Knowing the competition means playing detective on the World Wide Web. Hotel operators can take a page from the great fictional detective stories. Sherlock Holmes studied the suspects and reviewed the clues to solve the mystery. Hotel managers who study the competition on line and uncover clues to their business can discover information that will lead to additional revenues for their hotels. Smart hoteliers who incorporate the same sleuth techniques as Miss Jane Marple will find the means to gain market share while protecting their own with clever on line marketing. READ MORE

Hotel incentive programs have long been a part of the travel industry. The ever present challenge of keeping properties occupied has now become the focus of new marketing plans. Today's traveler is no longer a strict brand “loyalist”. Current hotel consumers are now loyal to the chain that offers the most relevant incentives during their stay and who can give them the best incentive offering to become a repeat guest. READ MORE

The movement to improve the environmental performance and image of the travel and tourism industry in the last decade and a half has taken root and built the foundation of long term sustainability. Hotels of all sizes and customer class, and in all locations, have joined the "green revolution". A visit to the website of any globally recognized hotel brand or chain yields an abundance of information on that organization's efforts to make its properties and services more environmentally sustainable. From guest room towel reuse programs to energy efficient and water conserving devices to commitments toward sustainability initiatives at the local and global level, consumer awareness has finally caught up with the industry's leadership initiatives. READ MORE

Golf courses have always been recognized for their natural beauty and serenity. Players feel as if they are worlds away from reality - with the silence broken only by the swish of a club or the warbling of a native bird. While it is often criticized for its abundant use of land and natural resources, the golf industry is answering back with sound programs that assist courses in measuring environmental sustainability. READ MORE

Green Hotels = Energy and Waste Efficiency through Sustainability Management, an article by Scott Parisi of EcoGreenHotel, discusses the cutting edge methods of energy conservation for the hospitality industry. The current financial incentives for sustainability projects by the federal government make this ever more relevant. Conducting a utility audit is the first necessary step for a successful energy plan. The article highlights the three "energy hogs" all hotels face - HVAC, lighting, & hot water production - and their related "cures." Citing specific hotels' actions, Parisi shows how these solutions can yield strong ROIs and in sum net a 5-year positive cash flow sustainability plan. READ MORE

With so much information at consumers' fingertips, the hotel selection process has become an involved journey, often spanning many days and many sites and devices. Online travel shoppers are looking for content that speaks to their needs and wants at every stage of this shopping journey. The stories they encounter for hotels along the way are undeniably powerful and often the last stand between the hotel shopper and the booking. Video is especially in demand. In order for hoteliers to meet consumer demands for online video, the two most critical essentials are relevance and availability. READ MORE

Fukushima. Is it a non-issue for all but those living around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, as governments and obliging media have been saying; or are the meltdowns spreading invisible tentacles of radioactive death around the world, as some are insisting and others are wondering, a sense of unease at our prospects for the future. How, then, would these tentacles impact hotels and tourist destinations as news radiated into the consumer consciousness and people changed their eating and travel habits? READ MORE

What has happened to direct sales in the hospitality industry? Once a discipline of an enviable combination of great social skills, good business judgment, and powers of persuasion, direct sales was many times the starting point for learning the business of hotels. A knowledgeable sales person understood how each piece of business or account had an impact on revenues in all areas not just limited to rooms and not just for the short but the long term as well. How has the proliferation of technology impacted the way of doing business as well as enhancing the learning curve? Does the new generation of hotel sales people offer impersonal and cut and dry customer interactions and rely solely on technology to give a red light or a green light on a piece of business? Or are powers of persuasion and good judgment still critical in generating business? This article will reflect the insights and wisdoms of key industry leaders who were interviewed for this article on how direct sales has been impacted by technology and where they seen direct sales going in the future. READ MORE

Every day, your best employees have the decision to stay and invest their time with your company or to move on, taking their knowledge and skills with them. Finding and keeping your best people goes far beyond the recruitment process. It is directly impacted by the involvement of senior leaders as well as the culture of the organization and the perceived commitment to employees. Here's how you can identify employees at risk of leaving and what you can do to make a difference in engaging your best talent. READ MORE

Hotel Revenue Management (RM) is maturing, and more and more hotels have implemented RM programs along with advanced RM software to automate pricing. As the discipline matures, the law of diminishing returns begins to apply. More and more effort is required to squeeze our fewer and fewer dollars from hotel rooms. Smart revenue managers are turning to revenue generating assets outside of the hotel room, like function space , restaurants , golf courses and spa, as the next potential for revenue gains. In a world where most hoteliers are already doing more with less, how do you even get started? READ MORE

In the last decade the channels of communication for hotel public relations have opened wide, and what was once a single three-branched media river has multiplied into thousands of individual streams. Through these streams flows a volume of information no one thirty years ago could have even begun to fathom, let alone process. This means there is a wealth of public relations strategies available that leverage the nature of this information delivery delta. Here is our list of ten next generation public relations approaches hotels can and ought to be exploring right away. READ MORE

Memorabilia of our past is secured within our hearts and vaults, though the consequences of our economic activity will directly contribute to the behaviors and communities of generations forward. Read along with me as I listen, learn and begin to sew a thread of GREEN around the providers and processors of sustainability in hospitality. The brush and color does not determine the canvas, it is the thread that binds it all together to form patterns of culture in relationships of people and planet. Wisdom defines the learning and is shared as a common thread to each. READ MORE

Satisfying the sustainability-related demands of a hotel's corporate, government, and MICE clients and prospects is an entirely different proposition to satisfying the sustainability-related preferences of independent travelers, the so-called eco-consumers. Your current energy management practices and your current plans for improving these practices in both the short and the long term serve as a good indicator to yourself and to the outside world of how well sustainability is embedded at your hotel. To take maximum advantage of the coming sea-change on the sustainability front will require deep thought, shrewd business decision, and rigorous execution. But the rewards for success will be enormous. Energy management is merely the litmus test. READ MORE

With the meetings marketplace now more competitive than ever, sales teams are feeling the pressure to enhance their knowledge base about their respective venues to help bring in new business. To help with this, more and more convention centers, hotels and convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) are beginning to utilize their convention services managers (CSMs) during the sales process. READ MORE

If most hotels are using similar game plans to achieve high levels of service, why aren't service levels the same from hotel to hotel, property to property? Jesse Boles of FreemanGroup uses football as a metaphor as he discusses the reasons why some service teams perform better than others. The Pittsburgh Steelers didn't win more Super Bowl games than any other team by simply telling their players to play better; they gave them specific standards that enabled them to achieve better outcomes than their competitors. With the right standards and solid leadership, your service staff can do the same thing. READ MORE