La segmentazione della domanda e dell’offerta nell’industria dell’ospitalità

No two customers are identical, even whereas they belong to the same marketing program orthey choose the same product or service (Withiam G., 2000). Revenues, costs and therefore profitabilitydiffer because of the different effort required to meet the specific need of the specific consumer or groupof customers. When competing, firms target information towards specific segments through directmarketing initiatives and actions (Cross R.G., 1997). This finding underlines the importance of knowing inadvance customer’s characteristics, even before thinking at the service to provide, and aims to illustratehow the lodging industry normally segments its customers, and which group of customers we mayretrieve within the industry.The framework of this article involves four main topics, which cover the theories behind the strategies,the actual configuration of the market segmentation within the lodging industry, the hotel response interms of product differentiation with a hint on the crucial decision between standardization andcustomization, and ending with the strategies behind results.The purpose of the finding relies on the statement that two customers are not even similar and in thissense, hotels should invest on studies aimed at understanding the consumer’s behavior (Dall’Ara G.,2009). Choosing the right approach at the right time for the right consumer would stand at increasing theretention, building relationships and customize a one-to-one marketing approach. On an economic pointof view, targeting customers would also lead firms to the implementation of the customer profitabilityanalysis, which allow hotels to assign activities and thus costs, revenues and profits (Fasone V., 2007). Inthis paper, this will be demonstrated not only through the international literature and the hotelnewsletters on the topic, but also through a direct study on a four stars’ property, through which thereader will distinguish between the two different approaches, i.e. fitting strategies on customer’s shoesrather than applying the same business strategy.