Protea Hotels teaches you hotel skills with its own tycoon app

Stimulating the money-making part of your brain, the South African Protea Hotels try to give you a taste of what it’s like being in their shoes. So watch out Railroad Tycoon, Protea Hospitality Group just launched its own business simulation app. This is to see if we’ve got what it takes to successfully manage a hotel.

This iOS app runs like a game and is meant to be “simple and entertaining” while teaching you financial skills. This is done by “challenging [you] to think laterally to improve revenue.” Apart from customer satisfaction, a successful revenue stream is the most important trait a hotel can have according to Danny Bryer of Protea Hotels. This isn’t “the rock n roll side of the business, though, so the best way to learn about it is to make the process fun.”

Although not that visually stimulating, the app focuses on “detailing the complexity and skill” of management and finance. You barter your way to success as you “choose which guests to accommodate at the right time based on demand only.” Unlike many of the popular tycoon platform games, the app doesn’t give you a bird’s-eye view of your business, but rather with this app you only “have one week and five rooms to play with.” Through careful decision-making you eventually compare “the revenue you banked vs. the actual highest revenue possible.”

The theory of gamification has come a long way since first coined a few decades ago by Nick Pelling. The theory involves applying game-like scenarios to business strategies to better the users’ behavior and level of engagement. Gamification’s aims are simple: make something which may not be fun, fun” says Bryer.

Day-by-day we see tycoon games of all genres take the PC and phone crowds by storm at viral pace. All based on the gamification theory. Let’s see if Protea Hotels’ got what it takes to pull this one off. The app is available on iTunes for US$2 and compatible with iOS 4.0 or higher.