Case Study: An unusually busy January

Mr. Mahesh Patel is the general manager of the 80-room BlueSky Hotel in Sherrod, Minnesota, a small town just outside Minneapolis. Sherrod is a quiet town near the highway without a lot of restaurant options or local activities, and festivals and events there are rare. The BlueSky is a rooms-only chain property with a modest staff: ideally he had three front desk agents, six housekeepers, a maintenance person, and Mahesh. He bought the hotel two years ago, on the advice of his cousin, who owns and operates a similar hotel in Minneapolis.

Mahesh was tired. He had often wished his hotel had a caf or restaurant so he had a way to make additional food and beverage or meeting revenue, and provide that additional service to guests to make them enjoy their stays or stay in the hotel longer. He'd also wished he had had time this summer so could've learned more about updated hotel technology options he could take advantage of to increase his profit, as well as research some options on adding a food and beverage element, but so far hadn't had time to learn how.Part of the reason why he was so busy was that he'd also struggled this summer with keeping his front desk staff as several had quit after a few months of training and working for him to seek jobs at larger hotel chains in the big city nearby. This was a pattern that had repeated itself since he'd bought the hotel two years ago and he didn't know how to solve it.He had just finished a summer where he himself had to work a lot of overtime to provide adequate coverage for check-ins and checkouts, and had missed out on some of his normal ownership and management duties doing work he'd tried to hire others to do. At least by working so closely with guests during these interactions he had been able to learn what they likedand didn't really likeabout the hotel.There were guest complaints about outdated furnishings, noise, and slow service. Mahesh wanted to find a way to reduce those complaints too.

But those are not his current issues.Right now, it's the first Monday in September and, as is his custom on the first Monday of every month, Mahesh is looking over his historical records and his booking projections for 30, 60, 90, and 120 days out. He is surprised to discover that he already has 41 room reservations for the month of January, which his records show is usually his worst month of the year. This time last year, he only had one reservation for January. He decides to investigate a bit further. The reservations are not from a large group; they all appear to be individual, transient guests, even though all but two are clustered around the dates of January 11th and 12th. About half of the 41 reservations came in via the hotel chain's 800 number; the rest are divided between direct call-ins to the hotel and reservations made via the Internet. Since January is the hotel's slowest month, all of Mahesh's discounts were in place and the rack rate was at rock bottom$39. (Rack rate during the hotel's high season is $99.) So all 41 rooms were sold at the rock-bottom rate.

Why were so many guests already booking for next January? On the advice of his cousin, Mahesh called the town's convention and visitors bureau and discovered that a boat show had been booked for Saturday and Sunday, January 11 and 12, at the Rockingham Auditorium in a nearby suburb of Minneapolisthe first time this show had been booked there.

Mahesh leaned back in his chair while thoughts of rack rates, discounts, and special rooms packages floated through his mind. There were several strategies and tactics he could employ for taking advantage of the boat show; then again, the show was only for two days, and half of the hotel was already booked. Plus he was so tired of working all the extra front desk shifts himself and had to place another ad to hire some additional employees.Maybe trying to make additional profit from the Boat Show wasn't worth the trouble.

Please consider and write about the following:

1.write the respond why in January, the hotel are all booked at discount price