The Tricycle of Guest Service Excellence: A Perfect Model For Remarkable Experiences
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Smart Strategies
New Research Shows 81 Percent of Consumers Want Experience Recommendations From Their Hotels
ALICE | April 22, 2019
New ALICE "Hotels' Digital Divide" report reveals consumers' shifting expectations for more personalized experiences and offerings NEW YORK – April 24, 2019 – ALICE, the hotel operations platform that empowers operational excellence and meaningful guest experiences, today released new research that found a sweeping majority (81 percent) of consumers would like to receive local experience and hotel upgrade recommendations from their hotels. The "Hotels' Digital Divide" report, commissioned by ALICE and conducted by third-party research firm YouGov, highlights the shifting expectations of modern hotel guests, as well as travel...
Industry Report: Innovation Strategy in Practice
Dr Carlos Martin-Rios | April 22, 2019
How do global hospitality businesses tackle innovation? The Hospitality Innovation Report analyzes how different innovation strategies contribute to generating competitive advantages for hospitality businesses. By Dr. Carlos Martin-Rios The Hospitality Innovation Industry Report, authored by EHL Associate Professor Dr. Carlos Martin-Rios, is based around a comprehensive model reviewing combinations of technological and non-technological innovations and analyzes how different innovation strategies contribute to generating competitive advantages for hospitality businesses. Dr. Rios has been tracking hospitality innovation for the past sev...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Negative Flow Thru
David Lund | April 22, 2019
By David Lund One of the most read articles I have written is on the topic of flow thru and how to use it in your financial statements. Understanding flow thru is not something that comes easily to most people immediately, but once you look at it and do the calculation it usually clicks. Once it drops in place you have got it for good. To take things one step further in this piece I am going to discuss negative flow thru. Negative flow thru or retention is something that most people in North America have not had to deal with very much in the past decade. We have just crossed over a massive stretch of growth in our industry that was mark...
Six Tech Trends Still Reshaping Hospitality in 2019
EHL | April 17, 2019
From narrow artificial intelligence to intelligent things and edge computing, these six trends continue to reshape hospitality business. Technology in recent years has evolved at such a rapid pace and taken us further into a sci-fi-like future faster than our ancestors could have ever predicted. From smart home-enabled devices that control our thermostats and refrigerators to cryptocurrencies that provide secure stores of value, recent trends have brought many pipe-dream technologies to life. Many advancements have been more subtle but equally promising and transformative, from smart analytics in consumer and professional apps to the gr...
When Customers Speak To Us, Are We Listening?
Gary R. Hernbroth | April 17, 2019
By Gary Hernbroth I firmly believe that we can learn a lot from our failures and setbacks – IF we pay attention. In fact, I recently spoke on this very topic at the Club Management Association of America's World Congress in Nashville. Several of my audience members enthusiastically shared their stories with each other, stories of how they failed, or suffered a setback, or screwed up, and how they learned from the experience and came out of it smarter and better-suited to deal with similar situations in the future. As with individuals, the same should hold true for businesses. Sometimes things break. Sometimes things go boom in the nig...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Nobody Gets to Be Wrong, Everyone is Wrong, No One Gets to Be Right, Everyone is Right
David Lund | April 15, 2019
By David Lund I use this quote to start many of my workshops. To me it's the way I want the participants to stand in their individual power during our time together. It's also how I see our industry. In the hotel business we all need to have an opinion and even more important we need to be able to share those thoughts. Reason being is, we all have something important to bring to the table. That's what I tell my workshop participants. To illustrate this, I often ask the following question. "What would you rather have to increase your GOP in your 300-room hotel that is currently operating at 75% occupancy with a $150 average rate, a $4 ro...
How Many Tourists Is Too Many?
JLL Real Views | April 10, 2019
The hospitality industry, benefiting from surging tourism worldwide, is scrambling to keep up with demand while remaining aware of the potential pitfalls from the deluge of tourists. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, tourism and travel spending grew 3.9 percent in 2018, compared to global economic growth of 3.2 percent. The sector generated US$8.8 trillion in revenue in 2018 and accounted for 10.4 percent of global economic activity. "Budget airlines, new technology promoting destinations, and a greater disposable income among a rising global middle class in countries like China and India have led to a travel boom," s...
Booking Engine Personalization to Adapt to the Experience Economy
Larry Mogelonsky | April 10, 2019
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) So much talk is made nowadays about the experience economy and how this affects the personalization of hotels, but how can we make these concepts a reality? We all know they are both important for driving satisfaction scores, loyalty and healthy return over the long run, but there doesn't seem to be a straightforward and one-size-fits-all path towards operationalizing these trends in a way that's meaningful for guests. To wrap your head around how these two concepts can drive each other in a virtuous and profitable circle, you must first understand what the experience economy is and...
Why Hoteliers in the US Love Hotelogix
Hotelogix | April 10, 2019
The true test (and victory) for any software, in this day and age of rapid tech advancements, is when the users come forward to share their success stories with the world. And the sense of elation is even stronger when the system helps them attain their key business goals. Over the past decade or so, Hotelogix cloud PMS has helped thousands of properties the world over, conquer their business challenges and has gained the trust of several hoteliers in the process. This is especially true in the case of hoteliers in the United States, where our product is loved for various reasons. We are both humbled and thrilled to share with you some ...
How Google Reviews Is Crushing TripAdvisor
Vikram Singh | April 9, 2019
By Vikram Singh An interesting trend has been brewing in the travel business. Quietly but surely, Google Reviews has been expanding their online review market share for brick and mortar businesses. Since hotels, inns and B&Bs are a 100% location-driven business, this change directly impacts both their revenue and branding. Online reviews left by strangers have become almost as trusted as personal recommendations. However, placing this much trust in reviews requires the user to be able to filter real reviews from fake ones. This sorting process can be extremely frustrating, especially on websites like TripAdvisor where everything is ...
Tourism Tidbits: Marketing To and Protecting Visiting Children – Part Two of a Two Part Series
Dr. Peter Tarlow | April 8, 2019
by Dr. Peter Tarlow Last month Tourism Tidbits examined the marketing issues that surround child or young adult tourism and travel. This month Tourism Tidbits takes on a second aspect of this segment of the tourism and travel industry. It is a specific and continuously more difficult issue: that of providing travel safety for the child and young adult market. Safety and security are always a concern of the travel industry, no matter who the traveler might be. A major issue when dealing with children is their safety and security. In the case of young travelers the situation becomes even more difficult and emotional. There are many reason...
GlobalReach Technology Hotspot 2.0 Wi-Fi Delivers New Guest Communications, Location-Based Engagement & Monetization Capabilities to Hotel
GlobalReach Technology | April 8, 2019
HT-NEXT, New Orleans, April 8 2019 - GlobalReach Technology has added new guest Wi-Fi features to its Hotspot 2.0 solution, giving hospitality brands the benefit of communicating through, and monetizing their Wi-Fi service, without the need for loyalty program guests to log-on through a captive portal. The new capability comes ahead of the launch of the Hotspot 2.0 Release 3 standard. Today's announcement sees GlobalReach add interstitial functionality to its Hotspot 2.0 guest experience, which complements traditional captive portal pages. The new feature enhances the frictionless Wi-Fi sign up process by allowing the brand to smoothly ...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: OH, BROTHER
David Lund | April 8, 2019
David Lund It was early October 1987. I was newly married and questioning my hotel career plans. I aspired to be a general manager, but this hotel environment veered me off track. As these thoughts occurred to me, this was one of the places where fate and other people changed my life's direction. I'd been with the hotel for 18 months. Just another day at the office started with a ringing phone. It was the hotel manager's administrative assistant requesting my appearance in his office. Now! What did the manager need to see me about? My head was spinning with the possibilities. Most of them not good. I didn't know what I might have done t...
Driving Innovation: How Frugal Can Hotels Be?
Margarita Cruz | April 4, 2019
By Margarita Cruz and Isabella Blengini When speaking of innovation in the hospitality industry, we often hear about new technologies and processes capable of breaking the standards on how the industry works. Typically, these innovations require large amounts of investments; as well as the design and implementation of new processes. According to the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scorecard, in 2017 alone, investments in innovation made across different industries around the world surpassed €700bn. However, only a small percentage of players are effectively able to implement innovations of this kind. In fact, 90% of the world's R&...
Meet the Bleisure Demand With Meeting Experiences
Larry Mogelonsky | April 3, 2019
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) A clever portmanteau between business and leisure, hybrid travel is now mainstream, so much so that it is starting to influence how meeting planners select their destinations and host hotels. After all, in a world where video conferencing can connect anyone, anywhere and at any time, the purpose of travel is to offer guests a unique and stimulating setting. The bleisure incentive has thus far been the prospect of extending a few days on either end of the main event to fully appreciate said location. However, the demand for heightened experiences on the leisure side are starting to c...
What the Hotel World Looks Like in 2020
Robert A. Rauch | April 3, 2019
Bob Rauch and Sarah Andersen Hotel Distribution is arguably the big topic of the near term. Expedia Group and Booking Holdings (previously Priceline) are the two big online travel agencies (OTAs), dominating well over 70% of OTA market share. Now this duopoly faces major disruption by Airbnb, Facebook, and Google. Airbnb just bought HotelTonight, an app-based company that sells last-minute, unused boutique and independent hotel inventory. Meanwhile, SiteMinder's "BookingButton" already integrate into Facebook business pages as a widget, eliminating the need to click away from the site to make a booking. Add in the possibility that Googl...
Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 211: Hotel History: Asian American Hotel Owners Association*
Stanley Turkel | April 2, 2019
By Stanley Turkel, CMHS Hotel History: Asian American Hotel Owners Association* The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) is a trade association that represents hotel owners. As of 2018, AAHOA has approximately 18,000 members who incredibly own about half the 50,000 hotels in the United States. If you bear in mind that Indian Americans constitute less than one percent of Americas population, the conquest of this business niche is extraordinary. Furthermore, about 70% of all Indian hotel owners are named Patel, a surname that shows that they are members of a Gujarati Hindu subcaste. How did this economic miracle come to pass? ...
Hotel Data Management: Build an Integrated Journey
April 2, 2019
Why data scientists need to be an integral part of a hotel's data journey. Data scientists are becoming increasingly popular and necessary as industries realize the need to manage data points and understand how to collect and breakdown their data to better advance their business. Data scientists are experts in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and can make educated decisions on what to do with and how to use that data. The critical role of data scientists in hotels Within the hospitality industry, data scientists are crucial to understanding the hotel's data and how to use it to benefit the overall business of the hotel. Howe...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Hotel Finances for Dummies
David Lund | April 1, 2019
David Lund My primary responsibility as the head of the finance and accounting departments in the hotel was to ensure the books were clean and balanced. What I really got paid for was serving as the "chief financial information officer." The reality was the financial information I had to work with stunk! In every business, communication is important, but especially around the financial piece of the business. Communication is key. Great communication can make the business successful, help it grow, cause it to take on a life of its own. Poor communication can make the business die either a long, lingering death or a swift, unexpected deat...
Hotelogix and RepUp to Host Webinar on Hotel Reputation Management
Hotelogix | March 27, 2019
Bangalore, DD/March/2019: Hotelogix, a leader in cloud-based Property Management Systems has announced that it will host a webinar on hotel reputation management in collaboration with RepUp, a guest experience management platform. Titled - How your hotel can make more money from Online Reviews, the webinar will take place on Thursday, April 11 at 2:00 PM (SGT). In today's digital travel era, an increasing number of travelers across the globe book hotels via several online hotel booking channels. In this process, they come across guest reviews that can influence their booking decisions. Most importantly, around 88% of travelers filter ou...
How France’s Hotels Are Rethinking Style and Space
JLL Real Views | March 26, 2019
Design has long been important to the hotel industry as a way to attract new guests and turn them into repeat visitors. In recent years, however, new brands to the market have raised the design standards to stand out from the crowd and win over a new generation of traveller looking for unique experiences. Faced with these new norms and higher guest expectations, long-standing establishments and big chains across France are rethinking how they use their space, as well as the look and feel of the hotel itself. "The idea is to break with established design codes, to deconstruct old styles and reconstruct them in a modern way to create vibr...
Hermitage Hotel Becomes the First Hotel in Nashville to Offer Wine by the Glass With Plum
Plum | March 26, 2019
Award-Winning Luxury Hotel to Bring Innovative Wine-On-Demand Technology Plum to their Suites, Restaurant, and Bar Nashville, Tennessee (March 26, 2019) - Plum, the first wine by the glass technology revolutionizing the hospitality industry, is proud to welcome the historic Hermitage Hotel to its rapidly growing list of new clients. By introducing Plum, the award-winning property will be the first location in Nashville to offer guests the perfect pour in the comfort of their hotel suite, while dining at the Capitol Grille or relaxing at the world-famous Oak Bar. "Our guests value a sophisticated experience that is designed with their pe...
Hospitality M&A Focus to Shift to Smaller, Niche Platforms in 2019
March 25, 2019
After a bumper 2018, more hotel mergers and acquisitions are expected this year. But don't expect a further slew of mega transactions. The focus instead is shifting towards more private deals with smaller platforms. The top brands only account for around a third of hotel rooms around the world, making more acquisitions in 2019 likely, says Tony Ryan, Managing Director of Global Mergers & Acquisitions in JLL's Hotels & Hospitality Group. "Most of the larger platform deals have already been done, so the big operators are now seeking out unique concepts and locations to complement existing product offerings – particularly as ...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: RevPAR vs. GOPPAR and Why We Need a New Champ
David Lund | March 25, 2019
David Lund I have been around awhile and it's not like I'm ancient or anything, but I have seen some BIG changes in how we as an industry look at numbers and what numbers we focus on. What's important and what people are talking about for metrics is always changing—albeit slowly. Inside the current look is the driver for how we operate. For the longest time RevPAR has been the king. However, it was not always that way and I think it's time for the king to move on. I can remember when we didn't even use RevPAR; it was only occupancy and rate. Long gone are those days. I can also remember when we didn't have anything more complex th...
