Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Caribbean Guesthouse - Research Paper Example

? Caribbean Guesthouse Business Plan Caribbean Guesthouse Business Plan The Executive Summary You might have wished to be a tourist or rather a visitor at the Caribbean but afraid that you may lack a place to rest at the end of the day. This fear is no longer there since we at the Caribbean guest home are here with you ready to offer our services to your satisfaction. The home offers both food and accommodation for the tourists and any other interested individuals who may find themselves within the surrounding of the Caribbean. Our clients are left to decide on the rooms they would wish to have and the type of food that they would like served to them. While there are a number of such homes offering such services our home stands out with difference of being located along the river banks. “Its marketing strategy will seek to find out ways in which quality of services can be improved within the home in order to attract more tourists.” (Davidson, 2005) It will seek to market the services one is likely to enjoy while at the home and how available the services are to the individuals. The intention is to also convince the consumers that the moment they step in the home they will leave the place satisfied and happy. The staff will be responsible for managing the affairs of the home with the support from the subordinate staff. As a start we will have a staff of 30 people. The size of the market area will be determined by amount of profit made from the investments. Advertisement for the home will be made through the newspapers, television and radio. Based on the demands by the tourism for accommodation, we expect that as a home we will be able to meet the sales projections of up to $400,000 and that the salary of the workers will be determined depending on the amount of profit that will be incurred. Currently, we have completed a six bed room home that is self financed and we expect to get more finances from those who obtain accommodation from the home. From the market research carried out we discovered that most of the profits were made during the festive seasons when families visited the Caribbean and we found that to be an opportunity for us to expand on our services and better them. The Industry The players in the industry are expected to be the tourists who come in from other countries. More and more people are considering leisure activities as one way of trying to avoid straining an idea that makes them want to visit and learn more about other countries. With the increase for the demand in accommodation and good food our home has to cooperate with other industries like those involved in food production. Through such cooperation the industry has been able to receive an increase in number of tourism. The director of marketing has noted that currently, people are interested in homes that make them comfortable and at the same time are able to provide a home feeling for them. “The home industry is very competitive, a challenge that leaves workers to be hardworking in ensuring that they deliver the best to clients and this includes not only services from the home but workers” (Davidson, 2005). To ensure this the staff will be expected to specialize more in their area of expertise in order to offer the best services. With time areas of expertise will become more narrow and interdependent to the extent that they will be able to come up with innovations that foresee advancement in their services. It should be clear that there is likely to be the non local competitors who might be dealing inn the same services. Strategies on how to overcome the barriers of competition is a key factor here. The home will seek to strengthen its mode of advertisement such that it is able to reach a wide range of people. The advertisement will take place after a clear investigation on the mechanisms undertaken by the other homes that makes them to remain at the top despite the competition. Marketing Plan This will range from the prices for the commodities to the rates charged for the accommodation. “With the advent in technology, the home will also undertake advertisement programs via the internet so that it can be accessed in other countries for those who will be interested” (Drucker & Drucker, 2007). The plan will also include things like the quality of the product, the pricing strategies, promotion and the process of advertising. With the need to allocate for funds in every category, the home will get some funds from its savings to cater for these expenses. As for the products the home will market the type of foods served at the home, the accommodation facilities available and the rates charged for the rooms. Prices will vary and there will be no fixed prices for the products provided. Our target consumers will be the tourists who are the frequent visitors in the country especially during the festive season and during the school holidays. The tourists add up to 5,000 tourists per year whom we expect to host in our home. During the festive season, the home will reduce the prices for some foods and offer them at a discount level while for the rooms the prices will be charged n relation to the number of the tourists received. In case where the number will have reduced, then the prices will be lowered in order to enable the consumers to be able to afford the rates. When marketing we will also indicate to the consumer the quality of the product and how the consumer will benefit from using the products and the services offered. When pricing, the prices will be affordable to all and also profitable to our home. Management Plan The home will be divided into various categories for workers so as to avoid role conflict. This will ensure a governed code of conduct that will restrict workers to their specific work and this will also promote high quality of work. “There will be workers responsible for ensuring that the rooms are left clean and the catering department that will strive to ensure food is of high quality and standard” (Kuratko &Hodgetts, 2009). The staff in the different departments should also be a trained one so as to offer better services as they is likely to be little time for induction processes. The management is a strong supporter of team building in order to be able to solve problems and also for decision making. There is ample security provided by the security guards with whom you have to clear first before proceeding to the home. Others surround the home to ensure the consumers are safe even at night. The internal management team consists of all the workers present in the home and are headed by the supervisor who dictates the roles out clearly to them. The accommodation rooms will be taken care of by the house mothers who will ensure that the beddings and the rooms are always neat. As for the tour guides they will take the tourists to the expected destinations and bring them back together with the drivers. “The professional service providers include the accountants and IT consultants. The professionals will be hired to give advice and support the home from outside” (Drucker & Drucker, 2007). The workers will be expected to have a diploma qualification in catering while for security men they should have at least obtained a certificate course in security studies. They are expected to work hard in order to ensure that they make a profit and incur sufficient cash flow. Operating Plan The home is located in the Caribbean along river banks and in it are six self contained bed rooms that have modern facilities. There is a kitchen where food is prepared from. Other facilities available are the swimming pool and horses which individuals pay to ride on. With the catering services the home will need supplies from food stores and markets on an agreed price. So far the home has been able to acquire a well trained staff to offer different services in the home depending on areas of specialization. With time the home is expected to expand its services by building up more homes so that we can avoid the problem of congestion that is likely to be experienced in future. “More recreational facilities will be created near the river banks so that consumers and tourists can also have fun from there and not just spend the whole day at the home” (Per, 2005). With this more revenue will be obtained a move that will enable the home to be able to expand its services. Most of the food will be obtained from the whole food market as the home prefers to serve natural food and not food that has undergone several organic processes. This is attributed to the fact that, currently most individuals are health conscious and therefore have to observe what they eat. I will continue to maintain my membership with the home as an active worker. Being a home that has just started I will oversee all the daily tasks so as to ensure that the home picks at a faster speed so that more people can be interested. It should be noted that potential risks exist that may hinder the success of the home. The delivery process for the food maybe a problem as some suppliers may not deliver them on time given the fact that the weather changes constantly. Financial Plan The financial statement has a list of all profits and losses experienced during implementation process of the home. There are operating expenses which will help the home in running of the home. SALARIES TELECOMMUNICATION SUPPLIES MAINTENANCE TOTAL WORKERS - $25,000 $12,000 $37,000 HOME $30, 000 $55,000 $35,000 $90,000 From these operating expenses they will also be able to know how much they spend on both the workers and the home at large. As a home, we intend to invest $300,000 so as to help as to fully implement the program where $130, 000 will be released to foresee the above expenses. However, during the first year of operation the home will be expected to generate $ 600,000 and a gross profit of 25%. As the owner of the home I will invest $ 150,000 so as to cover up for the start up costs of $127,000 since the fixed costs will only be limited to the home space and the equipment that will be required for use by the consumers. “Other equipment like the stores and the telephone system has to be also set up and if there is a positive cash flow then the money spent will be recovered.” (Davidson, 2005) With the balance sheet the money invented and that obtained at the end of the year will be calculated and this had amounted to $ 56, 000 and this was a lesson that we minimize on the inventory levels where we only purchase what is really needed. We are to maintain our stock prices to be ranging from $3,000 to $6,000 so that we can be able to avoid the losses. Other variable costs will be included in order to purchase cleaning facilities and to cater for the electricity bills. In case where the demand for the home services fluctuate as a result of lower influx of tourists, then we also offer outside catering services in ceremonies or during public holidays. Risks and Conclusions The major risk for the home is the current unstable economic standards being experienced among individuals and the country at large. This forces us, as a home to come up with mechanisms that will seek to ensure that despite hard economic times we are not affected drastically. This means that as a home we do not just concentrate on offering one major service but struggle to ensure that all the services offered are competitive enough to be maintained in the market. The services provided will therefore be modern and that the food provided at the home will seek to meet the standards required by the consumers. “The services of the home are to be offered for 24 hours and this means that some of the food products and accommodation facilities will have reduced rates in their prices.” (Drucker & Drucker, 2007) Having only six bed rooms could prove to be a challenge in the sense that during the festive season we are likely to have many consumers whom we may not be able to accommodate in a comfortable manner. It is therefore possible that with the profits incurred more rooms will be added to the home to avoid the problem of congestion. We will also be able to avoid the problem of routine maintenance through frequent renovation which with time will leave the buildings in a poor state and also old. As for marketing, advertisement proves to be expensive and is likely to interfere with normal expenses of the home. This is because an advertisement has to be tested first in order to gauge its viability and whether it will attract consumers. The human resource risk in our home will be the lack of a qualified human resource manager whom it has been a bit difficult to get as most of them are very expensive and are not willing to be employed on a permanent basis but prefer to work on a contract. “This may come with impossibilities since most managers tend to have their own way of resource management and adoption of more than one method may make the workers not to have a straight idea of what is required of them” (Garcia, 2007). Moreover as the manager of the home I am currently on frequent medication a move that may make it hard for me to be able to efficiently manage the home well together with the workers. This maybe risky since despite the fact that am expected to foresee the running of the home as it starts I might not be efficient in the delivery of my services. We have to be aware of the idea that we are entering a new market and therefore acceptance is the key issue and any tight competition should not be a discouragement for the home to move out faster. We should come up with mechanisms that will convince our consumers that despite being new to the market, we are capable of offering the best services. We will be dealing with foods that have not been organically processed and this b requires a market that will ensure that they are exhausted so as to avoid wastage as we will incur losses. Storage facilities are currently not enough and we have to strive to make better profit at the start so as to be able to purchase more storage facilities. Conclusion It is our goal to start the home as a way of promoting tourism in the Caribbean and as a way of marketing the country to the incoming visitors so that in future we will be able to provide more services. Currently the tourism sector has been expanding and this has called for individual with homes to better their services so that they can be able to accommodate more consumers. However we realized that tourists do not only need to visit the historical and other tourist sites but prefer places they can also have fun an idea that has prompted us to strive to create more recreational facilities within the home. We hope to work together with our workers to make sure that those we accommodate will always come back next time. As it is indicated the rate at which the home business is growing is very positive making us to have long term projections since modern living has brought with it modern demands. With this demands we are to also expand on our menu where we now offer foods from other countries and this means that we employ more experienced caterers. If maximum profits are obtained in the next two years, then our consumers should expect to find a big difference ranging from additional buildings to a variety in the meals being served. We will also offer entertainment during the weekends and on festive season our consumers will be treated to every day entertainment. This will only be successful if the management will keep an eye on the sales and the profit incurred as this will allow the home to expand the following year. References Davidson, P. (2005). Researching Entrepreneurship. Valencia. Springer Publishers. Drucker, P. F. & Drucker, F. (2007). Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Oxford. Elsevier Publisher. Garcia, A.C., Ribeiro, D. & Roig, S. (2007). Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Theory and Perspective. Valencia. Springer Publishers. Kuratko, D. F. & Hodgetts, R. M. (2009). Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, and Practice. New York. Cengage Learning. Landes, D.S., Mokyr, J. & Baumol, W.J. (2010). The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times. New Jersey. Princeton University Press. Minniti, M., Zacharakis, A. & Spinelli, S. (2007). Entrepreneurship: The Engine of Growth, Volume 1. Westport. Praeger Publishers. Read More