The Project of Digital Marketing Strategy for Naroth Beach Bungalow Resort in Cambodia

Sophalgnean Chan

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Naroth Beach Bungalow in Koh Rong, Cambodia is a newly-built resort yet the owners have a great mindset of entrepreneurs who realize the importance of digital marketing for their business. This study aims to study their current digital marketing strategies, find out how their targets use the digital platform during their consumer decision journey for online accommodation booking, and develop a new digital market strategy to help their business grow and prepare for future expansion. Based on the literature review on digital marketing, I did a semi-structured interview with the resort's owner in order to analyze the current digital marketing and SWOT of the re-sort and I did the competitors' analysis using the secondary data. Based on the literature review on consumer behavior in the hotel industry and guests' data from Booking.com providing by the owners, I did the other semi-structured interview with four major targets including German, French, British and Spanish to create consumer personas and a custom-ized consumer decision journey map. As a result, from all of my analyses, I recommend the resort to focus on OTAs, create a website with a blog, continue improving their social media, and create better contents in all their platform. Importantly, I built the strategies based on the McKinsey consumer decision journey.

Abstract:

Naroth Beach Bungalow in Koh Rong, Cambodia is a newly-built resort yet the owners have a great mindset of entrepreneurs who realize the importance of digital marketing for their business. This study aims to study their current digital marketing strategies, find out how their targets use the digital platform during their consumer decision journey for online accommodation booking, and develop a new digital market strategy to help their business grow and prepare for future expansion. Based on the literature review on digital marketing, I did a semi-structured interview with the resort's owner in order to analyze the current digital marketing and SWOT of the re-sort and I did the competitors' analysis using the secondary data. Based on the literature review on consumer behavior in the hotel industry and guests' data from Booking.com providing by the owners, I did the other semi-structured interview with four major targets including German, French, British and Spanish to create consumer personas and a custom-ized consumer decision journey map. As a result, from all of my analyses, I recommend the resort to focus on OTAs, create a website with a blog, continue improving their social media, and create better contents in all their platform. Importantly, I built the strategies based on the McKinsey consumer decision journey.

Keywords

hotel industry, digital marketing, social media marketing, website with blogging, SEO, content marketing, online advertising, online travel agencies (OTAs), McKinsey consumer decision journey

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 17. 6. 2020

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: doc. Ing. Miloslava Chovancová, CSc.

Tomas Bata University in Zlín

Faculty of Management and Economics

Master programme / field:
Economics and Management / Management and Marketing