THOMAR HOUSE MARKETING PLAN

The main objective of this final Master's project is to create a marketing plan for Thomar House, helping this local accommodation to analyse the market, competition, and potential customers in order to achieve sustainable business expansion. It opened shortly after Covid-19, so the next few years are expected to be more successful. As a company in the early stages of market entry, it faces some problems and challenges. Some of the problems it faces are related to the return on the initial investment, strong competition and the fact that it is a less traditional type of accommodation where sometimes the idea you want to convey to the customer is not always the one they perceive. The methodology used was action research, where the research work is done to explore, understand and solve real business problems through the collection of primary and secondary data. In order to understand people's preferences when choosing tourist accommodation, a survey was carried out based on the SERVQUAL model from Parasuraman et al. (1988). The data from this survey was positive, as 36% of respondents would be very interested in staying in a historic building, such as a railway station, and 56% wouldn't mind trying it. An informal, semi-structured interview was also conducted with the owner and manager of Thomar House to gain a better understanding of how it works, the policies already in place and the concept of this type of accommodation. From the data collected it was possible to identify weaknesses, strengths and areas of action. Increasing the online presence and creating experiences related to the stay are some of the strategies that make up the marketing-mix plan. The marketing plan for Thomar House was developed on the basis of strategies and tactics, with the main objectives of offsetting the effects of seasonality, increasing sales throughout the year and improving the service offered.