Hospitality press is full of stories on the growing popularity of mobile keys and the apps that support them. Much of the publicity leads hoteliers to believe that all their guests need is a mobile phone or wristband to do everything from unlocking guestroom doors to ordering cocktails by the pool. Surrounded by media pressure, many hoteliers today are mystified about how - or even if - they should commit the resources to develop mobile key guest access services for their properties. The major chains make this decision for franchisees, but not for independents. This paper offers guidelines on how operators can make an informed mobile access decision and intelligent implementation plan. READ MORE

Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) recently published The Mobile Revolution Is Here: Are you Ready? They surveyed several hundred travelers and asked about their expectations regarding a mobile offering from their host. The findings support what progressive hospitality brands have been suspecting - that we exist in an industry built on the assumption that guests desire a drawn out welcome as they walk in the door - but that's not what guests say they want anymore. What are they saying? They want what Uber and AirBNB are giving them. They want to know when the car's going to arrive so they don't have to wait. They want to know when their room is going to be ready. READ MORE

Dynamic Content Personalization for hotels includes delivering unique and relevant textual, visual, and promotional content based on a variety of things: demographics, location, how the visitor is navigating the website, their past booking history, reward program affiliation, and type of customer (leisure, business, family, meeting / event planner, etc.). Today, most hotels still operate in a one-size-fits-all approach and serve the same version of the website to the visitor, regardless of what we know about them. However, we don't just have visitors anymore, we have unique personas with a unique profile or virtual biography. READ MORE

People are used to being treated like crap. Have I gotten your attention? Let me explain further. We all “get” social media and understand how powerful platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others are vital in both building customer loyalty and engaging customers. With this in mind, hoteliers have come to understand that social media marketing is not free. While setting up accounts and pages on the social media networks are free, in order for the hotel's branding and visibility to benefit, it requires constant attention which costs money as it relates to hiring people to leverage the social media networks. READ MORE

To keep up with brand standards, hoteliers know they need to invest in renovating their hotel's interior every two years. Just as a hotel's interior features begin to age, the landscape also begins to show signs of aging and looks tired overtime. One of the biggest mistakes hotel property owners and managers make, however, is investing an immense amount of time and money into a lifeless landscape. In order to collaborate effectively, hoteliers should think about their long-term and short-term goals so they can invest wisely. This will also help determine which contractors they will need to involve at various points in their plan. READ MORE

To really appreciate our guests' requisite for personalization we can go back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that we learned in school. Maslow taught us that people are motivated to achieve certain needs; when one is fulfilled, they move on to the next one. By definition, a hotel satisfies the first two levels of physiological and safety needs. It provides shelter, water, in many cases food, and of course a safe place for guests to stay. The third level includes guests having a sense of belonging and acceptance, of being part of something special. But it is Maslow's fourth level where this personalization trend really kicks in. He called it Esteem and loosely defined it as our desire to be valued by others and to be recognized as an individual person. In this article, you'll find the ABCs of moving your marketing strategy from globalization to personalization. READ MORE

Hotel properties have suffered from a dramatic loss in guest service revenues starting with the in-room telephone, high costs for low rates of bandwidth to dwindling pay-tv take rates. Device mobility has allowed for guests to continue to circumnavigate the ways hotels can charge for sponsored technology services using everyday applications such as Skype, personal Wi-Fi hotspots and entertainment services such as Netflix and Hulu. This is leaving hotels scrambling to find superior ways to introduce new applications that can capture the guests' attention and accelerate immediate purchase decisions. READ MORE

In recent years, the hospitality industry has experienced a surge of interest surrounding the ability to provide guests with convenient alternatives for interacting with properties and their services. While maintaining a priority on offering the latest in security innovation, hotels have also experienced an ever-increasing demand for greater convenience and personal preference in the way that guests gain access to their assigned rooms. This has resulted in security access technology evolving in a manner that now provides the industry with some of the most guest experience-enhancing solutions to date. READ MORE

Mobile threats are surging in hotel environments and elsewhere. From specialized infections that target hotel guests to spyphone apps that monitor a guest's location and communications, malware is proliferating in the mobile space. What's more, the devices that are used and characterized as "mobile" are more diverse than ever. Anything used to connect to a public wireless network, including laptops, tablets and phablets are all fair game for mobile malware. Products like the Microsoft Surface are used and classified as mobile devices and are now becoming a significant target. READ MORE

Whether it's guest facing or hotel internal operations, mobile strategy is happening amongst all the major brands and quite rightly so. Whether it's mobile booking, mobile check-in and mobile key access, or check in via a tablet and reporting room clean status via tablet and mobile PoS device, surround mobile becomes key to the hotel industry. It is predominantly the “during” experience that becomes the key differentiator between brands. In order to facilitate an excellent stay experience, the key foundation is a purpose-built and consistent wireless/wired network that allows all different applications to effectively and securely operate on a single converged network. READ MORE

In hospitality, the concept of guest engagement has changed dramatically over the last decade. Today, it's all about the quality of the connectivity you provide and empowering guests to interact with your hotel in new and meaningful ways. The experience you deliver means everything. So, imagine if you could identify when a particular guest was arriving at the front entrance, send a personal message to his device that welcomes him back to the hotel and allows him to skip the check-in line and go right to his room. Your ability to cater to guests' needs from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave will determine the quality of that experience - both good and bad. And it takes technology to do it right. READ MORE

Comscore reported in April 2015 that 60% of digital media time is now spent on mobile devices. Mobile devices are now commanding a greater market share than desktops and laptops. And while 21% of Millennials do not use desktops or notebooks to go online, the fastest growing segment of mobile users are age 55 and older. Is your mobile strategy in good shape now that we are past critical mass for mobile commerce? With technology investment, there always looms the question of "do I want to be on the leading" edge of a trend. Many hoteliers ask this exact same question about the technology that they have in their hotels. READ MORE

There are countless website solutions out there these days. You could go the SaaS route and pay a monthly subscription for your website, or you can hire an agency to make a website for your hotel. Both have their pros and cons. There are some hoteliers, however, who want to make, host, and publish their own websites by hand. And for them, there is no argument--the best tool to use is Wordpress. With this 7-step guide, I will show you how to make a basic but fully functional hotel website with Wordpress. READ MORE

Steve Jobs has been an icon for millions and even after his death continues to inspire many around the world. 'Apple' brought in a revolution from the very beginning in everything it did. Steve Jobs and his beliefs and practices remain very relevant even today in the ever-evolving hospitality industry. This essay elaborates on some of the guiding principles followed by Jobs in his career and their correlation with the hotel industry with apt real life case studies from a luxury resort in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. His legendary address at Stanford is the basis of this article. READ MORE

The quality of cell phone reception at hotels and resorts is critical to guests. Ppopular online review sites even have categories such as: best hotels with cell phone reception. Why is this so revealing? Because many hotels don't offer good cellphone reception - and that it's a big consumer concern. READ MORE