Background: Holiday Villas owns more than 40 hotels throughout the United States. They recently acquired a small hotel chain in Spain (6 hotels),with the objective of growing the organization globally and establishing an international presence. Holiday Villas are family style rooms, typically two bedroom suites and a mini kitchen that cater to families on vacation who want to spend time in a low budget but well located area. Most guests stay 3-7 nights, and most guest are families or groups. The hotels are typically located in cities with tourist attractions, near downtown locations that are easily accessible by mass transit. The organization has decided to use the acquisition of the hotels in Spain as a pilot project and if all goes well, they will consider acquiring other hotel chains across Europe and South America. This is a strategic endeavor, so it is important that the organization finds an effective formula to operate successfully in the global arena.

Task 1. The hotel management would like to have a PCN (parent country national) as manager in each of their six sites. Some members of the executive team disagree and think that the manager should be a HCN (host country national) in order to establish better rapport with the local employees and guests. However, they want their core values and organizational culture to be coherent with the hotels in the United States. They come to you and ask: 1.What is the best approach to staffing? 2.How important is it that staff speak fluent Spanish? 3.What kind of cultural differences may be important in the hospitality business in Spain? 4.How should they brand themselves? As a multinational, international or global enterprise? Respond to the management with a memo. Respond to each question and give a suggestion on how the hotel should proceed. Be sure to support your suggestions with both the literature and current facts or statistics that you research for this task, as well as information from the course. Task 2 The management team has decided to go with a PCN (parent country national) for the position of manager at the 6 hotels. They ask you to: a. Put together a compensation plan along with a balanced scorecard. Assume that the base salary of a manager in the U.S. is $7500 a month. You may need to do some additional research to find out what taxes are in Spain, what is a typical housing allowance, and cost of living. b. List the top three benefits that should be offered to the expatriate. Explain why you chose these as the most important. Task 3 The organization has hired six hotel managers. The success of these managers is vital to ensure the success of the expansion into the international market. They ask you to propose the content and format of a 5day training program for the new managers. Typically, this will consist of some pre-departure training, as well as some in-country training upon arrival. Your task is to put together a proposal for the training program. Your proposal should include: a. Best practices in expatriate training (why is training so important and what does the literature tell us is important in expatriate training? b. an agenda for the 5-day training with an explanation of each training activity and its purpose