Project Management - Sa Adventures Unlimited

1.0 Executive Summary

SA Adventures Unlimited is a tour business which focuses on organizing and leading "high-end" adventure trips in South America which was formed by Micheal and Jill Rodriguez. Adventures Unlimited uses the Rodriguezes' strategy which include of recruiting experience, reliable people who shared their passion for South America and the outdoor. They helped these people to organize specific trips through organizing excursion over the Internet and in travel magazines and this lead to the size and scope of its business began to expand slowly after the first year.

Adventures Unlimited enjoy a high level of repeat business and often use their customers' suggestions to organize future trip. This allows the company to grow from offering 4 trips a year to having 16 excursions scheduled, including trips to Central America. With the increase growth, the company now had an administrative support staff of three people and a relatively stable group of five trip planners/guides whom they hired on a trip-by-trip contact basis.

The Rodriguezes begin to encounter problems that worried them about the future even though they were pleased with the success of their venture. In one case, the company had to refund 30 percent of the tour fee because a group was stranded five days in Blanco Puente after missing a train connection and due to unanticipated costs, a couple of the tours went over budget which eroded that year's profit. On the other hand, customers begin to complain about the quality of accommodations and the price of the tours and one group unfortunately was struck by a bad case of food poisoning. Therefore, this causes the company having a hard time maintaining the high level of customer satisfaction to which they were accustomed. Lastly, the company was also having a hard time tracking costs across projects and typically did not know how well it did after their taxes were prepared which causes them having difficulty to plan for future excursions. In the following report, we will look into how the applying of Project Management can solve Adventures Unlimited problem.

1.1 Background

Adventures Unlimited runs each of their tour business as an individual project which has a classic project phrase as each have a beginning, middle, and end and includes a definition or selection phase, a planning phase, and an execution phase. In project management, it involves budgeting of resources, and the company resources include their administrative staff and tour guides as well as project selection. The Rodriguezes need to be able to accurately anticipate the costs of each tour that they consider to take up, so that they are able to make wise decisions about which tours to operate as project management also includes financial analysis like calculating the net present value of each tour that the company's considered to offer.

In