Carlton Bale

The presentation was complete, I had nothing to do, but I still woke-up early. Li, Brian, and I practiced a couple of times but we were getting experienced and the practice became boring. We had a late breakfast and meet in Brian’s room (our team room) for one last time. It was sad knowing that this phase of the trip was coming to an end. We performed a tremendous amount of work in that room but also had quite a bit of fun and really grew into a team in there. It was sad starting to break-down the large table we were using before returningRead More →

Day 11: Thursday the 22nd The presentation is basically complete at this point but we all basically wasted the morning creating slides that were suggested even though I knew we would not be within our time limit if they were included. We practice our presentation again but didn’t make any notable changes. It was basically Li and I practicing our coordinated swap between English and Mandarin with Brain advancing the slides as necessary. The food at the hotel and the restaurants has been of very high quality. Unfortunately, we had experienced about every creature and flavor Chinese seafood had to offer several times over byRead More →

Day 10: Wednesday the 21st We split-up the final slide preparation process. I built the main presentation, Garrett took the lead on the direct internet booking model. Doug made several slide on bundling. We frantically work all morning and declined a presentation to Professor Chan just before lunch and deferred it to after lunch. We worked frantically, skipping our meal, and started finalizing and collating. About 15 minutes before our presentation, everything was combined and we suddenly had a presentation! The planning and structure that I had started the previous day came together and we had some very solid analysis and strong recommendations. Our presentationRead More →

Day 9: Tuesday the 20th Where did the day go? I spent the entire day analyzing data and making the actual first presentation. This presentation barely followed the outline that was presented the day before because the data was showing a much more clear direction. I switched frequently between the spreadsheet and the presentation, trying to form a strong strategy to go about identifying specific recommendations. I became one-with-the-chair in the team room. I barely left it for a couple of meals and stayed there until almost midnight, when Brian kicked me out. We were very thankful to have our own dedicated room. First ofRead More →

Day 8: Monday the 19th Today was when we first started our presentation construction. Garrett came up with an outline and I included some of the data (in table format) from the detailed financial spreadsheet that was built the previous day. We were asked to present what we had so far to Professor Lyles. It was somewhat lacking versus what I desired to present but this was not inappropriate for the situation. We did not fully explain the detailed data that we had in the spreadsheet, including a comprehensive income statement and monthly occupancy levels over a two-year period. Thinking that we did not haveRead More →

Today I felt like we really came together as a team. We met for a late breakfast to start our day (it is the weekend after all). We discussed our strategy for the day. We weren’t deciding which pricing strategy to follow, we were working together to determine the best meeting location for our team. We could either meet in the war room with all of the Hong Kong students or we could go off on our own and start to formulate our strategy. I had talked to a couple of the Hong Kong groups and sensed that they were unsure of their direction, soRead More →

Today was a bit anti-climactic. It was even more apparent that a team member was missing since we had more free time to hang-out with one another. It was the first morning since the morning after I arrived in China that I was able to sleep in. the group meet in the lobby at 11:00 to go to the Pearl Market again; the only thing I purchased was a inside-painted glass ball for my mom. I was tired and didn’t feel like haggling, so I only got the price down to about half the original value. Everyone except Prof. Lyles went to Silk Row inRead More →

Today has been much more productive than yesterday. The day started off with long meetings and no specific answers. However, the team was able to meet individually with the finance manager and we were able to get some detailed year-end financial data, at least as much as is available. The accounting leaves much to be desired. Weekly, monthly, and quarterly financial reports are not even a possibility as they only prepare yearly reports. Since demand for rooms (in theory) fluctuates daily, this poor of resolution of data is not nearly as useful as would be desired. The % utilization of hotel services is not trackedRead More →

Today was a very long and frustrating day for all 5 of the team members. We were asked to formulate a plan for addressing pricing strategies before we left and a very vague plan was included in our pre-trip report. It would have been unproductive to devote any more effort to that plan because everything we were lead to believe about the operation and management of the hotel was incorrect. This was not a surprise to any of us I don’t believe but pre-trip planning can be only as accurate as the information provided by the host. We were originally supposed to have meetings betweenRead More →

Today was largely uneventful. I was 20 minutes late to breakfast because I couldn’t figure out how to work the alarm clock. Actually, there isn’t an alarm clock at all in the room, just a sophisticated lighting controller with a time display. I set the alarm on my Palm but that didn’t wake me from my slumber. I just downloaded an alarm clock for my PC from qlock.com. I set it to play the karaoke version Bust a Move by Young MC, so hopefully that will awaken me tomorrow! I had a couple of observations about China in general today. First of all, the drivingRead More →