November 2016 – The success of Hillside Beach Club has been recognised through the creation of a case study for marketing students at one of the world’s leading universities, Harvard Business School.
Operated by Alarko Holding Tourism Group, the luxury resort is praised for its authentic management methods, motivated staff and popularity with guests in a case study named “Delivering the Ultimate Family Vacation in the Mediterranean”. Through an analysis of Hillside Beach Club’s practices, students can appreciate and learn what it takes for management to create and maintain a successful company culture and achieve exceptional rates including 99% guest satisfaction and 68% repeat guests.
The study was carried out by Harvard’s Senior Professor Rajiv Lal, who exclusively focuses on marketing and guest-oriented organisations and is an esteemed authority in this area. Through one-on-one meetings with Head of Alarko Tourism Group Edip İlkbahar, managers, employees and guests, Hillside Beach Club’s authentic approach to service, original marketing insights and innovative management methods have been thoroughly examined.
In training and motivating its staff, behaviour over technical training and human motivation over systems are what really matter to Hillside Beach Club. The case study highlights the resort’s “happy employees, happy guests” philosophy, and mentions the renovations to staff accommodation to ensure they’re well cared for. Testament to the success of this approach, employees stay at Hillside Beach Club for an average of 6.2 years.
Speaking of Hillside Beach Club’s mission to create a “feel good factor” amongst staff and guests, Ilkbahar commented; “We are bound to our employees, as well as our guests. We are in the business of making people feel good, we define feeling good in the real sense, not through notions like possessing or luxury, but as the emotions that you feel sitting under your favourite tree or the joy of having a friend over at your home. This philosophy of making people feel good with sincerity has helped us gain many guests that keep coming back, and staff that stay with us for many years”.
To cater to evolving guest demands, Hillside Beach Club employs a culture of “continuous improvement” and closely aligns global trends with human psychology to introduce new and diverse experiences each year. The Harvard case study credits the resort’s innovative offerings such as the “Hillside Beach Order” app which allows guests to place an order without leaving their sun-lounger, as well as its “Chief Instagram Officer” job advert campaign which received 62,000 applications and achieved the “Best Social Media Project” award in the 14th Golden Spider Web Awards.
Hillside Beach Club adopts long term and sustainable strategies tailored to key markets to prepare for possible crisis in the tourism industry. Ilkbahar said; “We set our priority to become resistant to potential crisis, maintaining quality through our continuous improvement philosophy”.