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 – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, 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 -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Harbour Centre Development in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Harbour Centre Development has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Harbour Centre Development to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Analytics focus
– Harbour Centre Development is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry. The technology infrastructure of Hong Kong is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
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.
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.
Ability to lead change in Hotels & Motels
– Harbour Centre Development is one of the leading players in the Hotels & Motels industry in Hong Kong. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Hotels & Motels industry in Hong Kong but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Harbour Centre Development in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Harbour Centre Development is one of the most innovative firm in Hotels & Motels sector.
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 -
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Harbour Centre Development supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Harbour Centre Development is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Harbour Centre Development vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Harbour Centre Development, 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Hotels & Motels industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Hong Kong, Harbour Centre Development 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.
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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Harbour Centre Development, in the dynamic environment of Hotels & Motels industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Harbour Centre Development has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Harbour Centre Development has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Hotels & Motels industry using digital technology.
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.
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.
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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hong Kong, Harbour Centre Development needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
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 -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Loyalty marketing
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Harbour Centre Development has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Hotels & Motels industry. This can help Harbour Centre Development to build a more holistic ecosystem for Harbour Centre Development products in the Hotels & Motels industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Harbour Centre Development 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Hotels & Motels industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Harbour Centre Development in the Hotels & Motels industry. Now Harbour Centre Development can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
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 -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Harbour Centre Development 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Harbour Centre Development demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Hotels & Motels industry and other sectors.
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.
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.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Hotels & Motels industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Harbour Centre Development can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Harbour Centre Development
– 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 Harbour Centre Development.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Hotels & Motels industry are lowering. It can presents Harbour Centre Development with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Hotels & Motels sector.
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.
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.
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.
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.
