nancy huang
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 ...
Road to Recovery: Planning for a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Nancy Huang | July 15, 2020
By Nancy Huang The following article is part of a series on reopening tips and strategies for hotels, part of our Road to Recovery guide for hoteliers. Click here to access the complete guide. As countries loosen lockdown restrictions, hotels around the world are cautiously reopening and hoping to salvage what’s left of their high season, while simultaneously adjusting to a “new normal” of enhanced hygiene and social distancing in their daily operations. Unfortunately, while some countries of the world are confidently past the first wave of the pandemic, others are seeing their cases rise, even after having successfully broug...
How Hotels Will Need to Adapt Duty of Care Policies for the Coronavirus Pandemic
Nancy Huang | April 22, 2020
By Nancy Huang Duty of Care, which for hotels is the legal obligation to ensure the safety or well-being of its guests, has always been an important aspect for hotel operations. Though many hotels are currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, many hoteliers are already concerned with how they will need to exercise Duty of Care once they reopen. Not only will government standards resulting from the pandemic dictate new requirements from businesses, but the public’s expectations for health and safety will also be markedly different than before. To ensure a smoother reopening for your hotel, we’ve compiled some of the most impo...
5 Ways to Market to Your Guests With Instagram Stories
Nancy Huang | October 29, 2018
Instagram Stories is quickly becoming the go-to platform for savvy marketers. This Snapchat-like feature has seen tremendous growth since launching in 2016, with more than 400 million daily active users. Instagram Stories has a more raw and playful feel than traditional Instagram posts, allowing marketers to engage followers in a more natural way. While the stories used to disappear after 24 hours, Instagram now allows you to archive stories on your profile as highlights. That said, because stories only exist for 24 hours as a default, they're generally better at helping to build urgency around offers, thus triggering immediate response...
How 5 Hotels Compete With OTAs by Showcasing Unique Local Experiences
Nancy Huang | October 25, 2018
By Nancy Huang Today's travelers are no longer content with merely visiting a destination and have the same experience as everyone else. They increasingly yearn for something unique and want to explore the places they visit through a local perspective. This emerging need represents a huge opportunity for hotels. By creating in-depth destination guides, or by hosting their own locally-led tours, hotels can make their properties more desirable to drive more direct bookings. The following post highlights five hotels that are promoting their destinations with engaging neighborhood guides and authentic local experiences. But before diving...
How Hotels Can Take Advantage of Instagram Business Profiles
Nancy Huang | September 21, 2018
By Nancy Huang The meteoric rise of Instagram continues. Just recently, it reached an incredible one billion monthly active users for the first time in its history—up from 800 million back in September 2017. In comparison, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat all announced slowing or declining growth. The influence of Instagram in the travel space is also gaining momentum. Celebrity Instagrammers with legions of followers hold huge sway over the places that people choose to travel, and 40% of millennials admit that they consider "Instagrammability" as a crucial factor when they choose a travel destination. To maximize the potential suc...
Are Travelers Falling out of Love With Airbnb?
Nancy Huang | August 23, 2018
By Nancy Huang The sharing economy came with the promise of revolutionizing the way we purchase goods and services, creating a frictionless world where buyers are connected to sellers, thereby cutting out the middleman and bringing down costs to consumers. The promise came to fruition. Today, an innovative breed of startups are giving consumers more choice, control, and convenience than ever before — nowhere more so, than in the travel industry. Yet there are signs that sharing economy accommodations are losing appeal. Since launching a decade ago, Airbnb has become the undisputed poster child of an alternative form of travel. Its...
Revisiting Chat Apps: What Messaging Platforms Are Best for Your Hotel?
Nancy Huang | March 16, 2018
By Nancy Huang Messaging platforms are fast becoming the new way for businesses to interact with customers. When communicating with brands, 54% of US social media users say they prefer messaging platforms to email, phone, and online chat. Much of this comes down to ubiquity. Millions of people use chat apps on a daily basis to talk with friends and family. By extension, this familiarity makes them a preferred way to communicate with their favorite brands and businesses. Including hotels. From making booking queries, to ordering room service, to firing off a question about the local dining scene, chat apps offer a streamlined way for gue...
