A group of ten hotel chains have decided to merge their business to combat market pressure for low priced hotel accommodation. The new chain called StayTogether has over a thousand hotels from all categories (backpacker, bed & breakfast homes to luxurious suites) around the world. It combats the sale of hotel rooms via popular web sites such as booking.com, hotels.com and so on which reduces their profits and waters down their corporate image. Bookings will be from a single web site only (with a complementary mobile app) and prices are fixed through the year with peak pricing during popular periods. Senior management has finalised on the following decisions: 1. A customer loyalty scheme called StayTogether Loyalty will reward customers with airport transfers, car parking on site and free nights. 2. If a kitchen and standard restaurant is on site, buffet breakfast and dinner is included in the hotel room price. This is to add to the ******** value earned per guest. Exclusive restaurants on site will charge extra. 3. If travellers arrive by selected airlines, rebates are given. Customers can choose credit for free nights or meals. 4. A corporate social responsibility programme to allow customers to nominate the charity where they want the chain to donate to. 1% of their total (billable) expenses will go to this charity. Assignment format An executive summary, or management summary, is a short document or section of a document, produced for business purposes, that summarizes a longer report or proposal or a group of related reports in such a way that readers can rapidly become acquainted with a large body of material without having to read it all. For example, write your summary this way: This report provides an critical analysis and evaluation of... Results of the analysis show that the four management decisions designed to improve the business competitiveness are... The report finds the prospects of the company to compete successfully with booking.com and hotels.com are... Recommendations discussed include... Your Introduction can start like this (150 words): This report is a critical analysis of the management decisions in systems and technology at StayTogether, a group of ten hotel chains that have decided to merge their business to combat market pressure for low priced hotel accommodation...and so on and so forth (state the problems here that StayTogether is trying to resolve). This report will primarily discuss the four management decisions designed to affect customer choice, continued patronage, brand loyalty, attract new customers (from competitors) and any other new business opportunities that may arise with such a set up. Finally, this report provides recommendations on how to utilise ICT to gain competitive advantage against their competitors. In this report, i also made the following assumptions...(state assumptions here, for example, the app was developed internally (proprietary), by one of the hotel chain's IT group). You Body may be divided into the following sections (1800 words): Critique into the four management decisions (Since the goal is continued patronage, brand loyalty, attract new customers (from competitors) and any other new business opportunities that may arise with such a set up, discuss whether the four strategies below will most likely, or least likely help achieve their goals). The four management decisions are: - Loyalty scheme - Free buffet breakfast and dinner - Rebates - Social responsibility (i.e., charity donations) For example, you may write: Loyalty programs are structured marketing strategies designed by merchants to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of businesses associated with each program (Sharp et. al., 1997). Over time the data can reveal, for example, a given customer's favorite brand of beer, or whether he or she is a vegetarian. Data collected can be used to formulate marketing messages specifically tailored to the customers needs. Loyalty program works because (state your reasons here)... REFERENCES Sharp, Byron and Anne Sharp (1997), "Loyalty Programs and Their on Repeat-Purchase Loyalty Patterns", International Journal of Research in Marketing, 14 (5), 473-86. Difference between IT and IS issues the company will face - Issues such as scalability issues, technology compatibility issues, data conversion issues, sustainability issues, legal issues (patented technologies), employment issues (machines replacing people in the job), user interface issues, etc How these issues affect customer choice, continued patronage, brand loyalty, etc. (for example, if user interface is not user friendly) Conclusions/Recommendations How to attract new customers (from competitors). Your response here should be beyond the four management decisions above. For example, should they use BI as well? CRM? SCM? New business opportunities that may arise with such a set up (eg. technological services on site, personalised automated tour guide, etc.). References Minimum 5 references. Follow the generally accepted format for a business report: - Title - Executive Summary - Introduction - Main Body - Conclusion - Reference List Thanks and Re