In order to provide diversified training opportunities for Macao's local hotel industry professionals and enhance their management skills, Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) and Cornell University, U.S.A. co-orgainsed a two-day Executive Development Programme on Planning for Profits for Hotels on 3 and 4 June. This workshop will integrate the disciplines of management accounting, finance, marketing and business decision making, aiming to enhance participants' management decision making skills with respect to pricing and incentives, advertising, staffing, service quality and other operating decisions by learning how to evaluate financial statements. The programme attracted 24 professionals of local hotels and mega resorts to participate. IFT has the honour of inviting Mr. Robert E. Kastner, an experienced lecturer in tourism education, to be the facilitator of this programme. Graduated from Cornell University with Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration specialising in finance, Mr. Kastner has been teaching at the School of Hotel Administration of Cornell in the areas of concentration include accounting, hotel financial management, investments, and personal computing. He has also developed numerous software programs in the area of financial management and hotel development earlier and has been teaching at Cornell's Professional Development Programme. The purpose of the programme is to enable participants to learn how to perform competitive analysis, identify opportunities to improve profitability and measure success. Programme topics include:
Formulate and implement marketing and profit making strategies for hotel operation;
Practice hotel decision-making and analysis through rapid feedback of operating results. Decision-making areas include pricing, rate incentives, advertising & promotion, staffing, operations and finance;
Perform competitive analysis and identify opportunities to improve profitability;
Understand the concept of GOP "Flow-Through" and the impact on profitability;
Practice income statement analysis, apply ratio analysis to hotel financial statements and discuss industry trend comparisons.
Understand the concept of operating leverage and how to calculate the break-even point;
Understand the performance measures of hotel operators and owners including vocabulary such as GOP, NOI, EBITDA, ROE, ROCE, ROA, ROI, etc.;
Understand the concepts of financing and financial leverage and its impact on profitability, cash flow and return on owners' investment. As the tourism and hospitality industry is growing swiftly in Macao, the demand for knowledgeable professionals is increasing and thus hotel management needs to upgrade themselves to cope with the changing market trends. This course offers key insights on how to plan for profits for hotels in a strategic and theoretical way which is definitely one of the essential areas in operating a hotel. It is hoped to strengthen the decision makers' theories and extend the knowledge to their operations.
IFT is always striving to enhance its research and teaching so as to contribute to the society. By organising diversified seminars and workshops, IFT constantly shares with the industry the most updated information and research findings about the future development of Macao's sustainable tourism industry and ways to enhance it.