WHAT IS HOTEL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT TRAINING SIMULATION GAME?

The Hotel Business Management Training Simulation is a virtual management training game where participants are divided into teams and assigned the task of running 500-room hotels in a competitive virtual marketplace. Each 500-room hotel competes against other 500-room hotels located in the same destination that are managed by other participants. Just like in the real world, hotels compete against each other to attract customers from their target markets that will generate the most revenue and enable the management team to reach their monthly and annual financial and operational objectives.

The Hotel Business Management Training Simulation utilizes both operational decisions made by the management team for their hotel and operational decisions made by competing hotels to determine demand and revenue for each hotel. Operational decisions includes, but not limited to, capital investment, operating expenditures, marketing expenditures and pricing strategies. The external factors such as day of the week, demand patterns, etc. are also factored in the simulation.

At the beginning of each month (round of simulation), each hotel management team must determine their objectives and primary and secondary market segments from eight market segments included in the simulation. Afterwards, just like in the real world, the management team must make decisions relating to hotel operations, marketing, distribution, pricing, operational and capital investment decisions, and financing decisions to fund capital and operational expenditures. The challenge is to develop and implement a competitive business strategy that results in a competitive positioning in the marketplace and produces good financial performance as measured by market share, occupancy, RevPAR, ADR, total revenues, net operating earnings and net profits.

After making decisions for each month, results are made available to all management teams so that they can see how their actions and their competitors’ actions impact the performance of their businesses. Just like in the real world, each management team must analyze their previous months’ decisions and the outcomes of those decisions, competitors’ actions and strategies in the previous months, market and demand conditions for each segment before making their decisions. In order to be successful, decisions must be rational and logical based on thorough analysis of data from previous months and projections (forecast) for the future.

The Hotel Business Management Training Simulation game provides invaluable training opportunities for managers and management trainees to improve their managerial and operational skills and efficiencies. It also provides great learning experiences to students who are studying hospitality business management.

Contact Us

For questions and inquiries, please contact Dr. Dogan Gursoy at dgursoy@wsu.edu

For technical questions, please contact Yibai Li at yibai@wsu.edu