The Grizzly Bear Lodge

The Grizzly Bear Lodge

Growing a business is almost always a difficult decision that leaves the main decision makers with several difficult decisions. The Grizzly Bear Lodge in Yellowstone Park, owned by Diane and Rudy Conrad, are facing this exact dilemma. They were offered a chance to double their capacity by acquiring a neighboring lodge. The acquisition would appear to add a good chunk to the Conrad’s bottom line with revenue coming from twice the amount of rooms to sell as well as opportunities to add services and activities to offer their guests.

The Conrads are looking to more than double their rooms at the lodge. Not only will they be adding capacity, but they want to offer more benefits to their customers, which would include serving dinner, partnerships to offer activities and to be open year round. A few things the Conrads can do to be sure they experience as little growing pains as possible is use some effective feedforward controls. These controls can include adding an IT package to track room rates, bookings and extra purchases, as well as maintaining accounting controls. Becoming more effective and knowledgeable in these areas can help the Conrads keep extra costs to a minimum and be able to manage their workforce much more efficiently. By knowing how many rooms will be full on any given night, they can effectively plan for cooks, housekeepers and when to staff the front desk. Knowing these business indicators, the Conrads may find they only need to hire a couple more employees to help shoulder the load. Also, by tracking guest’s expenses, and where they spend it, they can track whether they dine in for dinner or what activities they most enjoy so that they can budget resources better for these aspects as well.

Concurrent controls – Once the acquisition has taken place, the Conrads will have to be able to monitor the controls they have put in place with the new IT system and make sure it is working as planned. To do this, they must...