isabella blengini
Chain Affiliation Is on the Rise but Which Hotels Will Rebrand?
EHL | October 13, 2020
Hotels can change brands (i.e. rebrand). An independent hotel may affiliate itself to a chain (or vice-versa), or a branded hotel may change affiliation from one chain to another, or even within a chain. The rebranding trend has been hot in recent years (see Figure 1): between 1990 and 2017, 32% of hotels in the US were rebranded at least once, with some changing their brands up to seven times. Since 2011, on average 1200 hotels (110K rooms) have been rebranded annually. The hotel rebranding trend From 57 hotels (4,445 rooms) in 1992 to 371 hotels (36,074 rooms) in 2017, the number of independent hotels affiliating themselves to a chain h...
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&...
Protecting the Hotel Brand by Providing ‘Reliable’ Information
Dr. Isabella Blengini | March 22, 2018
By Dr. Isabella Blengini and Dr. Giuliano Bianchi Elle Darby may not be a household name but this video blogger does have influence in social media circles with some 87,000 YouTube subscribers and 76,000 Instagram followers. According to media reports – some 114 articles in all across 20 countries -- she contacted the Charleville Lodge Hotel in Dublin, offering the owner exposure on her social media channels in exchange of a free stay for her and her boyfriend over the Valentine's Day weekend. The hotel owner declined, posting his reply online and publicly banning all social media influencers from his hotel. This provoked a series...
Changing the Rules of the Game for Hotel Bookings
October 20, 2017
By Giuliano Bianchi and Isabella Blengini Last month the Swiss Parliament ratified a decision to allow Swiss hotels operating on booking.com to offer rooms at lower prices directly to their customers. The digital platform opposed the decision, arguing that it would be the customers who would be hit hardest. Booking.com allows hotels to sell their rooms on the platform on a commission basis and customers have the convenience of being able to compare prices before booking a room. For hotels, the main advantage in using the site is that it can dramatically increase their visibility, so much so that some 72 percent of all hotel bookings in ...
