Hotel marketing and price policy

Abstract

The paper discusses basic methods and means for forming and applying a price policy in hotel marketing and emphasizes the importance of market orientation in forming the price policy as well as the importance of researching user perception of the price in forming a price policy for the product. As the development of Croatia's hotel industry (as well as tourism) is based on seasonal business and the booking offer mostly realised via foreign tour operators, price policy did not develop as per strategic behaviour of the market and in harmony with product policies. Using a theoretical example based on application of prices for hotels in tourism locations it is shown that hoteliers who decide for the application of market orientated price forming policies, can use the method average prices and divide the financial year into two periods, i.e. use the same prices throughout the whole year.