Management (Cambridge (CIE) A Level Business): Exam Questions

Seaside Hotel (SH)

SH is a large hotel located in a tourist area of country H. SH has 120 rooms and employs 42 workers during the peak (busiest) season which is from April to September. Table 2.1 shows employee data for SH’s peak season.

Table 2.1: Employee data for SH’s peak season

SH makes half of the cleaners and customer service employees redundant at the end of the peak season.

To break even, the hotel must sell 72 rooms per night. The hotel offers good views of the sea and it is very busy in the peak season when the weather is hot. Table 2.2 shows SH’s sales of rooms.

Table 2.2: SH’s sales of rooms 2021–2022

SH does not have a restaurant. It has a joint venture with a restaurant close to the hotel where SH’s customers receive a discount on their food and drink. The hotel advertises the restaurant on social media and the restaurant advertises the hotel on its menu.

Tia is one of the managers of SH. She has an autocratic leadership style and is responsible for the cleaners and marketing employees.

The directors of SH aim to increase the value added to the service that SH provides.

Rehana Recycles (RR)

Rehana is very environmentally aware. One year ago, Rehana identified a business opportunity to reuse waste products and set up Rehana Recycles (RR) as a sole trader.

A local company sells bottled drinks and reuses the empty glass bottles that are returned by customers. It cannot reuse any damaged bottles, so they are dumped as waste. Rehana asked this company if she could have the damaged glass bottles. The company agreed she could have them at no cost.

RR melts down the glass and makes unique vases and other glassware products. RR’s mission statement is ‘Make waste beautiful’. Rehana markets her products as ‘Lovely for the planet, lovely for you’. The business has a strong local brand image. Rehana has recently invested in marketing which focuses on her unique selling point of recycling waste.

To help satisfy demand, Rehana recently employed two local artists who are also very environmentally aware. They are skilled in making handmade glass jewellery. RR currently makes handmade products using job production. Rehana has a democratic leadership style.

Rehana has produced some financial data shown in Table 1.1.

As demand has grown, Rehana needs to increase her output. Rehana has identified two ways of increasing output. She could either:

• keep using job production and employ more artists to create unique glassware products using the RR brand, or

• change to batch production and make a larger number of standardised glassware using the RR brand.