BABC001
Academic and Business Communication

Assignment 3: Report

Chinese and English Name:Student number:Class number:Contact number:Tutor’s name:Assignment due date: | Cheng Shixuan Jane Cheng | | 14901107 | | 10 | | Antonio | | week 9 class 1 |

To be completed by the student upon submission:

Word count (excluding TOC, Executive Summary and reference list): ……………………..
Turnitin percentage: ………………….

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Table of contents

Executive summary i

1. Introduction 1 2. Benefits of visual communication in business
2.1 Definition and value of visual communication 2
2.2 The brain prefers message in different form. 2 * 2.3 Visual communication makes information easily-understood. 2 3. Information visualization techniques in hospitality industry 3
3.1 An brief introduction of hospitality and two visualization techniques 3
3.2 Graphs 3
3.2.1 Use graphs to highlight key information in corporate reporting. 3
3.2.2 Graphs help audience see the substance of data. 3 * 3.3 Photographs make corporate reports more attracting. 4 4. Evaluation of Intercontinental Hotels Group’s annual report 4
4.1 Brief Introduction of Intercontinental Hotels Group 4 * 4.2 Graphs 5 * 4.3 Photographs 5 5. Conclusion 5
Reference list 6

Summary

Visual communication refers to communication through a visual aids and in part or whole relies on vision.It is vital in business communication and becomes an important element of corporate reporting,because of the fact that visual communication in business might make message easy-understood and bring about insights to audience.This report will introduce graphs and photographs as visualization techniques.Generally speaking,graphs are often used to highlight key points and help audience understand in deeper depth.Photograph can attract attention and is more powerful than other techniques.In IHG’s annual report,these two techniques are both widely used.They make it easier the present financial statistics and declare principles of the company to public.

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1.INTRODUCTION

Visual communication plays a more and more important role in business communication due to the fact that it is an efficient medium to promote and communicate financial strategies and information to both internal staff and public.Thus it becomes an unavoidable challenge for companies to choose a best visualization technique and make information better visualized .The use of images or other infographics is named as information visualization,,which is nowadays widely used in business field to convey message more clearly and concisely,especially in corporate reporting and annual report.This report will explain importance of visual communication in corporate reporting and introduce two information visualization techniques—graphs and photographs.The uses in annual report in Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) and how they help to enhance corporate reporting will also be given in the report.

2.BENEFITS OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN BUSINESS

2.1 Definition and value of visual communication

Visual communication is communication through a visual aids and in part or whole relies on vision.Information visualization can lead to rapid connections to already stored information,which is able to strengthen the memory in the brain at instance.(Visage,2015)Visage also declared that the true value of data visualization lies in its ability to help you show— not just tell your story.Your message is only as good as your ability to share it.

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2.2 The brain prefers message in different form.
The brain is designed to seek out thing that are different.Since long time ago,many methods have been created to communicate information,(e.g. language,word,music,picture…)As we all know,infographics are the combination of information and graphs.It provide medium for companies add uniqueness to boring information and make it more memorable.(Smiciklas 2012 p.17) Being paid attention on it might be a good beginning of a corporate reporting.For example,pictures about toys or theme parks can help attract children’s interest;A video might leave a deep impression on many audience and make the reporting more impressive.

2.3 Visual communication makes information easily-understood.
People are surrounded with increasingly amount of information in the current financial condition.It gradually becomes a major issue for organizations to deliver neat and easy-understood corporate reporting. The result is that many visualization techniques(e.g.graphs,photographs,…) are included in reports.It is found that 93% of communication is nonverbal and visual information can be processed 60,000 times faster than text.(Maiketh 2013)Furthermore,infographic visualization brings about insights to audience.(Lester)For instance,maps with points are widely used in corporate reporting to show the location of hotels in hospitality industry.Line graphs of annual revenue can not only present the revenue,they are also great medium to show changes of the statistics.Thus,infographics lead to audience to think about the information behind the data and see through appearances to grasp the essence.

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3.INFORMATION VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

3.1 An brief introduction of hospitality and two visualization techniques

The hospitality industry is a broad category of fields within the service industry that includes lodging, event planning, theme parks, transportation, cruise line, and additional fields within the tourism industry. (Wikipedia) There are many effective visual techniques used in hospitality industry, although it is general to everybody.For example,photographs are usually used to attract audience’s attention in delivering corporate reporting.In addition,graphs can make boring data analysis easily-understood to normal people resulted from the truth that our brain can process visual information much faster than textual information.(Maiketh 2013)

3.2 Graphs

3.2.1 Use graphs to highlight key information in corporate reporting.

Graphs other from text, can represent message directly,which help information understood by audience faster and more clearly.Furthermore,they might become memorable part of certain report if more colors and patterns can be added to them.So,it can be concluded that the suitable graphs can direct people’s attention,graphs are thus commonly displayed in financial/corporate reports to highlight key message throughout the content of reports.(Davison 2013 p.55)

3.2.2 Graphs help audience see the substance of data.

As mentioned above,the true value of information visualization is to show,not to tell.Although there are many useful kinds of infographics,pie chart is generally used to show the proportion while bar chart is a good choice to represent data clearly.Just as Zekany (2004 p.80) reported,a visual description of relational data set can largely improve the

3 comprehension of information for your audience.In other word,graphs can help audience analyze the cause of the statistics changes which is the real meaning of every corporate reporting.

3.3 Photographs make corporate reports more attracting.

It is generally known to us that long and tedious speech is easy to make audience feel sleepy and can hardly pass on information to audience.Apart from graphs,pictures and photographs relate directly organizations and society ,which also make reports more attractive.(Davison 2013 p.56)Smiciklas (2012 p.17) reported that about half of the brain is devoted to visual functions.Photographs have much more powerful impact on audience than other audio or textual message. One Image is worth more than a thousand word.

4. EVALUATION OF INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP’S ANNUAL REPORT

4.1 Brief Introduction of Intercontinental Hotels Group

Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) is a global company with 9 hotel brands with over 4,700 hotels and nearly 674,000 rooms in almost 100 countries around the world. IHG is one of the largest and most famous company in hospitality industry. This report will evaluate how Intercontinental Hotels Group uses graphs and photographs in their annual report 2013.

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4.2 Graphs

Graphs and charts are usually used to show the data directly and dispose true substance of data in annual reports.For example,line graphs are adopted in the annual report to show the changes of US industry annual revenues from 2005 to 2013.The use of line graph help IHG to display the amount and trend clearly.Another example is the bar chart of compare of new opening hotels in 2013 with that in 2012.Furthermore,noticeable colors are added to the chart in order to attract readers’s attention and stress the difference. 4.3Photographs
Cover of annual report is usually designed to be picture or photograph.IHG used a photo of lobby of hotel to share their first-rate service to customers. There are more pictures in the annual report which share unique principles and targets of many brands in IHG.Apart from many descriptive words,pictures and photographs actually bring more message to readers.

5. CONCLUSION

Use of visual communications gradually dominates business communication and becomes a huge challenge for organizations in corporate reporting .This report has explained importance of visual communication in corporate reporting and introduced two information visualization techniques—graphs and photographs.The uses in annual report in Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) and how they help to enhance corporate reporting have also been analyzed in the report.

5 Reference List Davison, J. 2013, ‘Visual Perspectives’, in L. Jack, J. Davison &R. Craig(ed), ‘The Routledge Companion to Accounting Communication’, Routledge, London, pp. 58-75.
Intercontinental Hotels Group,2013, viewed 13th January 2016,<http://www.ihgplc.com/files/reports/ar2013/docs/IHG_Report_2013.pdf>
Lester,A.’Data visualization tools bring finance data into focus for operations’,viewed 21st December 2015,<http://searchfinancialapplications.techtarget.com/feature/Data-visualization-tools-bring-finance-data-into-focus-for-operations>
Maiketh. 2013,‘Visual Communication: New Trends for Businesses’ ，viewed 13th January 2016, <https://blografie.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/visual-communication-new-trends-for-businesses/> Smiciklas, M. 2012, ‘The Power of Infographics: Using Pictures to Communicate and connect with your Audiences’, Que/Pearson, Indiana. Zekany, K. &Elsass, A. 2004, ‘Great Graphics: How to illustrate financial information the rightway’, Strategic Finance, March, pp. 52-55.

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