A Win-Win Relationship Between Horseshoe Bay Resort and Texa Tech University: Part I

By -
Over the years, Horseshoe Bay Resort, a Marriott franchised property, and the RHIM (Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management) program at Texas Tech University has built a close and win-win relationship. On one hand, the resort hotel hires about 25 RHIM students in the summer and a couple interns in the fall and spring to meet its temporary needs in staffing. On the other hand, RHIM students at Texas Tech can gain valuable first-hand operation experience in the resort hotel. How does this relationship work?

Today, I am travelling with two RHIM professors to the Texas Hill Country and learn more about Horseshoe Bay Resort and the students’ work. These professors are Dr. Shane Blum, Chairperson of the Nutrition, Hospitality, and Retailing Department, and Dr. Charlie Adams, Director of Career Center in the College of Human Sciences.

Horseshoe Bay Resort is located in the Texas Hill Country, about 45 minutes away from Austin and 90 minutes from San Antonio. Next to Horseshoe Bay, there are Marble Falls and Fredericksburg, which is a small German-influenced town. The resort has 385 bedrooms, of which 117 are suites and villas. Many of these rooms oversee the gorgeous Lake LBJ and the Texas Hill Country. It has more than 51,000 square feet meeting space and multiple restaurants. The resort also operates three Championship Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Golf courses, full service Marina with pontoon boat, jet-ski, and ski-boat rentals, Bayside Spa, Fitness Center, and a Private Jet Center.

Like most resort destinations, Horseshoe Bay often experiences high and low seasons and may have temporary needs in staffing. Tomorrow, I will meet with some managers and the RHIM students who are doing internships in the resort. I look forward to sharing their experience with you.

References:
The official website of Horseshoe Bay Resort: http://www.horseshoebaymarriott.com/
* The pictures (from the top to the bottom) show: a pool next to the hotel, a corner of the hotel lobby, and the reception area. If you are interested in seeing more pictures of the resort, please visit my Facebook page via www.facebook.com/linchi.kwok
Reactions:

Popular posts from this blog

Expedia, Priceline join battle against Airbnb

By -
Image
The growth of Airbnb has made a significant negative impact on hotel business, even though the hotel industry has also been enjoying a steady long-time growth since 2009, as measured in almost all performance indicators including occupancy, average daily rate, revenue per available rooms and number of new hotels open for business.

For hotels, it is a loss of revenue (or uncaptured income) when a traveler chooses to stay in an Airbnb listing rather than a hotel room. Hotels have been trying hard to fight with Airbnb, but it does not seem any of their strategies can actually stop the growth of the room-sharing website. Besides hotels, Airbnb also makes a negative impact on online travel agents (OTAs), such as Expedia and Priceline, especially when Airbnb is aiming to become a true full-service travel enterprise. Because a large portion of OTAs' revenue comes from the commissions on hotel sales, it is also a loss of revenue for OTAs when a traveler books a room elsewhere, either on Air…
Read more

Marketing segmentations for resorts (by Karen Valeria Sandoval)

By -
Image
The Year of 2017 has been a year full of renovations, many of which happened to take place within the hospitality industry. One specific topic is still, and might always be pondering in the minds of those in a hotel's or a resort's Marketing and Advertising Department. Who is the best market to cater to? Or more specifically --- Who is the best market to cater to for 2017-2018? Family vacationers could be the answer. Here is some insight into what families will be looking for and how a resort can get the businesses from family vacationers.


The “adults-only” segment
To answer this question, I took the liberty of investigating through last year's highlights to see what all the fuss was about for “adult-only” resorts and hotels. In 2016, "adult-only" resorts and hotels are popular among honeymoon goers, singles traveling, and overall, couples having some quality time to themselves. What drew them in were resorts based on a coastal, island settings. Such places as the …
Read more

Consumers' path of purchasing a travel product

By -
Image
Hotels have been working hard to win more travelers to "book direct" on their companies' websites, but are consumers listening? In fact, hotels are not alone. All service providers in the hospitality and tourism industry want their customers to make purchases directly on their websites, but consumers want to search and compare various options before making a decision. So, to convince customers to purchase directly on the service providers' websites, companies must understand where their customers "hang out" in the cyber marketplace before they make the purchasing decision, as well as where they end up buying their services. The white paper "Understanding the Travel Consumer's Path to Purchase" by Eye for Travel provides some business intelligence in that regard. The report combined a large panel consumer data of online transactions and surveys into the analysis, revealing the following results: The places where customers purchase a travel produ…
Read more