Banff Aspen Lodge: Evolving the Business Strategy

In June 2013, the general manager of the Banff Aspen Lodge in Alberta, Canada, had to decide how to use the space previously vacated by a gift shop that had been housed in the lobby of the hotel. With high occupancy rates and no immediate pressure to add significantly to the hotel’s bottom line, the general manager had the luxury of testing new services that could help deliver on the hotel’s mission to provide every guest with an exceptional experience. However, he had to work within the hotel’s footprint at the time. He was considering using the prime storefront space to add a restaurant or a café. He also knew, however, that complementary service offerings could pull resources away from the hotel’s core lodging offering and pull him away from crucial long-term business development.

This case is intended for a strategy course at the undergraduate level. The case should be included early in the course because it is a good illustration of the Diamond-E Framework. The case provides a vehicle for analyzing complementary service offerings within a mid-sized, privately-owned hotel over short- versus long-term strategic time horizons. The focus is on differentiation strategy, strategy evolution, and the potential fit of complementary service offerings with an organization’s value proposition, organizational culture, core competencies, available resources, competitive offerings, industry changes, and owner’s preferences. After completion of this case, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Evaluate potential complementary service offerings as compared to focusing on and developing new markets in the core service offering.</li></li>Examine the fit of potential new complementary service offerings with a differentiation strategy, available resources, core competencies, changing environment, competitors’ offerings, organizational values, and owner preferences.</li><li>Consider strategy within both short- and long-term time horizons.</li><li>Examine how strategy evolves in response to changes within the industry and resource availability.</li></ul>

• complementary offerings, core competency, hotel industry, market development, Diamond-E framework