- Report/Findings
Key business opportunities that heritage park may encounter are:
- Awareness of facilities available will increase
- Occupancy rates will rise bringing profit into the business
- Worldwide bookings helps expand the business
- Expand the business, buy more places in locations all over the country
By having an online presence Heritage park will benefit as they will gain more customers since they can be known all over the country rather than just locally, and also world wide audiences are attracted online. Gaining more customers means that the hotel can fill their occupancy rates and also advertise their facilities and special occasions bringing more money into the business to help cover all their costs and gain a profit overall.
Once Heritage Park has made a sufficient profit then the management could consider buying more places and turning them into more hotels for the business so that they could attract even more customers as they would have branches in different locations meaning the choice of stay is open more widely and this will help to keep the business expanding.
Heritage parks aim is to expand the business and their objectives are to fill up all their business and room spaces, increase the awareness of the existence of the hotel and to increase the wedding trade as well as other special occasions. The achievement of these aims and objectives may be supported by the online presence because tourists and companies on business trips may be looking for a hotel in the area that specialises in various activities. Since the hotel has a wide range of amenities they can cover the majority of their customers’ interests and for business meetings the hotel has rooms especially designed for the purpose.
The online presence of the hotel means that the customers can actually see pictures of the hotel, leisure centre, bedrooms, restaurant and business rooms giving the customer an idea from where they are sat rather than having to visit the hotel first. Online booking is effective as it is a much quicker way of bringing money into the business. Customer feedback and guest books will give new customers a brief view on what previous customers have thought of the hotel and whether it is a good hotel or not.
There may be problems that the management would encounter with an online presence which could be the
- Cost
- Fraud
- Trust from customer
- Training
- Data loss
Cost would be the main problem of an online presence because if the hotel did not manage to attract enough business from the use of the internet then they would not have the money to pay for the internet space, bills, advertisements, staff wages etc. Setting up the site costs quite a lot of money and then to give the site a boost, advertisements would be beneficial. Heritage park would go bankrupt if they did not manage to get enough business to help them cover the costs. Training the staff to use the internet to make regular updates and answer any online queries would be needed and this also would cost to get the people in to train the staff.
A lot of fraud can happen over the net and if the hotel isn’t careful then they could end up losing a lot of money so they would have to make sure that the site was secure and that all details were checked correctly before proceeding with online bookings and enquiries. Online security is important for both Heritage Park and their customers because the hotel is bound by certain Acts of Parliament and must abide by them. They will lose trust and customers if they break the law.
The use of online facilities could improve the business operation because it would mean that their customers and members could feel more involved if they are able to access certain facilities online as well as in person. Also providing online facilities means that customers can access these at any time of day or night 7 days a week. Providing a small fee that customers are willing to pay would be of benefit to the hotel as this would be more money coming into the business as well.
3 End of report
3.1 Conclusions
I have come to a conclusion that Heritage Parks main problem of online presence is whether they would attract enough business to cover the costs but that overall the online presence supports Heritage Park achieve their aims and objectives and also gives them the chance to experience more business opportunities. Providing the online presence is a success and the aims and objectives are met then Heritage Park will be able to expand the business a lot further and make a lot of profit.
3.2 Summary
I have written this report to help the management of Heritage Park to understand what business opportunities they could possibly encounter from having an online presence and also how having a website will help to achieve the aims and objectives of the hotel and how it could attract customer interest.
The problems have also been looked at of an online presence so that the management of Heritage Park can take these into account and set out a plan of how they could overcome the problems if they are to start an online presence for the business.
