With the enactment of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (“ADAAA”) and the corresponding regulations recently promulgated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), the legal landscape under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) has changed dramatically and will continue to do so with court decisions interpreting and applying the amended law. As a result, employers face new compliance challenges and must re-examine how they address disability-related issues and accommodation requests in order to minimize the risk of enforcement actions and/or litigation. READ MORE

As the economy continues to recover, competition for talent will heat up and employers in the hospitality industry will need to be more creative and proactive to attract top talent. Well-qualified candidates always have options. Today's savvy workers are your new consumers and they expect to be sold. They want to know why your company is a good choice for them and what they will gain from working for you. If you are one of those hotels that are concerned about attracting and retaining top talent, it's time to look for ways to communicate a compelling story about why your company is a desirable place to work. How can you stand out from the crowd and attract the best talent? Here are some tips to give you an edge: READ MORE

Hospitality is about people. Therefore, when making hiring decisions, we need not only evaluate the hard skills candidates bring to the table, but also take the softer, human side into consideration--regardless of the position. In this article, Holly Stiel identifies four "softer" qualifications for hiring successful concierges and adapts them to help management in all areas of the hotel make well informed hiring decisions. Because qualities such as "spirit," responsibility, cooperation and the desire to serve can be more difficult to assess than the more concrete, job-specific skills, Stiel offers stories, interviewing tips and sample questions that help bring the more intangible attributes to light. READ MORE

While much is written about-and many lament-the new generation of workers, Gen Y employees offer employers a hidden gift that employers, managers, and "experts" fail to recognize. Gen Y employees offer a critical gift to the astute employer: an early warning signal that can help them improve employee engagement, morale, and retention for ALL employees. When it comes to the employee experience you deliver, when it comes to attracting, retaining, and engaging talent, your Gen Y employees are your Canary in the Coal Mine. READ MORE

This article focuses on the need to plan to attract, recruit and hire the employees that you really want. The planning and considerations for business and the job candidates are considered. Too often people view the hospitality industry as a pass through career. It is our goal to make this industry and its individual businesses, the leaders in employee recruitment and retention. READ MORE

Attracting, developing and retaining the best employees is much easier said than done. Without an intentional, deliberate approach to this talent equation, you will demoralize employees, destabilize business and create situations where you must defend a mediocre guest experience.  And mediocre guest experiences aren't good for you, your employees, your guests or your business.  Find out how you can attract the best talent for your hotel while reducing business costs and improving guest experiences. Rene Lewis discusses tips on creating a great workplace and great culture that will make your hotel more attractive to the best talent. READ MORE

Cross-training certainly is a great opportunity for a hospitality establishment, as it positively affects employees and management. One way that cross-training can impact robustly in the workplace is from a service perspective. The article below explains several case scenarios and examples, in which you, as a hospitality manager or owner, may seize the opportunity to adopt this concept into your overall service plan. When implementing cross-training, management will have the advantage of using employees in several departments, thereby reducing hiring and training costs, while improving employee morale and skills at the same time. READ MORE

Most business executives don't feel they are getting much out of the federal stimulus initiatives. But hospitality employers are well-positioned to capitalize on one such initiative: the HIRE Act hiring-based tax incentive program. Hotel operators can claim tax benefits of roughly $750 per qualified hire, and at least half of new hires will qualify. The HIRE Act is not only good for the economy because it encourages companies to bring people back into the workforce, but it's also great for the bottom line. Here are some guidelines on how the HIRE Act works and how to implement a screening program. READ MORE

As a successful hotel executive, you keep your finger on the pulse of every aspect of your property. If you are like most hoteliers, one of your greatest challenges is engaging and retaining frontline staff --- housekeepers/room attendants, bell staff, kitchen help, and often the high-stress switchboard. Are you ready for some leading edge solutions? Then you will certainly want to read this article. Combining knowledge of our industry with effective non-hospitality employer practices, it provides eight great low- and no-cost ideas that you can implement tomorrow, without breaking the bank. READ MORE

Whether your hospitality niche is timeshare, shared ownership, vacation club or hotel, customer loyalty and retention is at the top of everyone's priorities these days. Since I came from the hotel world into timeshare operations it has become increasingly evident that the most effective way to drive loyalty with our customers, guests, and in our case, owner, is to keep them engaged and continually reignite the flame that motivated them to invest in owning a timeshare. Our strategy to keep our owners loyal and committed to their timeshare purchase is tied to a simple equation: Use + Satisfaction = Lower Delinquency. How do we do that? READ MORE

It is clear that revenue management practices can help hotels increase revenue, but successful revenue management counts on consumers being willing to pay different prices for essentially the same product, based on the hotel's expectation of demand. Hotel managers have good reason to be concerned about negative consumer reaction to demand-based pricing. Research has shown that consumers will punish firms that they perceive to be acting unfairly in their pricing strategies by refusing to patronize them in the future. So, how can hotels balance the risk of negative consumer reactions with the benefits of variable pricing? READ MORE

Over the last thirty-five years I have studied demographic and industry patterns. As a CEO, I understood that one of my key responsibilities was to look into the future, anticipate the markets and place my company clearly in the position to capitalize on the market trends. Demographic patterns have clearly been one of those tools I used to anticipate movement in the marketplace. The Hospitality industry has a repeatable pattern of recovery from economic downturns. Those CEOs who provide services to the Hospitality industry will do well to pay attention to these patterns and position their company's production capacity and marketing focus to provide products and services to the industry. READ MORE

Remarkably, two hospitality companies were named among the ten Best Places to Work out of more than 2,000 that applied in competitions sponsored by business journals in 44 states throughout the U.S. Winners were determined by employees completing a 37-question employee engagement survey administered through third-party data collector, Quantum Workplace of Omaha, Nebraska. The two winning employers--Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which achieved the highest score on valuing employees, and Gaylord Hotels and Resorts, which tied for highest score on senior leadership, are very different businesses, but strikingly similar in their workplace cultures. READ MORE

Having spent over two decades immersed in hotel, travel and lifestyle brands, I've watched marketing trends come and go, and at times despaired at how much the hotel and travel industry has failed to embrace innovation and change. Fortunately, that's not been the case with the world of digital. Today a full 39% of U.S. travel brands engage in e-commerce. But taking reservations electronically doesn't mean that a brand has truly capitalized on the power of the digital marketplace, so I thought it would be interesting to see which brands are especially adept at engaging and serving their guests online, and to benchmark their performance by creating a Digital IQ READ MORE

Our industry has at times lagged behind others in terms of embracing training as a vital driver of success. Thankfully, the majority of hoteliers today fully appreciate the true value of having a structured approach to training, so the attention must now shift to ensuring that the training budget is spent as wisely as possible. This article focuses on some key factors to consider, across three important dimensions, when seeking to optimize the benefits derived from training and particularly so in the context of small and medium sized hotels. READ MORE