The Virtual Business Challenge – Hotel Management Edition

Founded in 2009, The Virtual Business Challenge (VBC) has been providing participants with the opportunity to run a virtual business as part of a community of thousands of other entrepreneurs and small business owners around the world. The Hotel Management Edition will be a 12-week session starting on October 10th and running through December 20th, 2017. In this session, you’ll be challenged to build your skills as an entrepreneur by operating and managing your own hotel, from managing its finances to finding customers and employees to help you stay successful.

What is the Virtual Business Challenge?

The Virtual Business Challenge is a competition that tests your management and business skills in a realistic virtual environment. The rules of the VBC are simple; each team must own, manage and develop one or more hotels, whose overall aim is to achieve certain objectives while avoiding bankruptcy. Managing in real-time and with restrictions, members complete various tasks set by their hotel managements to achieve both short-term goals as well as long-term strategies. This is all overseen by mentors who provide advice and keep track of progress whilst also ensuring that all teams play by the rules. In addition to tasks such as recruiting staff, purchasing equipment, and decorating rooms, participants can acquire additional revenue streams such as advertising within games or even physical products available for purchase on eBay. Participants are able to enter competitions against other virtual businesses with prizes including computers and web hosting packages! At its core though, it’s about learning how to manage a business effectively under pressure! Aims: The aims of Hotel Management Edition (HME) will be similar to previous Virtual Business Challenges hosted by VirtualEducationalGroup.

Topic Overview

The Virtual Business Challenge is a competitive program that provides an opportunity for business professionals to apply their knowledge, build experience and hone their skills in virtual business environments. The VBC – Hotel Management edition offers participants an opportunity to develop skills and competencies in areas of virtual customer service, human resources management, brand and market research, strategy planning, and financial analysis within a hotel environment. It also allows managers to put their leadership abilities to the test while building a virtual organization from scratch. Participants will gain practice by going through each step of starting up a new business including researching market conditions, developing strategies and designing processes as well as learning how to lead teams and work collaboratively.

Step 1. Plan Your Startup

Hotels need a plan to start. No matter how big or small, they all have one of some sort. Hotel management is no different and we’re going to help you with planning your hotel startup plan. Every hotel must take many factors into consideration when deciding how to start their business, so it’s essential that you are as informed as possible before getting started. So before building a virtual business challenge in Hotel Management Edition, we’ll look at what you need to consider in creating a startup plan for your virtual hotel. When taking on any venture there are always questions that must be answered. These questions are often centered around who, what, where, and why?

Step 2. Create Your Product/Service Offerings

Create a list of different offerings you can sell. If you haven’t launched your business yet, just write down what you intend to offer in the future (i.e., once your business is up and running). If you already have a few different product or service offerings, be sure to add them to your list. For example, Full-day Junior Executive Boot Camp for Entrepreneurs – $995 plus travel expenses Non-Profit Speaker Engagement – $10,000 per speech Consulting Services – Negotiable The intention here is not to be stilted and formulaic but rather to capture all of these ideas in as much detail as possible for each potential product/service offering that will help your organization make money over time. Also, don’t worry about coming up with too many different offerings at first. You can always add more later on if needed. Step 3. Create Your Pricing Structure: Next, take some time to think about how you want to price your products and services—and whether or not you need to adjust those prices based on where they are sold.

Step 3. Design Your Branding/Marketing Materials

Branding is an important step to take when getting your business off of the ground. It will help build trust and increase customer confidence in you and your product or service. Make sure you have a catchy, professional-looking logo designed to represent your brand. Choose a typeface, color scheme, and style that work well together, ensuring that you’re sending off professional vibes with everything you do. Get a Facebook page going for your business, create an attractive website (or even use WordPress), and start promoting yourself on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn—just don’t spam everyone! Getting real people to follow you on Twitter is more important than just having 100K followers which are all fake accounts. Be careful not to overdo it; try to keep your branding consistent throughout all of your materials. You want customers to feel like they know what they’re getting before they ever make contact with you, so be sure that everything from your online presence down to your business cards reflects exactly what it is you’re selling. And if there’s one thing I can tell you about marketing: do not underestimate its importance! If you can get a lot of people talking about what it is that you offer, then by default those same people will become potential customers who will hopefully spread positive word-of-mouth about how great your products/services are.

Step 4. Choose Your Venue/Location

Step four is all about choosing your venue, or location. This can be a tough decision because it requires you to have an idea of where you will work (which means finding a suitable workspace and getting a reliable Internet connection), but it also requires knowing what sort of people you’ll be working with and if they will contribute to your goals. For example, if you want to build relationships in your field, it might not make sense to join an online business network where everyone is an introvert that likes being alone most of the time. On another note, I think you should choose somewhere that has all of your needs met so you don’t have any excuses for not working on your business.

Step 5. Marketing Tips & Strategies

Marketing Your virtual business is a fun and effective way to strengthen your understanding of both how businesses work and their relationships with clients. While getting started in real businesses can be intimidating, you don’t have to hire staff or lease office space if you plan on launching your own virtual business. Just remember that there’s more to it than just creating a company from scratch; once you’re up and running, you’ll need to keep paying attention to marketing strategies in order to maintain a competitive edge! In today’s post, we’ll give you some tips for using social media in particular and explain why marketing your business online is actually so much easier than it seems. Here are some quick tips for getting started:

1) Think about who your target audience is.

2) Create an image for your brand.

3) Keep track of what people say about you.

4) Find ways to improve your products and services based on feedback from customers.

5) Use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., to share information about your business with others.

6) Make sure that potential customers know how they can get in touch with you (e-mail address? phone number?)

7) Stay active on all platforms by posting at least once per day

8 ) Have fun while doing it!

Tips for Hotel Management

Some tips include: In setting up the hotel ensure that proper sanitation is being followed. It is important to maintain a clean area for guests, especially when hosting food establishments such as restaurants and cafeterias. Safety precautions should also be in place with alarms and surveillance as part of your security measures inside the hotel. It is also important to make sure that your employees have been trained in order to successfully run their operations properly. Training is essential for them so they can familiarize themselves with the different procedures in running each operation within the hotel.

Finally, deciding whether you should try to participate in a virtual business challenge like a Virtual MBA is always going to be difficult. Challenges can give you a great perspective on how important various aspects of your business are, and what changes need to be made. However, there’s also a risk involved in jumping into a new challenge. Before you decide if you want to sign up for one, make sure that your schedule can handle it—you don’t want something unexpected affecting your ability to participate! No matter what challenge you choose, though, always do some background research beforehand; it’ll help ensure that you have an idea of what exactly it is that you’re getting yourself into. If you’re looking for more information about Virtual MBA, check out their website here. And if you want to learn more about virtual challenges in general, check out our post here.