Background

The focus of this course is on strategic management in the hospitality and tourism industry- the process of choosing and defining purposes,  goals, and objectives,  formulating a  strategy and implementing it while taking into account the available resources. The Business Analysis Paper (BAP) has been assigned in an effort to operationalize what is covered in course materials. 

As such,  the  BAP  assignment has been designed to develop your ability to understand an organization as a  whole;  to understand how and why the various functions of a  business are interdependent and need to be coordinated. The focus is the organization in its totality – the environment in which it operates (external and internal) and how the organization’s strategy builds on the firm’s internal administrative activities. This is the focus of the BAP. 

The emphasis is on the types of problems and issues that affect the success of the entire organization. While there is a general applicability of the strategic management discipline to all types of firms (i.e.; nonprofit), in the end, the focus in the course and hence the BAP will be on profit-oriented enterprises operating in a competitive environment in the hospitality industry. Hence, your identified company for this analysis must be public, profit-based and directly in the hospitality/tourism industry. 

Your background in preparing the BAP will be through readings, discussions, and support materials posted each week in Canvas modules. The textbook will be an important tool for you as the /table of contents for the paper follows the content structure found in the textbook. 

Even though some of the readings may be more historical in nature, the theoretical background to Strategic Management is important for you to understand. Additionally, many of these historical (dated) theories are still used in Strategic Management today or have been built upon to reach more current theories.  I  have tried to include a  wide range of both historical and current materials including some of the prevailing views and  ideas about the manager as an architect and implementer of a strategy.

Nuts and Bolts

You will write a strategic analysis (BAP) of public, for profit, hospitality, or tourism company of your choice. This is an individual project. 

Company Selection: You must select a public company in order to have access to materials and information on the internet you will need.  You will submit the stock exchange code when you submit your company selection to Discussion 3 for approval. 

Critical Thinking (graduate level): Imagine you are the recently hired top management consultant (and making a lot of $$) for your selected company. You will be conducting an in-depth analysis of the firm, and apply the concepts, analytical tools and frameworks of the course to analyze its vision, mission, external and internal environments, competitors, financial structure and more to identify the firm’s problems, strategic options and ultimately develop a  set of recommendations to maximize the firm’s long-term financial performance and success. 

The BAP consists of three components (not of equal depth); 

An Industry Analysis; A Company Analysis; Problem Identification/Solutions/Recommendations.