Guerrilla Marketing in Hotel Businesses : A Research in Ankara

Abstract

Purpose – In the modern world ,as a result of the changes in the field of developing technology marketing, brands have started to use new alternative marketing ways other than traditional marketing activities to increase the consumption of their products and services. One of these alternative marketing types is Guerrilla marketing tactics. Guerrilla marketing; is a marketing philosophy that uses creative methods that the competitor cannot imitate and that can affect the customer with interesting tactics. Guerrilla marketing practices are based on factors such as creativity and imagination that have a lasting impact on consumers with messages that have never been seen and could not be imitated. In this study, it has been tried to reveal to what extent guerrilla marketing strategies are used in the hotel businesses. Design/methodology/approach - The universe of the research has been determined as four and five-star hotels in Ankara. There are a total of 92 hotels in Ankara, 65 of which are four-star and 27 are five-star. In the research, a questionnaire was applied to 75 hotels, 55 of which were four stars and 22 were five stars. In the research, SPSS 22.0 (Statistical Program for Social Sciences) program was used to evaluate the data collected through questionnaires. Frequency, percentage T-test and ANOVA test were used in the analysis. Findings – According to the results, it cannot be said that guerrilla marketing techniques have been fully used in hotel businesses. The guerrilla marketing techniques they use most effectively are the activities they perform on their hotels' websites. Discussion –The biggest reason does not applied guerrilla marketing techniques effectively is that hotel businesses have a low budget for marketing activities. In particular, the budgets allocated to the marketing of the majority of hotel enterprises generally do not exceed 20%. Hotel enterprises budget plans may increase their budgets for marketing activities a little more.