Accra

The Accra Beach Hotel Case

The sales manager for a Caribbean hotel wonders whether to accept a large block booking at a discount rate from a group participating in an international sporting events. The Accra Beach Hotel is 141-bedroom Hotel on the Caribbean Island Barbados. It is optimally located directly on the beach in a tropical environment, offering rooms with panoramic views, a large swimming pool, gardens, a fully equipped gym, restaurants, bars, big banquet and conference facilities and easy access to the closely located Golf Club. All the rooms in the Hotel are on a very high standard, including TV, Air-conditioning balconies and fully equipped bathrooms in all the rooms. The hotel was originally meant to be resort destination for individual travellers and was also working closely together with tour operators. Tourists were mainly from Britain and Canada.

Do the promised publicity benefits justify the risk of turning away guests for higher paying segments?

KEY ANTECEDENTS OF THE CASE

• The request from the West Indies Cricket Board was about 6 months ahead.

• Cherita Howard, sales manager for the Accra Beach Hotel was debating what to do about a request from the West Indies cricket band.

• The Board wanted to book a large block of rooms during several of the hotel’s busiest time and was asking for a discount.

• In return, the board promised to promote the Accra Beach in all advertising materials and television broadcast as the host hotel for the upcoming West Indies Cricket Sereis, an important international sporting event.

• The Accra Beach enjoyed a relatively high occupancy rate, with the highest occupancy being achieved from January trough March and the lowest during the summer.

• The highest room rated are ($150-$170), the lowest are ($120)

• The WICB wanted 50 rooms (including two suites at no additional cost) throughout each part of the series and was willing to pay US $130 per night per room, inclusive of both breakfast and VAT

• The Accra Beach had traditionally promoted itself as a resort desination, but in recent years had been promoting its convenient location and had succeeded in attracting many business costumers.

IDENTIFY AND DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM(S) THAT YOU FIND IN THE CASE

I think that the problem is that Cherita Howard, the sales manager, dont know what to do about the offer from the West Indies Cricket Board because the financial rates that the Accra Beach Hotel can have in the high occupancy rate and part of the low occupancy rate.

Analysis SWOT

Strengths

• occupancy rate

• different customer segments

• price differentiation

Weakness

• different customer segments

• marketing strategy not completely developed

Opportunities

• develop new markets like India

• develop new markets like sports fans

Threats

• normal tourists annoyed by businesspeople

• third types of customer although there are already problem within the existing two customers groups

POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES

1. To Reject the Offer from the West Indian Cricket Board and keep their normal cicle in the hotel.

If the management decided to try to keep the actual customer situation and would want to focus on the solution of the problems that occurred, this would be the best alternative. With sportsmen as a third potential target group the conflict potential would rise. The business customers could feel disturbed by them, or even the vacationers would be annoyed of this group as well because it would occupy the gym of the hotel.

2. To persuade to the West Indian Cricket Board to have a higher rate and accept the offer.

This would only be an option if the hotel management has the point of view that having the WICB as a guest would nice and good opportunity to maybe open another market segment, but that this would not be essential. The risk that the WICB will refuse the offer is high.

3. To accept the offer with the normal rates that the West Indian Cricket Board offer.

Many business customers from there are satisfied and come back to the hotel regularly. These can be

interpreted as the ability of the Accra Beach Hotel to satisfy the needs of this customer group closely. This means that many potential customers could be reached with TV advertising in these countries.

Cricket is a very popular sport in the Caribbean countries, and like every sport especially popular with men. As men are mostly business customers, they probably would appreciate to stay in the same hotel than cricket players, even they were national players for another country. Second, the Indian market was identified by the Barbados Tourism Authority to have a high potential for the island. Last July, the first airplane of Air India landed on Barbados. It seems