Plan of Action (addressing the problems) Business entities will always be facing competition problems, and Eskapismo Bout

ique is not an exemption. The growing number of boutique hotels cannot be contro lled so eliminating competition or hindering entry to the industry is not the co rrect problem to address. One of our goals is to actually lessen the effects of competition by finding our own niche of clients. We could attend to the unserved markets of students and the less elite. To serve this market, minimizing our co sts to decrease the price would be the best option. Nonetheless, this cannot hap pen in the short run. If we are to minimize our costs, we should add more rooms, and thus profit from it in the long run. But a lot of other factors would affec t demand for hotel accommodations, so our management cannot just minimize costs easily. One of the solutions we came up with is to discriminate prices. Charging differe nt prices for the same services is widely practiced in other industries, and now , it is our time to have this kind of system as well. For instance, a walk in cl ient may be charged a higher room rate than a client with reservations for the s ame room type. Of course, we would expect the number of reservations to increase , and if this happens, we can have enough time to manage our reservations, alloc ate our rooms, and practice second level of price discrimination this time, to c ustomers with reservations. Basically, we will divide the customers into two categories: discounted and nondiscounted. Discounted customers include students and senior citizens with prope r identification and senior citizen cards, respectively. These customers will pa y less than non-discounted customers, and can avail special service packages and promos to be provided by the hotel. The non-discounted customers would be all t hose other than students and senior citizens. They will pay the regular rate and can avail only specific hotel packages. Our system of price discrimination will also be touching the issue of uneven dis tribution of clients for different months. There are months like _____________(b ased on analysis)_______ with very few demand for our accommodation, and we beli eve that giving a room rate discounts during these months will help the business improve the distribution of clients all year round. Promotions of these discoun ts and other packages will be available in our websites, and other advertisement sites. We can also form some ties with group buying companies for some of our s ervices for the sole purpose of promotions and publicity. Our management found out that high school and college students (particularly, t hose involved in tourism and hotel and restaurant management courses) are a poss ible new market for our hotel. Since the school trips of these students can be o n any month of the year, we can also solve our problem regarding maintenance cos t in these months without much demand for hotel accommodation. To cater to their needs, we would again be providing packages to discount the price. We also would want to improve the number of repeat business clients by issuing m embership cards with benefits and discounts to hotel-controlled activities. The membership card will be renewable yearly, and it should be used to earn points t o avail more the benefits and discounts. Some benefits would include free breakf ast breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hotel s restaurant. If the hotel is overbooke d, the membership card would allow them to be put up into the priority list. A y early raffle, would give them the chance to win a free stay in the hotel and the y could also have the chance of winning free tours around Batangas. Discounts wo uld also be given to customers who have accumulated a certain number of points f rom their membership cards. These discounts would apply to meal charges, room ch arges, and activities charges. We would also improve our clients ease of access to our hotels by improving our web

site, which contains our hotel s contact information, online support forums, and the list of services we provide. We will make sure that even tourists from other co untries will have easy access to information about our hotel. Magazine advertise ments and feature can also work in promoting our hotels, specially lifestyle mag azine. We could negotiate this through hotel magazine subscriptions. Online broc hures are equally appealing and ads on social networking sites can work miracles . As seen from our database and survey results, only a few tourists are part of ou r market. Batangas is a well known tourist spot in the Philippines, therefore a lack of foreign customers is troublesome. To give solution to the deficiency, ou r best chance of attracting tourists is through online advertisements, since thi s might as well be the medium where tourists could find out about our hotel. As mentioned earlier, we have improved our website where online customers can alrea dy do booking and reservations and where they can see photos of our hotel and al so information about the different services and packages we offer. Our email add ress and contact numbers would also be included in the website. In addition to o ur website, we could also post advertisements to popular blogs and websites, for a minimal fee. This is already a practice that is proven and effective. For exa mple, a popular blogger in the Philippines may have a number of foreign readers. We decided to be partners with the blogger and for a minimal fee increase the v isibility of our hotel. Moreover, our foreign customers would be treated to a free pick-up from the airp ort to our hotel if they include this as their preference when they booked or re served. They could also avail of our tours and hotel cars if they wish to have a private tour around Batangas. This will surely help the tourists move around th e city easier. Sometimes our foreign customers would not always know how to spea k English. To mitigate this problem, the hotel will be hiring interpreters based from the foreign customers that would be coming. This would not necessarily be more costly for the hotel because the interpreters would only be hired up to the extent of the foreign customer s stay in the hotel. The hotel hopes that through th ese actions, there would be an increase of tourists in our hotel. Our survey and database have also shown us the preferences of our customers to t he different activities our hotel offers. We have observed, that in activities s uch as the (insert activity here that is rarely subscribed to), no customers are subscribing to them. We decided to put those activities mentioned into packages , or offer them in a lower price if a customer purchased another activity. Putti ng them in packages would assure us that all activities are subscribed to and it will surely increase the hotel s profits. We also observed that most of the outdoor activities are only popular during mon ths such as October, December, April and May. In all other moments they are only minimally subscribed to and most of the time not at all. Due to this, the hotel is facing increasing costs from maintaining the activities and receiving lesser profits. As mentioned, putting activities in packages would help in the efficie nt distribution of the subscription and use of all the packages. We have also de cided to offer only the most subscribed activities all year round and all the ot hers only during the peak months of October, December, April and May. Lastly, we decided not only to advertise the hotel as a place to stay and relax but the hotel can also be a place for conference, seminars, weddings, birthdays etc. The banquet hall that our hotel has would be a great venue for the aforemen tioned activities.