Hillside Beach Club: Delivering the Ultimate Family Vacation in the Mediterranean

In 2015, Edip Ilkbahar, HBC’s founder and CEO, was looking over the plans for a new branch in Cyprus. Since the inception of the company by the Alarko Group of companies in 1994, Ilkbahar’s company had enjoyed high occupancy, high guest satisfaction, and high return-visitor rates, not to mention increasing profits from HBC’s single location in Fethiye, Turkey. Although branching out had been on the agenda for a couple of years, Ilkbahar was feeling the pressure to recreate HBC’s culture in a new location to live up to and even surpass its established success. In parallel, Ilkbahar also needed to make sure that employee motivation at HBC’s original Fethiye location did not drop and the employees continued to deliver wholehearted service to live up to HBC’s reputation. 2015 certainly looked like it would be a tough year. How could Ilkbahar both try to extend HBC’s special formula for success to Cyprus while maintaining high motivation at the Fethiye installation? The case describes the forces that shape the hotel industry's structure, raising the issue of how HBC established itself a sustainable niche for competitive advantage. The case provides the context for the students to identify the design elements underlying HBC’s success and helps them explore the link between guest satisfaction and employee training, empowerment, feedback culture, continuous product development as well as social media and marketing. The case challenges the students to ponder what it takes for a company to repeatedly increase customer satisfaction rates and profitability with the same product over the years.