Hotel Impossible: The CHESS Hotel

This morning, I arrived to class exceedingly early. Upon entering the classroom at 7:50 AM, I took my seat in the front row and began studying for what I believed was going to be an upcoming quiz. In the end, we were told that there was to be no quiz today, a fact that brought me equal amounts of relief and rage. 

To start off the morning, we watched an episode of Undercover Boss followed by Hotel Impossible: The Penguin Hotel. The hotels featured in both shows encountered issues due to the lackluster state of their subpar managing and maintenance divisions.We then analyzed the importance of a hotel's maintenance department and managing department and concluded that the absence and or incompetence of either departments would result in a hotel quickly falling into a decrepit state of disorderliness and disrepair. 

Starting at 10:00 AM, Group B spent time learning advanced computing skills with Mark. Namely, we learned how to make a template-a document with preset colors, fonts, and themes as well as placeholders to insert information. Making a template is a long, complicated process. However, because of the amount of hard work put into the creation of a template, very little has be done when using one, thus improving overall efficiency rates by reducing the amount of time wasted by formatting documents. 

After lunch, we returned to the computer lab, although this we spent the period working with Reneta and the CHESS program. My plan for the program was to use advertising to target different demographics on certain days of the week in order to deduce which days were the most popular with which group of customers. I hypothesized that from Monday to Wednesday, the majority of my occupants would be business travelers. As for Fridays and Saturdays, I deduced that leisure travelers would compromise the largest population of customers. I also assumed that the remaining days of the week would be much slower, so I invested menial amounts in advertising towards all group on Thursdays and Sundays. The results were polarizing; my strategy resulted in high business on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, as I had hypothesized, but it also resulted in devastating losses and pitiful numbers on every other day. For instance, a Tuesday was sure to entail occupancy levels as staggering  as 97%, whereas on Wednesday the percentages would plummet to a measly 50%. 

In preparation for our upcoming group presentation, Mark gave a mock presentation highlighting the dos and don'ts of PowerPoint presentation.Though I was familiar with most of the material Mark went over, I was still able to learn a lot of new, helpful tips such as the importance of lighting, transitioning, graphical balance, and  and color coordination. 

I spent the entirety of our two hour office hours period personalizing my very own business memo template. Through the use of my newly acquired computing skills, I was able to create an entirely original template. Designing a template that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing is a surprisingly difficult task, involving extensive editing and reformatting. In the end, I created a template that I'm quite proud of. 

I believe that today was a great learning experience. I was able to gain much insight on the of the importance of productivity and presentation in the professional world. Before, I believed that only the quality of a document's content contributed to it's credibility, but I've now come to realize that proper time and impression are amongst a company's biggest assets, as they both contribute to the company's overall performance.