Hotel valet parking company: strategy, offering and launch plan as CEO

You are the CEO of a newly started company whose business will be running valet parking for hotels: hotels contract your company to park and return their guests' cars. What would you do? Walk through which hotels and stakeholders you would build for, what the service and any supporting product would include, how the company would make money, how you would launch, and how you would measure success. ```hint Three people touch every car The hotel signs the contract, the guest experiences the service and the attendant delivers it. Work out what each of them struggles with today before deciding where your company can do visibly better than an in-house valet desk or an existing operator. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the company starting from nothing, or does it already run parking operations, such as garages or event parking, that it can build on? - Who pays for the service: the hotel through a contract, guests through a parking or valet fee, or both? - Which hotels come first: upscale city hotels where parking space is scarce, resort or airport properties, or hotels that offer no valet today? - Should the answer focus on the business strategy, on software for guests, attendants and hotel staff, or on both? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear view of the hotel as buyer, the guest as user and the attendant as operator, and which of them the business is built around first - Pain points grounded in the valet journey from drop-off to pickup, and why current options fail them - A differentiated, prioritized first offering in which software strengthens the operation rather than existing for its own sake - A business model and go-to-market plan: contract structure, target hotels, a pilot and a path to scale - Success metrics that combine service quality and unit economics, with guardrails and risks around vehicle damage, safety, liability and staffing ### Follow-up Questions - Guests at a partner hotel complain about long waits for their cars during the morning checkout rush. How would you diagnose and fix it without simply hiring more attendants? - A guest says their car was damaged while parked and your attendant disagrees. How should the company handle the claim, and what would you build to prevent such disputes? - Once you run valet at many hotels in one city, which adjacent services or customers would you pursue, and which would you avoid?