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Thomas Wang
V00728598
Bert Klatt
Huntingdon Manor
May, 14, 2014d
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Executive Summary

This report is to describe the working experience and knowledge obtained from
the spring coop work-term of 2014.
Vancouver Island is one of the most popular tourist sites in Canada, millions of
travelers and business groups pay their visits to Victoria each year. As an important
source of economic growth, Victorias tourism industry had played a significant role.
Huntingdon Manor is located at the Inner Harbour of downtown Victoria. It is a hotel that
had witnessed the citys history since the 1800s. The property was acquired last year by a
Chinese corporation named The North Corporation. It was now not only a hotel for
domestic and foreign tourists but also serve as base for the Corporations educational
program called UNIU by accommodating Chinese university exchange students. Unlike
the tourist hot season, exchange student groups are more concentrated in spring and
winter. Thus, the new owner of this property is then able to make sustaining profits over
the whole year.
I made a detailed introduction about Huntingdon Manor departments distributions
and functions. Each department is unique and perform significant duties to keep our
organization vibrate and profitable. More importantly, a better place not only for our
customers but also to the staff to work in.
As the Manager Assistant at Huntingdon Manor, I have developed strong
competencies in multi-tasking by working on 3 projects at the same time, negotiation
skills while getting better deals with local businesses, and expertise in bookkeeping.
Based on my observations while working in Huntingdon Manor, I made
suggestions such as Hotel Wi-fi service renovation, student tour group meal plans, and
building redecorations for my current employer. As well, there are some suggestions for
those who are also interested in working for the company at the end of this report.
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Table of Contents



Analysis I-------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Analysis II------------------------------------------------------------------------------2

SWOT Analysis------------------------------------------------------------------------3

Conclusions and Recommendations------------------------------------------------5
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Analysis I
Huntingdon Manor is a boutique hotel located at the Inner Harbour of Victoria. I
worked there as the Manager Assistant. Although my listed duties are assisting my
manager with daily management tasks such as documentation and filing, I also worked in
the department of accounting as well as tour guiding. If I am required to describe my
experience in one word, I would called this work term as busy. I was busy because
there are lots of things to learn and challenging task emerge everyday. But I love this
work term because I felt that my work done is valuable in generating valuable revenue
for company.
Miao is the owner and the General Manager of Huntingdon Manor. She is about
my age and is very ambitious about bringing the hotel back to life. Right after her
familys purchase of the property, hotel staffs were largely retained for their expertise and
experience. Our hotel provides quality hotel services to both Chinese exchange student
groups and other guests who are from all over the world. One interesting point to mention
about our hotel is that Huntingdon Manor allowed the tenants to bring their pets in except
a cheap fee is required by the Front Desk. There are also two restaurants in our hotel,
Hunters and Gatsby Mansion. Hunters is attached to our hotel building with a bar table
and an independent kitchen. Usually it is providing food for room order or tenants
breakfast. In Gatsby Mansions case, it is a building by itself that provides dinning
services to local citizens and tourists who are attracted to the traditional style of building.
Hunters recipes include oysters, chicken wings, and poutine. Gatsby Mansion serves
salmon, steak, and soup. I personally like Gatsby better because hotel management staff
gets 50% off.
Huntingdon Manor has several different departments including: Front Desk,
Housekeeping, Food and Beverage, Sales and Marketing, Maintenance, and Accounting.
The first three departments are the most populated ones, the others are only occupied by
one person. Front Desk is responsible for reception, room booking management, and
security. It is also where money is paid for parking and room charge. Housekeeping
consists many staff members, they were well trained to keep guests rooms cleaned up
and checked for security. Food and Beverage Manager took care of all the cooks and
servers. In addition, she is responsible for ordering supplies to keep our kitchen and
restaurant running. Sales and Marketing Manager is in charge of hotel promotion
activities. Maintenance is especially important for Huntingdon Manor because the
building is old and we are now going through the reconstruction stage to beautify the
hotel. Then Accounting has only one controller who is responsible for looking after the
companys financial health. Basically, our expense and revenue all go through him before
making effect. I am more involved with the accounting department. I learnt to use Simply
Accounting to enter daily revenue, record expenses, and to do payroll information during
the past few months.
To improve the quality of our guests stay, Miao made large investment to
redecorate our hotel. New carpets are bought, a gardener is now hired to make the garden
look nice, and better cooks are hired for Hunters. Student Voucher Program is now in
effect to reduce the pressure for serving both normal guests and student groups. And our
hotel is finding out a way to seek out the balance for between guests and student groups.
I believe the experience I gained working as a Managers assistant and
bookkeeper will give me an easier landing on future positions in hospitality and
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accounting industries. As some of my college friends already found their positions in
large corporations, my office experience would also help me to shorten the distance from
such achievements within the next 5 years.

Analysis II
Since this is my second coop work-term, my objective is to apply my expertise
and knowledge in Business to realize revenue targets for my employer. In this case, to
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our hotel management would be the first step.
As soon as our hotel is operating with a reliable mechanism, I will initiate my second
objective. To seize profits and expand our hotel business from student tour groups from
China to other countries. My final objective is to understand the hotel management
process and the pieces of each department. Eventually, to be able to draw a complete map
of how a hotel survives in Victoria. In order to realize those objective, first, I try my best
to first demonstrate professionalism in the workplace. Huntingdon Manor provide its
management staff with all necessary office equipment including a desktop PC and a
single room office. It is the first time for me to work in an office environment. Honestly, I
love the atmosphere here. Being on time used to be a little bit of problem when I was
taking buses, but now I got my first automobile in Canada I am almost always early to
my scheduled work time. With the healthy habit, I am then able to focus on studying the
pieces of this business. By examining payroll details, I am fully aware of hotel front line
staffs duties as well as their routine hours. It is extremely helpful in reducing costs when
I start to know what the minimum requirement on labour for each department is.
Also daily communication with department head helped me gain relationship in
this company. For example, when I need new keys for my office, I know who to ask. By
clearing up the door of communication, people open up more resources for me to utilize
when emergency or changes take place. It would be awkward for me to ask the Front
Desk Manager to order office supplies for me when we had not yet spoken to each other
before.
I remember when I was learning Accounting at BCom, balance sheets are the
most frequent subjects we discuss and think about within and outside the classroom.
However, when I really start to work in a bookkeeping role, daily entries of each revenue
or expense items are the major duties. Although eventually they go into Income
Statement and Balance Sheets for sure, but it takes up months to get that processed.
In addition, I thought managing people would be easy when I was sitting in the
classroom and writing our Organizational Behavior exam. I was wrong. In reality, people
are not as disciplined as I thought. Tasks, although simple, may be delayed or forgotten
for days or weeks. Unfortunately, business entities, too, may send in their invoices late
after three months and this could cause chaos to monthly reports. One of the things I
learnt is that I shall never wait till the problem occur, send advance notices to the
responsible contact and do not draw any conclusions when records are not complete.
Like any other BCom students, I believe my career can be a great success and
pride for me and my family. I think I am in a great career starting point now. At
Huntingdon Manor, I believe I saw the light of a responsible employer and a lovely team.
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SWOT Analysis
Strength Weakness
located in the tourists favorite site
Inner Harbour
The only hotel in town that has
sustainable student source of income
from China
Large room capacity and amount of
staff to handle large group of
customers
Long-time existence leads to positive
relations with local businesses
Aged building needs constant repair
and large cost in maintenance
Cultural barrier between new Chinese
staff and old Canadian Staff
In a bad position competing with
young competitors such as the Grand
Pacific and the Empress
Only 1 professional tour guide is not
enough for tour groups with around
50 people each that come every week
Opportunities Threats
Summer in Victoria promise a busy
and profitable season
Long term participation in Chinese
student exchange program brings
more local attention about the hotel
Nice location that can be sold or rent
for a better price when the
corporation decides to exit the market
Lack of variety of tourist program,
needs to expand the reach into cruise
tour group
Due to fierce competition, pricing is
going down slightly for the hot
season
Quality of cooked food within the
hotel is not satisfying for either hotel
residents nor for Chinese students

SWOT Recommendation
During this work-term, few major issues have surfaced. Some of them had been
changed and others should be further discussed about the possibility of improvements.
While I first started to work as a part-time tour guide, I received lots of student
complaints about the slow Wi-fi network in the hotel building. The previous owner only
made limited purchases of routers and services. Thus, there is only one router in each
floor of the hotel building. After we brought the feedback to our hotel General Manager,
Miao, she instantly made the purchases with indoor Wi-fi network service providers.
Now both students and tourists are very satisfied with the high speed free Wi-fi. As a
result, our hotel ratings online actually went up due to this small improvement.
Hotel used to provide group meals for student groups, but now we decided to
export the business to some of the local restaurants. There are two direct reasons that lead
to this decision. First, as the summer season approaches, student groups will take up all
the space for hotel residents who may wish to dine in our hotel restaurants. Second, our
kitchen staffs are unable to keep up with the quantity and quality of food provided for our
students. After few troubling nights and starving students, the voucher program is not in
place. By quickly negotiating with some restaurants, we now offer our students with the
opportunities to try out different recipes in town. For examples, every student will be
given with 1 voucher every night to Japanese, Chinese, Western, or French food. It also
became a chance for the students to experience the tipping culture in North American
restaurants.
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However, there are things not that easily changed or improved by a one-time and
inexpensive investment. For instances, the hotel area is indeed filled by 18
th
century
gardens and historical buildings. Nevertheless, they look quite old and fragile compared
to our neighbouring competitors. Though the hotel management team is aware of the
disadvantage, the redecoration and re-construction could potentially become the largest
expense and may injure hotels ability to accommodate guests for a long period of time.
In my opinion, whatever the cost may be, the hotel should pursue perfection on its sharp
look outside and solid and comfortable lay-out in the inside. I believe that as soon as our
hotels hardware got renewed and upgraded, along with the excellent service we provide,
Huntingdon Manor will soon become the famous hotel thats every tourists first choice.
The other problem I think would be interesting to talk about would be the fact that
we are having enough number of housekeeping, front desk, and restaurant staffs but there
is only one full time tour guide in Victoria. Based on the large volume of student groups
that leave and arrive back to back, one tour guide has caused server inefficiency in
finding people to take care of the two or three groups at the same time. As a result, our
only tour guide start to suffer from extensive overtime and non-stop working conditions.
My presence as a coop student somehow relieve him for a brief break for one day and he
will have to start work 100% with students. However, such scenario is not going to work
out during the long-term after I left for school. Recently, we are starting to look for fresh
blood tour guide. He is not being trained by the current tour guide and by me to
familiarize himself with the touring routine. Hopefully, with him joining the team, we are
able to process multiple groups at the same time.
To conclude, the student group business is generating revenue and it is deemed as
important as the hotels traditional accommodation business. There is a clear tendency
that the entire hotel staff team is working to serve their needs as a priority. I would
suggest the company to find a healthy balance between traditional hotel business and
student group business.


Recommendation for Future Applicants


This position best fits BCom students who are seeking to complete their second
coop; it is great job to take because it helps the coop student to better understand how
hotel business operates. This position will be also a good choice for students who wish to
enter the field of tourism in their senior academic years.
If students have decided to join this company, it is better for them to start working
in different roles as much as possible. Because hotel has different aspects and each of the
job duty require a different type of skill. It would be better to be trained with various
abilities and eventually become the superman that can do everything.
At the end, feel free to talk to your manager or colleague for help, they are very
nice. Best of luck with the coop work-term at Huntingdon Manor.