Meetings, chicken & eggs

Saskia (l) and Erica (r) with architects João Boto Caiero (l) and Alejandro Ponce (r)

It has been a busy week. We thought it would be nice to give you an idea of what we’re working on. 

We started the week with a visit to a community center in one of the remoter and poorer areas of Oaxaca, in the context of our research of potential education projects to support. We were welcomed with a traditional dance, performed by children of the neighbourhood that are taking dancing classes in the center. So sweet!

Many meetings

We continued with a visit to our new accountant, because we had to send in our tax declarations halfway through the month. We went to the bank, to make Erica co-owner of the bank account. We had two meetings with our architect, to talk about design and construction, materials (block or brick, tiles or polished cement, wood or metal?) and planning. We saw our ‘consultant’, another architect that we see when we need a second opinion. We had several skypes with Marcel in The Netherlands, and we skyped with students of the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, who are going to develop an entry strategy for our hotel in the world of OTA’s (Online Travel Agents) and tour agencies.

Chicken-and-egg

And then we have the paperwork with the municipality, like the subscription in the public register in Oaxaca (with that, the terrain will be put to our name). To be able to subscribe to the public register, we need to hand over proof of payment of the predial (a property tax), but in order to pay the predial, we need proof of subscription to the public register. A typical ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation, but not the first and most likely not the last either. 

Plans

Apart from all this we have been working on our commercial plan, our education plan, our operations plan, our staffing plan. We need to have all of those finished before summer, because then our busy season will really start!