Case Statement:
Your client is a start-up in hotel/hospitality industry. They are in the business of leasing/buying hotels and refurbishing them. They are looking for growth and want you to identify locations where they should focus.
I: Look on this from the supply side with a focus on how and where you will get the data from. We need not to focus on the calculation part, just the approach.
C: Understood! I do have a few questions for the clarity of understanding. Where is the client operational?
I: They are looking for locations across India.
C: How exactly does the process of renovating happen?
I: They send their BD (business development) people on the ground for that.
C: And when we mention growth what exactly do we mean by that?
I: Good question! So, by growth we need to identify the locations where there is availability of hotels for our refurb and service purposes. We’ll focus on the customer demand side later.
C: Are we into any specific kind of hotel business- premium or otherwise?
I: We are not into the premium business, as there are already big players in that segment.
C: To shortlist the locations I’ll start by looking at the supply side- which includes the availability of Hotel Buildings, Workforce, Process setup, and the financial aspects of it; then I’ll look at the demand side which includes the number of visitors, purpose of visit- business or personal, and duration for which the people visit the location. And thirdly, I’ll look at the associated risks which includes competition.
I: Yes, we can start with that. You can assume, that availability of people is not an issue for us.
C: Okay, so starting with the supply side. To figure out the number of hotel buildings available for us to reach out, we can bifurcate them into two types- a. the ones listed online on different platforms like Agoda, MMT etc.
b. The ones which are not listed.
I: Sounds good, how can we get the exact number for these hotels? Don’t you think counting the number of hotels online will be a hectic task?
C: For the ones listed online, I might be getting a little technical, but we can use web crawling (wherein through automation you can get the details of the hotels) to get those numbers.
I: This is perfectly fine. What about the ones not listed?
C: For these since a lot of taxi drivers and tourist guides are associated with these hotels, we can reach out to them and run a survey to get an idea about the number of hotels available for us.
I: Perfect! Let’s move onto shortlisting the locations down in India. Let’s leave out the metro cities for that.
C: Okay, for this now we need to look at the demand side.
Firstly, for getting an idea about the inflow of people, We can get the data regarding number of people entering into the cities via trains and flights, and assume a certain percentage of native people and their relatives who wouldn’t be staying in hotels
I: Yes, we can get this data from the government portals. And let’s say, we can assume a certain percentage of hotel stayers.
C: Secondly, for the type of crowd, we can break the locations in terms of Personal and Professional visit. Personal visit account for vacation places. The professional ones include where there are different industries which require people to go there for business purposes.
I: Can you list down some of these industrial places.
C: One could be Jamshedpur for steel industry. Kanpur can be another for leather industry. Kota for sarees.
I: Sounds good! We can close the here. You did good.
Background Information:
Client: Startup working for buying and leasing hotels
Service: They refurbish hotels and lease it out again. Not in the premium segmenr
Objective: Identify the locations with availability of hotels for refurb and service purposes
Case recommendations:
The case majorly dealt with structuring and identifying where to get the data from.
There is no right or wrong answer in this case, just back up your answer with good reason
