Reflective Journal

About the Task:

The Revenue Management Simulation demonstrates the basic techniques and consequences of hotel room pricing and distribution decisions. Students must read the user guide carefully and run the simulation on the websites and complete the reflection

You are in charge of sales and marketing decisions at a 500-room hotel. You have access to the following controls: room price, direct advertising budget, social media man-hour budget, and five distribution channels (on/off, commission percentage). You have 32 days to earn as much money for your hotel as you can.

Description of the Websites Simulation:

The simulation exercise has the following aims:

- The simulation isolates bookings for a single day of the year, the 31st August. All bookings are for rooms on that one night.

- The exercise starts at the beginning of August, so there are 31 days in which bookings can be taken for accommodation on the last day of the month (the exercise has 32 separate decision days, but that is to calculate the results for the last day of the month. As in reality, you can only view the complete results for the previous month on the first day of the following month).

- The exercise begins with a certain number of bookings already on the books. These are bookings that were taken before the first day of the exercise.

- Each booking has a revenue associated with it (the price) and a collection of direct costs, which include any OTA commissions, direct advertising and social media costs, cost per occupied room and any costs associated with specific account bookings that may be accepted.

- The overall aim of the exercise is to manage occupancy, rates and direct costs to achieve the maximum contribution from room sales on the night of 31st August.

- Each user can make multiple ‘runs' of the exercise. At the end of each run, the user can add his or her score to the leader board, with comments on any key decisions, then click ‘Restart' to begin a new run.
NOTE:

The reflective journal assignment is based on the fundamental theoretical and conceptional learning in this course.

At the end of the course you are to write the reflective easy based on the lecture topic. The reflective essay must be situated in a discussion of the current theory, fundamental concepts and practice learned in this subjective. Ensure to reflect on your decision-making process in the revenue management (RM) simulation.Use appropriate referencing and integrate primary resources where possible.

PLEASE following learning outcomes are assessed in the Reflective Journal tasks:

1. Research, identify and evaluate critical components influencing strategic revenue management decisions such as market segmentation, economic conditions and booking data.

2. Develop and strategically apply the RM theory to pricing strategies in line with the analysis of the consumer value perception, market segment characteristics and the competitive environment.

3. Interpret and apply pricing tactics to make strategic decisions within the framework of real-life examples.

4. Reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness and outcome of established pricing strategies within the hospitality and tourism industry.