensive goods. The company also markets itself on the basis of high quality services. For example, it highly accentuates its booking services and holiday packages. It also doubles up as a tour consultant.
The two companies therefore have different Unique Selling Proposition which makes them stand out from each other. On that basis, clients can easily differentiate each company from the other. They target different clientele. Jet2 targets people who prefer low prices while Elegant Resorts targets people who prefer high end quality services. Therefore, the approach of the two companies in marketing is quite different.
Jet2 clients are in the middle class and the upper side of middle class. It poses as a premium service provider at a low cost. The low cost model relies on economies of scale concept whereby it expects to make as much sales in order to make profits. The model cannot thrive on a low turnover of clients. It requires a huge number of people consuming the products. By design, the low cost model is based on the idea of affordability. Many people can afford low cost services and therefore it is able to sustain sits business based on the big numbers of clients.
The elegant resorts on the other hand bank on providing high end luxurious services. In such a selling proposition, the cost of the services is usually under toned, rather the service provider emphasize much on the quality of the services offered. In our case, the Elegant Resorts through various media outlets sells itself as a prime service provider. It has received several awards as a way of recognizing its immense effort in the provision of high quality luxurious services. The awards include the Virgin Atlantic Airways Gold Achievement in 2013, luxury tour operator by The Sunday Times in 2010, and it was recognized by the Ultratravel 100 in the UK as the best small tour operator (ElegantResortsUK., 2016).
From Jet2 Website, the company largely poses as a tour travel agent; this could be as a result of its main business in the air travel. Jet2 has combined two business concepts at a go. The first one is the provision of the air travel services and the second is the sales of key tourist destinations. Notably, the two business concepts are intertwined and have become the key identity of Jet2. No wonder their name Jet2, creating an impression of travelling via air to your holiday destination of choice. In contrast, the Elegant Resorts do not base their marketing on the means of travel like the Jet2 has done it. Rather they focus on the end goal which is the holiday destination. Their website is full of exquisite pictures and videos of the various hotels that they have partnered with. They have a category of air travel providers as partners thus setting themselves apart from the air travel business. On the same note, the holiday destinations are just partnership and the Elegant Resorts comes in as a tour consultant and operator. Clients ought to approach the company in search of their best holiday destination. The Elegant Resort in return advises the clients based on their tastes and other preferences such as affordability. As the company put it, it is able to tailor make every tour package in accordance to its clients taste and priorities (ElegantResortsUK, 2016).
- Comparison of the Jet2 and Elegant Resorts marketing styles
Websites: Having a website may seem to a basic thing to any company today. However, despite the fact that most of the companies got their websites, the manner in which a website is made matters a lot in terms of marketing. The two companies have got websites which are easy to navigate. As a client, it is not hard to find whatever one is looking for. The websites plays an important role of informing clients. The various tour packages are well displayed in the sites. For example, the Elegant Resort has categorized its services in terms of regions, partners, awards, destination and so forth. The website is simple and has attractive pictorial demonstrations. The pictures capture the beautiful holiday destination where clients can visit.
On the other hand, Jet2 website has an outlay of all the services offered but it does not use a lot of pictures as Elegant Resort (Jet2, 2016; ElegantResortsUK., 2016). It instead list out its services with a pricelist tagged along. The approach is based on the company’s unique selling proposition which is based on a low price. Elegant resorts use a lot of pictures which are of high quality to demonstrate quality and create more urge to their clients to a visit to the holiday destinations. The high quality comes with a high price as well. It is clearly from the websites of the two companies that the two are selling holiday destinations but on a very different approach. They have been able to differentiate their products and develop their own clientele (Trauer and Ryan, 2005). Their respective web sites are http://www.jet2.com/ and http://www.elegantresorts.co.uk/information/about for Jet2 and Elegant Resort.
Blog spot: Through a blog spot called http://www.elegantresorts.co.uk/luxuryblog, the Elegant Resort are able to further reach out to their clients. Blogs play a key role in search engine optimization. So do websites. They create a strong online presence and people can easily find a company with a simple search. Jet2 do not have a blog and it should borrow the concept from the Elegant Resort in order to further strengthen its online presence.
Paid Search: It is a way of reaching out to the clients. The companies pay for adverts in the major search engine worldwide such as Google and Bing. Therefore, every time a potential client searches for one of the services offered by the companies, they are among the first one to be suggested to the client by the search engine.
Other ways related to search marketing include paid for inclusion feeds and pay per click (Riley, 1995).
Videos: Elegant Resort is so good at this. It has embedded many videos in its online sites such as its website, blogs, and in You Tube. Videos creates further creates an irresistible urge to the viewers to visit the holiday destinations in demonstration. The You Tube account is called https://www.youtube.com/user/elegantresortsuk (ElegantResortsUK., 2016). Jet2 has a You Tube called https://www.youtube.com/user/Jet2flights (Jet2, 2016).
Social Media: The two companies have marked their presence online by the use of social media such face book, twitter, You tube, twitter among others. The social media creates a good platform for them to interact with their clients and even attract potential clients. Social media acts as a medium of communication between the company and the clients. It is an inevitable way of marketing today noting the scale at which the use of Social Medias has penetrated our society. They are more so important while marketing services suitable for the younger generations. Notably, the older generations are not good at using the social media.
- Contrast of the Jet2 and Elegant Resorts marketing styles
Unique selling Propositions: The two companies use different USPs. While Elegant Resorts base its USP on the quality of its service, Jet2 base its USP on prices. The two strategies form the foundation of the others forms of marketing that follows (Seaton and Bennett, 1996). For example, Jet2 lays a lot of emphasis on its pricing model in most of its adverts while the Elegant Resorts emphasis much on quality service and the exquisite nature of its holiday destination. As a result, the Elegant Resort uses lots of pictures and videos in its advertisements lure and create taste for its holiday packages (MacKay and Fesenmaier, 1997).
Diversification: Jet2 has exploited the concept to the full. It has diversified its services even though they are all built around leisure travel. For example, it offers travel insurance, car hires and parking, drinks while on board and so many other customized services that are a necessary to every traveler on holiday. It is able to offer such services because it is primarily an air carrier. Therefore, the extra services complement its core mandate. Leisure travel is an added value to its service hence making more valuable. Leisure travel generates high revenues. Elegant Resorts has some diversification but not as extensive as that from Jet2. Diversification facilitates a company to catch a wide range of clients and therefore make more revenues (Moutinho, 1987).
Online PR: The companies protect and promote their brands online via the use of their own Websites and the various social media. Online PR draws clients closer to the company. It creates connection and a basis of relation. Elegant Resorts have gone a step further by creating a blog spot unlike Jet2; it further plays a key role in entrenching public relation (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2011).
Offline communication: Even though it is a primary mode of communication in advertisement. Elegant Resorts has gone a step further to launch their own magazine that publishes the news and the trends on holiday destinations. It is worth noting that magazines and marketing are some of the primary ways of reaching out to clients especially at the UK. According to Morgan and Pritchard (2000), the magazines and the newspaper take the biggest share in tourism and leisure advertising. At the bottom is outdoor advertising which takes 1 percent, followed by cinemas at 4 percent and radio and television at 6 percent and 30 percent respectfully. The newspapers and the magazines take 60 percent of advertisement share at the UK. This implies that people rely a lot on them (McWilliams, E.G. and Crompton, 1997). It is commendable that Elegant Resort has noted and started its own magazine called Elegant Traveler in 2003. Jet2 should follow suit in order for the company to reach out to more customers and also reduce its cost on advertisement.
- Lifestyles and Needs of Varying Clusters
Going by the different clientele each company targets, it is important that they understand the actual needs of their clients. The Elegant resort is required to fully comprehend the needs of the affluent while the Jet2 is required to understand the needs of the middle class and the upper middle class.
As Tribe (2015) explains, the taste of the clients is of paramount importance to the marketer such as the Elegant Resort. The company is required to comprehend the taste of the preferences of the affluent. The holiday packages should augment the lifestyles of the affluent clients. In that way the company would be a position to capture their interests. Some of the recreation facilities for the affluent class are golfing, boats, skiing, golfing among other activities. Therefore, the holiday destination should encompass such desires (Kandampully, Mok and Sparks, 2001).
The price of the service is not a key determiner while determining a holiday destination for the rich since they can afford even the expensive services. Rather, quality matters most. That is the reason the Elegant Resorts do not bother indicating their prices alongside their holiday destinations display. They instead focus much on the facilities, expected experience and the nature of the holiday package. The nature of the product is the most crucial thing in marketing (Riley, 1995). Even though the prices should be economical, they quality and the prices charged should be at par. Therefore, high end services tend to be costly as a reflection of their worth. The affluent do not like low quality cheap services. The quality of a brand plays a key role too. Therefore, it is critical for a company to invest wisely in a brand name. It is for that reason; the Elegant Resort comes out so clearly by indicating that it is a luxury travel and tour company. The company also targets celebrity clients. Such people are very careful of the choices they make; they invest heavily in their life and append a high value to it. Such is depicted through their lavish lifestyle. For a company to attract such kind of clientele, it has to offer services in an extremely exceptional way. Price charges are one of the key determiners to the choice of a high end client. Rarely can you find an affluent person associating themselves with cheap products (Woodside, Crouch, and Ritchie, 2001).
On the other hand, Jet2 largely targets the middle class people. These are people who are a bit sensitive to prices. As a result, it has to embed the price structures on its travel packages. They act as bait. The company has extensively done price differentiation. It offers same products at different prices for only a slight differentiation. The major advantage of cost leadership strategy is that a company has a large number of clientele. Therefore, as much as the prices are low, the large numbers makes it earn high revenue. The clients are very sensitive to price changes. Therefore, the price elasticity of demand is relatively high in such market. For that reason, Jet2 extensively offers price discounts (Jet2, 2016).
- Marketing aids
Each of the two companies target different clientele. Therefore, different means of advertisement and reaching out to them are required as well. The following are some of the marketing aids:
Search Marketing: The companies should pay to the search engines like Google to improve the visibility of their companies online. Search marketing involves developing key terms that are in tandem with the services offered by the company. When a clients searches for that specific or related services, the company under promotion appears among other suggestion. It also involves paying for inclusion feeds. Alternatively, a company should boost its search engine optimization (SEO). Search marketing concept applies the same way in the two companies; however, their key words ought to differ. The key words should reflect the taste and the preferences of their clientele. Therefore, some of the key words for Jet2 would include Jet2holidays, low flight fares, free flights, and much more. On the other hand, the Elegant Resort key words should be like luxury holidays, elegant resorts, ultimate luxury holidays for family, travel experts, as so forth (Jet2, 2016; ElegantResortsUK., 2016).
Online PR: Through the use of social media and other online platforms such as a company’s website. A company can improve on its public relation and make it strong. The process involves consistent advertisement and promotions as well as engaging the clients online. In the process of marketing, the companies do offer solutions to the clients as well as consider their sentiments for service improvement. The end process is a strong brand. Since the two companies are dealing with different people classes of people. Their PR should match with the tastes and the attitude of their clients. For example, the Elegant Resort’s PR should have some sense of classiness, however, Jet2 do not need all that. It should emphasize on affordability of air tickets.
Offline communications: It is the process of reaching out to the clients via the use of traditional modes of communication such as direct mail, sponsorship, promotion campaigns, and advertisement on billboards, TVs, newspaper, and magazines. Placing advertisement on the newspaper and the magazines is the most successful way of advertisement in the tours and travel business (Morgan and Pritchard, 2000). The message carried on the offline Medias should reflect the client’s needs. The pictures too should go hand in hand with the client expectation. For example, the Elegant Resort advertisement should feature posh and lavish lifestyles. Jet2 adverts can focus on its affordable prices, discounts on offer, and baggage allowances.
Viral Marketing: It is a way of advertising using a self repeating mechanism which makes its viral (Nigel and Annette, 2015). The process involves the sharing of memes on face book, trending on twitter, and sharing a viral meme or video on whatsapp. Viral marketing reaches to very many people within a short while.
- Third parties
The third party companies that would play a key role in assisting the companies create and maintain loyalties are the advertising companies such as the Google, Microsoft, Face Book, Twitter, and other offline newspaper and magazine companies along with major TV companies in the UK.
- Conclusion
The two companies have created a strong online presence. They are also highly differentiated and as a result they are not in direct competition. The Elegant Resorts targets the high end clients whereas the Jet2 targets the middle and the upper middle class. Thus, the two have a different marketing strategy. Jet2 uses a cost leadership strategy. It charges low prices that are affordable to the many. Besides the use of the cost leadership strategy, Jet2t has diversified its services in a big way. It offers insurance cover to travelers, car hire services, parking services, and luggage carriage services; On the other hand, the Elegant Resort uses a focus strategy. It has focused on the high end clients and it offers them exquisite holiday packages. The holiday packages are in line with their taste of class and luxury.
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