Through WCCUSD’s Ivy League Connection program, Hercules High School Students Justine Betschart, Stacy Chan, Ramiah Davis-Shephard, Louisa Man, Julia Maniquiz, and Yueming Wang will be attending Cornell University to either study Freedom and Justice or Hotel Operations Management during the summer of 2009.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

After the basics

Since the professors have gone through the basics of hotel management, they have started to veer into a more fun direction. We had a continuation of the housekeeping lecture we had the other day today with Reneta as well as took a quiz on the weekend readings. Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy were not pleased with the scores on the last quiz so they decided to cancel that one out. I was glad. I have to be truthful, I was one of those students who did no do so well. I did some major studying for today's quiz and I am confident I will receive a pretty decent grade. In the afternoon, we began a small lecture on casinos. Mrs. McCarthy told us at the beginning of this course that when we get into casinos, things will be a lot more fun and interesting. I have to agree with her.

Hotel casinos have their own style, charm, and do not follow the same type of management as normal hotels. First of all, they are not ranked the same. They do no fall into scales of services such as upper upscale or midscale. I asked Mrs. McCarthy which category would hotel casinos fall under, and she explained to me that they do not officially fall into a category. However, if you were grouping them that way, they would be mostly upscale to luxury. They have to at least be midscale though since they proved food an beverage.

If I were to decide to work in the hospitality industry, I would choose to work in a hotel casino. Everything is so opulent and vibrant. There is always excitement in the air and everyone is there for the same reason, to have fun. Although, I must brush up on my poker hands and every other card game. Actually, I should really learn all the card games and work on my poker face.

In the evening, I went to office hours and worked diligently on the group final report. I am in charge of the rooms contribution statements. Once again, the microsoft software has challenged me again. To do the room contribution statements, or the calculation of revenues each room is contributing, there is already a sheet on Excel in which Mr. McCarthy set up. All we have to do is fill in our numbers on the expense sheet, which is also on Excel. The rooms contribution sheet refers to the expense sheet, so it basically does a lot of the work for me. However, I notice some errors. As I was comparing the data being calculated to the actual data on the CHESS game file, they did not match. For the entire two hours of office hours, I sat there playing with the Excel sheet trying to figure out what was wrong. I asked a TA for assistance and she was able to explain to me that they may not always match up. From there, I proceeded to just complete the sheet. I realized that most of it I will have to do calculations manually.

Tomorrow will be an all day work day for us. We will be working for 9:00AM to 9:30PM, with food breaks of course. It will certainly be a long day.

~Louisa

1 comment:

  1. Louisa,

    I’m sure the McCarthy’s will bear this out but in those big fancy hotels that have casinos, the casino really isn’t a part of the hotel. Sure, they’re housed in the same building but they’re a separate operation just as food & beverage and entertainment is.

    Being an expert in gaming would have nothing to do with the hotel end of things and vice versa.

    Also, it may surprise you to learn that the number of employees associated with the hotel end of things and also the food & beverage end, far surpasses those in the gaming end. Try to imagine the housekeeping staff and even the restaurant staff when you have 5,000 rooms.

    The vast majority of the guests at these hotels never gamble beyond sitting in front of a slot machine so they’re low maintenance with the gaming staff.

    Conventions are a HUGE part of the Las Vegas hotel business these days with many of the hotels having their own convention center (as opposed to a centralized convention center like they used to have or like most cities have.).

    I used to attend conventions in Las Vegas where we would have 6,000 delegates in the convention center plus guests.

    A big part of the convention business are the parties and the hospitality suites. At these parties, they might be serving food and beverages for maybe 15-20,000 people. One of the staples at these parties are large shrimp. At the last party I went to in Vegas the shrimp would cost the party thrower $5 apiece and they figured at least 10 per guest. Do the quick math and you can see that they might spend $75-$100,000 just for the shrimp at these parties. And never underestimate the profits on water downed drinks.

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