Management Case Study: Adventures Unlimited
South American Adventures unlimited The project management could play a critical role in operating the business of Adventures unlimited. ‘A project Is a temporary endeavourer undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result'(Larson and Gray 2010).
In this case, each tour organized by Adventures Unlimited could be a project as they have an established objective on organizing and leading outdoor actively In Central and South America. Each trip has a defined life span with a specific beginning and ending date.
Adventures unlimited also recruits several experienced, professional people for purporting its administration and planning trips based on trip-by-trip contracts. In addition, this company used suggestions from its customers to organize future trips, this would lead every trip to be new and more desirable for customers compared to the previous one. Therefore, each tour has done something new on organizing the excursion to Central and South America.
And apparently, there are specific costs for each tour, such as the transportation fees, advertising fees on the Internet and travel magazines. Besides, each trip follows a standard project life cycle through a defining tags, a planning stage, an executing stage and a closing stage on evaluation by customers’ suggestions. Therefore in this case, organizing and executing each tour could be seen as a process of project management. Adventures Unlimited has already taken advantages of a dedicated project team organization on providing an effective and cross-functional management. The Rodriguez, the administrative staff, and tour guides could improve the operation of Adventures unlimited through training in project selection, scope management, cost management, risk management, communication management as well as quality management. The portfolio management could oversight the project at the organization level.
One of Its functions Is overseeing project selection. In this case, the Rodriguez can take advantage from a rational project selection by using net present value (NP) method to decide which tours are worth being booked based on profitability.
If the net present value is positive, which means there is profit earned by the company from this tour. In other word, this project should be invested. On the contrary, Rodriguez should try to avoid such a tour with a negative net present value.
In consideration of internal rate of return ORR), which Is the rate of turn when the net present value is zero. It could measure the quality of project as compared with the real rate of return. The Internal rate of return (AIR) Is higher, the project is more desirable for investing and organizing.
In addition, the methods of scope management such as the work breakdown structures could allow the company to manage the trips in detail effectively. For each tour, a well-defined scope will help the administrative staff to control the costs within budgets.
Furthermore, scope management could be also helpful on scheduling the progress of each tour and Identifying risks simultaneously. Thus, these administrative staffs could do further management on costs Ana RL KS. In overall , ten scope management noels stats assess the quality of the completeness of the projects.
In this case, Adventures Unlimited should write down a scope statement includes all relevant information and activities of the trip. This would provide a clear plan for the projects.
In terms of cost management, the training on this is more valuable for the tour planners and guides as they are experiencing challenges on spending within budget during each tour. According to the above paragraphs, the scope management could be useful on anticipating tour costs and the project selection could be useful on assessing the profitability of each tour.
In this case, Adventures Unlimited should refer to the scope management by using the work breakdown structures, which include the top-down and bottom-up structures, could be easier to forecast the costs for each step of the trip. Moreover, tour planners and guides could find out a way to stay within budget. Risk management training related to organization is crucial for Adventures Unlimited u to travel is an inherently risky business.
In this case, identifying the risks would benefit the company from avoiding inclement weather, ensuring the safety of food and maintaining the high level customers’ satisfaction.
However, these risks are difficult to eliminate in general, Adventures Unlimited should be aware of these risks and prepare the remedial measures in advance. Therefore, the risks with a reduced probability of occurrence would not be too damaging for the tour business. Communication management is also significant on improving the quality of the project.
A training on communication would help the company resolve conflicts with its clients. For Adventures Unlimited, a trained staff would be more specialized on managing its customers’ expectations and addressing some inevitable conflicts.
This may be also helpful on improving the level of clients’ satisfaction. Finally, the quality management training should be applied in each step of the tours. In this case, Rodriguez should concentrate on improving the quality of accommodation during the tours. If the quality improved, the price of tours would not be unacceptable for customers.
