Hospitality Consulting

Re-position a German Family Owned Hotel for the 21st Century while maintaining the local atmosphere.

This successful hotel outside Hamburg, Germany was slowly being pushed aside by multi-national chains. They had just expanded their restaurant, and added 50 additional guest rooms; unfortunately, this only increased overhead. Our solution was to move the perception of the hotel from a stopover for salesmen to an upscale vacation spot. A swimming pool, unusual in Northern German Hotels, was added, a 3 "chef hat" (stars in U.S.) executive chef was found and employed, and a website offering online booking and weekend packages was completed. This brought the hotel to the forefront with local Hamburg organizations for their meetings and took advantage of the German custom of traveling on weekends. By emphasizing their closeness to the autobahn, family atmosphere, great food, and the large concentration of antique dealers in the area, we enabled them to increase their weekly commercial guests while adding weekend stays; bringing occupancy rates to an average of 68% and being overbooked during holidays and weekends.

Print Production & Design

Printing an expensive catalog in a very tight mail order/e-commerce market.

Our client was spending several hundred thousand dollars each year to conventionally print a catalog of their products. They needed to cut costs, but had concern their customers would order less without the catalog in front of them. Our consultants did an extensive survey of clients and determined that it was true that everyone liked having a catalog. We approached the conundrum from a different angle. The catalog artwork production was switched to an inside task, then converted to an Adobe PDF searchable file and written to dvds. Clients then received the (much lower cost) full catalog, it was easily searchable and an electronic order form was included to streamline the overall order process. We are now implementing a application where clients can see the illustrated models wearing a selectable color of each item, this will sell more items while cutting down on returns because of misinterpretation of color shades.

Restaurant & Clubs

Concept-to-Daily Management. We have done it all, as well as realistically the most important aspects in today's market - promotion and customer service training.

To many restaurants and clubs are brought online without considering how to get customers to the venue and conversely, have them come back again and again. Many fantastic concepts, and great chefs, have failed because the promotion policy and employee training have not been considered. This is why the most successful venues operating today are large chains. They have the financial strength to endure, the research to be sure their concept will work in the location, and scripted employee operating procedures. We suggest taking that to the next level and give your customers an experience they will want to repeat on a regular basis. Remember you can do 20 great things, but that one mistake will be what the customer remembers - and relates to friends. Besides an operating plan you must create a complaint handling plan. Your venue may be recalled for great food, drinks, or service; but it will be preached to the masses for its unexpected service when something does go wrong.

Your Solution

We realize, or rather it is self-evident, that every business situation is an unique, singular, and complicated structure to itself - a packaged answer or solution is never the best long-term viable answer.

Give our people a chance to structure a solution to your business. We have the advantage of looking from outside and oft times can suggest a non-conventional solution to your project.

We are not everything to everybody. we have no desire to help restructure General Motors or Citibank. We can draw on our many years of business experience to suggest and implement a solution that is right for your business.

A simple website? Too often we are asked to just design and construct a website. It is actually more important to comprehend what you need to site to do. A site with bells and whistles may be attractive but not communicate your indended message. Conversely, it is often more critical to generate the correct traffic to the site. Look to the goal not just a perceived idea that a website is needed.