THE PARK HOTELS: DESIGNING EXPERIENCE

Marketing Management II
By Group V

Introduction
The case traces the transformation of Park Hotels (TPH) from
another hotel at the time of its founding in 1967, the first
boutique hotel chain in India
The case discusses how Priya Paul, chairperson, TPH, and her
team have created a unique network of Indian boutique hotel
emphasizing an intimate and personalized service, and the
positioning of each hotel as an entertainment destination for
customers

What are the success factors for The Park Hotels?

Their steadfastness to stick to their concept of differentiation and originality in their product-service-experience
chain:Making customer experience the purpose of every action undertaken, shifting from customer services
By striking a balance between design and function

Smartly positioning themselves to attract a young consumer who is a trendsetter, and will attract further customers
by increasing the presence of The Park via their own work or leisure, and sometimes simply by effective word-ofmouth
Empowering their staff

Making continual profits and increasing the value of shareholders, by believing and delivering on their mission and
vision

What are the future challenges for The Park Hotels?

Rival groups setting up similar boutique hotels and expanding heavily in the up and coming metropolitan
areas of India

Ensuring the implementation of differentiation of services in The Parks own new branches
Taking the product-service-experience cycle to the next level. Boutique hotels, departure experience,
music-pubs, restaurants, lounge and cocktail bars, preference-based service staffs, smartcards, loyalty
programs, to what is next?
Choice of expanding to internationally
or remaining a domestic powerhouse,
presenting 2 different problems:-

Lack of possibility to grow

domestically in the face of heavy
competition

Struggle to find a footing in

foreign lands as The Park
brand is not popular yet

Late entry into the Golden Triangle of Jaipur-Delhi-Agra, an area which provides huge advantages in
terms of logistics and customer traffic

Can The Park Hotels once again change the way people live in hotels?
Yes, by Implementing the following methods:Indoor sports facilities such as table tennis and badminton
Sports themed bars which will promote local IPL teams during IPL season, and display
Premier League Football matches on weekends
Further innovation on their event management strategy, to encompass events such as
food, music and cinema
Enhancing the Preferred at the Park loyalty program, which will serve free and
personalised services as a token of appreciation, to endear itself to the customer
Offering family packages to single users of hotel facilities to encourage repeat visits

Someplace Else already offers a ladies night with a lot of free services, which can be
implemented throughout the branches in Aqua and Fire

Can The Park Hotels evolve further in the product-service-experience chain?

Acquire good assets which already possess a history and a sense of individuality
Appoint the right manager for each new property who can ensure that the quality of service is never compromised and
keeps evolving along with customers
Bring a higher degree of individuality in their products and services which strikes a chord with the personality of the
customer
Doing the above simultaneously, while making sure that the back-end systems of the whole chain works as efficiently as
before
Assigning single point-of-contacts with previous customers, to ensure that they keep coming back to The Park whenever
they are in the city in the future

With new properties coming up, a local connect has to be made with the youth of that location, such that it generates
enough buzz to draw them in, as in case of Someplace Else in The Park Kolkata.

Why is it more difficult to create an experience in comparison

to a product or service?
A product or service has a certain degree of pre-existing definitions, from the perspective of
quality management, whereas an experience is not clearly pre-defined
Products and services are more deliverable, whereas experiences are not, as they cannot be
read and interpreted on the basis of statistics of just customer usage
To stand out from the rest, constant additions have to be made to an existing
product/service. Some of those additions fail, as in case of Fire for The Park Hotels, whereas
Someplace Else and Aqua still thrive
A start should be made with an achievable objective, and build on it with unique out-of-thebox additions, as in case of The Park Kolkata
A visionary at the top such as Priya Paul, also helps deliver consistently, and innovatively,
without becoming too avant-garde to the general public

Can The Park Hotels now design their customer experiences to make them more
blissful, scintillating and memorable?

Each managers of The Park hotels have to learn from mass customization, in a way
that they provide specific needs of clients in line with their lifestyles
One must consider whether customization is possible based on the types of services
and their delivery
One must determine the amount of judgment that can be exercised by the customer
relationship manager in defining the nature of service a customer may receive
Some types of services do not only require a high level of customization but also
needs customer contact personnel to deliver the services to the customers

THANK YOU