In today's world, loyalty programs are practically a requirement in the hotel industry. But who beyond your front desk team really knows your loyalty program? Sharing a point balance at check-in is great, but having a bartender tell a guest how many points that martini just earned them can be even better. Engaging and educating your staff on your property's or brand's loyalty program can have surprising benefits including happy guests, happy associates, and a healthier bottom line. READ MORE


In today's socially connected, consumer-led world, there are few sources that are more effective at helping companies gather competitor information than social media. Social Business Intelligence, a methodology to make sense of unstructured feedback on the web, enables organizations to capture competitor performance, as defined by customers online, and analyze it to realize a clear and timely understanding of competitor strengths, weaknesses, and initiatives. READ MORE

Over the past year, a lot has changed in the hotel reputation management industry. And these changes require a new set of buying criteria. We've seen social media tracking technology move from being simply a way to aggregate guest feedback into a powerful business intelligence tool that can provide deep insights into customers, business performance, and the competitive landscape. Managers throughout the hotel organization-from sales and marketing to revenue and distribution to operations and quality-all the way up to the executive suite and hotel management groups, are all using different parts of the tool to improve performance. With this in mind, let's look at some of the criteria I suggest you use when shopping for a social media management tool. READ MORE

What is the underlying goal of your hotel fitness center? For many it is seen as a required amenity to offer guests - a space used by only those that are health conscious. Hotels often go through the trouble of allocating space for the gym and spend thousands of dollars on equipment but fall short of marketing the space. The time has come to change the view of the hotel fitness center. Now, given the shift to a more health conscious society, the gym can be used as a vehicle to drive business. with the correct marketing. So what actually goes into marketing the hotel fitness center? How does it differ from marketing the hotel as a whole? This article defines some basic marketing techniques you can incorporate into your overall marketing plan to promote your hotel fitness center and draw new business into your property. READ MORE

Too often money spent on marketing is wasted. When marketing is based on conventional wisdom and old assumptions rather than advances in the understanding of consumer behavior, sales suffer and money that could have been spent more wisely goes down the drain. Marketing based on age bracket or generation is blas'e. The current market demands marketing departments pay attention to emotional elements of their potential guests, i.e. how can I afford to take my family on vacation when I might lose my job? Too many marketing departments refuse to take initiatives and think outside of the box and the same 7 mistakes occur again and again, regardless of market conditions. Avoiding the following seven patterns will help your property save money, stay competitive, and enjoy a healthy share of the lucrative family travel business. READ MORE

I would like to suggest that you view your online brand as a reflection of the heart and soul of your organization. The quality of your hotel and the level of service excellence that you deliver in the bricks and mortar world must likewise be mirrored online. I would guess your organization constantly monitors guest satisfaction as it relates to their stay or a visit to one of your restaurants. Can you say the same for your online initiatives? When was the last time you stopped and listened to what your online visitors were thinking? Do you have a way to track their level of satisfaction with your site? Do you know how well you stack up when it comes to delivering on your brand promise compared to other hotels in your sector? Online is no different than offline. You know everything there is to know about your guest's "in-hotel" experience, but I'll bet you don't know everything there to know about their "online experience". READ MORE

Three of the nation's top hospitality brands gathered together recently at the 6th Annual National HR in Hospitality Conference & Expo in San Francisco to share how they have taken a unique approach to building their organizations' talent bench. This highly anticipated session, “Re-Building the Bench: Strategies for Improving Your Organization's Talent Depth,” featured an expert panel of HR executives from Hilton, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, and the Denihan Hospitality Group. The panel discussed provided a unique insight as to how these leading brands of varying size and complexity successfully tackle today's current talent challenges, and how they are approaching strategic issues of the future. READ MORE

The search for all levels of hospitality management talent is an excruciating process for many companies. Looking for anyone from Front Line Managers to Chief Operating Officers can be a grueling, time-consuming exercise. There are many opportunities for talented hospitality professionals, yet there are just as many open positions that remain on open position reports for months. In an economy where unemployment has been rampant, how can this phenomenon in the hospitality industry exist? The number of layoffs that occurred in the hospitality industry while a global economic meltdown occurred should have numerous qualified people sitting on the sidelines just waiting for those available opportunities. Yet some of these opportunities were available even at the height of the recession. How too can this be? READ MORE

The impact of social media to hotel operations has gone beyond marketing and communication. This paper outlines the HR challenges created by social media and the Web 2.0 technology under the areas of job analysis and job design, recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation plans, performance appraisals, discipline and retention management, social responsibility, and ethics. Under the influence of social media, there are many emerging HR issues that need hotel executives' attention. Hotels are advised to include HR operations in their comprehensive social media strategy. READ MORE

Today's social media channels, combined with other more traditional recruitment tools can attract the best high performing sales candidates. You must know how to act quickly and appropriately in today's social media environment. It's challenging to source outstanding sales talent in this highly competitive market. A vacancy in your sales department will have a severe effect on your revenues and you don't want to hire just anyone out of desperation in order to fill a territory. How you speak to prospective candidates, in this fast paced, savvy world of social media will help you vie for the best sales talent in the market. READ MORE

Although the US hotel industry is far from the dark place the 2008 US publishing industry found itself in, we can take some very compelling (and profitable) lessons from this experience. The Internet transformed the distribution of hotel inventory ten years ago, but not much has changed on the distribution front since then. Yet, with the advent of powerful mobile devices, the hotel-buying public is changing dramatically. Forward thinking hoteliers, like the first authors and publishers who quickly embraced e-books, have a tremendous opportunity to reach an entirely new segment of consumers in exactly the way they want to be reached. READ MORE

Do yourself a favor and skip this article if you prefer to think the ship is simply rolling heavily in the calm seas. The captain of the Good Ship Earth, I am afraid, has a very definite agenda that is taking it off the course everyone thinks it is on as they go about their lives: sitting down to dinner, sleeping peacefully. Nobody thinks the ship can sink, as big, beautiful, and safe as it is, but the truth is rocks tear holes in metal hulls and they turn turtle. So it is with our world economy: sail close enough, long enough to enough rocks, and the ship goes down, no matter how many people are opining on the matter with complex or oversimplified theories. READ MORE

Your conversion ratio of looking for a room to booking that room with you will depend on how well you sell your guest that confidence. You need to be certain that your online presence will give today's traveler the information they need to book with you. You have to know what that shopper will see as they will see it. Take off your hotel operator goggles and look at your online position and the competitions position from the consumer's viewpoint. READ MORE

Mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop-based access within three to five years. People are accessing the web via smart phones, tables, desktops, laptops, game consols and their TV's. Your architecture needs to support all of these outputs and even take into consideration how people will browse your content either by mouse, fingers, keypads, game controllers and touch interfaces. We're faced with a greater number of devices, input modes, and browsers than ever before. Building a foundation that will support these devices is critical to your guest engagement and your bottom line. READ MORE

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that hotels in this country will need approximately 300,000 new workers by the year 2014. It is a fact that the U.S. is the 2nd most visited country in the world. Tourism is a very important part of the U.S. economy. But it is clear that there is a need for immigrant workers to fill these roles. This is largely because domestic workers typically shirk hospitality careers, some citing the jobs as too basic given their educational achievements. Hospitality continues to be an unpopular career choice for many U.S. Citizens. READ MORE