46DE Creativity assignment year 2

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Refining your strategy

It has been two years since you took over the hotel, and you have gained detailed insights into the market and increased management experience. While you did well overall, not all of the measures you have adopted have been successful, and some of your assumptions about the market were not accurate. This year, you need to make some adjustments and improve your entrepreneurial and intercultural skills in order to achieve your business goals.

Goal

Refine the strategy for your hotel by taking account everything you have learned about the market and your target group. Identify the internal and external factors that influence the success of your hotel and develop measures both for fully developing your strengths, maximizing opportunities, and for addressing weaknesses and potential threats.

Task, deliverable

Please hand in 2 – 3 pages (including figures) addressing the following questions and tasks:

A – Web-Based Marketing
Analyze the web-based marketing you already created or are going to create (your page in the game-wiki, website, social media). What kind of creativity techniques did you use? Explain your approach and describe the results.

B - Location
Expand your view of your hotel's catchment area. What competition is there in the surrounding area? What other potential target groups can you address? What points of interest are there?

C – Operations
Improve your strategy (e.g., operational decisions and activities). Do you need to adjust in hiring and managing staff or marketing and advertising? Do you even need to invest in renovations or services?

D – Feedback from customers, activities of competitors etc.
Since you took over the hotel, you have met with investors, business partners, prospective customers, customers, competitors, the Amstelburg tourism association and other stakeholder groups. Please describe briefly the most important new facts about the market you have learned.

E – Networking
Networking is the establishment and maintenance of personal and professional contacts. A social network of people who support, help or cooperate with you professionally is of particular importance for the success of your hotel. Take every opportunity to expand your network and ensure the success of your hotel. You will always need help. Networking events can be very useful for meeting potential business partners and customers, but also for observing your competitors. Please describe any networking events you attended and the new information you gained about the Amstelburg hotel market.

F – Lessons Learned
Make a SWOT analysis taking into account what you learned about the location and the market (A – E).

Assessed elements

• Have all questions and tasks been addressed in a professional way?
• Are your ideas in line with the overall strategy?
• Are the arguments convincing?
• Did you critically reflect on your performance?

Handing in your assignment

• Hand in your competition analysis as a document. Upload it somewhere in the cloud.
• Be sure that your posts and video are made public
• Copy the link (only the link, not the document or content) and put it in your Team File before the deadline into tab Year 1-2-3-4, cell D48
• Be sure the file is freely accessible without logging in or anything, just the click on the link should open it!

Additional reading and references

• Nils Bickhoff, Svend Hollensen, Marc Opresnik. The quintessence of marketing: what you really need to know to manage your marketing activities. Berlin u.a.: Springer, 2014.
• Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo: Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media. 2011.
• Kaefer, Florian. An Insider's Guide to Place Branding: Shaping the Identity and Reputation of Cities, Regions and Countries. Cham : Springer, 2021.
• Strategic Management, Formulation, Implementation, and Control by John A. Pearce II and Richard B. Robinson, 12th ed., international ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2011
• Theory of Strategic Management (with cases) by Charles W. L. Hill ; Gareth R. Jones, 8. ed., internat. student ed. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, 2009.
• Neil Bendle, Paul Farris, Phillip Pfeifer, David Reibstein. Marketing Metrics: The Manager's Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. 2020.

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