Tag Archives: Capstone

Capstone #7

For Capstone before CapCon day our school thought that there is already enough pressure for the day why add more. So we are recording our presentation two days before.

When I presented my slideshow I was very scared. I thought I would forget my whole script. Luck for me that did not happen. But I did stutter a bit. Once it took me around five to six seconds to think what I was going to say. But then I remembered what I was going to say and I was so happy because of that. If I could do it again I would bring my script to refer to. Now I know to practice as much as I can before CapCon day so I don’t stutter.

For the whole Capstone experience I there where some things I loved and some things I hated. The parts I hated was researching and writing the essay. I think I hated these two things because for research I always hated research from any project no matter what. And for the essay it took me so long to do it and it took so much work and just to much thinking. But what I loved is memorising my script. For a lot of people this was very hard. I don’t know why it was easy for me, maybe because I got into my research but I don’t know for sure.

Capstone was my favorite unit ever. And I’m very proud of how far I came with my speech skills. Over all I really loved Capstone.

Capstone #6

For our Capstone project you might not think about all the things that go into this project. I mean sure you might have heard of how I came up with my topic, main inquiry question, sub questions and more. But the hardest part for some people was actually really easy for me. To learn more about this read this blog post!

  And that thing that was very hard for some people but not me is memorising your script. I think it was really easy for me because I was really into my research and I remember what I researched and that really helped me. I was pretty lucky because of that. Now there was a lot of other things that you need to do like make your slideshow. This was hard for me because I’m not great with tech so I needed a lot of help with stuff like transitions which to be honest I didn’t even know existed. But these things really helped to put my slideshow together. What I mean is these things that I said really made it look really good and much better. I think the pictures really help the views see what I’m talking about. For example say I’m talking about the five diamond award, the viewers will have no idea what I’m talking about the pictures really give them a vision of what I am really trying to say.

If your interested here’s my script:

For a hotel, advertisement is very important because without advertisement how would you even know if your new favorite hotel even exists? For advertisement you need to make good decisions for where you’re going to put it, because you have a limited amount of money and you don’t want to use it all on all on a video game that nobody plays. It’s also very important to spread out where you use your marketing budget, so you get all kinds of views not just some. You want adults to see the paradise you’re offering. Hotel advertisement was all over newspapers and magazines with saying at the top “the best house in America” or something like that, that’s it another way to get adults to see your hotel. For hotels it’s important to have advertisements everywhere. Recently studies have shown that social media like Facebook, gets a lot of views.

But there is advertisement that by far is the best kind, because one people listen to it the most and you don’t have to pay for. That advertisement is . . . word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is when one of your customers love their stay so much that they post photos of the hotel on social media, and write something like “Best hotel ever!” or tell their friends about the hotel they were just at and tell them how good it was. Happy customers are and will always be the most important part of advertisement.

One of the big things that makes a hotel a great hotel is the location You want to be near parks for kids, amusement parks for families, business center for workers and to be walking distance to rent a car places and public transportation.

Amenities are a really important for a hotel to have. If you don’t know what an amenity is it is a feature that not all hotels have but they really add to the experience of your stay. The thing is not all hotels have amenities. And that’s what makes some hotels stand out. There are hotels that have meeting rooms, fitness center, kids club, a room with computers so you can do work, dining room, free wifi, free breakfast, room service, free parking, 24 hour front desk, clean rooms, a bar, robes and slippers in hotel rooms, air conditioning, tea and coffee in the lobby and room, allow strollers inside hotel, offer free strollers, tell customers about nearby activities and my favorite, a pool. On top of that it that pool has a lifeguard which is another amenity. Now this is a very long list but this just shows how much a hotel can have. But some of these things really make parents life so much easier. For example hotels offering free strollers for their guests. This is very convenient.  Also the kids club. The kids club is great to have because say their parents want to go out to dinner together they could just take their kids to the kids club and everyone is happy. And the best part is that it is free. And these are things that kids and their parents love.

Making people come back is the whole reason why hotels these days have all of these things I talked about. But there are some tips to make sure people come back. Like being nice. Or having a staff that is really good at solving problems and they need to be polite to their customers. And once I was at a hotel and someone at the front desk was being very rude to me and my family so we never went there again. And once I was at a hotel and someone at the front desk which gave me and my brother lollipops. So we went there again. Little extra touches go a long way with customers.

As you can tell that to answer my main inquiry question (What contributes to a hotels success?) the answer is my sub questions. What I mean is service, advertisement, location and amenities. All these things  contribute to a hotels success and in my book all these things make a hotel a hotel. Thank you.

Capstone #5

Have you ever been to a hotel and thought about what makes it

successful? Well you’re in luck because today I will be talking about that exact thing. But as you know you can’t just answer that in one sentence, you need to answer it with lots and lots of research. And lucky for you, I did that research for you. We will be talking about how service impacts hotels success, what role has advertisement played in hotels, why is the location of a hotel important, how do amenities add to the experience and how do you make people come back. I know it’s a long list but we will get through it all!

Service is a very important aspect of a hotel if not the most important. You really need to have really great service so that your customers come back. Let me give you an example, say you are at a hotel. You ordered room service two hours ago. And it still had not come. Also the person at the front desk was very rude to you would you want to go back? I know I would not. Like what Phillia Tounta (a hotel hospitality worker) said, “Gone are the days the travelers were satisfied with an ordinary bed and breakfast,” This really stood out to me because this just shows how much you need to do to make sure your customers are happy. On top of the challenges hotels face to keep their customers, hotels also face the challenge of turnover rate (how many people leave). Bureau of Labor Statistics say that every year three quarters of hotels have a turnover rate of 73.8% workers leaving a year. And on top of that 6% of their staff leaving every month. With an average cost of $5,860 for each person leaving and with around 500 people leaving a year that’s $2 million every year. And it’s only going higher. This is so bad for hotel industries. But then again there are all always some hotels that go above and beyond. Like the W downtown located in New York city. The hotel has got the five diamond award seven years in a row. The five diamond award is based off of comfort, cleanliness, security and service of amenities. It is rated one to five. What you get (if you even get one) will most likely to be the rating of your hotel. This hotels has got all seven of the awards rated four. That is really good because it is not only good by itself but it’s even better because they are constituent too. As you can tell service is very important and were won’t stop now!

For a hotel advertisement is very important because without advertisement how would you even know if your new favorite hotel even exists? Sure advertisement is very annoying when you’re playing a game and right in the middle a add pops up but still it is very important. For advertisement you need to make good decisions for where you’re going to put it, because you have a limited amount of money and you don’t want to use it all on all on a video game that nobody plays. That’s a waste of money. It’s also very important to spread out where you use your marketing budget, so you get all kinds of views not just some. Like for example for a hotel you don’t want only ten year old kids to see it, they will just x it out. You want adults to see the paradise you’re offering. Hotel advertisement was all over newspapers and magazines with saying at the top “the best house in America” or something like that, that’s it another way to get adults to see your hotel. But you also want kids to see them to. For hotels it’s important to have advertisement everywhere. Recently studies had shown that social media like Facebook, gets a lot of views. But there is advertisement that by far is the best kind, because one people listen to it the most and you don’t have to pay for. That advertisement is . . . word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is when one of your customers love their stay so much that they post photos of the hotel on social media, and write something like “Best hotel ever!” or tell their friends about the hotel they were just at and tell them how good it was. Happy customers are and will always be the most important part of advertisement.

One of the big thing that makes a hotel a great hotel is the location This is very important because almost all the actives your going to do are to be near the hotel your staying at. But for your hotel you want a perfect place. Near everything. For example you want a hotel near a park for little kids, you want it to be close to amusement parks for families, you want to be near a business center for business trips, ect. But it’s really hard to find a hotel in the middle of all those things. It’s way too hard. So a easy solution for that is to have some of those things in your hotel like a meeting room for the people on the business trip. Or a playroom for kids. These things are called amenities. We will get closer in to that later. You also want to have everything walking distance so there is no hassle to rent a car or use public transportation and waste a lot of money. Most hotels have something very important to have that really does makes the customers life so much easier. And that is the hospitality desk where someone tells you about all the hit terrorist locations in the area.

Amenities are a really important for a hotel to have, because I’m sure that everyone would rather go to a hotel with a pool then without one. If you don’t know what an amenity is it is a feature that not all hotels have but they really add to the experience of your stay. The thing is not all hotels have amenities. And that’s what makes some hotels stand out. There are hotels that have meeting rooms, fitness center, kids club, a room with computers so you can do work, dining room, free wifi, free breakfast, room service, free parking, 24 hour front desk, clean rooms, a bar, robes and slippers in hotel rooms, air conditioning, tea and coffee in lobby and room, allow strollers inside hotel, offer free strollers, tell customers about nearby activities and my favorite a pool and on top of that it that pool has a lifeguard that is another amenity. Now this is a very long list but this just shows how much a hotel can have. But most only have three to four. The most common ones are the ones that you would expect from a hotel like air conditioning. But some of these things really make parents life so much easier. For example hotels offering free strollers for their guests. This is very important for guests because they don’t have to spend a forton to take it on the plane with them if their flying in. If their driving it such a hassle to get the stroller in and out. It’s just so much easier. Also the kids club. The kids club is great to have because say their parents want to go out to dinner together they could just take their kids to the kids club and everyone is happy. And the best part is that it is free. And there things that kids and their parents love. Like a pool with lifeguards. The kids love it because it’s a pool, who doesn’t and the parents love it because they don’t have to watch but if they want to they can. Amenities  are very important for a hotel to have and as you can tell . . . everyone loves them. Weather it’s the kids or the parents, everyone loves it!

Making people come back is the whole reason why hotels these days have all of these things I talked about. It’s all about having people loving your hotel and wanting to come back. So everything I said before was a build up to this. I mean who would not want their customers come back right. It’s more money for you and your team anyway. But there are some little strages that really do help people and make them want to come back. But let’s start out with the little things that you would not think help but they really do and things that you know work and it obvious. Like treating your customers well for example it’s obvious but not all hotels do it. Sometimes when I go to a hotel at the front desk instead of someone being nice, they are very rude you can really tell and you won’t feel great and then you would not come back. Or leave a bad review. But once only once that someone was so nice to me that she gave me and my brother lollipops. And that made me feel good. And then we  went there again and again. This shows that things like this really make people want to come back. Also your staff needs to be really good at solving problems, they need to be polite and they need to help customers with ease. If they can do that, that gives your hotel a huge advantage. These things really help a hotel and that makes people want to come back.

As you can tell that to answer my main inquiry question (What contributes to a hotels success?) the answer is my sub questions. What I mean is service, advertisement, location and amenities. All these thing contribute to a hotels success and in my book all these things make a hotel a hotel.

 

Capstone #4

Like I said in the last post in capstone you need a site visit and interview. I told you about the site visit in the last post and now I here to talk about the interview. I  interviewed Joanna Sanchez. The manager of the W downtown, a four star hotel. You will learn about my exsence interviewing someone and I will give you a hint … IT WAS A LOT OF FUN!

For me which I know was a whole other story for some other people but for me I found a interview pretty quick. Once I told my mom and dad about this and because my dad works at a hotel right away he knew someone. “Her name is Joanna Sanchez and you will be interviewing her on May 21 at 8:00 am,” my dad told me. At first I did not know what to expect. I also thought it was going to be weird. I thought that she would feel weird to. And I was scared that the audio would be weird when I was going to record it one my phone like it was for my immigration interview. But then I started  to think what is the worst that can happen. I mean not a lot of  things can go wrong. And things that can go wrong there not that bad. So when I started to think that things got better. Like when the day finally came I was ready!

The day finally came and I was so excited! But scared. But excited! More excited than scared though. Once we were at the office we were late because someone on the train got sick so all the trains had to stop. Once we got to Joanna’s room she was not there. I was scared that she would be a know show. She came! I was so happy. She said she ran into the same problems on the train as me and my dad. It took her a few minutes to get ready but not to long. And once she was ready we started right away. I found that it was not weird and that I had nothing to be scared about. I went really well! I learned a lot about her as a person and about the hotel industry. It was a lot of fun! If could change one thing it would be how I sounded really shy. But that’s it.

In all I think me and my dad made the right choice to decide who to pick for my interview. I learned so much and I will make sure to use it in my research.

 

Capstone #3

For the Capstone project you need to have a site visit and interview. For this blog post I will be talking about the site visit. And you will find out if it was good or not. And more about what it was like.

I did them both on the same day, May 21. The site visit was not really that helpful. I learned a lot mostly from me noticing simple things. But it was pretty cool to see what was like to work at the W downtown. What I noticed was that everything was up to date. Everything was new. And people seemed to like that. I got to see everything. From the gym to the rooms. I also saw that they had a lot of amenities. And I started to think that that must really help there sales. And one more thing, there employees looked very happy and were very polite. This must be very good for the business because if your workers are not happy then they will quit and that would cost a lot of money. And what’s the problem with having service?

But then again there were some problems to. Like one of the problems were that there sweet that I was going to look at and take pictures of was being used yesterday so I could not take pictures of the sweet because it was not clean yet. Also the train that me and my dad took was late so I was late for my interview. But that’s not the hotels fault. And that’s all the problems. So now you can tell how good it was.

All in all I think this site visit was very helpful and it was a great learning experience.

 

Capstone #2

If you don’t remember from the last post, Capstone is a research based project. And right know I am really liking it right now!

 

Right now we just came up with a main inquiry question. A main inquiry question is a big question that is about your topic (hotels) that is not a yes or no question. It’s a question that you can not answer in one sentence. It’s a question you can answer with lots of research. I had a few choices to pick from. They were, “What has made hotels successful and what has affected their sales?” and the other one was, “How has hotels changed over time?” it did not take a lot of thinking for which one was better. I thought that the first one was better. So I showed to my teacher, Mrs.Cooper and she made a few tweaks to it. She asked if I was interested in researching, “What contributes to hotels success?” and I thought for a minute. Then I said yes realizing that it was the same thing.

 

After that you had to come up with sub questions. The sub questions are just to help you know what you want to research. But they all have to fit in with your main inquiry question. So as you can tell you can’t just make random sub questions that do not connect to your main inquiry question. The questions help when you research so that you know what you’re looking for. My first two came to me in seconds. And those were, “How do they draw people in?” and “What role has advertisement played in hotels?” the others took a while. It took so long I had to get my teacher aide to come and help me. It took her awhile then she said “How about you do, how does the location of the hotel affect their sales?” That was perfect. Then that she said another one “You should also do, how do they make sure that their customers will come back?” And that made me think what special things do hotels have that makes people want to come back. So I said “How does think pool add to their experience?” “Those things are called amenities.” She says. Then I should do how do the amenities add to the experience?

So I typed it in and she approved. But Mrs.Cooper did not. She tweaked the first one. She said that the first and second ones were to close together. So I changed it to, “How has service affected hotels sales?”

And…

It got approved!

So that all that has happened so far so I will tell you what’s happening next during Capstone. But for Capstone so far I am really liking it. And I am excited to see what we have to do next.

 

Capstone #1

In my school and all the other scarsdale schools there is a end of the year project called capstone. Capstone is a big research based project. It is a two month project and it takes up a lot of your grade. The first step of the project is to pick a topic. Picking a topic for me was pretty hard because my first two choices were to broad so I had no narrow it down.

My top three choices was hockey, hotels and IMB. I decided to element IBM because I realized that I was really leaning towards hockey and hotels. And in the end I went with hotels because I did not know nearly as much about hotels than I did about hockey. For me it took a while because the day we started I had no idea and it took me a while to start coming up with ideas. But so far I think capstone is pretty good.