Estimate the point at which start-up and operating costs would be covered.  The target audience of the report is our client.  Total length of the report, exclusive of appendices, must be no more than five pages of single-spaced text.  Appendices are expected and are to be used for charts, figures, tables, or calculations that would spoil the flow of the written report, but which are necessary to support or substantiate statements that are made in the report.  Do not include an appendix unless it is specifically referenced in the report; appendices that are not referenced will not be read. 

This report must use the following basic outline:

  I. Problem Statement

 II. Situation Analysis

III. Analysis of Alternatives
     A) breakeven using client-supplied information and assumptions
     B) breakeven using some reasonable set of assumptions
     C) perhaps one more even better set of assumptions

 IV. Recommendation
 

This is a real world assignment.  The written report will be scored in large part on the professor's perception of the usefulness and acceptability of the report to the real client.  A common problem is that students tend to include irrelevant and inappropriate material in a report to show evidence that some particular concept has been learned in the course.  For example, the situation analysis in this report is used to provide a background for breakeven feasibility; a SWOT analysis used for tactical planning would be inappropriate here.  In this study of breakeven feasibility, you would instead be addressing/researching issues of competitive pricing, of competitive occupancy rates, of projected start up costs, of projected operating costs, and such.  Be certain, of course, to cite sources of these marketplace issues.  Do not fabricate material for the sake of creating a report. 

I haven't had time to put together a list of resources that might be useful to us all, but at least visit the portal:

http://www.TexarkanaMSA.org

You might want to visit, for example, the state's Texas Tourism web site for information on hotel occupancy rates, tourism revenues that are generated, and such.  Some of the links that are posted on the portal are now broken and most are linked a few levels deep into information that is specific to Texarkana rather than the geographic area of our client's ranch.  Nonetheless, these might quickly get you into the ballpark of where you need to go to find something.  E.g., I just found a broken link in looking for hotel occupancy rates, but that got me pretty close to the new link here.  Watch the announcements area on the syllabus for a page with any new information that I might find.

In preparing this report, you are encouraged to collaborate with other students.  You may work in teams of your own choice with a size of no smaller than one and no larger than five.  All names on any report will receive the same score.