The Tricycle of Guest Service Excellence: A Perfect Model For Remarkable Experiences
Doug Kennedy | October 4, 2024
Crafting a Unique Employer Brand for Today’s Talent Market
Veronika Mercier | August 14, 2024
Smart Strategies
IHG Hotels & Resorts Supports It’s a Penalty and Its Campaign Against Human Trafficking
IHG Hotels & Resorts | May 4, 2022
New impact report reveals campaign positively affected awareness and prevention of human trafficking ATLANTA, May 3, 2022 – IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG), one of the world’s leading hotel companies, recently partnered with international nonprofit organization It’s a Penalty (IAP) to support its anti-human trafficking campaign leading up to Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles. Due to the prevalence of trafficking crimes around major sporting events, IAP launched its extensive awareness and prevention efforts before the February game. This month, IAP released its Impact Report stemming from those efforts. Highlights include: 14...
Is Your Hotel Ready for the Travel Rebound?
Cicero Construction Group | April 27, 2022
PLAINFIELD, IL, APRIL 27, 2022 — For the hotel industry, the last two years has been a rollercoaster. Dragged down initially by COVID-19 lockdowns, hoteliers are now finding their business on an upswing with bookings exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Even group business travel is showing promising first signs of returning on the books. Thanks to ongoing widespread vaccinations and the power of pent-up demand, this momentum will likely continue throughout the year with travelers willing to pay pre-pandemic or higher rates. To help hoteliers "get heads in beds" and drive RevPAR, Cicero Construction Group, a general contractor specializing ...
Beach-Bound Countdown: Hilton Survey Highlights 2022 Summer Travel Trends
Hilton | April 21, 2022
Survey Spotlights Increased Travel Demand, Reaffirms Need to Unplug, Recharge and Reconnect MCLEAN, Va. - With Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, just a month away, one reality is clear: Americans are desperate for a vacation and are feeling the effects. According to a recent Hilton survey of U.S. travelers*, more than three in four (76%) respondents experience negative feelings when they go too long without a vacation, with burnout (41%) and boredom (36%) being among the top emotions. Beyond spotlighting the undesirable impacts of missing vacation, the survey also revealed the reason for the demand. Though respondents report...
The Day I Became a Customer Service Expert and Two Important Lessons
Shep Hyken | April 13, 2022
By Shep Hyken “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This line has been credited to Confucius, Mark Twain, Mark Anthony and others. Anyone who finds what they love to do at work, either through a passion, hobby, interest, a random job they end up loving, or some defining moment is lucky. That makes me one of the lucky ones. Just out of college I started my career as a customer service expert. It wasn’t a random job I applied for. It was a chosen profession that had its roots in something that happened to me when I was younger, an event that caused me to become obsessed with customer service. I’v...
2022 Update: EB-5 Is Back! What Every Real Estate and Hotel Developer Needs to Know
Jim Butler | April 4, 2022
By Jim Butler and the Global Hospitality Group® Click here for the latest articles on EB-5 Financing, and here for C-PACE Financing. The hotel development and financing world is buzzing with the news that the EB-5 program has been renewed, creating new opportunities for upcoming projects. My partner David Sudeck and I have written the short update below to help get you up to speed. EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 EB-5 is revitalized and renewed by Jim Butler & David Sudeck In case you haven’t heard, EB-5 is back! On March 15, President Biden signed the Omnibus Spending Bill, which included the “EB-5 Reform...
Tourism Tidbits: Working for a Safer and Happier Tourism Industry
Dr. Peter E. Tarlow | April 4, 2022
By Dr. Peter Tarlow As the world hopes that COVID-19 restrictions will wane, we all need to work for a safer and happier tourism industry As war continues in Europe pray for peace and remember that tourism is an instrument of peace! It appears that many of the Covid-19 travel restrictions from around the world are slowly being removed and tourism is beginning to return to normal. Most employees and guests want both their holidays and their workplace environment to be a safe and secure spot where no one has to worry about street crimes, tourism crimes, issues or rage, and poor interpersonal relations. In the post Covid world an ad...
Local Market Growth: A Return to the Lost Skills of Filling a Hotel
Magnuson Hotels | April 1, 2022
April 1, 2022 – We have been trained in recent years to fear the word ‘artisan’. Hoisted over your favorite coffee house, bakery or even rug shop, it usually means that you’re about to pay significantly more than you would normally budget. But you feel good about it, because even if you secretly like instant coffee more, you’re supporting skills which otherwise might be lost. You feel that you’re making the world a better place. And the fact is that – coffee making aside – we are losing skills all the time. If we in the hotel sector were to look back into the not-too-distant past, we would find a whole set of abilities whi...
ADA Defense Lawyer: Does Your Hotel Have an Electric Vehicle Charging Station?
Martin H. Orlick | March 30, 2022
By Jim Butler, Martin Orlick You’re about to see a lot more Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS) on your daily drive. Within months of taking office, the Biden Administration announced an initiative to build half a million new charging stations across the country. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act, which passed in November 2021, includes $7.5 billion towards this goal; the Administration’s signature domestic policy bill, the Build Back Better act, also includes funding to promote electric vehicles and expand the public charging network. California’s governor is promoting an ambitious plan of 500,000 electric vehicles on...
Reasons to Make Books a Guestroom Feature
Larry and Adam Mogelonsky | March 30, 2022
By Larry and Adam Mogelonsky Your kneejerk reaction might be, “Why would anyone come to a hotel to read a book?” You wouldn’t be wrong. Books aren’t the main draw – nor will they ever likely be unless you theme the entire place like a library. Instead, think of books as a spice to flavor a dish; they’re one more item in the room to elevate the visual appeal and to ensure your guests are never bored. Coming out of the pandemic, adding books would be a timely addition. Many people became quite introspective during the lockdowns and general malaise of being restricted from pre-pandemic forms of social interaction. ...
Business Opportunities: Is the Metaverse the Right Way to Go?
Dr Valentina Clergue | March 25, 2022
Maybe you are not involved in gaming and do not use virtual reality, and thus you think that the Metaverse is irrelevant for your business. Should you dismiss it completely? Maybe not. After all, most if not all of the major trends impact businesses sooner or later. It is already a necessity for companies to have a well thought digital strategy and to look for opportunities to maximize the business’s digital presence. The Metaverse could be one of these opportunities today. By Dr. Valentina Clergue Brand image: New opportunities The Metaverse is a virtual immersive environment where people can interact, play and buy...
Rearranging the Communications Hierarchy in the Post-Pandemic
Larry and Adam Mogelonsky | March 23, 2022
By Larry and Adam Mogelonsky Now that Covid is waning, it is time for us to re-examine how to use communications media to our full advantage. Going all the way back to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ proclamation, we’ve known that the type of channel you use to talk with a guest will influence satisfaction and customer spend. But the preferred mediums change as society does, especially in the wake of the internet, smartphones and the pandemic, and you need to pivot accordingly to maximize revenues. To be fair, one of the more positive legacies of the pandemic has been the general acceptance of videoconferencing ...
CRS + PMS = SUCCESS!
Zucchetti North America LCC | March 22, 2022
By Greg Swain Everyone who has been working in hotel technology knows that one of the biggest hurdles for hotels in adopting operational technology is the difficulties in fully integrating all their systems. We’ve all heard “we integrate to that” (eye roll). Integration between systems can be time-consuming and costly. Even once the initial integration is finalized, there can be issues where integration fails, and business losses often happen as a result. Whether it’s a lag in the data transfer time that causes an unfortunate overbooking, or an error in either rates or inventory, these tech struggles can wreak havoc on a hotel’s o...
Keeping the Promise: Why 2022 Is the Year of Hotel Worker Safety
John Stachowiak | March 16, 2022
The pandemic has shifted the timetable for the adoption of worker safety technology, but now the clock is ticking; There are quick, easy, and effective ways to comply with AHLA’s 5-Star Promise and state legislation to protect hotel workers with confidence By John Stachowiak Hotel workers deserve to have the confidence that they are operating in a safe environment. Providing safety and security to hotel staff is getting even more difficult with fewer workers on property, making it even more important to have a plan in place in case of an emergency. Fortunately, technology is available to help protect hotel workers regardless of who is o...
What Is Servitization?
EHL Insights | March 14, 2022
What is servitization? Its origins go back to 1988, Sandra Vandermerwe and Juan Rada presented what they termed the “servitization of business”, explaining how more and more corporations were adding value to their core corporate offerings through services. – For some well-intended temporal perspective here, this was the year before Tim Berners-Lee invented the “World Wide Web” while working at CERN and a full eleven years before Kevin Ashton coined the term “Internet of Things” during his time at Procter & Gamble. – Vandermerwe and Rada observed that companies were offering “bundles of customer-focused combinations of ...
Why Hotels Need “Visibility” to Avoid Data Privacy Liability
Jim Butler | March 9, 2022
By Jim Butler and the Global Hospitality Group® The rules around data privacy and cybersecurity are constantly evolving. In order to protect themselves from liability, hotel owners should pay attention to ongoing legal developments and learn more about their own data infrastructure. Bob Braun, senior member of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® and Co-Chair of the Firm’s Cybersecurity & Privacy Group, explains why hotels need to understand exactly what data they hold, where it is stored and who has access to it. Facing the Knowledge Gap: Why Hotels Need “Visibility” to Avoid Data Privacy Liability by Bob Braun, Hotel ...
Rethinking the Gift Shop as a Part of a TRevPAR Strategy
Larry and Adam Mogelonsky | March 9, 2022
By Larry and Adam Mogelonsky The gift shop is for many hoteliers an afterthought. But a win is a win, and as travel recovery gets underway for a gangbusters summer of 2022 (our hope at least), it’s time for all hotels to consider operating under the model of optimizing revenue on a per guest basis (otherwise called TRevPAR) rather than simply trying to maximize occupancy. By doing so, you can drive a better topline and healthier margin without having to rely on those 100% occ summer weekends (which may not be possible due to labor shortages) or the full-fledged return of corporate guests to buoy midweek occ. Hence, there’s a strong ...
Inclusivity Is the Key to Gender Diversity: Open the Door Please!
Marloes Knippenberg | March 8, 2022
By Marloes Knippenberg Belonging to hospitality, the most service, people-oriented industry, you tend to be impacted by everything the world is undergoing at any given time – technological zeitgeists, global economic slowdowns, unexpected weather turbulence, in addition to the human quest for knowledge, disruptions, and innovations. Regardless of the environment, less represented groups on a leadership scale change the social engineering in decision-making. For decades, boardrooms have lacked women inclusivity, but now, industries have adopted and started promoting changes as more women sit at executive boards and rank high on global pro...
Travel Brands Need to Use Social Media to Directly Engage With Younger Cohorts
GlobalData | March 3, 2022
With social media proving to be the most cost-effective and impactful way of directly getting engaged with younger consumers, travel companies have begun to invest time and resource into this space for faster outreach and connection, finds GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. GlobalData’s Job Analytics Database reveals that there was a 175.8% increase in social media-related jobs in the travel and tourism industry from 2020 to 2021. This showcases that an increasing amount of travel companies have acknowledged the importance of social media for brand engagement and customer service. According to GlobalData, *30% of Gen Z ...
Until the PIPs Squeak
Thomas Magnuson | March 3, 2022
By Thomas Magnuson We can trace brand standards and the standardisation of hotel rooms back to the 1950s upon the introduction of the interstate freeway system across the US. It was post World War Two and President Dwight Eisenhower decided to completely network the US to create jobs and spur commerce. With this system came an increase in travel and the impetus for the birth of standardisations and chains. At the same time, Kemmons Wilson (the founder of Holiday Inn) was visiting Florida on a road trip with his family. After staying at several motels of uneven quality, Kemmons realized that somebody needed to create a way for travellers...
Never, Never, Never Be Late
Shep Hyken | March 2, 2022
By Shep Hyken Never being late … that’s not realistic. It’s going to happen. It’s not a question of if. It’s when. But you might say, “It’s not my fault!” And maybe it’s not. For example, you may be driving to a lunch meeting, and a car accident shuts down the highway making you. And it’s not just about arriving late to a commitment. It could be a delay in shipping a product. Maybe a customer orders something three days before Christmas. You ship it out that day, but the backup at the post office causes a delay. Or perhaps there is a supply issue, and you can’t get the parts to manufacture your products. ...
Let Go of Something, and You Might Get More of Something Else
Gary Hernbroth | March 1, 2022
“Without risk, there is no growth.” [caption id="attachment_297034" align="aligncenter" width="615"] The Beatles enjoy a sip of Coca-Cola in the early days (photo: Mirrorpix)[/caption] By Gary Hernbroth My dad sprang this on me when I was in high school. As a lifelong educator and administrator, he was full of lots of little nuggets like this for my brothers and me while we were growing up. Not that we always listened to him, especially as teenagers, but he sure was right about this one. Especially challenging times like these bring risk-reward front and center to much of what we do, especially in the hospitality busin...
The Light Switch Mentality
Shep Hyken | February 23, 2022
By Shep Hyken When you flip a light switch, you know exactly what to expect. The light comes on – right away. No hesitation. It happens immediately. The human brain loves instant results. Let’s use the TV as an example. It was a number of years ago, but I remember the frustrating feeling like it was yesterday. I switched to a new satellite system for the internet and TV. Before the switch, when I changed TV channels it was instant. Go up, go down or push the number pad to get a specific channel, and it worked instantaneously. But with the new system, it took three or four seconds, sometimes longer depending on the signal, to move ...
An Omnipresent GM Who Picks Up Trash
Doug Kennedy | February 21, 2022
By Doug Kennedy Having been in the profession of hotel training for over three decades, with an average of six clients a month, one can imagine I have stayed in a lot of lodging facilities across all segments. I am often asked “What is your favorite hotel ever?” To me, picking out a favorite hotel is like being asked to pick a favorite child; we love them all, right? (Well, most of the time, anyway!) But I must admit, I do have a very short list of a select few that truly stand out. One of those at the top of my list is the Nizuc Resort Cancun. It is memorable for several reasons. First, I am always mesmerized by the arc...
How to Reposition Hotel Real Estate: A Methodology
Jochen de Peuter | February 15, 2022
By Jochen de Peuter Ever-changing market factors, including external economic forces, shifting demand patterns and changing competitive pressures, can all influence a property's success and constantly require hotel property owners to re-evaluate their asset's position to improve its image, profitability and value. The Basics Hotels are different from other types of real estate because they involve both a special purpose real estate and a daily operation business. Repositioning a hotel is therefore a complex process with many moving parts. Repositioning hotel real estate involves many factors (market, economy, customers) ...
