The Upper Midwest of the United States has lagged behind the economic recovery enjoyed by much of the rest of the nation. With an economy built largely on the steel, lumber, agriculture, and manufacturing industries, local businesses were hit by the triple challenges of declining commodity prices, globalization, and automation. Countries such as China and Canada offer cheaper steel or lumber, crop prices have been falling, and many manufacturing jobs either were replaced by robots or moved to China, Southeast Asia, or Mexico. Finding thriving businesses in this region can be difficult, and one of the few standouts has been in the gaming industry.

A small group of Native American tribal leaders opened the Brown Bear casino about 30 years ago. The facility was built on tribal land. Initially started as a relatively small stand-alone casino, the complex has grown to include 2,000 slot machines, 25 blackjack tables, a bingo ball for 600 players, a convention center, a 400+ room hotel, three restaurants, and a golf course. Over the years it has become a destination location for those wanting to play golf, see shows, enjoy good meals, and gamble without having to travel all the way to Las Vegas to make it happen.

The Brown Bear casino complex is now a $50 million business headed up by a general manager, who in turn oversees 11 different department heads, such as the chief financial officer, head of security, director of gaming operations, and so on. These 11 leaders manage the 1,200 employees working at the casino, hotel, convention center, and golf course. Although the casino enjoyed strong growth during its first 20 years of existence, it has not recovered fully from the economic recession of 2007-2009. Many of the good-paying jobs in the area disappeared, and as a result the local population has become considerably smaller and older. Compounding this problem is the fact that the gaming industry is facing increasing competition for customers' entertainment dollars. The chief marketing officer has implemented a number of campaigns to bring more and younger customers into the casino and increase their average spend per visit, but so far these efforts have yielded negligible results.

Although the casino is the largest employer in the area, staffing and employee engagement have been chronic problems. Many long-term employees appear to be completely checked out at work, biding their time until retirement, and they go out of their way to disparage those who put in an honest day's work. Despite paying a competitive wage and the relative scarcity of good-paying jobs in the region, the casino averages 30 percent annual turnover, with some positions reporting turnover rates over 100 percent. Turnover is not only taking a toll on the employees who remain (as they often have to pick up the slack for those who leave), but it also has an impact on the casino s customer satisfaction and financial results. Newer and less experienced staff do not know how to handle more complex customer issues, and it costs the casino $1,000-$5,000 in recruiting fees for each new person hired. With 400 new staff being hired each year, these staffing fees are having a material impact on the company's bottom line.

The general manager has asked you to help reduce staff turnover, create a more engaged staff, in the hope that this will improve the casino's customer satisfaction ratings, and have a positive impact on revenues and profitability.

QUESTIONS

1. How could you use the following motivation approaches to reduce turnover and improve employee motivation? Be as detailed and specific as possible and demonstrate that you understand how to apply the theory to the situation.

1. Goal setting theory
2. Organizational Justice
3. Herzberg’s two factor theory
4. Expectancy Theory

WinCo Foods, a large Discount grocery retailer in the western United States, promotes itself as the lowest priced grocery retailer. In newspaper ads WinCo Foods published a price comparison for products between WinCo and several competing grocery retailers. One of the retailers compared against WinCo was Walmart, also known as a low price competitor. WinCo selected a variety of prodcts, listed the price of the product charges at each retailers, and showed the sales receipt to prove the prices at WinCo were the lowest in the area. A sample of the products and their prices comparison at both WinCo and Walmart are shown in the following table:

1. What is the null and alternative hypothesis to the case above?
2. Copy the data into excel and do an analysis to test the hypothesis
3. What is the conclusion of your analysis? (State it in terms of the case or scenario)
4. At the bottom of the price list, the following statement appears: “ Though this list is not intended to represent a typical weekly grocery order or a random list of grocery items, WinCo continues to be the area’s low price leader” Why do you think WinCo added this statement?

Explain what Net Operating Income is and what is meant by Net Operating Loss. What factors arre associated when calculating the Net Operating Income percentage for a hotel? Why is this measure a good way of evaluating the hotel performance?

Park is always willing to give up 5 tangerines for 1 orange. The price of one orange is $1 and the price of one tangerine is $0.25. Park's spending budget for orange and tangerine is $10.

(1) Park is currently consuming 16 tangerines and 6 oranges. Give a suggestion about the direction of substitution for Park to improve his satisfaction.  Justify your suggestion using the economic meaning of the marginal rate of substitution and the market rate of substitution.

(2) To maximize his satisfaction, how many oranges and tangerines should Park purchase with $10 budget?  

(3) Give a graph in which the optimal consumption point shown. Include both the budget line and an indifference curve related to the optimal consumption. Clearly label the axes and mark the coordinates of the optimal consumption point.  

You are an intern at the health department of your city. An outbreak of coronavirus has been detected in a hotel in your city. 10 guests are infected. You must decide whether to quarantine the hotel or not. There are 1000 guests in the hotel. From previous experience, we know that at least half of them will be infected if the quarantine goes in to effect. If there is no quarantine the virus will spread more rapidly to the general population in the city. What would you do? Your city has 8 million population. The death rate of this virus is 2%, the cost of lock down of hotel is AED 1M per day. The length of the quarantine is 2 months. What would you do? Use the five step ethical decision making approach to resolve this case and indicate which approach you will be taken.

Park Co. is considering an investment that requires immediate payment of $21,555 and provides expected cash inflows of $6,800 annually for four years. Park Co. requires a 8% return on its investments.

1-a. What is the net present value of this investment? (PV of $1, FV of $1, PVA of $1, and FVA of $1)

1-b. Based on NPV alone, should Park Co. invest?

1-c. What is the internal rate of return? (PV of $1, FV of $1, PVA of $1, and FVA of $1)

1-d. Based on its internal rate of return, should Park Co. make the investment?

The Manager at Rainbow Valley II advertises that the typical family visiting the park spends at least one hour in the park during weekends. A sample of 25 visitors during the weekends in the month of July revealed that the mean time spent in the Park was 63 minutes with a standard deviation of 8 minutes.

1. Using the 0.01 significance level and a one-tailed test, is it reasonable to conclude that the mean time in the Park is greater than 60 minutes? Show all steps in your test of hypothesis.

2. Repeat the analysis at the 0.05 significance level. (You may show only the calculations that change).

3. Repeat with a survey mean of 64 minutes at the .01 significance level. (You may show only the calculations that change).

4. What do you conclude from your analysis?

Hotel Occupancy

C++ Only

Program Description

Write a program that calculates the occupancy rate for a hotel. The program should read its data from a file named "hotel.dat". The first line of this file will be a single integer specifying the number of floors in the hotel. Each of the remaining (N) lines will have two integers; the number of rooms on that floor and the number of occupied rooms on that floor.

Your program should display the following:

• How many rooms the hotel has,
• How many rooms are occupied,
• How many are unoccupied, and
• The percentage of rooms that are occupied.

Notes

1. Your program should be named hotel.cc.
2. You can build this program initially to read from the keyboard, get that working, and then modify the program to read from the file.
3. You will need to create the "hotel.dat" data file.

Mermaid Beach Hotel Ltd (Mermaid Hotel) operates a seaside hotel on the Sunshine Coast, providing
accommodation, bar and restaurant facilities for tourists. Casual and part-time wages are a major
expense item, particularly during summer, when up to an additional 30 staff members are employed.
In order to keep track of casual and part-time wages, Mermaid Hotel’s operations manager prepares
a weekly roster (using Excel) showing:


• employee name
• employment position (e.g. bar staff)
• days and hours rostered for the week
• hourly rate
• any additional amounts to be paid (e.g. meal allowances).


Each employee’s immediate supervisor is required to sign a hard copy of the Excel roster spreadsheet
on a daily basis as evidence that the hours were worked as rostered. Any discrepancies (e.g. additional
hours) are recorded on a separate payroll adjustment form (PAF) and co-signed by the employee. The
Excel roster spreadsheet plus any PAFs are forwarded to the payroll officer at the end of the week and
used as the basis for that week’s casual and part-time employee payroll. Last year, you still placed
reliance on controls over casual and part-time wages, despite finding some breakdowns in controls,
as you were able to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence that the controls were operating
effectively. Assume that you have decided it is appropriate to test internal controls over the relevant
payroll transactions.


Required:

Briefly outline how the information provided above would affect the nature, timing and extent of tests of controls.