Today has been another day of number , statistics and looking into a crystal ball trying to predict what will happen in 2011.
Rachel did really well with yesterdays homework and managed to compile the data in regards rooms revenues and occupancies for the past two years. She then pet those figures into a spreadsheet that we gave her, to work out Average Room Rate and then allow us to discuss a Budget for the rest of the year. We sat down and had a good few hours discussion over the figures, debating why there may have been dips in previous years in certain months, and how improvements could be made to increase rooms revenues for the year ahead. We discussed all the environmental issues (ranging from political to events such as the volcanic ash of last year!) and came up with some plans to aid the low season sales.
After a plate of lovely fish and rice, Rachel sat down and in-putted the figures into the spread sheet and voila …. the first ever Rosy Guesthouse ,Siem Reap year budget. It was great to see the feeling from satisfaction from the guys here and really hope that the experience was helpful for them and their future management of their business. From that, we then filled out the rest of the forecasting spreadsheet we had set up yesterday with the budgeted figures and now the guys have all the tools to be able to easily forecast their rooms figures etc for the months ahead, a really helpful tool for themselves as well as for the other key members of staff.
So that is week 1 of the ISTC skills exchange almost done and boy it has gone so quickly but feel we really have made great progress.
Planned for next week…
Get the new website live and populated with data
Train the guys here how to manage the CMS (content management system) and some ideas of what to update!
Sit down with staff and doing competitor analysis & a SWOT analysis
Training on online and offline advertising
and if we can squeeze it in … Some more stock control techniques and more advanced yield management.
I have also contacted a local hotel school which I hope to visit sometime over the weekend or next week too.
I hope you all have enjoyed week 1 of this adventure.I will be helping out at the football league here on Sunday so will update you with photo of that and what went on (before you think I am playing… I have been told I can’t ;-( so will be referring , and coaching).
Have a great weekend all and looking forward in updating you on Sunday afternoon after the football!
**On a different note, when discussing the figures I said it was unlikely that the volcano would erupt again in Iceland… when we came down from discussing it.. we check the internet and guess what… a volcano in Bali has started spewing ash!!! **