best practices
Playing Ball: Summertime Isn’t the Only Time to Solicit Sports Tourism & Travel-Team Bookings
Hospitality America | June 27, 2024
Best practices to attract and retain this market segment for year-long profitability By Donna Oglesby There may be no crying in baseball, but hoteliers who are not building relationships with travel sports teams may find themselves shedding a few tears once they realize how much money is being left on the table by not catering to the lucrative sports tourism segment. As a mother of two, I know firsthand how much parents pay annually to support the travel-team circuit and I’ve experienced the pain points when dealing with hotels. That’s why, as director of sales and marketing for two Hospitality America hotels, I began researching how t...
Innovative Wellness Solutions to Drive Future Hotel Growth
Adam and Larry Mogelonsky | September 20, 2023
By Adam and Larry Mogelonsky Wellness at hotels is perhaps the biggest win-win for our businesses besides sustainability investments which help the environment. For you, wellness means more revenue per guest either in add-on experiences or the ability to grow nightly rate, while the guest it leads to improved wellbeing. This is the big, big, big picture, and focusing on the micro of figuring out your brand’s unique approach within the quite ambiguous term that is ‘wellness’ is the 99% perspiration. Alas, if there’s one guiding light, it is technology. Welltech and spatech are becoming increasingly democratized due to the princip...
Hotel Design Trends: Adaptation Is Key!
Jennifer Luo | May 28, 2019
From eco-consciousness to wellness and smart-rooms, design is an incredibly powerful tool hoteliers can leverage to differentiate themselves and cater to ever-evolving guest demands. By Jennifer Luo With the growth of private home bookings through a variety of digital platforms, such as Airbnb, hotels face a fierce competition to win customer demand. With a stronger focus on their overall experience, hotel guests today have higher expectations and the ever evolving landscape of travelers have brought about a slew of changes within the hospitality industry. Now, hotels are reshaping the look, feel and appeal of their properties, using ex...
A Sense of Place, Welcome and Hospitality
Larry Mogelonsky | May 22, 2019
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) I recall the last time I stayed at what would categorically be a cookie-cutter hotel. Performing my typical inspection as a casually walked the halls and entered my guestroom, nothing seemed out of place, yet something was still missing. The hotel in question proudly touted its recent renovation for which I can confirm this fact given the scent of fresh paint, glue, wood and new upholstery. The doorman performed in strict accordance with his title while the receptionist at the front desk was upbeat while still remaining matter-of-fact. Arriving after the dinner hour, the corridors w...
RevPAR Is Only One Piece of the Picture
David Eisen | May 17, 2019
By David Eisen Imagine you're scouting a young baseball player or footballer—someone experts have pegged as the next Derek Jeter or Lionel Messi. You can't, however, just take their word for it; you have to see their performance for yourself and also dig into the numbers—into how they rate statistically. Now, imagine you are only allowed to consult one statistic, such as batting average (hits divided by at-bats) or goals scored. Then, imagine that within this context, our Jeter heir apparent is hitting a more-than-respectable .315, and our Messi-to-be is his team's leading goal scorer. Great news, right? Well, yes and no. ...
Independent Hotels: An Action Plan to Win the Direct Booking
Max Starkov | May 16, 2019
By Max Starkov With the explosion of the "digital way of life", the traveler's customer journey has become increasingly complex, which necessitates independent hoteliers to rethink and overhaul their marketing and technology stack strategies and investments. Today's online travel consumer is exposed to more than 38,983 micro-moments in any 60-day timeframe and visits an average of 18 websites via multiple devices across eight sessions before making a hotel booking (Google Research). Google defines this customer journey as a fluid series of interconnected stages: Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing Phases, in which eve...
Building Your Hotel’s Sharing Economy Defenses
Larry Mogelonsky | May 15, 2019
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) While it is crystal clear to me and many other hoteliers that the sharing economy and all its resident internet-based service firms (IBSFs) have severely changed how customers perceive hotels, many outside of hospitality tout their successes and grander benefits for the community. Regardless of whether or not they are ultimately 'good', the rapid proliferation of all these sharing economy accommodations should not be mere doom and gloom for hotels, however, but an opportunity for you to improve your own product. As Airbnb is by far the largest among these IBSFs, I will use it as a p...
Hospitality Financial Leadership: Engage Their Hearts and Minds First
David Lund | May 13, 2019
By David Lund Getting your hotel leadership team excited about accounting is like someone thinking it's fun to go to the dentist. Your average person wants nothing to do with it because they have a predisposed notion that it's yucky, boring and better left for someone who has a hard time walking and talking at the same time. What I have learned about getting your average hotel leader excited about the numbers is just the opposite. Let me explain. Hotel leaders ALL want to have the "financial where-with-all" to dazzle their peers. They know it's the secret sauce to propel their career. They all want their seat at the captain's table. Bei...
