Identify (3) three revenue management “factors” that will have an impact on a hotel with respect to optimizing revenue generation. Explain and elaborate each concept.

The Wellington Plaza Hotel is located close to the main railway station in a large regional city. Its main client base is business people visiting the city for work-related purposes. The second-largest group of clients consists of groups of (mainly) women visiting the city for its great shopping. All major department stores have a presence in the city and there are a number of specialty shops and factory outlets. Another large group of clients are groups of (mainly) men visiting the city for various sports events, including several important hockey games during the winter. Occupancy rates have been reasonable but stagnant for several years, providing a steady but unsatisfactory rate of return for the owners of the hotel. Revenues have only been sufficient to cover operating costs. In an effort to increase the hotel’s profitability, a major renovation program was undertaken and completed earlier this year. The renovation was predicted to increase the relative attractiveness of the hotel to guests. It was also undertaken to earn additional revenue from the rent of a new coffee shop on the ground floor. The coffee shop is run by a separate company that has purchased a franchise of a major international brand. An economic slow down means business travel is down by 25 percent across the country. Further, discretionary retail spending is down by 40 percent. Several specialty shops in the city have already shut down and others are cutting their opening hours. In addition, the hockey series was won by the local team in four games (instead of the possible seven games). Thousands of visitors left the city early once the final game was over. Just before the hockey games began, the coffee-shop owners went bankrupt and closed down, breaking their lease. The hotel owners are seeking legal advice on whether they can claim penalty fees on the broken lease. Finally, the hotel owners’ bank is warning that the short-term financing obtained for the renovations will not be renewed when it is due (one month after year end). The hotel managers had expected to repay the debt from this year’s bookings and the coffee-shop lease. The hotel owners are still hopeful that the summer will bring a large increase in occupancy (and revenue) as the weather is expected to be nice. This expected summer trade is essential to meet repayments on the long-term debt and to convince the bank to extend the short-term debt. (a) New attempt is in progress. Some of the new entries may impact the last attempt grading.Your answer is incorrect. Which of the following conditions in this case may cast doubt on the client’s ability to continue as a going concern? (There may be more than one correct answer)

A.Economic slowdown

B.Prolonged losses

C.Inability to renew short-term financing when it comes due

D.Supplier reluctance to provide goods on credit

E.Lower occupancy fees due to reduced demand from customers

F.Loss of rent from coffee shop with uncertainty about a new lease

G.Rapid growth with insufficient planning

H.Falling behind competitors

Case – Recreational Park Project

The public has recognized the benefits of recreation and parks as essential to their health and quality of life. A recent survey conducted in 2016 found that the construction of more recreational facilities was a top priority among residents in Lazarette Town (in the Caribbean).

As such, the town council in Lazarette, with the help of other key stakeholders, has sourced and secured three (3) million dollars of grant funds from the Caribbean Wellness Community (CWC) for the development of a mini outdoor recreational park on three (3) acres of land donated by a benevolent resident of the town.

The park will contain sporting facilities among other recreational facilities (e.g. walking trails, children playground, tennis court, basketball court, work out stations, benches, shower facilities, rest rooms etc.). All major key stakeholders and sponsors have unanimously agreed that that the facility should cater for residents of all ages. Additionally, a group of minority stakeholders has expressed their requirements of having an eco-friendly and climate resilient facility. The park should be completed and ready for use by 2022, i.e. the project duration should not exceed two years.

To ensure that the project is completed on time, within scope and on budget, the funding agency and the Lazarette Town Council require that a dedicated and knowledgeable project team is assigned to the project. CWC has expressed the need for the project deliverables to be of ‘high’ quality to guarantee stakeholders’ satisfaction and safety. The CWC requires that ‘tight’ procurement processes should be followed to ensure transparency, accountability and economy. It is anticipated that most of the goods, works and services for building the park will be procured from vendors, suppliers and contractors in the town. In addition, CWC has detailed the need for both positive and negative projects risk to be properly managed throughout the project.

In response to CWC implied and expressed requirements, the Lazarette Town Council has selected and appointed your team to provide project management services for the Recreational Park Project. As a proactive team, your team has decided to use ‘best practices’ in project management to plan project activities and get approval from key project stakeholders before constructing or building the facility. Give the type and nature of the project, the intention is to use a traditional/waterfall approach to project management activities instead of the largely popular and contemporary agile methodology used other industries.

Your team understands the value of planning before doing, and the council’s concerns of not losing the grant funding from CWC. In addition, your team is keen on building a good reputation in the

town. With a can do attitude and the need to increase the chances of the project success, the project management team (your 5-member group) is determined to ensure that the team utilizes the ‘best practices’ for planning, executing and controlling this valuable community based project.

1. Propose an initial risk register for the Recreational Park Project. The risk register should contain a minimum of 10 risks.

* Use template of your choice fo

Warkworth Furniture specializes in environmentally friendly and sustainable furniture. One of its products, the TePaki desk, uses bamboo for the surface and recycled aluminum for the supports. The desk is made in its factory in Vietnam and shipped to all of its 30 stores throughout the United States, primarily in the large urban areas on either coast. Karen Williamson, the owner of Warkworth Furniture, is struggling with how it should organize i supply chain. Currently, it ships the desks from Vietnam to the United States via ocean carrier. Once they arrive in the United States, they are shipped via a third-party carrier to each store. It usually takes 10 weeks between when an order is placed with the factory and when the product is received in a store. The TePaki desk may be eco-friendly, but it isn't wallet friendly: Each desk costs Warkworth $325 to make and it sells the desk for $850. Nevertheless, Warkworth has been able to identify a market segment of customers that value the look of the desk and what it represents. Across it:s stores, it sells six desks per week, or 0.2 desk per week per store. Given the upscale nature of its business, Warkworth's stores are located in nice areas that unfortunately have high rents. Consequently, between the opportunity cost of capital and the cost of physical space, Karen estimates that it costs Warkworth $150 to hold each TePaki desk in one of its stores for one year. It would be a financial disaster if each desk actually spent the entire year in inventory in a store, but the $150 does represent the true cost of holding a desk in a store for that period of time. Shipping a TePaki desk from Vietnam to a store costs Warkworth $80 per desk, about $40 for the ocean portion of the journey and $40 for the land portion within the United States. Shipping a TePaki desk from Vietnam to a store costs Warkworth $80 per desk, about $40 for the ocean portion of the journey and $40 for the land portion within the United States. Andy Philpot, Warkworth's director of operations, has been arguing for some time that Warkworth should set up a distribution center in southern California to receive products from Asia, and from there distribute them to its various stores. Warehouse space is much cheaper than prime retail space. Hence, the holding cost per TePaki desk per year in a warehouse would only be $60. The only problem with this approach, according to Andy, is that the total shipping cost from factory to store could increase by $8 per desk due to the extra handling and shipping distance once all of the desks are routed through a distribution center. Karen understands why the distribution center approach could make sense, but she worries about getting all of the execution done right. Instead, she suggests that it ship all of the desks directly to the stores as it currently does, but then ship product between stores as needed. The only problem with that approach is that it probably will cost it about $40 per desk to ship from one store to another. To add to the discussion, Kathy White, Warkworth's marketing director, is concerned with how these ideas will affect the desks' in-store availability. She proudly reminds everyone that Warkworth currently has a .99 in-stock probability for the TePaki desk. Andy, a typical ops guy, quips that it could save a ton if it were willing to make its customers wait a week or so to get their desk delivered to the store from a distribution center.

1. How much does Warkworth incur in holding costs each year with its current system of delivering directly from the factory to its stores?

2. Say Warkworth opens a distribution center in southern California. How much would it incur in holding costs each year with that strategy?

3. Say Warkworth opens a distribution center in southern California. How much does it incur in holding costs per desk?

4. Would you recommend that it consider Karen's idea of holding all inventory at the stores but shipping between stores as needed?

5. Say Warkworth listened to Andy and didn’t hold inventory at the stores. Instead, inventory would be held in a distribution center and shipped to the stores as needed. How much would it save in inventory holding costs with this strategy?

Show any work.

Universe Studios Sentiasa is a theme park licensed from a major Bollywood studio. Customers pay a fixed fee to enter the park where they can participate in a variety of activities such as riding roller-coasters, playing on slides and purchasing themed souvenirs from gift shops.

Customers purchase tickets to enter the theme park from ticket offices located outside the park. Tickets are only valid on the day of purchase. Adults and children are chargedthe same price for admission to the park. Tickets are preprinted and stored in each ticket office. Tickets are purchased using either cash or credit cards. Each ticket has a number comprising of two elements - two digits relating to the ticket office followed by six digits to identify the ticket. The last six digits are in ascending sequential order.All cash ticket sales are recorded on a computer showing the amount of each sale and the number of tickets issued. This information is transferred electronically to the accounts office. Cash is collected regularly from each ticket office by two security guards. The cash is then counted by two accounts clerks and banked on a daily basis. The total cash from each ticket office is agreed to the sales information that has been transferred from each office. Total cash received is then recorded in the cash book, and then the general ledger.

The park also accepts Visa and Mastercard. Payments by credit cards are authorised online as the customers purchase their tickets. Computers in each ticket office record the sales information, which is transferred electronically to the accounts office. Credit card sales are recorded for each credit card company in a receivables ledger. When payment is received from the credit card companies, the accounts clerks agree the total sales values to the amounts received from the credit card companies, less the commission payable to those companies. The receivables ledger is updated with the payments received. You are now commencing the planning of the annual audit of Universe Studios Sentiasa .

Required

(a) Identify four (4) risks that could affect the assertion of completeness of sales and cash receipts. [12 marks] (b) Discuss the extent to which substantive procedures could be used to confirm the assertion of completeness of income in Universe Studios Sentiasa. [6 marks] (c) Provide any four (4) substantive analytical procedures that can be used to give assurance on the total income from ticket sales for one day in Universe Studios Sentiasa. [12 marks]

An Illinois state program evaluator is tasked with studying the intelligence of soon-to-graduate high school students in a number of Chicago-area high schools.

One of the specific questions that needs to be answered is, “How do the students of Collins High School, one of Chicago’s lowest-rated high schools in terms of academic achievement, fare in intelligence compared to students of Lincoln Park High School, one of Chicago’s highest-rated high schools in terms of academic achievement?”.

To conduct this study, the program evaluator administers the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 4th Edition (WAIS-IV) to one 12th grade class from each high school in the Chicago area (if you are interested in learning more about the WAIS-IV, click here).

The following table shows the WAIS-IV scores for student from Collins HS and Lincoln Park HS (note: data were fabricated for purposes of this excersize):

First, complete the below grouped frequency table of WAIS-IV scores for each HS:

Compute the appropriate calculations to complete the following table :

What is the shape of the distribution of intelligence scores (normal, negatively skewed, positively skewed) for Collins HS? Explain how you arrived at your answer.

What is the shape of the distribution of intelligence scores (normal, negatively skewed, positively skewed) for Lincoln Park HS? Explain how you arrived at your answer.

Many product markets exhibit characteristics of both monopolistic competition and oligopolies, such as video game consoles and movie theater chains. What characteristics in each of these markets make it more monopolistically competitive? Which characteristics make it more like an oligopoly?

a. Elastic demand with differentiated products.

b. Differentiated products with mutual interdependence.

c. Single seller of a good or service and collusive agreement.

d. Large number of sellers with homogenous products.

A sociologist who studies guns is interested in understanding the differences in gun ownership across the United States, particularly if there is a difference in number of guns owned per household in Majority Republican States (n=18) vs. Majority Democrat States (n=22). 10 states do not have a political lean. (2018 data (Links to an external site.)).

• Sociological note: guns, gun violence, and gun ownership are currently under-studied in the US, particularly because of the lack of funding and data available on this topic. Although we may have some stereotypes about pro-gun attitudes and political affiliation, there isn’t enough research to assume the directionality of the relationship between the majority political opinion of a state and the number of guns owned per household.

Answer the following questions. While you are not asked to provide all of the information we have performed on the worksheets in class, following along with the worksheets will help you to answer this problem. Assume that you are performing a t-test at an alpha level of 0.05 (p<0.05).

A) What is the right t-test to use in this case: one-tailed or two-tailed? Why?

B) State your alternative and null hypotheses.

C) What is t-calculated?

D) What is t-critical?

E) Compare t-critical and t-calculated. What decision will you make: reject the null hypothesis, or reject the alternative hypothesis?

F) State your results in a complete sentence as described on the worksheet, including the mathematical portion. Explain what you can (and can’t) determine about the relationship between the variables at hand.