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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...
From the Experts: Digging for Data and Kicking out Competition
Holden Madison | May 6, 2019
By Holden Madison What does it take to efficiently work with data in hospitality? Four data experts weigh in. EHL recently welcomed three hospitality companies actively engaging in data science during a panel discussion hosted by Associate Professor Alessandro Inversini. Participants shared their experience working with data, its opportunity and its pitfalls. Checking in With Data Suzanne Ward, Director Enterprise Solutions Integration MEA - AccorHotels For a hospitality giant like Paris-based AccorHotels - which has 4,200 hotels, operating in 100 countries and a total room-capacity of 570,000 hotel rooms - data has been tapped into ins...
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...
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&...
Luxury Hotels: What’s Their Digital IQ?
Meng-Mei Maggie Chen | March 21, 2019
By Meng-Mei Maggie Chen In response to existential threats posed by disruptors like Airbnb and Google, luxury hotels continue to grow digitally through reinforced loyalty programs, digital visibility and content production efforts and differentiating technologies on their online or on-property experiences. According to New York-based consulting firm Gartner L2, Four Seasons, Hilton, The Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont account for some of the smartest hospitality groups online. The firm released its annual report - The Hospitality Digital IQ Index - ranking the digital competency of 75 of the biggest hospitality players. We rounded-up three ke...
General Managers: Bridging the Gap Between Hotel Owners and Operators
Demian Hodari, Ph.D. | January 9, 2019
By Demian Hodari, Michael Turner and Michael Sturman In the final article in a three-part series on the evolving relationship between hotel owners and operators, EHL professor Demian Hodari and his co-researchers explore how general managers can help bridge the divide between owners and operators. In our previous articles in this series, we provided evidence from our research that owners are actively involved in property-level decisions, even when these are governed by hotel management agreements that formally prevent or limit their involvement. Furthermore, we demonstrated that such hotels achieve greater performance when their owners ...
2019 Top 10 Hospitality Trends
Philippe Masset | January 7, 2019
By Philippe Masset and Jean-Philippe Weisskopf The hospitality industry has been undergoing tremendous changes and disruptions over the last two decades.What key trends have been steadily reshaping the industry and where is hospitality heading in the near future? A study conducted among EHL faculty in the fall of 2018 provides insights on past and new challenges (as well as opportunities) hospitality players need to take into consideration. The TEN trends that have reshaped (and are still reshaping) the industry: #1 - Virtual communities Social networks and in particular TripAdvisor have had a profound impact on customers. This has led ...
How Involved Are Hotel Owners in Property-Level Decisions?
Demian Hodari, Ph.D | November 6, 2018
By Demian Hodari, Michael J. Turner, Michael C. Sturman Hotel owners increasingly contract hotel management companies to operate their properties. While extensive research has examined management agreements to determine the balance of power between owners and management companies, little research has investigated the actual role that hotel owners play in property-level decision making. This is perplexing because management companies generally insist that hotel management agreements (HMAs) specifically stipulate that the owner should not seek to influence the hotel's general manager (GM). In other words, in exchange for their services, m...
