CENTARA Hotels & Resorts

Introduction
Centara Hotel is one of the leading Thailand hotel group consisting of 46 deluxe first-class
properties across Thailand and it has overall 24 hotels and resorts in Maldives, Vietnam, Bali, Sri
Lanka, Qatar, Laos, Oman Turkey and China. Its operations are also spread in 3 State of arts
convention Centers in Bangkok and Northeastern Thailand.

Vision: “To be the leading global hospitality group of Thai origin”

Mission: “To provide locally-relevant, Thai-inspired experiences in each of our global
destinations, delighting guests through a blend of innovation, authentic family values and the
unique passion of Centara's people, whilst maintaining a commitment to sustainability”

Products: The products offering of Centara is very luxury and useful for the customers Like
their products are: In room dining, Indoor Lap pools, Valet Parking, Fitness Canter, Bagging
Service, Business Center, Spa Centers, Wine & Dine, Iconic Beaches, Meetings and
Conferences.
There are certain challenges that are faced by the Centara and all these issues are unpredictable
in their nature like:
 Dominance of online travel agents (OTAs)
 Economic performances impact on tourism
 Global security threats
 Natural Disasters.
 Competition from a shared economy.

The most faced difficulty by the Centara is of complete dominance of OTAs and most least issue
is the natural disaster. Because maintaining a huge standard and luxurious offerings are not easy
and its all about the customers that how they spend in the hotels and what experience they are
taking with them globally. Centara has the mission to succeed globally and expand their name
worldwide for this they have to think out of the box as their targeting nations are all u der Asia

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and although Asia is very gig and biggest of all Continents Centara is doing Strategies and
analysis to take them Far more from what they have achieved. [ CITATION UPA20 \l 2057 ]
We’ll discuss it all in detail further in this Project.

External Environment Analysis

The know-how of the external environment is very necessary because this is the most important
factor to analyses, for predictions, for success overall all success is relying on this analysis. If the
analysis is strong than you can make sure you have a strong grip on all your factors that can
cause your trouble in the most important time. [ CITATION Ame15 \l 2057 ]
As Centara is the growing Hotel in Asia and it has many big competitors such as:
 Classic Hotels & Resorts.
 Dolce International.
 Barceló Hotel Group
 Columbia Sussex.
 African Sun.
 Rosen Hotels & Resorts.
 Movenpick Hotels & Resorts.
 Serena Hotels.
So, the list of competitors of Centara is quite big and to sustain their position in the market they
have to do some extra ordinary things in the form of competitive advantage and also keep on
seeing these all-competitors strategies to overthrow them and target as big as no one can. Centara
is a big name in Asia and their competitors are also doing very well to make it more difficult for
them to perform more globally. But they can analyze their activities and make their smooth track
to beat them all in once at a place. So, we’ll discuss in detail all the factors involved in external
environment are associated with Centara and the we will choose the best strategy for Centara
with they can follow to beat them certainly. [ CITATION Ang15 \l 2057 ]
There are two analysis that we have to discuss and these are:

SWOT Analysis
As Swot analysis consists of four terms names Strength, weakness, opportunities, and Threats, as
we know Strengths and weaknesses are internal so we’ll discuss them later. Here we are doing
external environment analysis so it only has opportunities and threats included from Swot
analysis.

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Opportunities: There are always many and certain opportunities that can be followed to make
weak the opposition and in case of large number of oppositions Centara has to find the
opportunity from the environment to target and make them their strength. The big opportunity
for Centara that in Thailand there is a great place Krabi and it is emerging as a new destination
place for tourism and moreover Centara already operate three hotels in the tropical region and
they are trying to open two more to stronger their position before any one else for better future.
Moreover, Centara is opening the Ao Nang Beach resort and Spa Krabi to become the only brand
resort there. So, this is the big opportunity for Centara to Cater more rising number of employees
that are now choosing to visit these beautiful places. [ CITATION Boc15 \l 2057 ]

Threats: Threats are always uncertain and can damage you badly and Centara’s growing
success cannot oversee these threats these threats are changing of consumer demands in the
market as customer wants new and unique every time and some customers never visits again if
they have a prior experience with you. So, Centara has to do some more out of the box to attract
them again and again. Consumer perception of Risk is also a big threat that no one can eliminate.
Uncertainty in travel like in this Pandemic is also a threat for the Centara Resorts and Hotels.
[ CITATION Abo15 \l 2057 ]

PESTEL Analysis
Many factors can affect the Centara’s growth from governmental changes to the competitors and
Weather incompatibility to tourism industry. So, all the possible factors that can affect Centara
externally are:

Political: This factor always important and it can completely destroy Centara success and it is
un predictable like government bans travelling so it’s a complete loss for their Hotel and resort.
In a good way government can levy less tax reforms so that they can give more to their
customers.

Economic: The factors that can weakens the currency and economy of a country and in case
the economy goes bad Centara Hotel can have a big loss. On the other hand, a stronger economy
can strengthen them as would have offers tailored to their customers that can increase their
success externally.

Social: A socially interactive business is always good and a customer wants the service that
he’s fully confident of. As Customers wants cheaper hotels then anyone else and if you can
completely do the process at your comfort zone like through internet or app it would create more
stronger image in minds of customers that will allow them to socially do your word-of-mouth
marketing.

Technological: Centara use the technology very advance and unique and their blogs is famous
around the globe that if anyone reads can surely made his mind to be surely staying in Centara.

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So, these types of technology and according to customer demands satisfaction is always a key
factor and with unique website information of all things Centara can be fully rely on their
technology.

Environmental: The weather is always good for the Mood and with Centara technology they
urge the tourism industry to visit their place on the day when the whether is beautiful and
charming. All this is fully forecasted and it also give them advantage of their resorts on all these
whether oriented Locations.

Legal: Many factors are involved legally with hotels and Centara is legally secured because of
their location of hotels and resorts so they have no legal threat that a wrong person will stay in
their hotel and make them unethical in the minds of their international customers. Moreover,
Centara is completely Truthful of their Menu and fully protected from Legal actions they have
the quality assurance Certificate from ISO-9001. [CITATION Zai161 \l 2057 ]

External Performance of Centara

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 Competitive Advantage
Centara is always been creating and following
strategies for more success and these
competitive advantages helped them more and
more through their all this time period. Three
advantages of Competition of Centara are:
 Their always ongoing plans and
strategies to expand current portfolio
 Doubling the operational properties by
doing business with successful
investors for increasing investment
opportunities and earn big.
 Strengthened core infrastructure,
including reputation. [ CITATION And14 \l 2057 ]

Competitive excellence of Centara

Internal Environment Analysis

Internal factors are very important in making your business grow big and Centara’s biggest
success lies in their strong management in internal affairs and turning their every chance into
their big strengths but in terms of positive and negative aspects Centara has also some weakness
that have to be minimized in order to grow more global. The strengths and weaknesses of
Centara are:

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Strengths: Centara has got a big name in Hotel management and some of their biggest
strengths that took them to a flight are basically the control and effective measures like Hotel
Facility because their capacity and offerings always attracted customers to trust them. Moreover,
their resort’s location on the beaches where the sight and whether is always charming and mood
changing is another strength.
From strong leadership experience Centara has made their image very good in international
market and the increasing numbers of tourism made them advancing their strength in the form of
goodwill. The biggest of all is their highly skilled workers and staff because of their successful
training and recruitment. Centara has invested huge in the training and development sessions of
their employees resulting in making Centara a Big brand by just its name. [CITATION Boc16 \l 2057
]

Employees development Phases in Centara

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Weaknesses: Centara has achieved big because of the strengths but it has also lost some
shares in the market that can make them even stronger in collective measures. Centara was
unable to tackle many new and small entrants in market thus losing the share of those small
markets and lost control in niche categories. Another weakness of Centara that made them unfit
most of the time and making them challenging is their products demand forecasting. As, tourism
is un predictable and can’t be fully sure and certain about the fact. So due to this Pandemic of
Covid-19 Centara has lost big investment because they were totally unaware of the fact that this
forecasting demand could have saved them big. So, Centara is working on their Weakness but
another big weakness is about less budget in technological advancement that will make them
more uncertain about the future events. Thus, an opportunity for the competitors to take Centara
down. [ CITATION Ber17 \l 2057 ]

Core Competencies
Centara is a big brand and have many core competencies in order to be more efficient and
effective and there are certain core competencies that Centara is currently acquired of and no one
can throw them apart from these competencies.
 Business strategies & model design.
 Trust and loyalty Brand relationship.
 Excellence in Services design.
 Operational supremacy in Systems and processes.[ CITATION AlA19 \l 2057 ]

Sustainability in Competitive advantage

The competition among brands is always on top of the list and is increasing day by day but some
brands has succeeded in running ahead of all these and making their brand stronger of all.
Centara is already a brand of worth but it has some blackness in achieving more. So, here we’ll
identify which core competencies can help Centara to sustain their competitive advantage and
overthrow all their competitors behind.
Centara’s always ongoing plans and strategies to increase their portfolio is their advantage over
recent years in regards of their competitors and by merging the core competency of business
strategies implementation and model design is a big strength for Centara and they can achieve
more in this regard as their portfolio strategies to increase has suited them in many big decisions
and made them successful and Centara can use their model designs to work on their suitable
strategies to achieve more big like going to these places where resorts needed but not have

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enough like to the Sub-Continent because of the increasing business opportunities there and to
American regions to go as a threat to American Brands. Moreover, they can also attract heavy
investors more to invest and make them even bigger because of their strong brand reputation and
relationship internationally like providing franchising to remote areas to spread their name.
[ CITATION Gut15 \l 2057 ]

Strategy Alternatives using TWOS matrix

TOWS and SWOT both are acronyms of each other but in different arrangements of words
Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats. By analyzing the external and internal environment
Centara can formulate the best strategy for their departments and team. Moreover, marketing,
processes, skills and experiences can also be determined on these two analyses. [CITATION Zai16 \l
2057 ]

TWOS matrix

External opportunities External Threats

1. New destination 1. Changing Consumer
place for tourism demands
2. Opening the Ao 2. Consumer Perception
Nang Beach resort in Risk
and Spa in Krabi 3. Uncertainty in travel

ST
Internal Strengths SO "Maxi-Mini" Strategy
(S) "Maxi-Maxi" Strategy Using their goodwill to
1. Hotel Facility Opening new hotels with same eliminate risk from minds and
2. Resorts Location facility on different tourism increasing certainty in
3. Goodwill locations. travelling.
4. Skilled Staff Using skilled staff for more Consumer demands to make
convenience. more suitable using Resort’s
location.

Internal WO WT

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 "Mini-Mini" Strategy
Weaknesses (W) "Mini-Maxi" Strategy Due to Changing consumer
1. Unable to tackle Make a step ahead from new demands don’t forecast their
new entrants entrants and open new places at demand.
2. Weak in product tourism. Uncertainty due to Covid-19
demand forecasting Opening Ao Nang beach can Centara can allow new entrants
3.Less budget in increase demand to predict more to Work and don’t try things.
Technology better.
[ CITATION Nik18 \l 2057 ]

Recommendations
Although Centara has achieved a lot in their business but there are always certain aspects that
can’t be overlooked and these are the strategies that can take you to a flight or that can dig you to
the bottom under the debt. So, after analyzing the external and internal environments we can
state many strategies that can uplift Centara success. In the above TOWS matrix, there are
certain strategies and methods to eradicate and make Centara stronger in many ways. But the
most important strategy that can be suitable for Centara would be Opening new hotels with same
facility at different locations to strengthen Centara more. Centara has always been successful in
opening new ventures and resorts at beautiful places in Asia like Bali, Malaysia, Thailand,
Oman, Turkey, China, Maldives, Sri Lanka etc. Although, Centara opened many more resorts on
small islands but they have to take their dominance from Asia to other Continents as well and
make their mark stronger. Moreover, Centara can use their skills staff on difficult locations and
make those locations their powerful areas under Centara’s name. [ CITATION Tan17 \l 2057 ]

Conclusions
To conclude Centara is a big name of excellence in their portfolio, Leadership in the market of
Asia, Luxurious Hotels and resorts, Skilled staff, Product quality etc. all these are their top
priority indexes that they have followed from start and achieved a high success till now. But
there are certain loose ends that have to be gripped more tightly by the Centara to eliminate any
risk factor that is involved with their name. Centara all strategies can boost their performance
even more and increase the competitiveness in the market in this strong competition in the global
market. But the strategies have to be implemented in the sectors of technology because the
technology now a days is very advanced and anyone can affect them with their technology.
Moreover, Centara has to hire some bloggers and social media managers that checks the online
and virtual environment of Centara. They should increase their Online activities and posts to

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attract on individual level and also make strategies to cover smaller markets by giving small
proportion of their profit to the middle-class people So, that they can also enjoy the luxury
environment fully. Overall to eliminate those factors that can be threat to them more in coming
future Centara has to make some more strategies to prevent uncertainty of like this pandemic
Covid-19. SO that they can be well prepared for their performances and have a backup plan to be
more globally concerned.[ CITATION Ber171 \l 2057 ]

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