Harbour Centre Development (51) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Hotels & Motels
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Harbour Centre Development (Hong Kong)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Harbour Centre Development is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Harbour Centre Development
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Harbour Centre Development can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Harbour Centre Development, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Harbour Centre Development
2. Improving business portfolio management of Harbour Centre Development
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Hong Kong
4. Making a Hotels & Motels sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Harbour Centre Development
Strengths of Harbour Centre Development | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Harbour Centre Development are -
Innovation driven organization
– Harbour Centre Development is one of the most innovative firm in Hotels & Motels sector.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Hotels & Motels industry
– Harbour Centre Development has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Harbour Centre Development to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Harbour Centre Development to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Harbour Centre Development has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Harbour Centre Development staying ahead in the Hotels & Motels industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Harbour Centre Development in Hotels & Motels industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Harbour Centre Development has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Hotels & Motels industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Harbour Centre Development have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Harbour Centre Development has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Harbour Centre Development 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.
Learning organization
- Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Harbour Centre Development emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Harbour Centre Development is present in almost all the verticals within the Hotels & Motels industry. This has provided Harbour Centre Development a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Digital Transformation in Hotels & Motels industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Harbour Centre Development digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Harbour Centre Development 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Hotels & Motels industry
– Harbour Centre Development is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Harbour Centre Development 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Harbour Centre Development 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.
Weaknesses of Harbour Centre Development | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Harbour Centre Development are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Harbour Centre Development 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. Harbour Centre Development should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Harbour Centre Development strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Harbour Centre Development don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Harbour Centre Development 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Harbour Centre Development has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Hotels & Motels industry over the last five years. Harbour Centre Development even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Harbour Centre Development 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development lucrative customers.
High dependence on Harbour Centre Development ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Skills based hiring in Hotels & Motels industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Harbour Centre Development has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Harbour Centre Development is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Harbour Centre Development 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Harbour Centre Development has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Harbour Centre Development Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Harbour Centre Development are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Hotels & Motels industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Harbour Centre Development can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Harbour Centre Development can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Harbour Centre Development 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Harbour Centre Development can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Harbour Centre Development operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Hotels & Motels sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Harbour Centre Development can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Harbour Centre Development can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Harbour Centre Development to increase its market reach. Harbour Centre Development will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Manufacturing automation
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Harbour Centre Development to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Harbour Centre Development can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Harbour Centre Development 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Harbour Centre Development is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Harbour Centre Development can utilize new technology in the field of Hotels & Motels industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Threats Harbour Centre Development External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Harbour Centre Development are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Harbour Centre Development is facing in Hotels & Motels sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Harbour Centre Development will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Environmental challenges
– Harbour Centre Development 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. Harbour Centre Development can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Hotels & Motels industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Harbour Centre Development has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Hotels & Motels industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Harbour Centre Development 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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
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 Harbour Centre Development in the Hotels & Motels sector and impact the bottomline 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 Harbour Centre Development business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Harbour Centre Development.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
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. Harbour Centre Development needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Hotels & Motels industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Harbour Centre Development Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development 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 Harbour Centre Development needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.