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Every property’s finance function keeps detailed records of the daily transactions involved in the running the organization. Periodically, they create reports that allow management, stakeholders and regulating authorities to have insight into the financial health of the organization. As a manager, you need to understand both the metrics that are reported in income statement, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, and how they relate to each other. You also need to understand how comparing numbers across your company, the industry, and from year to year, can help you assess the overall financial performance of the firm.

For a hotel investment to be successful, you must first have accurate and reliable data about the critical aspects of the hotel operation, such as occupancy, revenue, expenses, and cash flows. But how do you generate these detailed forecasts? In this course, Cornell University professor Jan deRoos leads you through this analysis using the Hotel Valuation Software he developed with HVS International.

In this course, you will evaluate your brand and define actions you can take to enhance your brand's performance. You will start by exploring the elements that make some brands great, why some brands garner premium consideration, and, as appropriate, how to improve a brand. You will work to create a great brand purpose and learn how to monitor the market to support the longevity of your brand by analyzing the impact of trends on your brand. You will also assess and strengthen your brand's mission, vision, and values. By the end of this course, you will have a strong vision, mission, a list of values for your brand and strategies to propel your brand forward.

In this course, you will assess the market to identify opportunities for a brand, determine a strategy to best position the brand, and draft a strategy to achieve the brand's goals. You will then apply this information to a brand of your choice. You will start analyzing the competitive space by identifying the brand attributes most important to your end users. You will use this customer focused analysis to create a positioning map that includes competitive brands. You will then create an opportunity space strategy and a brand positioning strategy to penetrate the market. By the end of this course, you will optimize a brand's position in its brandscape by completing a brand positioning mapping.

Successful commercial real estate developers are master coordinators, working with multiple counterparts every step of the way to create and maximize value through real estate projects. To do this, they use a thoughtful, organized process—regardless of project size.

Based on the research and expertise of John Hausknecht, Ph.D., you will evaluate the possibility of working with or without a system, identify the properties and benefits of different systems, and explore different approaches to performance management. Steps to mitigate risk will be outlined, common rating and feedback errors will be examined, and support in delivering feedback will be provided using tools such as a Communication Plan. With the completion of an action plan at the end of the course, you will be ready to apply what you learn to your own organization.

The hotel asset manager is responsible for managing lodging investments to meet specific objectives. Their role in building value is analyzed at both the portfolio and the property level. In this course, Professor deRoos focuses on the importance of developing a strategic vision for asset management and explores the latest asset management techniques in pursuit of that strategic vision.

Your new project not only needs funding—it needs the right type of funding. You need to know how to choose between debt and equity funding, and when to consider acquiring funds from capital markets. These outside funding sources will have their own expectations for rates of return, and the cost of this funding is driven by a number of external factors such as the state of the economy and the industry.

The control and management of hotel real estate is a complex process with a wide variety of options for both hotel owners and companies. Determining who manages the hotel on a day-to-day basis and whether or not the hotel should affiliate with a brand can make or break your property. Based on his many years of academic and real-world experience, Professor deRoos provides you with the tools and knowledge you need to navigate the options and make sound decisions for your hotel investment.

Brand planning is the process of devising the specific actions needed to enable the brand to attain brand performance goals.The process of developing the brand plan helps to identify opportunities to grow and create value for your brand. In this course, you will refine your ability to create a brand plan by investigating each step of the process and developing a plan for an existing brand of your choice. You will start by completing a situation analysis for your chosen brand. You will then draw conclusions from the analysis and determine objectives and strategies for the brand. Finally, you will develop an executional roadmap to deliver on at least one of your identified strategic directions for your brand.

Investing in proper management of a real estate asset is investing in future profitability. Excellent maintenance and tenant management can increase property values by lowering operational costs, increasing cash flow, and generating higher rents and occupancies.

The key to financial success for any business is choosing the right projects to pursue at the right time, for the right price and with the right financing structure.

Managers must foster a good workplace atmosphere and be able to deal effectively with behavior issues as they arise. Doing so improves productivity and employee engagement and helps an organization avoid costly legal liability.

In this course, you will learn about perceptual and psychological processes that impact the way that individuals interact with people who are demographically dissimilar from them. You will examine psychological processes that impact personnel decision making within organizations. This understanding will help HR professionals to design better practices and will help line managers to more effectively leverage the potential among employees from diverse backgrounds. The course will also help you understand why “Diversity” is now often referred to as “Diversity & Inclusion” by explaining what inclusion is and how it differs from diversity. Why is inclusion so important, and what are its building blocks?