Please only complete and submit one of the following assignments as your research report.
Option A: Group Research Assignments
Please provide an analysis of operation issues for a selected hotel. You are instructed to choose a specific hotel at a specific location. Then you should figure out and discuss the current operation issues/challenges (no more than 3) in that hotel, and suggest the better solutions for that particular hotel.The research report should be around 12 pages long for the body of the paper.

The analysis should include:
1. Title Page/Cover Page
2. The introduction and background of this hotel
3. Issues / challenges faced by Operation and their Impact
4. Solutions /your recommendations
5. References

Option B: Individual Research Assignments

The research paper is a secondary research, which is a systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and interpreting the existing body of recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners. The data that you will base on could be from journals, books and reliable websites. The research report should be around 8 pages long for the body of the paper.

Sections will be as follows:
 Title Page / Cover Page
 Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Literature Review
 Analysis/Discussion
 Conclusion
 References

The following list provides possible research topics. You are not limited to these topics, but between this list and a review of some books on hotel operations management, you should be able to find a topic that interests you.
Suggested Topics may include:
• Full-service hotels
• Middle-scale hotels
• Limited-service hotels
• Boutique hotel
• Theme Hotels
• Smart Hotels
• Social Media
• Market segmentation
• Data mining
• Merge &Acquisition
• Globalization
• Corporate culture
• Career ladders in the hotel industry
• Mentoring
• Franchising
• Revenue management
• Educational Institute of the AH&LA
• Ethics
• Communication in hotels
• Human relations
• Empowerment
• Decision making
• Motivation
• Coaching
• Discipline
• Teamwork
• Interstate commerce
• Wages
• Unemployment insurance
• Employee handbooks
• Benefits
• Retention
• Continuous quality improvement
• Auditing
• USALI
• Centralized versus decentralized accounting systems
• Inventory systems
• E-wholesalers
• Frequent guest programs/Loyalty programs
• Merchant models
• STAR Report
• SMERFs
• Smart cards
• Curb appeal
• Night auditing
• Global Distribution Systems
• Point of Sales systems (POS)
• Blood-borne pathogens
• Housekeeping systems
• On-premise vs. Off-premise laundries
• Commercial foodservice operations
• Institutional (noncommercial) foodservice operations
• Banqueting
• Catering
• Word-of-mouth advertising
• Dram shop laws
• Preventive maintenance
• Green hotels
• Renovation and refurbishment
• Energy management
• Lighting systems
• Air handler systems
• Manager on Duty (MOD)
• Safety&Security
• Other (must be approved by Professor)