Demand management : Preferred options from the customer’s point of view regarding the rural hotel industry

Sammanfattning: Master thesis in marketing written in spring 2012 at the LinnæusUniversity, Växjö, Sweden. Authors: Lina Bengtsson and Desirée Valler Examiner: Professor Mosad Zineldin                 Tutor: Professor Anders Pehrsson Title: Demand management - Preferred options from the customer’s point of view regarding the rural hotel industry Introduction: If demand and capacity is not in line, dissatisfaction can occur among the customers. In these cases demand can be managed by demand management options in order for it to reach the wanted level. Purpose: The purpose is to identify which demand management options (DMO) that rural hotels customers’ finds significant in order to affect their usage of the service, hence, to change their demand. Delimitations: The delimitations of this paper are automation, substitute services and sales promotion, as these areas will not be handled in this paper. Methodology: This study will be approached by the deductive point of view. Further the methods to gather empirical information will be both a quantitative approached in the shape of a survey and a qualitative approach in the shape of a focus group. Conclusions: Price is of importance for rural hotels, but they could also use service differentials, which can be a winning concept. The DMO of overbooking is not as successful as the customers perceive it as something negative. Promotion can increase the demand but should be used together with other DMOs, hotels should although be careful so no negative WOM starts spreading. A negative WOM could occur if the hotel segments their customers wrongly. Suggestion for further research: Is to investigate to which degree the recommended DMOs affects the demand within rural hotel industry by practically measuring it. Further, if these DMOs also should be implemented by downtown hotels can be a ground for future research.