The Radisson is owned and operated by Mrs. Payne. The hotel just completed its third year of operation. During that time, Mrs. Payne sought to establish a reputation for the hotel as a high quality hotel establishment that specializes in fresh seafood. Through the efforts Mrs. Payne and her staff, her hotel has become one of the best and fastest growing hotels. Mrs. Payne believes that to plan for the growth of the hotel in the future, she needs to develop a system that will enable her to forecast food and beverage sales by month for up to one year in advance. Mrs. Payne complied the following data (in thousands of dollars) on total food and beverage sales for the three years of operation.

Month First Year Second Year Third Year
January 242 263 282
February 235 238 255
March 232 247 265
April 178 193 205
May 184 193 210
June 140 149 160
July 145 157 166
August 152 161 174
September 110 122 126
October 130 130 148
November 152 167 173
December 206 230 235

Perform an analysis of the sales data for the Radisson. Prepare a report for Mrs. Payne that summarizes your findings, forecasts, and recommendations. describe all answers thoroughly. Show work. Include the following:

1. A graph of the time series.
2. An analysis of the seasonality of the data. Indicate the seasonal indexes for each month, and comment on the high and low seasonal sales months. Do the seasonal indexes make intuitive sense? Discuss.
3. A forecast of sales for January through December of the fourth year.
4. Recommendations as to when the system that you develop should be updated to account for new sales data.

Assume that January sales for the fourth year turn out to be $295,000. What was your forecast error? If this error is large, Mrs. Payne may be puzzled about the difference between your forecast and the actual sales value. What can you do to resolve her uncertainty in the forecasting procedure?