Case Study: "Hotel Skipper Almost Misses the Boat (Show)" (10 Marks) Mr. Mahesh Patel is the general manager of the 80- room BlueSky Hotel in Sherrod, Minnesota, a small town just outside Minneapolis. The BlueSky is a rooms-only chain property with a modest staff: 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. 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? Mahesh decided to make some calls. He phoned the city's chamber of commerce-no one knew of any out-of-the-ordinary event occurring in Sherrod next January. Then he called the convention and visitors bureau and discovered that a boat show had been booked for Saturday and Sunday January 11 and Case Study: "Hotel Skipper Almost Misses the Boat (Show)" (10 Marks) Mr. Mahesh Patel is the general manager of the 80- room BlueSky Hotel in Sherrod, Minnesota, a small town just outside Minneapolis. The BlueSky is a rooms-only chain property with a modest staff: 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. 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? Mahesh decided to make some calls. He phoned the city's chamber of commerce-no one knew of any out-of-the-ordinary event occurring in Sherrod next January. Then he called the convention and visitors bureau and discovered that a boat show had been booked for Saturday and Sunday January 11 and
