Question: A small resort hotel that caters primarily to the family trade set as an objective an increase of 5% in its rooms occupancy over the next 12 months. Its strategy for achieving this was to convert some unused ground-floor storage space into a conference room that could seat about 30 people. It then marketed the resort property to businesses and organizations that agreed to hold two- or three-day meetings and use the guest rooms overnight. During the first conference that the hotel booked, the conference organizer complained severely about noise from children using the outdoor swimming pool and recreation facilities immediately outside the window area of the conference room.
Furthermore, the conference room delegates found there was no provision to have an evening meal served to them in the meeting room so that they could continue their discussions in private. Conference delegates were obliged to use the resort's regular dining room, where other residents were also seated. When subsequent conference groups arrived, they made the same complaints, and the resort found that negative word-of-mouth publicity had created difficulties for them in booking further conference groups. As a result, they did not achieve the desired increase in occupancy. Discuss the resort's problem with specific reference to the strategy it used to achieve its objective.