Exploring the region around Odessa — Day 4
Some of our group members made the hard work to get the cars. It was quite a struggle because of the lack of cooperation with the car rental office. Our cars were overbooked so they tried to sell us better cars for a higher price. Since we did not back down, we did not agree at all. In the end, we got the better cars for the same price and we could start our adventure. During our journey, we visited the Ackermann Fortress, a tourist attraction an historical old castle located in Bilhorod. We realized that the tourist attractions outside are also lacking of information as in Odessa. Afterwards we drove to Kalina and had our business meeting. Overall, we enjoyed the day a lot and due to the fact that we were outside the city and could have other impressions of Ukraine.
Business Meeting Hotel Kalina
Hotel Kalina is a Family and Children Hotel that is located a two-hour drive away from Odessa in Sergiivka. Sergiivka was very famous during the Soviet times for health tourism, there are still some Sanatories from that time but their medical treatment is out of date and not conforming to the modern standards. The area has a green cityscape, which originated from the former Soviet Union. They invested one million rubles to plant trees. Until today, Sergiivka protects the trees in order to be known as the quiet green Oasis.
Kalina Hotel was built in 2015 and is owned by two Ukrainian hotel investors. Our interviewee Georgij grew up in Charkiew. Before he started his job as a marketing manager in Kalina he worked as a journalist and marketing manager for more than eight years in Kiev. He then started in 2015 as marketing manager, which was planned just as a short stop for a few months, but the atmosphere of the hotel and region kept him there and he is now the hotel manager. The hotel has specialized on families and children and therefore they are open just during summer time and a minor time in autumn when the children have vacations. Furthermore, they are building a new campus with teachers, as they do not have many good schools in the region. Additionally, the hotel can thereby profit from a whole year operation. Another field of hotel Kalina is health tourism, currently they still work with big medicine centers nearby but they are building already their own facility for health tourism to extend the hotel.
Because they are operating only seasonal, they have problems with keeping good employees. Many young people from the area do not want to stay in Kalina as they earn better money in another region. As consequence, they can only hire older women or women with more than one children. All employees of the hotel Kalina entered the business uneducated, which is another issue. Therefore, the hotel made it its task to educate all of them. Even Georgij had to teach himself in core skills over online courses and learned a lot by learning by doing. He mentioned that the education system of Ukraine is not sufficient. It is therefore important for the hotel, to give as much knowledge as possible to their employees.
The main target groups are families with children but considering the nationality their most important source markets are Ukraine and Moldavia. Back in the days many Moldavian decided to go on medical treatments in Serievka because of their low prices. Nevertheless, the biggest problem they are facing today are the expensive flights. In general, Georgij is more interested in groups than in individual customers for the reason that these customers are more reliable and generate a better profit. In order to attract more groups, they even provide facilities to hold conferences. The main problem of the hotel in this section is the distance to Odessa. The two-hour drive hinders business people to come for small or short day conferences. Since they realized, they are concentrating on long stay conferences. The biggest advantage of this target segment is that they even stay longer and deliver an even bigger profit.
As already Valeriy Skosarev from the restaurant Dacha mentioned, also Georgij is not interested in a cooperation with the government. Even the only wish he would had from the government, namely speed bumpers to ensure the safety of his hotel, was not implemented. Based on this experience the hotel decided to operate on themselves. They are not relying on the government they just do not want to be disturbed.
Our questionnaire led him to reflect the hotel and his position as the manager. It gave him another perspective and, as we think, a more global view overall. This empowers us that our project is not only beneficial for us but also for the business partners.
Thurdsay, we will talk to two different business partners of the hospitality segment. Stay tuned!
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Kevin S.
Studyweek Odessa — A project from nine students of HTW Chur
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