Business strategy and planning
Every firm sets strategies and plans for it to ensure they achieve their goals and the mission of the company. A case study describes the scenario of the company in attempt to strategize and plan for its future. In this, case the problem statement, analysis, possible solution and recommendations.
Description of the company
The ski resort industry is a community-based resort. The considerations show the trends in the industry. It is associated with the costs of equipment and the general effects of economic and tourism concerns. The management of the industry in snow sport shows that their participation was due to their participation as 7.5 percent of the total participants in 2010. The participation rates were varied in terms of age. The participation was slow and steady increasing as they were in the last three years. This happened due to the family attention and commitment. The ratio of male to female was 64:36 and 46 percent of the skiers were male aged between 113 and 34. Essentially the Ski establishment was for two distinguishable types of community resort and destination. They offer a large scale for tourists by providing a wide range of operations.
Analysis of the problems
The aim of the company is to provide recreational services, the utilize various strategies to ensure they provide quality services. The resort faced challenges due to their location. Its geographical location constrained their customer reach out. The resort relied on the visits from the nearby population. In addition, the overall decline factors affect the participation of the tourists. The overall decline in tourist was claimed due to the economical factors of recession, which have affected the profitability of the industry the decline in the dollar has influenced the travels towards ski resort. This only affected the destination establishment. Furthermore, the fall in snowfall and the worsening of the climatic conditions affected the turnout of the tourists. The company has taken the option of creating artificial snow in order ton ensure the conditions of the ski are maintained. The warm weather attributed to the clients participating in other recreational activities (Hudson, 2007).
The company needs to divide the skiers for main groups, for example, casual skiers, experienced skiers and non-skiers to specialize in each group. The resort require to open more experienced skiers which offer a wide range of options in this way the number of tourists would increase. In order to win the loyalty of the clients the resort enacted an act to create an affordable entry fee to the resort and in participation of their events.
In order to increase their profit the industry opted to engage in the beverage and food provision in line with the provision of the recreational activities. In order to assist in the derailing financial situation the Drowling Mountain advertised about the company in order opt create a wider market and receive more clients. To ensure the existence of the resort the competing firms need to be watched with caution since the company requires strategizing and planning on how they would capture more skiers to their firm. The management together with the key stakeholders has enacted a policy that would see the ski resort perform competitively and meet the standards of being a key player in the recreational activity provision. In addition to competing effectively, the company requires teamwork that brings together the employees and the management in ensuring swift service delivery to the clients (Hudson, 2007).
Recommendations
After realizing that they were facing problems signaled by the decreasing volume of sales and the increasing losses, The Ski resort management laid a strategy of increasing sales volumes by focusing on establishment of new pricing scheme. The company missed the significant importance of carrying out a research in understanding the causes and the real problem that faced the business. The skiing and general tourism trends in the US are however the possible sources of the challenge to the Ski resort.
The business faces increasing losses caused by the decreasing sales. Specific advertising targeting the various US population groups is more recommendable to be undertaken by the Ski resort rather than the price scheming that was proposed by the company administration. Specific advertising aimed at attracting participation of couples, different age groups say adults or the youth thus matching the ratio of women to men and the other arbitrary numbers of skiers, will increase the resorts sales and hence profits without having the negative connotations that will be attached to increasing prices. Increasing prices will not have a good impact on the sales of the resort but it may have a negative impact on the sales in that it will scare away customers. This is true on the grounds that the resort has been experiencing increasing losses despite being the only resort offering the snow sport services and with no threats of possible new entries.
Tourism industry is more sensitive to environmental condition, the facilities in use and the modernity of such facilities and the services provided. The company needs to avoid the skyscraping competition that is created by their aging facilities in comparison to those of competitors. This can be achieved through investment on new and modern facilities for snow sporting. Investment on maintenance of the aging facilities will not attract customers especially the youth who are currently chasing the advancing dynamic technology. With the current competition pressure the company needs to focus on all possible ways of increasing the volume of customers’ visits, among them is emphasize on intensive advertising and the use of modern facility to attract customers.
The resort business is seasonal coming due during winter, timely planning of business activities to capture the opportune sales resulting from this seasonality. Diversification of business activities is of critical importance as it will ensure continuous operation of the resort business even during the off-season. For instance the resort should intensify on other additional services among them is hiking, biking, rental and lodging services. Which prove important in achieving customer satisfaction thus attraction of customers and maintenance of customer loyalty.
Drowling Mountain focuses on the population around Syracuse only. Expansion of market is potentially viable for the business and thus the company should try its level best to capture customers outside Syracuse. With the utmost dependence on the government for bail, the Drowling resort could have used government influence in advertizing its services around the New York and may be to the whole nation.
Product and service differentiation would serve to increase the profits of the resort. This will create exclusiveness of the resorts product in the mind of the customers. The other option is on segmenting the market to aim at the various groups in the market for instance directing differentiated services and thus prices to the experienced, casual and non-skiers.
References
Rogers, R. E. (2008). Corporate strategy & planning. Columbus, Ohio: Grid. Pub.
Hudson, S. (2007). Snow business: A study of the international ski industry. London:
