Global marketing content is an important part of how you communicate your hotel brand promise to customers while making sure it remains consistent from country to country. But a marketing concept that strikes a chord in one region won't necessary elicit the same strong response in a market thousands of miles away due to cultural differences. Transcreation allows you to re-create your marketing message so that it achieves the same impact in each target country. Today's hotel marketer should understand how transcreation works, what the process looks like and how it can actually strengthen a global hotel's core brand identity. READ MORE

The word 'talent' isn't normally associated with individuals working in the hospitality industry. However, a comprehensive analysis of the nature of talent and skill proficiency reveals that there are indeed wide-reaching implications for hotel managers. This includes how a hotelier might go about learning a task to grasping how early childhood experiences can affect a person's motivations and natural migration to one particular niche or another within hospitality. Also discussed are the relationships between talent and intuition as well as talent and supposed flashes of genius. READ MORE

As a hotelier, I attend a lot of industry conferences which afford me the benefit of experiencing many other hotels throughout the Caribbean, Europe and North America. This allows me to experience hospitality from the other side, which lends insight into hotel practices that work - and even more importantly - those to avoid at my own property. Check-in lines, for example, are something we've done away with entirely, ensuring guests are able to relax from the moment guests arrive on property. Nonetheless, I often find myself waiting in line to check-in, and recall a particular instance where the guest in front of me complained about the hotel's lax environmental policy. READ MORE

To meet the challenge of competing for clients who prefer a boutique atmosphere, larger properties must offer one-of-a-kind venues that are memorable and encourage repeat stays. Architects and designers should engage the client in an integrated design process, arriving at a "shared lifestyle vision" for the venue. Using three examples — a nightclub, a restaurant and a retail confectionery — this article demonstrates best practices for boutique-ing big properties in ways that make a powerful impact without appearing out of place in the larger context. The process is also shown to deliver sustainable designs with high ROI. READ MORE

Legendary Hospitality with a softer footprint—that's the Xanterra Parks and Resort mission statement. The Softer Footprint, the commitment to environmental stewardship is a long-standing commitment of the company, and a never-ending journey of learning. Unlike other important hospitality disciplines like food and beverage, sustainability barely was recognized fifteen years ago. It is a complex puzzle balancing efficiency, environmental regulations and the right amount of guest engagement. Projects are often piloted, analyzed for their “stickiness", modified and then with the help of employees, deployed across the company. The following two stories illustrate how Xanterra strives to deliver sustainability throughout its operations--one invisible to guests and the other targeting guest awareness and actions. READ MORE

The hospitality industry, by its nature, embraces both commerce and community. Positioning one's hotel as a valuable member of the community has many advantages. These advantages include building solidarity within a community and supporting its most valuable programs and identified needs; reinforcing the interests of team members, while building team work and leadership skills; and, also, reinforcing the organization's mission, goals and values. The best community programs result when we can endorse, whenever possible, the genuine interests of team members, while making sure that these efforts reflect the quality and value of the individual property, our organization, ownership and management. READ MORE

The World Bank estimates that global urban populations create 1.6 billion tons of solid waste per year, and more than half of that ends up in landfills. A mere fraction is composted or recycled. In the United States, the hospitality industry alone produces 1.9 billion pounds of waste annually. According the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 30 percent of all food produced in a year is thrown away, while more than 888 million struggle with hunger. That's 1.3 billion tons of uneaten food. And on a daily basis, 2.6 million bars of soap are discarded by the hotel industry in the United States alone according to the Global Soap Project. READ MORE

Success of a marketing campaign is routinely measured by the number of social media impressions it generates as a proxy for engagement. Using social media as a customer feedback to uncover problem areas enables us to move quickly and effectively to resolve them. And, synthesizing this data into reports allows the organization to get a snapshot view of what's happening. But, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Digging deeper into these insights gives us the intelligence needed to make changes in process improvement that will drive customer loyalty and long-term growth. Customer insights teams have been burdened with insights but are not always allowed and encouraged to capture and analyze feedback in creative ways. EFM systems have been installed to quickly identify problems and resolution tactics are formalized. But, learning why customers feel the way they do about their experience is how we as an industry move from impressions toward building customer experience management as a core competency. READ MORE

Vacationers, professionals, and travelers of all kinds are looking for a home away from home, and the landscape surrounding a hotel plays a major part in their appraisal of your property. In the article “Xeriscaping Your Way to Savings,” U.S. Lawns President Ken Hutcheson discusses the growing trend of xeriscaping, and how incorporating slow-growing, drought-tolerant plants help to conserve water and establish a waste-efficient landscape. By xeriscaping at least a portion of your property to a well-planned and well-maintained xeriscape can be advantageous to both the environment and your bottom line; something that can benefit you and your guests. READ MORE

The world has become a smaller place, and jet-setting guests who are savvy enough to travel thousands of miles are adaptive experts at feeling and being their best anywhere, right? No, not quite. There's no app yet for managing the physiological and psychological challenges of hopping continents or time zones - and these challenges, taken together, can burden your guest faster than an expired visa in a customs line. What's it got to do with you? Plenty - you want to make your guest as comfortable as possible, and be able to relate to their health and well-being concerns. Many of these concerns have straightforward, non-medical, effective solutions within your capacity as their host. READ MORE

Do you want to increase the profitability of your business? How about improve the morale of your staff? Build trust in your brand? Even better still, how about all of the above, whilst also enhancing customer satisfaction? Does it sound too good to be true, while it isn't! Believe it or not all of the above can be yours through the simple expedient of delivering really good quality responsible business training to your staff. READ MORE

With the advancements in digital media, it has become increasingly more important to become hyper targeted with your marketing strategy. This includes better targeting your audience segments and tailoring the messages and campaigns specifically to them, their culture, their interests and better yet their native language. Multicultural marketing campaigns that target specific demographics with a culturally relevant and on point message, yield high rates of return for hoteliers. The present multicultural market has been growing leaps and bounds and is quickly evolving into a new type of customer-influencing mainstream culture, especially within the travel and leisure segment. Members of this market are younger, more acculturated, more tech-savvy and most importantly, have tremendous buying power that offers hoteliers significant growth opportunity that cannot be ignored. They are utilizing mainstream media, social media and mobile devices more than the general market. Multicultural consumers are the new mainstream and the use of traditional marketing methods alone is no longer sufficient to reach them and make the necessary impressions that will drive increased bookings. READ MORE

Given the strength of the hospitality sector today, many hotel owners and developers are starting to see the value of their assets start to increase. Just as values are beginning to appreciate, however, numerous developers, who previously financed their projects through Commercial Mortgage-Backed Security (“CMBS”) loans will likely be facing a significant dilemma as those loans mature over the coming years. The pundits say that we will see a wave of CMBS loan maturities in the next 2 to 5 years. With many of these loans having been originated prior to the real-estate bubble bursting, however, many will not qualify for refinancing due to the decline in the value of the collateral securing the loan. The authors discuss this impending dilemma, and the options that should be considered by borrowers that find themselves unable to refinance. READ MORE

Consumers are shifting to using their mobile devices to call hotels and travel destinations to book due to the amount of friction in the booking process. Consumers are finding it easier to call to book rather than trying to use their cell phone's mobile booking applications, to search for the accommodations they desire and punch in their credit card information. The measurability of mobile bookings gives the hotelier the opportunity to build a relationship with the consumer by having a human voice connect with them. READ MORE

As all businesses, systems and humanity in general are in the midst of a radical and thorough wake-up call and overhaul, it is again time to speak and write about the inclusiveness of the wellness & spa industry within a hotel and resort environment, in order to create a sustainable enterprise. There is a system recovery happening right now and it will clear, delete and destroy everything which will not be compatible to the future business environment. As we all live in a time of transformation, the wellness education should be viewed as an extension and enhancement to the overall hotel operation and not just be pushed aside or be limited to a mere massage parlor. READ MORE