If WD (Wyndham Destinations) continues to grow the expansion to another headquarters will make things easier from a business operational standpoint. Segmenting the business into two headquarters responsible for 55 locations can add to increased productivity, data quality, budgeting, and more. There needs to be another headquarters for a company of this size that is global like WD is. First there will need to be a new international business plan that is developed for operating internationally. Then a team needs to conduct foreign market research for Europe and London. The team needs to evaluate whether London has the ability to grow the vacation and travel “product” and set up some foreign relations for when they start launching. There will need to be a different finance system due to different pricing and legal and economical differences. There needs to be research and a plan to work with the government to get licenses or whatever paperwork they need. Once this is all done there needs to be a local team that the Orlando team works with to make sure everything is done correctly. (Entrepreneur, 2019)
The long-term goal for a company like WD (Wyndham Destinations) is to grow their reach. In order to do this WD needs to increase the number of building projects in key locations and start opening new headquarters in other countries. WD is currently in 110 countries worldwide (Wyndham Destination, 2019). The best way for WD to grow is to start more building projects in Europe and more specifically Barcelona. Barcelona is the growing tourist destination. Building timeshares or growing their Home Swap program in Europe would be the key to staying ahead of the rapidly growing competition.
WD definitely needs to expand into another headquarters. Having a headquarters with locals will possibly bring more trust from the local people and be a way to grow their brand image. WD has 3,200 employees at their Orlando headquarters so they should plan on the same for their London headquarters (Paul Brinkman, 2018). They can send some of their talented managers from the Orlando headquarters to scout, hire, and train the staff in the London office. Forming a partnership with a local resort or working with some of the staff from one of the best London Hotels will also go a long way to helping make smart hiring decisions and really growing in their new community. Having a grand opening for new hires and the community can help start meeting potential hires and WD can do open interviews. Working with a successful hotel in the area and doing joint events can also lend a hand on hiring and finding potential managers. The most successful way to make the London office have the best chance of a great start will be the integration from their Orlando with their London. Start hiring in Orlando to move to London and have them work and train in London with locals on how to interact with the community and customers.
Obviously firing is a tough business. The onboarding and offboarding will need to be in accordance to the local laws and their needs to be a process in place. In Orlando, hiring is “at will.” This means that companies can hire and fire without paperwork such as write-ups. The best way would be a cross training. Have some of the current top management go to London to train new hires and some of the new hires from London can come do some training in Orlando. After training, that is when the decision should be made of whether they meet WD’s standards or not. If the new headquarters doesn’t have local employees, it will be hard to integrate the new expansion with the community.
Building projects are tough to plan and can take years to finish and launch. If WD (Wyndham Destinations) doesn’t continue to grow more building projects their competition will overtake them. Having a committee that is always searching and launching more projects in key areas will lead to success. There needs to be a team of analysts searching and finding key markets for growth and working with the building or growth team to showcase where to launch and when.
Wyndham Destinations is a hotel, vacation exchange, and rental company based in Orlando Florida. WD (Wyndham Destinations) is made up of 24,500 employees. WD employs 3,200 people in the Orlando area at its corporate offices and resorts (Paul Brinkman, 2018). WD is currently trying to build more timeshares in and around the Orlando area. In 2018, there was a 7% increase in timeshare sales (Get Informed, 2018). Europe has a growing tourism rate worldwide. To grow WD it would be a cutting edge move to expand their headquarters to London, England. The demand for timeshares is growing but so is the travel to places that are by a seashore or beach front. The competition is growing faster than the customer demand. Hyatt has opened a vacation timeshare and rental branch. This is called the Hyatt Residence Club. If WD wants to stay ahead of their competition and continue to keep their market share, they will need to build more timeshare properties around key locations of travel such as Europe and beach locations such as Barcelona. The competition is growing, and travelers tend to be loyal to the brand of hotel they enjoy or have enjoyed staying at. Marriott and Hyatt are trusted names and they are branching into WD’s market. In order to not lose any of their current customer base or future customers, they will need to continue owning the best timeshare locations and resorts.
Europe would be a wonderful place for RCI to expand. There are more visitors there every year and it reaches the target market we are missing according to our data for this project. There needs to be a focus on newlyweds, couples, and single adults for advertising and promotions. Paris France is rated in the top five best places to travel (Oneika, 2017). This would be a great start to getting the attention of newlyweds. There is potential for wedding packages to be promoted and even network with wedding planning agencies to offer deals.
At the risk of being super repetitive, the paradigm’s I would recommend would be focused on their advertising. The data is showing that the owners are very much slanted towards white families. This means RCI is missing out on newlywed couples, single Asian American adults with kids, and more. Looking at my tables there needs to be more promotions or advertising geared for what those demographics are looking for or places that those consumers like to travel. There are more travelers to Europe every year. There is a better chance for more newlywed couples to want to take part in this type of promotion versus a family resort such as Disney World. Overall, there needs to be a stronger diverse advertising method to reach a larger market because as the data is starting to show, the median age in the last 10 years has dropped from 49 to 39 (Savannah Turk, 2015).
The issue really becomes whether you are buying a family a vacation or a single adult. The budget will need to be flexible to include multiple families instead of just single adults. Other ethical issues are the amount of whites over African Americans. There are 2.28 million white owners out of the 760,000 African Americans. This means there will be a 60% chance that the contestant chosen will be white and married. The other problem is the advertising. Any successful campaign will want to target a variety of audiences not just married white families. Maybe to start focus on allowing a certain number of packages to families and a certain number of packages for single adults. Then ensure that there is diversity among the winners.
Based on RCI.com’s data, there are currently 3.8 million members. Of those members according to my table 1.432 million of those members are female (RCI, 2019). The chance of it being a woman is 1.432/3.8. That means that there is a 37% chance that a woman is chosen in the contest. The biggest factor is the woman’s marital status. If a married woman is chosen, then you run the issue of the promotion not being for a family and therefore not being a success. If it is a single or divorced woman that is chosen, then it is more likely to be a success and lead to a potential owner.
References:
Open Up Your Vacation Options. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2019, from http://www.rci.com/
RCI has 3.8 million members (RCI, 2019). The target customer pool for timeshares in general are white married couples over the age of 35 with children who travel more than once a year (ARDA, 2017). There are multiple ways to reach this demographic. The cheapest option would be through social media marketing. According to Pew Research, 78% of users that use social media are between 30-49 (PewResearch, 2018). According to Pew Reseach 64% of the users are between 50-64 (PewResearch, 2018). Pew Research found that the two most used platforms for these age groups are Facebook and Youtube (PewResearch, 2018). According to Pew Research, 51% of Facebook users check Facebook several times a day and 74% of Facebook users log in daily. Facebook would be the primary form of advertisement for this campaign. Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users (SproutSocial, 2017). Eighty-two percent of Facebook users have attended college which fits the timeshare owner demographics and 79% of them have graduated (SproutSocial, 2017). Opening a Facebook page for this promotion that ties in with RCI’s main Facebook age and running ads on both will be the key to making this promotion a success.
The cost for the promotion should be based on a total budget. Facebook marketing is broken down into multiple catagories. There are low costing options such as cost based on impressions or there are options such as cost based on clicks. The average cost per click for travel and hospitaltiy is 0.63 (KellyMain, 2018). The conversion rate is .0282 for travel and hospitality (KellyMain, 2018). The average cose for impressions for Facebook are $7.19 per 1,000 impressions (Betsy Mcleod, 2017). The hotel is based on around 500 a night if we look at a suite for a family (Reservations.com,2019). The promotion is for a week so it would be 3500 for each family. Taking all this into consideration, this promotion would be anywhere between $150,000 to $250,000. The reason it can very is because Facebook marketing is tricky cost wise and can fluctuate. The majority of the cost will be for the price of the resort. The promotion is perfect to grow the brand of RCI and reach the growing target market for timeshares. Timeshare owners hate going to the meetings and promotional tables when they get to the resort (Savannah Turk, 2015). This promotion will inform our target market and hit both of timeshares largest conversion rates. The first is consumers that have traveled to a resort and the second those that have been previously informed that go to meetings and travel to a resort (Savannah Turk, 2015).
The demographics for timeshares are shifting. The average age for owners used to be over 50 years old. Now we are seeing a younger market of highly educated “Genxers” come through (Savannah Turk, 2015). The average age is now between 34-54 years old with a median age of 39 (Savannah Turk, 2015). Seventy five percent of these new owners had previous knowledge of timeshares and the programs (Savannah Turk, 2015). ARDA released demographics on timeshares stating that 78% of owners are married and 23% have a child under 18 at the house (Savannah Turk, 2015). The top places for timeshare owners are beach resorts. Fifty percent of the timeshare owners had a beachfront or seashore property (Savannah Turk, 2015). Golf destinations were the next in line at 29% (Savannah Turk, 2015).
Let’s tie this all together. The demographics that I just went over said that the new target market is younger, highly educated, married couples, and have children. Remax’s study also suggested that beach locations or seashore locations are the top visited followed by golf. This all wraps up to be a nice promotional event where for maybe 3-4 months there are 3 families with children offered an exclusive 1 week stay at the Floridays resort in Orlando. Floridays is rated number 9 out of 355 resorts according to TripAdvisor (TripAdvisor, 2019). When they get there, they are asked to do an hour conference to learn about timeshares with a place for their children to hang out during. According to Remax, 44% experienced timeshare vacations through renting and 35% of owners said they attended multiple sales presentations before buying (Savannah Turk, 2015).
The map below shows the largest traveled in cities in Europe in 2017. London has the highest number of people who stayed in the city in 2017. This would be a great hub for management to work out of as a European headquarters. The beaches within Europe have the highest travel ratings and are perfect for RCI and the Love Home Swap programs to start kickstarting initiatives. London will be the perfect hub to focus all data for the European side Wyndham.
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