Singapore Food Festival

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to analyze how an event had helped our hotel “Swissotel The Stamford”, and to observe an annual Food Festival of which might be of interest to a hotel. In this report, I would be touching on the hotel’s event marketing strategy, various components of the event marketing mix in the festival and evaluate how effective it is in contributing towards its success.

SwissÔtel The Stamford

Swissotel The Stamford is a luxurious 5-star hotel, one of the tallest hotels in Southeast Asia. Amidst in a dynamic central Singapore hotel location, it is surrounded by world-class shopping and entertainment. 
Soaring at a height of 226 metres, it had been the site for Asia’s most gruelling Vertical Marathon for the past 25 years. “Swissotel Vertical Marathon” is a climbing of 73 storeys marathon for a good cause. Proceeds would go to the adopted Children charities.

This is part of the place under the marketing strategy. The hotel has helped the event to be a success because of its location and being one of the tallest hotels in Asia. Without these, there would not be an opportunity to hold a vertical marathon that is able to compete with other world’s skyscrapers. 
Also, promotion is another strategy used by the hotel to facilitate this event. They had specially publicized this event on their official hotel website via the internet. This had managed to create more attention to potential visitors who seek accommodation at the hotel. They would be drawn to the attention of this unique event and thus learn more about it from there.

Singapore Food Festival

Singapore Food Festival had just celebrated the best of Singapore cuisine in its 19^th run this year. It is one of the annual unique 1-month long festivals found in the country besides Great Singapore Sale. This event is of high significance and well-celebrated by notable chefs all over Singapore and appreciating different talents by showcasing of culinary skills, diverse unique array of local dishes as well as the culture and history of the country. 

With the help and collaboration of Singapore Tourism Board (STB), Singapore Food Festival has become one of the main attractions within Singapore’s calendar of events throughout the world.  

Every year, there will be a unique theme to differentiate and to showcase enriching and different programs. The theme for this year was “Seafood Tales of Temasek”. The main reason was that Singapore is known as an island of seafood due to the different kinds of seafood being bred here.

This year, they had a wide array of activities for the different markets such as the food village, culinary lessons, record breaking activity, beach BBQ, wet market trips, food trails, food and photography workshops as well as baking workshops for children. There were 50 local and international cuisines food stalls participating from hawkers, cafes, restaurants to luxurious hotels in one of the events.

This event had a large target market comprising of renowned chefs, food lovers, families, cultural seekers, gourmands, photographers and people from different walks of life.

This event would not have been successful without the support and sponsors from Singapore Food & Beverage Alliance, SPOC Solutions and Singapore Tourism Board(STB)

In all, the festival managed to attract 516,000 Singaporeans and tourists, which surpassed the 2011 figure of visitors. This contributed in making Singapore, a more prominent food paradise in Asia.

Identifying of the event marketing mix

Marketing mix is critical in every event or festival because it helps to determine the success of it. It helps one to evaluate each component to further help the event to run smoothly. Singapore Food Festival has been a successful event over the past years hence we will look at how their marketing mix has helped them.

A product is defined as anything that can be offered to the market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. It consists of activities that are intangible and do not result in ownership of anything.

Every product has four different product levels to offer – core, facilitating, supporting, and augmented.

Firstly, core products refer to what the visitor is really buying and aims to meet the visitors’ needs and wants. For this festival, their core product would be a place for visitors from all walks of life to experience and indulge in Singapore’s authentic food. Besides savouring Singapore food, they also get to discover about the history, culture and heritage of the country. Visitors had the opportunity to visit Singapore Food village and feast on a smorgasbord of seafood.

They were able to savour a plethora of local delights just at their fingertips and discover the antiquity of the local cuisines, both at the same time.

Secondly, facilitating products refer to goods or services that must be present for the consumer to use the product. It helps to improve the core product by its features, quality, styling, packaging and brand name. In this event, it was the collaboration of the hawker stalls as well as the week-long events being lined up. Without all these, visitors will not be culturally enlightened which would in turn, cause a loss in visitor ship. The week-long lined up events as mentioned earlier, included record breaking of serving 2012 portions of fish head curry, beach BBQ, culinary lessons, wet market trips and food trails. Also, another facilitating product was the hiring of renowned chefs to cook and demonstrate all of the mouth-watering local delicacies for the visitors to try out the different unique cuisines in Singapore. Renowned chefs will be further explained in the report.

Thirdly, supporting products are extra products offered to add value to the core product. For this event, the supporting product would be classic tiffin carriers. In one of the events known as “TIFFIN CRUISE @ SINGAPORE RIVER”, tiffin carriers were filled with fresh seafood meal so as for visitors to enjoy while soaking in Singapore’s skyline along the river. The tiffin carriers act as a supporting product because it gave a more historic and antique feel to the visitors. It enabled them to feel how it was like in the past. Visitors were given a tiffin carrier which is an old school but environmentally-friendly lunch box as a souvenir. This will let them be reminded of the fond memories captured during the festival.

Lastly, augmented products include accessibility, atmosphere, customer interaction with the service organization, customer participation and customers’ interaction with each other. Most of the events are strategically found in easily accessible places whereby there was no inconvenience caused. Shuttle buses, public buses, together with the Mass Rapid Transport were able to bring visitors right to the place of event. Hands-on events such as culinary lesson, has helped visitors to participate actively and interact with people of the same interest. The activities found at the events lightened up the atmosphere, creating a more lively and enjoyable experience for all.

Some of my personal thoughts to improve this marketing mix component is that visitors should be given a booklet about the history of Singapore’s authentic food. This facilitating product will be able to aid them in learning better hence create less confusion between the wide variety of dishes.

Every event comes with a price tag including those that are free. Event organizers usually have to set one or more prices for their products.

As the festival is unique, prestige due to celebrity chefs and held annually, visitors who attended were less price-sensitive. The pricing approached used would be valued based pricing. It uses visitors’ perception of value, not the seller’s cost, as the key to pricing. Since most of the targeted market fall under the category of price insensitive, visitors with high purchasing power would purchase event tickets despite it being expensive. This would benefit the festival by generating higher revenue without manipulating the visitor ship.

Furthermore, another of their pricing strategies would be discount pricing. For this instance, the festival would be using discounts based on time of purchase. Seasonal discount is a price reduction to visitors who purchase tickets out of the peak season. Activities found under “Seafood Treasures, Tales and Trails @ Kampong Gelam” had discount pricing strategies like early bird discounts and discounts given to members of the festival’s partners. Early bird discounts may go up to 20% whilst membership cards used would be 10%. This had encouraged visitors to sign up for the packages during the off-peak season where tickets revenue was slower.

I initially thought that they had discount pricings due to a low demand. However, after researching, I discovered that it was on a first-come-first-serve basis. Most of the culinary workshops have a maximum capacity of people to sign up hence discounts were introduced to encourage visitors to purchase earlier rather than later in order to secure the limited slots and minimize perishability. In this aspect, I believe that the event planners should have additional offers to entice a wider market. Eg, student prices or senior citizen rates

One of the key importances to a successful event is the promotion. Because it determines how many people would be aware of the event taking place.

Social media had played a significant role in Singapore Food Festival’s advertising and promotion. Top social networking sites like Facebook is a strong platform for advertising as statistics have shown that there are about 901,000,000 Facebook members.

With the given figures, Singapore Food Festival seized the opportunity to use it as a platform to gain more visitors. Having their own Facebook pages had attracted more visitors as they shared about the event over the Internet. It has helped to promote the festival to viewers, increasing both awareness and publicity of it. 

Some of their pages are shown below:

Besides social networking sites, there were also posters and brochures about the event given out and put up around Singapore.

All these managed to promote Singapore Food Festival by drawing more visitors, both local and international. Travel agencies as well as travel websites also helped to reach out to a larger market by putting up advertisements and deals to further inform and persuade potential visitors. Media involving radio stations like 94.2fm broadcasted and promoted the event over the nation.

I felt that Singapore Food Festival had done a marvelous job in this because it had helped to target even a larger market by using the Internet. For those who are not tech-savy, brochures and posters were put around in Singapore so that they would chance upon it even if they did not surfed the internet. However, for areas of improvement, I would suggest that more media coverage should be involved. Eg, the use of newspapers or food magazines. 

Place is very crucial to an event because it determines how big the crowd would be, which in turn affects the visitor ship.  It includes mainly the location, setting, atmosphere and destination features. The fact that Singapore Food Festival has strategically planned out which activity should be at which specific location, is highly commendable.

For instance, I believe that activities such as “Seafood treasures, tales and trails” and “Seafood Mela” are located at Kampong Gelam and Little India respectively is because of their rich heritage found in there. Planning out activities in these cultural precincts not only put it at an advantage over its competitors but also creates a higher demand due to it being a pull factor.

In terms of location wise, major core events like Singapore Food Festival Village was held at Waterfront Promenade, Marina Bay which is one of the central districts of Singapore. The recent upgrading of new train stations like “Bayfront” had further made it convenient and accessible. It is now only a short 5-minute walk as compared in the past of 7 to 9 minutes walk. The new stations made visitors travel easier between places for the different activities under Singapore Food Festival.

Personally, I feel that this festival had done a fantastic job in planning, such that both the products and place provide visitors the experiential experience. If it were not to be the place, visitors would be less motivated to go due to inconvenience. They had also ensured that the place had sufficient space for the maximum capacity of the activities.

Another essential point in making this event a success would be the people. They are the ones who kept the event going. This includes the interactions between customers, the setting, and the staff/volunteers constitute a large part of the event experience. As stated earlier, renowned chefs who participated in this event attracted more visitors with their culinary expertise. They would conduct culinary lessons and share their skills with the rest.

Well-known chefs like:

Chef Eric Teo	Chef Shaikh Ajarul
Chef Annette Lang	Chef Rosalind Lim
Chef Manjunath Mural	Chef Sakthivel

Also, just like any other events, there would be the occurrence of competitors.

However, according to Singapore F&B Alliance, there were no similar competitions held in the same month. Nevertheless, there was still inevitable competition from other F&B restaurants all over the country. Competitive advantage was present as this event had many top notch chefs participating. Indeed, visitors played a crucial role as they are the ones who were generating revenue to the event.

Another marketing mix would be partnership. Basically, it includes joint marketing and stakeholders. For this event, stakeholders included sponsors and organizers. It was greatly in conjunction with STB so as to promote and have a stable targeted market. Organizers such as “Singapore F&B Alliance” also significantly supported the event. There were other partners such as 94.2 radio station as their well-liked DJ Warna 94.2 FM TG who guided one of the events. This radio station managed to create awareness of the event and lure visitors via broadcast even before the event had started.

Every event would have a list of fun-filled programs lined up for the visitors to enjoy. Programming is a marketing decision, especially by the way of creating targeted benefits. Elements of style and quality make up this aspect.

There were wide array of activities for the visitors to participate in which can range from having a feast of authentic food down to selecting of fresh seafood at a fishery port.

In order to enhance the experience to visitors, unique hands-on programs were incorporated like “Behind the scenes @ Jurong Fishery Port”. Visitors get to go on a tour through the fishery port to learn how to pick the freshest catch, followed by a freshly prepared seafood breakfast in a restaurant. In another event known as “Seafood Mela”, it was the serving of 2012 Curry Fish Heads in a single dinner setting. The purpose was the attempt to break Guinness World Record.

Other programs mainly positioned more in the culinary arena. They had 2 cooking workshops featuring Malay and Indian cuisines respectively. Visitors get to sign up for these lessons and learn how to whip up the different authentic dishes.

I believe that all these different and various programs are the pull factors which helped to lure more visitors in attending this festival. It managed to add some life and colour to the festival, hence making it more exciting and interactive for all.

Last but not least of the marketing mix is packaging and distribution. This is mainly how the products are bundled together with other components such as goods or services, and sold as a single package to visitors.

They had a range of delectable dining privileges offered by more than 250 F&B outlets islandwide. Visitors who attended Singapore Food Festival were entitled to these exclusive discounts.

Apparently, there were no packages which bundled the event’s programs with goods or services. This may be one point I would like to highlight and suggest.

My personal thoughts are that they should bundle programs with a tangible product like cooking guidebook so that potential visitors would have a higher tendency to purchase. This is so as they would be paying 2 goods for the price of 1. From this, packages can be priced at a higher rate and at the same time reducing perishability.

Distribution channels are very critical as it is an indicator to awareness of the event which leads to the sales revenue. The distribution network is important when selling tickets.

When asked, executive at Singapore F&B Alliance, Ms Joanne Hu, shared that the core event for the Singapore Food Festival (SFF) is a non-ticketed public event. The public can walk into the venue (we call it the "SFF Village") and just purchase food from the food stalls.

However, there were some core events and fringe events that required tickets. Tickets were only sold online via the official SFF website.

My personal feelings are that the distribution channel was very weak. There was only one distribution channel for potential visitors to buy tickets which was, via the internet. This would only target a small group of people who surfed the net. They should implement ticketing booths at shopping malls they are associated with or at the various STB outlets around Singapore. This would attract both locals and tourists, thus gaining a wider potential market share.

Changes observed

In year 2012, the visitor-ship rose from previous year’s despite incorporating lesser fringe events and activities. I believe this success is attributed to the promotion effects made this year. In 2011, there were lesser SFF privileges offered to visitors, this probably hindered the attractiveness of the event.
Due to past years’ reviews about the restricted and limited space in the events; most of the locations this year were specially located in bigger areas to accommodate more visitors. This probably helped to increase the figures of visitors as land space is a crucial factor for visitors. Visitors would not want to feel suffocated but rather, comfortable to move about freely.

Events to collaborate

As there are no official hotels for Singapore Food Festival, I would propose Swissotel The Stamford to collaborate with the festival. Besides offering complimentary rooms and discount rates for SFF visitors, we can also incorporate an event right here on our hotel premises.

We would like to propose a Singaporean Authentic Desserts Buffet by our two free-form poolside. This would attract tenants from SFF village to whip up delicious and traditional desserts such as ice kachang, chengteng, tausuan etc there. We have decided on a dessert buffet because it is something new in the festival. SFF visitors would participate in this event as they will have the opportunity to try out something different which is the traditional desserts. Furthermore, this event would be more attractive due to its location by the poolside which creates a special ambience. By doing so, it will generate more traffic from the festival thus, increasing both revenue and goodwill from the festival simultaneously.

 

References

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