AHC Hospitality's vice president and managing director George Aquino's thoughtful and realistic COVID-19 reflection explores the state of the travel industry and how hotels can reopen safely through permanent changes to protect guests and employees. Mr. Aquino touches on sanitation practices, new design for amenities, meeting spaces and hotel restaurants, the importance of social media, as well as evolving traveler preferences. He proposes new protocols such as regular temperature checks for employees, increased hand sanitation stations on-property and more remote meetings for hotel teams. READ MORE

Coronavirus has cast many dark shadows across the world of hospitality. It has highlighted certain disagreements between hotels and their guests when it comes to payments, in particular whether money should be refunded or put towards future bookings. To progress beyond the global crisis, a new form of mutual respect between all parties is required. One way of achieving this is for everybody to agree that people are an important part of the ecology of the planet and that by creating a Travel Emotional Intelligence a long overdue appreciation of each others' needs can be attained. READ MORE

PART II. Last week, we looked at how the official response to the pandemic morphed from great concern about the danger; to numbness at the economic devastation (the UN World Tourism Organization estimated earnings down 80% on 2019 and the loss of 120 million jobs); to increasing rejection of the absurd. This week in Part 2 we review how a draconian censorship of the medical community is being enforced not just in China, as one might expect, but also in the Western world; we examine the information that has been hidden so enthusiastically from you, and finally explain why almost every action taken by authorities has been at variance with impartial science and common sense. READ MORE

While our nation's lockdown is loosening, we still won't see a 100% return to business as usual for some time. So your content marketing strategy shouldn't act like it has. According to Jessica Kaiser, CEO of leading hotel marketing agency Hawthorn Creative, if you're a hotel or resort that has recently re-opened or is in preparation to do so in the near future, here are the ways to best use your content (blog posts, email campaigns, and social media) to not just encourage bookings but to ease your guests' concerns and get them excited about future travel to your destination. READ MORE

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has hit the hospitality sector like a sledgehammer. As hotels around the country prepare for reopening, however, it's incumbent upon hotel owners and operators to demonstrate that they have not only absorbed the blow, but also the hard-but-necessary lessons about what it will take to flourish in a post-quarantine world. The good news is that leading hotel management companies have been doing just that, pivoting to new approaches and integrating new operational realities. While the operational modifications safeguarding guest and employee health are likely to be the most visible evidence of that adaptive flexibility, it is behind the scenes in sales and marketing where there is potential for truly transformative change. READ MORE