Premier Inn: Key Strategic Issues, Porter’s Five Forces, and SWOT Analysis

PREMIER INN STRATEGIC ANALYSIS
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Premier Inn Strategic Analysis
Introduction
Premier Inn is a British hotel based in the United Kingdom and provides hospitality services. It is the largest U.K. hotel brand with more than 800 hotels and 72,000 rooms. It has other operating hotels in different locations worldwide, including airports, suburbs and city centres. The company was first started by Whitbread PLC as a brewery in 1847 and produced famous breweries in the States (Bower, 2018, p.20). In 1987, the company decided to venture into hotel services as Travel Inn. Whitbread bought Premier Lodge in 2004 and merged it with Travel Inn, and shortened it to "Premier Travel Inn". This resulted in an addition of 141 hostels. It continued growing in size, and at last, it sold some of its smaller hotels, those with less than 30 rooms, to Good Night Inns in less popular cities.
What makes the company more interesting is that the hub has allowed them to situate their hotels in high-value locations, thus attracting more customers. Since it considers that most of its customers are out for their leisure activities, it invests more in good night sleep and new technology than other traditional hotels. It offers an application whereby guests can regulate the room temperature via their phones (Tempest, 2008, p.9). Since most people spend more of their time on their smartphones, such an offer makes the company more reliable. Besides, the company spends most of its hard cash on developing new sites in newer locations. The hotel focuses on high income and middle-income earners who can are willing to pay their hotel prices. It segments its customers according to business players who book their hotels on business trips and leisure players who typically book their rooms for recreation purposes.
This research paper will entail external factors affecting Premier Inn strategic positioning in the hospitality industry, including the macro-environmentally factors and Porter five forces. It also includes the company's key strategic issues together with its SWOT analysis.
Macro-Environmental Factors Affecting the Strategic Company Positioning
Several factors affect the strategies implemented by an organization either positively or negatively. For instance, reduction or increase in trade barriers, sudden changes in the political atmosphere, and cultural differences could significantly impact the operations of an organization both positively and negatively. Most companies use PESTLE analysis to analyze such outstanding factors and is an important consideration when formulating strategies.
The government is deeply connected to the political aspect. The United Kingdom's government, in particular, has collaborated with the hospitality industry to elevate it into the fifth-largest industry in the country to have an extensive employment rate giving jobs to more than 2.4 million individuals. The hospitality industry also brings in about a 34billion euros in tax revenue. Tourism recognition from top political officials such as the prime minister as an industry of the future helps the government back the industry. There has been a regional growth fund for the hospitalit...