SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Viceroy Hotels Ltd (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Viceroy Hotels Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Viceroy Hotels Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Viceroy Hotels Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Viceroy Hotels Ltd operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Hotels & Motels sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
Strengths of Viceroy Hotels Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Viceroy Hotels Ltd are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Viceroy Hotels Ltd are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Viceroy Hotels Ltd in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Viceroy Hotels Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Viceroy Hotels Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Viceroy Hotels Ltd has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Organizational Resilience of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Viceroy Hotels Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Viceroy Hotels Ltd is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Viceroy Hotels Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Viceroy Hotels Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Hotels & Motels
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Hotels & Motels industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Viceroy Hotels Ltd in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Hotels & Motels industry
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Viceroy Hotels Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Viceroy Hotels Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Viceroy Hotels Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Hotels & Motels industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Viceroy Hotels Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Viceroy Hotels Ltd has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Viceroy Hotels Ltd has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Strong track record of project management in the Hotels & Motels industry
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Viceroy Hotels Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Viceroy Hotels Ltd are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Viceroy Hotels Ltd has high operating costs in the Hotels & Motels industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Viceroy Hotels Ltd lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Viceroy Hotels Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Hotels & Motels industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Viceroy Hotels Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Viceroy Hotels Ltd has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Viceroy Hotels Ltd is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Hotels & Motels industry, but Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Viceroy Hotels Ltd to focus more on services in the Hotels & Motels industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Hotels & Motels industry, Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Viceroy Hotels Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Hotels & Motels industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Hotels & Motels industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Viceroy Hotels Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Viceroy Hotels Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Viceroy Hotels Ltd is just above the Hotels & Motels industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Hotels & Motels industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in India, Viceroy Hotels Ltd is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Viceroy Hotels Ltd is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Hotels & Motels industry in last five years.
High dependence on Viceroy Hotels Ltd ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Viceroy Hotels Ltd still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Hotels & Motels industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Viceroy Hotels Ltd has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Viceroy Hotels Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Viceroy Hotels Ltd are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Viceroy Hotels Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Viceroy Hotels Ltd can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Viceroy Hotels Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Viceroy Hotels Ltd to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Viceroy Hotels Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Viceroy Hotels Ltd in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Hotels & Motels industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Viceroy Hotels Ltd to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Manufacturing automation
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Hotels & Motels sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Developing new processes and practices
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd can develop new processes and procedures in Hotels & Motels industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Viceroy Hotels Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Hotels & Motels industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Viceroy Hotels Ltd has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Hotels & Motels industry. This can help Viceroy Hotels Ltd to build a more holistic ecosystem for Viceroy Hotels Ltd products in the Hotels & Motels industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Viceroy Hotels Ltd can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Threats Viceroy Hotels Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Viceroy Hotels Ltd are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Viceroy Hotels Ltd can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Viceroy Hotels Ltd prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Viceroy Hotels Ltd
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Viceroy Hotels Ltd.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Hotels & Motels industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Viceroy Hotels Ltd in the Hotels & Motels sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Viceroy Hotels Ltd may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Hotels & Motels sector.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Viceroy Hotels Ltd business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Hotels & Motels industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Hotels & Motels sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Regulatory challenges
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Hotels & Motels industry regulations.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Viceroy Hotels Ltd.
Environmental challenges
– Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Viceroy Hotels Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Viceroy Hotels Ltd to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Viceroy Hotels Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
