Strategy
The Bergman family
The Bergman family never had a specific vision or mission running their hotel, which is one of their weaknesses. They just took the event and happenings day-by-day and year-by-year. Until now, this was no problem at all, but in the rapidly changing landscape, a clear vision and mission is more and more relevant. Or, at least a strategic vision.
Strategy, what can you do?
In the Game you have a number of possibilities to influence your hotel. You will have a personalized, not public document: a so-called Team File per team. This is the most important file in the Game. In this file you will keep track of everything your team does.
- Your team's decision on prices, costs etc.
- Even more important, explain why you made these decisions.
- Try to make your arguments specific, calculate, give KPI's, benchmarks, predict results e.g.
- Explain how you handled the assignments or tasks.
- Links to your social media, maybe website or other things required by your tasks
- Other live actions of your team: sometimes required, like the Trade Fair but maybe also at your own initiative.
The coach remarks and your results will also be in this same file.
Your new strategy
The very first thing you have to do is think of a new strategy and describe this. Therefore it is good to have a look at the history of the hotel. One of the most important things in a strategy is to be consistent and to make things SMART (= specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and time-related). This consistency and clearness are important to:
- Your customers;
- Your board of directors;
- And don't forget to your staff;
- But in fact to all stakeholders!
Photo By: Courtesy graphic Joint base Charleston, S.C. - S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Your team makes a number of basic strategic choices already at the start of the Game.
- A new hotel name, a new logo and slogan
- New strategy: a basic strategy choosing target markets and target groups
- Setting all the goals to be reached; financially as well as other goals.
Please inform yourself well before making these strategic choices, as changing them afterwards is not easy and can be very costly. Consistency in your strategy and choices is key.
Stay consistent
Stick to your strategy: maybe bent it a bit during the Game, but do not change it radically. If you would be a "real" hotel you could not change your image overnight: you will lose all credibility. And why should you? If you make losses, try to cope with this and try to lower your costs, get higher occupancy rates or higher prices. Do not try just turning things around for the sake of having a higher profit. Indeed, it is a competition and you will probably aim for more profit, but your strategy is the most important thing in your evaluation and so in the marks given to you. This heavily influences your occupancy rate and so your results and profit.
It can be your assignment to manage one of these new establishments, you have a bit more 'freedom'. The benchmarks from the original hotel will still be used as mentioned before.
One of the most important decisions you will have to take soon, is what to do with the name of the hotel?
→ Go! Following the Introduction Game play? Step 5/10 is the page Occupancy rate
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