The Tricycle of Guest Service Excellence: A Perfect Model For Remarkable Experiences
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Crafting a Unique Employer Brand for Today’s Talent Market
Veronika Mercier | August 14, 2024
Smart Strategies
How to Compete With Amazon
Shep Hyken | June 2, 2021
By Shep Hyken Amazon has changed the way customers think. It has pushed customer service and experience to a higher level. The result is that consumers are more demanding and have higher expectations. It doesn’t matter what type of business or industry, Amazon has changed what customers want and expect from any type of business. This is actually good for everyone. So, how do you compete with Amazon? Five Ways to Compete with Amazon 1. Stop Competing: The first step is to change your mindset. Stop thinking of this as an all-out competition. Even if you’re in the retail world and sell the same merchandise as...
How Human Touch in Service Encounters Makes a Winning Customer Experience Strategy
Dr Sébastien Fernandez | June 2, 2021
By Dr. Sébastien Fernandez This article focuses on the power of touch in service encounters. It is a timely topic as physical distances in restaurants have never been so important. In many countries, restaurants are closed. In other countries, tables in restaurants are kept separate at a significant distance, and service providers and customers wear masks. Social distancing is nowadays required. Touch is no longer a sign of care and affection but may constitute a fatal weapon. Even before the pandemic, many people unfavorably perceived touch, considering tactile contact among service providers and guests as inappropriate or even rude. Whe...
How to Promote Empowerment in Hospitality Through Servant Leadership
Dr. Steffen Raub | May 28, 2021
By Dr. Steffen Raub Putting people ahead of power is not the usual leadership paradigm most of us are accustomed to, and yet, research is beginning to show that amazing things can happen when leaders decide to make serving their team a priority. Traditional power leadership models turned upside down When we think about leaders, the idea of “serving” others is usually the last that comes to our mind. Leaders are depicted as those who drive, who give orders, directions and whose instructions need to be followed. Subordinates serve leaders, not the other way round, right? Is “servant leadership” nothing more than an oxymoron? W...
What’s Normal For Us Can Be Amazing To Others
Shep Hyken | May 12, 2021
By Shep Hyken During my live presentations, there is a part of my speech where I talk about Moments of Magic. These are positive experiences we create for our customers, including our internal customers, also known as our fellow employees. (If you’ve been following my work, you already knew that.) In the speech, I’ll ask audience members to share an example of when they created that experience. During a recent keynote presentation to an audience of managers of a major retail chain, an example was shared, and it was a good one. A customer had left her purse at the store. It was found by an employee who put it in the manager’s...
Associate Retention & Motivation in Hotels: Let’s Leave Pandemic Crisis Mode and Focus on Employee Satisfaction Again
Neil Flavin | May 12, 2021
By Neil J Flavin The pandemic’s negative effect on the hospitality industry, especially its ability to hire new associates, will be long felt even as we see signs of recovery. Many have left the industry for other opportunities considered more stable. The more leadership can recognize, motivate, and reward team members, the stronger the chances are of rebuilding and retaining staff for the long term. There are so many hidden and not-so hidden costs of high turnover that exploring all options to retain your valuable associates is more important than ever. New associates are excited to come to work, be productive, and help provide for t...
Key Findings from New Travel Recovery Trend Report for Q1 2021
Expedia Group Media Solutions | May 10, 2021
SEATTLE – May 10, 2021 – Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, the global digital advertising organization of Expedia Group, today released its first-ever quarterly trend report. The Q1 2021 Travel Recovery Trend Report features data from custom research and Expedia Group first-party data combined with actionable insights to help ensure travel brands are best prepared to reconnect and reengage with travelers as spring and summer travel ramps up. “Traveler behaviors and preferences have evolved significantly over the past year, meaning travel brands can no longer rely on historical marketing strategies to inform their recovery plans,” ...
New Report Shows Value of IP to the Tourism Sector
UNWTO | May 6, 2021
A new report published jointly by WIPO and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) on the value of intellectual property in boosting tourism shows how the IP system creates a favorable ecosystem for innovation, entrepreneurship and investment in the sector. The publication, entitled “Boosting Tourism Development through Intellectual Property,” highlights good practices, features case studies and recommendations for policymakers and other tourism stakeholders on how to ensure that creativity, innovation, traditions and cultural heritage in tourism are properly protected and commercialized and that the benefits are shared by all. In ...
The Unexpected Stands Out – Especially if It’s Bad
Shep Hyken | May 6, 2021
By Shep Hyken In the customer service world, people have expectations. They want to be treated with dignity and respect. They expect that if they buy something, it will work and do what it is supposed to. If it doesn’t, they expect the company to stand behind its products and services. The effort a customer makes to get the problem resolved – hopefully, it’s minimal effort – is ideally rewarded with an acceptable and expected resolution. In other words, if there is a problem, customers expect it to be handled appropriately, and when it is, they are usually happy to continue doing business with you. I share this because someon...
Three Ways to Make Your Hotel Company Attractive to Investors
Michael Teplin | May 6, 2021
By Michael Teplin As we emerge from the doldrums of the last year and watch demand trend upward, there is a great opportunity to create competitive advantages for your hotel company. Cash flow from new Investors can make or break any company’s runway to a sustainable forward path, and a hospitality company that can opportunistically grow in today’s unprecedented environment can leapfrog its pre-pandemic growth strategy. There are three specific areas to focus on as you shift gears from cash conservation to post-pandemic growth: Fully-operation, efficient Finance and Accounting team. Corporate and Social Governance. Time...
Developing a People-First Approach to Mergers and Acquisitions
Jeff Venza | May 5, 2021
By Jeff Venza For many, change is a terrifying concept – especially when it comes to business. But what we so often forget is that, although uncomfortable, change is the inevitable catalyst to transformation and innovation. Sometimes, the most disruptive moments in our respective careers are the ones that derive the most meaning, setting us on course for incredible development and professional alignment. And contrary to popular belief, mergers and acquisitions can represent precisely that kind of moment. Historically, the hospitality industry is both resistant to change and notorious for it. We are a firmly rooted sector in a traditio...
ProfitSword Demonstrates the Cost Savings of Business Intelligence for Hotels With Newly Published White Paper
ProfitSword, LLC | May 5, 2021
White paper analyzes how hoteliers can save thousands of dollars each month while reducing business planning errors and maximizing efficient use of employee time. ORLANDO, Fla. – May 5, 2021 – ProfitSword, a premier developer of business intelligence and data integration software, has announced the publishing of a white paper focusing on how hoteliers can save themselves from thousands of dollars in operational expenses when deploying an advanced business intelligence platform. Now freely available for hospitality professionals to download from the ProfitSword website, the new white paper takes a step-by-step approach to demonstrate p...
The Current State of the Hospitality Industry
ROBERT RAUCH | May 5, 2021
By Bob Rauch Where is the Hospitality Industry as of Spring 2021? Current conditions in the state of the hospitality industry include leisure travel, employee challenges and reinvented guest programming. While I do not know how we are going to pay for the government spending plans, I do know that in the short-term, we will see huge growth in gross domestic product with some forecasters projecting over 6% for this year. Lenders are back in the game and traffic on the roads seems to me like an increase in business overall. To date, all of the hotel business, by and large, is leisure business. Longer weekends...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: The System to Follow to Create Financial Leadership in Your Hotel
David Lund | May 3, 2021
By David Lund Practice is what we are missing. Practice with the financial piece is somehow a foreign concept. But in the hotel world practice is everywhere, right? If you and I worked in banquets and we were both rookies, we would show up every day and listen, work and learn, and in a relatively short period of Time, we would both be pretty good at setting up, servicing and tearing down the banquet. How is this different from learning the financial piece? It’s not, that’s the illusion. It looks different because it is money and we see that it has a certain illusionary power. The monthly financial circle in a hotel is the prac...
Analyzing Recovery: Total Room Inventory vs. STR Standard Methodology
STR | April 30, 2021
Occupancy has long been one of the key hotel performance metrics measured by STR. Reported on both a monthly and weekly basis, occupancy is easily calculated by dividing rooms sold (demand) by rooms available (supply), providing a straightforward representation of the percentage of rooms occupied during a given time period. However, even this traditional metric has not escaped the impacts of COVID-19. Voluntary and mandated hotel closures caused a fundamental shift in the way we record and report supply, and thus, a new hotel occupancy metric was born. The status quo In normal times, and in alignment with USALI guidelines, STR record...
Tourism in Technicolour
PolyU’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management | April 30, 2021
Cartoons might just hold the key to attracting an important new niche in the tourism market, according to a pioneering recent study by Dr Mimi Li and Mr Yuhao Chen of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and their co-authors. With society’s increasing emphasis on family togetherness and bonding, especially through leisure activities, more families are travelling together than ever before. How can destination marketing be targeted to meet the needs of different generations? Focusing on child tourists, a growing yet remarkably understudied market, the researchers provide novel empirical e...
Hotel Franchise Lawyer: 5 Things to Negotiate in Your Next Franchise Agreement
Bob Braun | April 29, 2021
By Jim Butler, Bob Braun After a year of economic upheaval in the hospitality industry, hotels are making big changes as they look ahead to recovery. Oftentimes these changes involve a complete rebrand, and this leads to questions about what is negotiable in a franchise agreement. In the article below, Bob Braun, senior member of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® and Co-Chair of the Firm’s Cybersecurity & Privacy Group, talks about 5 important franchise terms that can usually be negotiated. To say that the past year has been a shock to the hospitality industry is a gross understatement. While many believe that a recovery is in s...
Are You Ready for Takeoff?
JC Thompson | April 29, 2021
By JC Thompson The pent-up desire to "hit the road" is forecasting a strong travel comeback. Are you ready? With hotels not fully opened and yet occupancies are at max capacity, the challenge will not likely be revenue or REVPAR. The challenge will be expectations. Customers will expect the same levels of service. They won't care much about your challenge with finding employees or that your customer service skills have been out of practice as they were replaced with COVID-19 regulations and survival skills. "You have got to be kidding me. I paid $350 for a room that no longer includes daily housekeeping services, there is a stain on the...
Stop Reading From The Script!
Shep Hyken | April 28, 2021
By Shep Hyken This is why some companies get a bad rap! Our colleague here at Shepard Presentations, Nate Jones, shared a story about something that recently happened to his father. This is a great customer service training lesson. He bought a new car. About a month later he’s in a parking lot and the car won’t start. So, he calls the dealership’s customer service number, which was actually a support center for all of that brand’s dealerships in the U.S. – maybe even the world. The call started off okay but quickly derailed into one of those, “You won’t believe this” kind of stories. After a little troubleshooting o...
Skyscanner Report Reveals How US Will Spend, Plan and Enjoy Travel in 2021
Skyscanner | April 28, 2021
MIAMI - April 28, 2021 - Skyscanner's Horizon Report reveals the hottest traveler trends for summer 2021, using the latest data and insights as well as expert opinion from Skyscanner and the wider industry. A one-off, survey of over 5,000 people worldwide provides insights into the hearts and mind of travelers. TRAVELERS ARE GIVING THEMSELVES A "FREE" UPGRADE US travelers are spending less, with the average fare purchased coming in at 21% less than it did pre-pandemic. US travelers are choosing to "upgrade" their travel, opting for fares on average 20% more expensive than the lowest shown to them for...
What Hoteliers Want From Their PMS in 2021; Top Features Requested by Hoteliers as They Prepare for Reopening
Audrey MacRae | April 27, 2021
Independent hotel and resort group operators are demanding more choice, more flexibility, more functionality, and more support as they prepare for industrywide resurgence By Audrey D. MacRae It is not surprising that 2021 brought with it a lot of hotel operational changes as management had ample time last year to evaluate which technology solutions were working and which were not. What many hotels are discovering — based on the increasing call volume to our North America sales team — is that their current property-management systems do not have the breadth of features or the contactless tools needed to support returning guests along t...
Seeing the Post-Pandemic Travel Landscape as an Opportunity for Hotels to ‘Be Direct’
Nancy Huang | April 26, 2021
By Nancy Huang More than any time in the last decade, travel consumer purchasing habits are up for grabs. In New York City, the sidewalk cafes are bustling, the parks are full of picnics, and the city’s attractions are coming back to life. The city is blooming again, cautiously but happily. And tourists are coming back to town. The same is true across the United States. While hoteliers are optimistic that the industry is starting its path to recovery, it remains impossible to overstate Covid’s effect on travel. The late Arne Sorenson, Marriott CEO, estimated in the early stages of the pandemic that “Covid-19 is having a more ...
Priceline Reveals the Top Travel Trends for U.S. Travelers This Season
Priceline | April 22, 2021
NORWALK, Conn. - April 22, 2021 - After a devastating pandemic kept us at home for over a year, Priceline did a deep dive into how travel has changed and what trends are emerging as we enter the spring and summer peak travel season. "Not only are leisure travelers desperate to make up for lost travel opportunities in 2020," says Priceline CEO Brett Keller, "but the slow recovery of business travel and broad availability of deals will fuel even more leisure demand." Here are highlights of how American travel preferences are changing: Escapism is top of mind. When it comes to air travel, hotel stays and car rentals, Americans are ...
How to Keep Hotel Labor Costs Down When Business Ramps Up
Rayna Katz | April 21, 2021
By Rayna Katz Some changes made to cope with the pandemic likely will be industry norms, while the crisis also spotlighted the need for new practices to be put in place. When the coronavirus pandemic surged worldwide in 2020, sending hotel occupancy into free-fall, owners and management companies worked to reduce labor costs wherever possible. On top of layoffs and furloughs, corners were cut—when they could be without damaging the guest experience—and many employees were tasked with multiple jobs. Now, as the industry gears up to get back to business, what will hoteliers do to control labor costs? How many measures that have bee...
There Is No Excuse to Not Respond to a Customer
Shep Hyken | April 21, 2021
By Shep Hyken Let me put it to you in the simplest terms possible. When your customer calls, emails or texts you, you must respond. That is unless you don’t care if they ever do business with you again. One of our subscribers to The Shepard Letter, Andy Saks, owner of Spark Presentations and professional corporate presenter, sent in a story worth sharing. (By the way, if you’ve got an amazing – or horrific – customer service story, send it over. I collect them and may include them in one of my articles or videos.) Here’s a short version of what happened. Andy was interested in buying more life insurance, so he emailed the...
