For the consulting project, I am part of the finance and business development team. I chose this team because I like to see how companies are run logistically, especially overseas, as their typical business practices may differ from ours, as we have different customs and regulations. For me, choosing finance and business development is because I like working with companies and getting a task done that has a beneficial outcome which I feel like you truly get in finance because you get a monetary amount outcome. Also coming from a school where I got to develop projects in robotics made me love the way our plans might not have been perfect at the beginning, but by the end they were functioning products so I inturn hope to create a sustainable plan for Carrigrate to make money in the off season.
When it came to preparing for my first client meeting, I prepared the night before by first deciding what my focus area of questions was going to be. I had originally thought heavily about doing festivals in the off-season since the town already has some experience with hosting festivals, so I set my mind to finding out information on that. I found that Christmas Markets and Halloween festivals were popular for other towns in Ireland to do in Carrigarts off-season time frame, but I was not entirely sold on the idea. But I thought it was a good start. For the meeting I knew that I wanted to not have focused questions on this idea though because it was not part of what Majella did as a co-work space manager so I instead had broad questions that I could ask based off of what my fellow classmates said since I knew my team would probably be the last to go since the co working space was not fully tied to the finance and business development side like the AI groups focus. However once we got into the meeting I was able to think on my feet and ask questions based on previous answers like if G-teic worked with other businesses to create almost like a corporate retreat with the golf course and hotel. From all of the information I think that I found out the fact that their are not many business partnerships going on the most fascinating part because in my small town all of the businesses promote each other in a way that is mutually beneficial to the overall economy of the small businesses in town.
After all of the research I completed after the meeting and from my notes from the meeting with Majella I came up with the idea of bachelor parties featuring the hotel in town. You might be thinking, how did I come up with bachelor parties? Well, originally I was thinking about having some form of corporate retreats, which could be a possibility down the line for Carrigart, but for the time being, it did not seem feasible to me because there were currently no partnerships between the hotel, the co-work space, and the golf course which would mean a business relationship would have to form and since I do not know how each business deals with each other professionally at this time I went looking for something that still tied companies together because I feel like that is important in a small towns economy. Which is were I found that the hotel has a special with the local golf course for a two night stay and a round of golf, but they also have a whisky tasting with two night stay and a distillery tour. So I started thinking what ties those to together which is when I thought of bachelor parties because in the US they involve activities like golf and drinking which pulls in the golf course and whisky partnership already in place and you can do this during the office season as well. My other group members are doing topics that tie into this because one is working with golf course revenue, the other is doing festivals which could tie into a bachelor party and make it a longer stay, and the final group member is dealing with the caravans which could bring larger parties that might not want to stay in a hotel but still participant in other activities related. All in all I think that the finance and business development team is focused on tying the businesses together in an effort to bring more people and money to the town in the off season.