Read the below article & answer the questions:

Introduction:

The Port of Aberdeen has long supplied services to the North Sea oil industry. In addition, there has been a surge of new activity due to the recent interest from these same oil companies to deploy vast offshore wind farms to harness the region's notoriously bad weather to produce power. Attracted by this upswing in activity, the Diamantis Shipping and Services Corporation recently outbid several other potential buyers to purchase the largest dock operation in the Port of Aberdeen facility. They have chosen to retain the entire operations staff, including the Harbor Master, but they have requested the assistance of a Revenue Management expert to evaluate their pricing and distribution strategy. DSSC was attracted to the Aberdeen market for several reasons. There is a limited amount of harbor space and no room for expansion. Its location on the western side of the North Sea, where the weather is more favorable, as well as the citys reputation for being friendly to sailors all contribute to making it one of the most desirable ports among all of those serving the North Sea region.

Description of Facility:

The facility has a total of 1000 linear meters of dock frontage, with two 110-meter, double-sided piers served by fixed overhead cranes, and 14 additional spots able to accommodate vessels of to 40 meters each. In addition to renting mooring space, the dock operation offers a full range of services including fuel, loading and unloading, and re-supply. The docks state-of-the-art crane system is the known to be the most efficient in the entire area.

Types of Business:

Aberdeen occasionally hosts cruise ships and there is a small private yacht markets, the majority of the activity in the port relates to North Sea energy exploration and management. The vessels using the facility fall into two basic categories, larger cargo re-supply ships (normally 95- 110 meters long) and smaller services vessels (normally 30 40 meters). Ships of both types come into port for many reasons including planned and unplanned maintenance, crew rest and crew emergencies, and resupply. The following is a breakdown of business for the past twelve months, compiled from invoices:

There is roughly an even mix of individual owner/operator and corporate-owned service vessels. Five or six companies operate the corporate service vessels and all the larger ship supply operations. The two largest are Feakins Steam & Fittings and Nora-Grace Logistics.

Competition:

With four 100-meter docks and state of the art crane operation, the DSSC facility is the largest operation within the Port of Aberdeen. Approximately 50% of the total dock frontage in the port are smaller, owner operated facilities that can only accommodate the smaller, service class of vessel and offer only mooring, crew supplies and fuel. The other half are larger operations like DSSCs, with additional services such as full-time mechanics and a large replacement parts inventory, restaurants and shower facilities and even airport shuttles. Only one other facility has more than one long dock and there are only nine in the entire port. The docks state-of-the-art crane system is a significant and unique enough advantage that some ships are willing to adjust their schedules or even wait offshore for an available time slot.

Seasonality: Though the industry operates year-round, there is more activity between May and October when the weather is more predictable. Dock utilization in the high demand months in the entire Port of Aberdeen exceeds 75%. The port fills to capacity on peak shore leave weekends, periods of bad weather, and occasionally just under normal circumstances in high season. In the off-season, utilization drops quite a bit, with exploration and other services declining much more than ongoing supply operations, though planned maintenance and long-term storage somewhat offset the seasonal decline.

Pricing:

All of the dock operations in the port, including the DSSC operation, use a traditional per meter pricing methodology, based on a suggested guideline that the Port Authority updates once per year. Though there is no industry standard, the traditional way of measuring business performance is revenue per meter of dock, per day (Revenue Per Available Dock Meter Day, RevPDMD). The Port Authority compiles this information from the daily ship logs, reported total revenues, and the registered dock frontage for each operation and releases the overall figures for the port on a monthly basis. The following table shows the last 12 months performance for both the DSSC facility and the total port.

Most operations quote the suggested seasonal rates, though many captains, and especially the larger corporate operators like Feakins Steam & Fittings and Nora-Grace Logistics negotiate better rates. The entire port operates with an 8am arrival time. Early arrivals and late departures are managed by the Harbor Master or Assistants on the day of voyage. Unless there is a change in the industry practices, it has been determined to alter this would be disruptive to vessel operators, third party vendors, delivery people, etc. Though there has been some discussion about changing the model to eliminate the specific arrival time, DSSC will not consider changing the day of voyage arrival and departure guidelines at this time.

Employee Feedback:

A combination of travel restrictions and extremely high business levels make it impossible to visit the port, but the following are several relevant excerpts from interviews with the existing site leadership at the time DSSC acquired the port.

One of the things I find most annoying is when the captains lie about the length of their craft in order to save a few pounds. I've been in the business for 15 years, and there's only about 5 hull configurations out there right now, and I know exactly how long every single one of 'em is. It seems like charging 20 or 30 more or less pounds for the same piece of dock isn't worth the trouble, especially when our customers will lie about it to try to save the money.

Maybe we could figure something out in high season. It's a little frustrating to know that we have boats sitting outside the harbor, willing to go to the 1st open spot and buy a bunch of food and gas, while we have boats on our dock that have been in for five days, just sitting there dark, and we're not sure when they're leaving.

It seems like every year more and more people want to negotiate. That's a pain in the neck for me, because I work the overnight shift, but a lot of ships contact us on their way in. I'm allowed to quote the regular prices, but only our harbormaster can negotiate with them. And he's available a lot, but nobody can be available 24/7, so sometimes I have people mad at me, or worse yet I lose potential business, because someone else is able to give them an answer before we can. Now, some of the deals he has that I know about, I go ahead and give it to them because I know he's going to be OK with it. But I got in trouble a couple of times, so I always err on the side of caution.

The companies that run the supply operations are a lot more consistent. To them those huge ships time is money. I'm pretty sure if you look at our records, you'll see that they consistently get in and out quicker, and because of our crane system, they love us. I prefer to do business with them with their smaller service fleet stuff too. They just seem like they're a little better organized, and because they like our cranes better than anyone elses, they don't swear at us as much.

The bigger ships are a little bit easier to work with because they're more predictable as well. They can stay out in tougher weather. Their only job is going back and forth from the port, so their schedule is not dependent on getting other work done, and there's so many more external logistics going on that they just can't afford to change their schedule last minute without causing all kinds of problems. Many of them schedule a whole years worth of stops at once without having to change them very often. It seems like some of the service providers, especially the independent ones, wake up every morning and decide.

The small guys all take care of each other. What things get really busy, they refer the business among each other, and they all managed to stay pretty full most of the time in high season. Even on the weekdays. The reason I know that is because once in a while they have a mechanical problem and someone can't leave, and they have to send them our way. But it doesn't seem like we're ever sending anyone their way. Some of them also seem to use seasonal vessel storage as a way to collect some revenue but have less activity and cost. Basically, they almost take the winter off, because once the season starts, they pretty much don't get a day off. That's why I like working here.

The old custom of captains calling all the ports on the way in is slowly being taken over by them sending emails and text messages. I get asked all the time if we have a website so they can make a reservation, which makes me laugh when you consider how we actually do it.

I know you guys are talking to a hotel person about what we do, but make sure they don't think of our utilization numbers compare to their occupancy numbers. People can't rent part of a hotel room. But we get measured based on how much of each dock is rented. For example, if we put a 36 meter ship in a 40 meter spot, we only use 90% of it. When they see our numbers they may not realize it, but at 75% utilization, the port of Aberdeen is one of the busiest in the world in high season.

Fortunately, most of our bad weather is in the off season, but when we have a storm in high season, it can be tough to deal with. All the ships that are in port don't want to leave, and more want to come in. It can get especially ugly when one of our regular customers can't find a spot, and it's not uncommon to lose a regular to another port based on them finding a spot for somebody when no one else could. There are a couple large operators working exclusively with a competitor just for this reason, even though their crane system takes twice as long as ours to turn them around.

I wish I had a crystal ball. I don't think it happens very often, but there have been times when we had a smaller boat sitting by itself on the long dock and we had to turn away a bigger supply ship. Then we've also had times where we held a long dark in the storm because the supply ship was on its way in, but because there are a lot more stable in the bad weather than the little guys, they decided to turn around and they never showed up. We could have easily put three of the little guys there if we had only known.

Questions:

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Supply Dockings Days Moored Avg Duration Avg Daily Dock Rental Avg Daily Ancillary Rev |Avg Daily Revenue 30 62 2.1 950 1,476 2,426 28 58 2.1 950 1,476 2,426 33 67 2.0 950 1,325 2,275 41 78 1.9 950 1,316 2,266 58 99 1.7 1,425 1,235 2,660 72 108 1.5 1,425 1,367 2,792 80 112 14 1,425 1,500 2,925 74 112 1.5 1,425 1,433 2,858 56 96 1.7 1,425 1,294 2,719 42 81 19 1,425 1,632 3,057 30 60 2.0 950 1,600 2,550 30 62 2.1 950 1,524 2,474 50 a 181 Service Dockings Days Moored Avg Duration Avg Daily Dock Rental Avg Daily Ancillary Rev Avg Daily Revenue 42 174 4.1 350 122 472 41 161 3.9 350 128 478 43 174 4.0 350 125 475 3.6 350 139 489 87 234 2.7 525 130 655 136 298 2.2 525 159 684 146 321 2.2 S25 159 684 140 321 2.3 525 152 677 126 302 2.4 525 146 671 52 140 2.7 S25 185 E710 35 135 3.9 250 128 478 28 113 4.0 350 125 475 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Usage DSSC Port Avg 39% 55% 40% 58% 40% 57% 46% 61% 57% 71% 69% 75% 70% 76% 70% 74% 66% 73% 41% 62% 35% 51% 32% 47% RevPDMD DSSC Port Avg 7.50 7.15 7.79 E7.54 7.57 7.41 8.83 8.54 13.46 15.27 16.85 16.13 17.62 16.34 17.31 15.91 15.46 15.70 11.15 11.78 7.26 6.63 6.68 6.11 Port of Aberdeen Posted Dock Rental Rates (dock meter / day) 10.00 10.00 10.00 10.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 10.00 10.00 Questions: 1) List the conditions that should be present in order to Revenue Management to be most impactful. Evaluate whether each condition is present, citing specific case information as support. Conditions needed for impactful Revenue Management Is the condition present (yeso)? Why or why not? 1 condition/criteria here specific justification from case 2 3 4 5 2) What strategic changes would you implement, based on the princliples of revenue management? List four distinct recommendations then explain your reasoning and expected outcome. Strategic recommendation (be specific) Justification from case and expected impact 1 recommendation here reason and expected outcome 3) Overall, what would you expect the impact of your recommended changes to be? How would you measure it? HINT: Hit ALT & ENTER at the same time to start a new line within the text box 4) What significant obstacles would you expect to encounter for implementing your recommendations and how would you overcome them? 5) The "ah-hah!!!" moment. Nothing more to answer here but you will receive these points if one of your answers demonstrates a uniquely creative and/or innovative approach. Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Supply Dockings Days Moored Avg Duration Avg Daily Dock Rental Avg Daily Ancillary Rev |Avg Daily Revenue 30 62 2.1 950 1,476 2,426 28 58 2.1 950 1,476 2,426 33 67 2.0 950 1,325 2,275 41 78 1.9 950 1,316 2,266 58 99 1.7 1,425 1,235 2,660 72 108 1.5 1,425 1,367 2,792 80 112 14 1,425 1,500 2,925 74 112 1.5 1,425 1,433 2,858 56 96 1.7 1,425 1,294 2,719 42 81 19 1,425 1,632 3,057 30 60 2.0 950 1,600 2,550 30 62 2.1 950 1,524 2,474 50 a 181 Service Dockings Days Moored Avg Duration Avg Daily Dock Rental Avg Daily Ancillary Rev Avg Daily Revenue 42 174 4.1 350 122 472 41 161 3.9 350 128 478 43 174 4.0 350 125 475 3.6 350 139 489 87 234 2.7 525 130 655 136 298 2.2 525 159 684 146 321 2.2 S25 159 684 140 321 2.3 525 152 677 126 302 2.4 525 146 671 52 140 2.7 S25 185 E710 35 135 3.9 250 128 478 28 113 4.0 350 125 475 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Usage DSSC Port Avg 39% 55% 40% 58% 40% 57% 46% 61% 57% 71% 69% 75% 70% 76% 70% 74% 66% 73% 41% 62% 35% 51% 32% 47% RevPDMD DSSC Port Avg 7.50 7.15 7.79 E7.54 7.57 7.41 8.83 8.54 13.46 15.27 16.85 16.13 17.62 16.34 17.31 15.91 15.46 15.70 11.15 11.78 7.26 6.63 6.68 6.11 Port of Aberdeen Posted Dock Rental Rates (dock meter / day) 10.00 10.00 10.00 10.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 10.00 10.00 Questions: 1) List the conditions that should be present in order to Revenue Management to be most impactful. Evaluate whether each condition is present, citing specific case information as support. Conditions needed for impactful Revenue Management Is the condition present (yeso)? Why or why not? 1 condition/criteria here specific justification from case 2 3 4 5 2) What strategic changes would you implement, based on the princliples of revenue management? List four distinct recommendations then explain your reasoning and expected outcome. Strategic recommendation (be specific) Justification from case and expected impact 1 recommendation here reason and expected outcome 3) Overall, what would you expect the impact of your recommended changes to be? How would you measure it? HINT: Hit ALT & ENTER at the same time to start a new line within the text box 4) What significant obstacles would you expect to encounter for implementing your recommendations and how would you overcome them? 5) The "ah-hah!!!" moment. Nothing more to answer here but you will receive these points if one of your answers demonstrates a uniquely creative and/or innovative approach