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Smart Strategies
Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 171: Hotel History: Hotel Theresa (1913)
Stanley Turkel | December 20, 2016
by Stanley Turkel, CMHS Hotel History: Hotel Theresa, "The Waldorf of Harlem" Fidel Castro's recent death brings to mind his visit to New York City. On September 18, 1960, four months before the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, Fidel Castro arrived in New York City for the 15th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He and his staff first checked into the Shelburne Hotel at Lexington Avenue and 37th Street. When the Shelburne demanded $10,000 for alleged damage that included cooking chickens in their rooms, the Castro entourage moved to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem. Castro's group rented eighty rooms for a ...
Tourism Tidbits: Providing Tourism Cheer
Dr. Peter Tarlow | December 13, 2016
Wishing Everyone a Happy Chanukah and a Merry Christmas by Dr. Peter Tarlow Tourism this past year has faced many challenges, from a slow economy in Europe to ISIS attacks, from medical issues such as Zika to waves of terrorism in Europe and wars in the Middle East. For many around the world, despite the fact that this has not been an easy year, the month of December creates a great deal of "light" and "hope'. In the northern Hemisphere the lights of Christmas and Chanukah provide great beauty during the dead of winter. In the southern Hemisphere this is the beginning of the summer holidays and a time for rest and relaxation. December t...
How Self-Service Technology is Enhancing the Guest Experience
JLL Real Views | December 7, 2016
by Natasha Stokes At hotels around the world, the friendly face of a concierge who remembers your name could soon be replaced by technology that aims to do just the same. When it comes to a great hotel stay, that personalized touch is often the defining feature. At the Aloft hotels in Boston and Santa Clara, guests can perfect their room's temperature not by ringing down to housekeeping, but by telling the in-room iPad to "cool the room". When it launches next summer, the Hilton Group's Tru brand will similarly target tech-savvy, millennial travellers, who can check-in by app, collect a virtual key on their smartphones and let themselve...
EHL Publishes the LAUSANNE REPORT, a Look Into the Hospitality Industry With a 2030 Horizon
December 7, 2016
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, December 7th 2016 – Today, Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), the world's leading institution in hospitality management education, announces the publication of its much-awaited Lausanne Report, an inspirational analysis of two years of extensive market research and exclusive interviews with prominent business leaders. The study provides reader-friendly reflection on some of the most important forces that are shaping today's world and their long-term impact on the hospitality industry. The Lausanne Report challenges a conventionally unilateral thought process and enriches the debate on future ris...
Robert Rauch’s Top 10 Trends in Hospitality for 2017
Robert A. Rauch | December 1, 2016
Just 10 years ago, Facebook morphed into a mainstream business tool, Twitter arrived, the iPhone exploded on the scene and Android phones were born. Today, the pace of change has accelerated dramatically. In his new book, Thank You for Being Late, Thomas Friedman explores this very age of acceleration. Our trends this year do not include every trend, just what we believe are the Top 10. Certainly we could add the Internet of Things (IoT) but we cover some of that in our technology trends below. We could also add the proliferation of brands but that is more of a continuation of the past few years. Feel free to weigh in on social media or...
Nobody Asked Me, But…No. 170: Hotel History: Washington Square Hotel, New York City (1902)
Stanley Turkel | November 29, 2016
by Stanley Turkel, CMHS A haven for writers and artists for more than a century, the Washington Square Hotel, located at Waverly and MacDougal Streets, just off the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, occupies a unique place in Greenwich Village's history. The hotel facilities include 150 guestrooms, a renovated lobby with unique art works, 24-hour front desk service, fitness room, lobby bar and the highly-acclaimed North Square Restaurant & Lounge. Complimentary wireless internet access is available in the lobby and lobby bar. The Washington Square Hotel was built in 1902 as a residential hotel named the Hotel Earle after i...
How Technology is Turning Buildings into Butlers
JLL Real Views | November 28, 2016
You enter your office and check your phone. An app displays your day's schedule and prompts you to reserve a room for your next meeting. When you settle down to work, the smart building controls automatically adjust the lighting and temperature just for you, and even plays your most productivity-enhancing background music. Morning coffee? The office espresso machine knows you prefer a double. Sound a bit too futuristic? Maybe in the average office in 2016—but technologies like these are already in use at The Edge in Amsterdam, largely occupied by Deloitte. And other workplaces could be following suit in the not-too-distant future. ...
Guest Experience: Moments of Difference
David Dann | November 28, 2016
New Approaches to Customer Service By David Dann We are learning from psychology that if we want to retain customers, then merely good or even excellent service is not enough. Because of the ways in which the brain remembers we must create 'moments of difference' which differentiate the customers' experience. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that the brain tends to remember specific moments rather than the total experience. Kahneman discusses the relationship between the 'experiencing self' and the 'remembering self' and these concepts have a direct impact on the ways in which we offer customer servi...
New Innovations In Hospitality HSIA Elevate Guest Experiences Through Relentless Network Monitoring & Management
Sunray | November 23, 2016
SAN DIEGO, CA — Sunray, the network provider widely regarded as the hospitality industry's HSIA visionaries, will unveil the next phase in hotel network management innovation in December, 2016. In addition to Sunray's Umbra service suite, this next phase includes real-time wireless connection quality monitoring and an intelligent auditing system. Hotel IT teams will now be able to receive real-time readings from thousands of devices across every level of their network. This provides accurate, easily digestible reporting, alerting and trending of events that can significantly disrupt network performance. The auditing system runs hu...
How To Serve A VIP: 30 Tips to Earn & Re-Earn Your Customers’ Loyalty
Bryan K. Williams | November 21, 2016
by Bryan K. Williams It's finally here! My latest book is called, How To Serve A VIP: 30 Tips to Earn & Re-Earn Your Customers' Loyalty. This book is designed for you and everyone on your team who loves to serve others. Each of the 30 chapters will reinforce the importance of giving your best service to all customers. Whether those customers are called colleagues, employees, guests, clients, tenants, patients, residents, students, visitors or customers is irrelevant. This book will highlight that the same caliber of service excellence must be given to all. Each of the 30 chapters ends with a powerful activity that is designed to...
Clean and Green: The New Energy of Choice
JLL Real Views | November 16, 2016
by Jim McClelland Hardly a week goes by without news of another record being broken for renewable energy generation. Take the REN21 global status report showing the largest-ever annual increase in power capacity for 2015; or the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) announcing electricity up year-on-year for every single month in 2016. Portugal even ran on nothing but renewables for four days back in May. Furthermore, despite clean energy investment in 2016 lagging behind last year's runaway success, recent International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) analysis still forecasts an ongoing upward curve, particularly for solar photovo...
Mobility and the Hotel Property Management System: Ending the Epidemic of Guest Experience Complacency
November 15, 2016
Jos Schaap, CEO, StayNTouch Hotel technology has come a very long way over the past decade and yet it still has a very long way to go in order to catch up with other industries. Companies such as SAP and Infor, in the ERP space, have taken the user experience to the next level by implementing social and mobile aspects to their platforms. This new movement ensures that the platform is truly engaging, the user is more productive, and the educational curve is largely diminished - resulting in cost savings. When we think about mobility within the hotel and travel industry, our minds immediately gravitate to the hotel room or air travel book...
Tourism Tidbits: Securing Our Ports for Safe Cruising, Part 1 of 2
Dr. Peter Tarlow | November 7, 2016
by Dr. Peter Tarlow In much of the world the month of November is a time when the cruise industry begins to enter into its high season, especially for those ships that frequent warm water tropical ports. Although the cruise industry has had its ups and downs, so far the industry's ports-of-call have avoided any major terrorism crisis. The same, however, cannot be stated with regard to issues of crime. Today's travelers and tourists seek out places/experiences where there is a sense of security and safety. Cruise liners bring thousands of people to a port of call, but if there is a perception that the port is dangerous, then passenge...
Nobody Asked Me, But…No. 169: American History: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; My Hotel Books
Stanley Turkel, CMHS | November 7, 2016
From the Editor: The award-winning hotel historian, Stanley Turkel, has an additional life as an American historian. The following article describes his recent invitation to the newly-opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. by Stanley Turkel, CMHS On September 17, 2016, I was invited to the Collection Donor Preview & Reception at the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The invitation came as a result of my donation of 670 artifacts* to the Museum which I collected over a fifty-eight year period. My lifetime interest was triggered by a chance exposure. In...
Marketing Strategies for a Competitive Advantage in 2017
Robert A. Rauch | November 1, 2016
By Robert Rauch According to Geoffrey Moore in his book Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet, stock price is a measure of future potential based on present competitive advantage. Competitive advantage consists of two components, GAP and CAP. The first, GAP, is the distance between your hotel offerings and your nearest competitors or the competitive advantage gap. The second is CAP, the competitive advantage period, that is the projected period a company can maintain its differentiated position. In other words if a hotel company has superior products and significant barriers to entry, it has...
Leadership Excellence: Leaders are Lifters
Bryan K. Williams | October 27, 2016
The countdown has begun and there are just 7 more days until the BW Leadership Academy. Strong leaders are lifters! They encourage, inspire, challenge and recognize performance on a daily basis. This will be an event like no other because you are a leader like no other. Take your leadership and your business to another level. What are you doing to become the leader you are meant to be? The BW Leadership Academy is the place to start. Let us show you how. Strong leaders have a strong vision and inspire others to follow them towards that vision. Join us at the BW Leadership Academy, and learn how to become a leader that others want to fol...
Capsule Hotels: Small Spaces with Big Potential
JLL Real Views | October 26, 2016
By Neasa MacErlean Sleeping in a box which is 2 meters long and a little over 1 meter high and wide is becoming the low cost, Japanese-style choice of thousands of international travelers. Launched in Osaka in 1979 to enable local businessmen enjoy an evening out, capsule hotels are now mainly aimed at international travelers. Growing numbers of these hotels have opened in recent years across Asia and into Europe and the Americas to cater for the rise in single travelers looking for low-priced rooms for one which equally offer opportunities to socialize with others in shared leisure facilities. "Capsule hotels offer budget tourists and ...
Meet the Robot Receptionists: A Sign of Things to Come
JLL Real Views | October 24, 2016
A good receptionist often has certain characteristics – a helpful manner, a friendly disposition and good organizational skills. But do they need to be human? Perhaps not anymore. Walk into JLL's Carrington Street office in Sydney and you will be greeted by new receptionist JiLL, who can assist in a delivery, report a fault and contact your hosts. So far so good. However, JiLL,is actually a robot – and could well be Australia's first fully automated front office face. Chris Hunt, Managing Director, Integrated Facilities Management, Australasia, says that there are capabilities for JiLL to do much more than the basic tasks pr...
Asia’s Hotels Gear Up for the Business Travel Boom
JLL Real Views | October 21, 2016
By Fran Molloy For the millions of business travelers visiting Shanghai, their focus is less on getting a room with a view of the Pudong district's futuristic skyline and more on ensuring easy access to that all–important early morning meeting. It's a similar story across Asia's big cities, where new strategically located hotels are springing up near business and financial hubs to specifically cater for the region's growing numbers of business travelers. Asia is now the world's largest business travel region, holding 38 percent of the $1 trillion global business travel market spend. In coming years, this market will gain another f...
BookingSuite: A Lesson in Direct Revenue Strategy
Vikram Singh | October 19, 2016
By Vikram Singh Throughout my career in revenue optimization for the hospitality and travel industry, I have always stressed the importance of owning your digital assets. This means having control of your domain, your marketing campaign's analytics and history, and especially your website. As a strong supporter of open source technology, I have stepped in every time a marketing vendor ("expert") started trashing new and innovative options for hotels. Of course, vendors will always favor their outdated proprietary systems over new technology. They have made a huge investment and have to keep selling. But being tied to old technology is n...
Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 168: Hotel History: Hotel Monaco, Chicago, Illinois*
Stanley Turkel | October 18, 2016
By Stanley Turkel, CMHS The Hotel Monaco which opened in 1999 was originally built as a hat factory for the D.B. Fisk & Company in 1912. Daniel Brainard Fisk was born in Upton, Ma. in 1817 and came to Chicago in 1853 where he developed the largest wholesale millinery business in the U.S. After the original Fisk building burned to the ground in the Chicago Fire of 1877, D.B. Fisk moved to a six-story building on the site where the Marshall Field Annex Building is now located. When Marshall Field wanted to construct the present Annex, they built the 13-story D.B. Fisk building at South Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue in 1912. The archi...
Revenue Strategies for Boutique Hotels
Robert Rauch | October 12, 2016
By Robert Rauch The market is poised for boutique hotels to make an impact on the hotel industry like they never have before. With an expected soft landing of the economy in 2017 (2-3 percent RevPAR growth max) it is more important than ever for independent hotels to ensure that they have proper revenue strategies in place. Competing with the big brands for market share can sound like a herculean struggle but with execution of the proper procedures, a boutique hotel can stand apart from the crowd. Revenue Generation Understanding where your business comes from is the first step of proper revenue management. Millennials now make up the l...
Hollywood Stars Heading Backstage in the Hotel Sector
JLL Real Views | October 12, 2016
By Neasa MacErlean Actors Robert Redford, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Leonardo DiCaprio have more in common than their Oscars: all have also taken an active role in the hotel industry. Robert De Niro is another Academy Award winner who is slowly but surely carving out a name in the hospitality world. Already the owner of The Greenwich in New York, scene of his 1976 success Taxi Driver, and the Nobu hotel in Manila, Philippines, De Niro has just been granted planning permission for an upmarket 83-bedroom project in London's Covent Garden. Described as a joint operator along with Capital & Counties, De Niro brought star power to the proj...
The Big Leadership Question: Why Should Anyone Follow YOU?
Bryan K. Williams | October 10, 2016
At our upcoming BW Leadership Academy, the key question we will help each person answer is: Why should anyone follow you? Besides your job title, why should each person on your team trust and believe in you? The best leaders are lifters. They lift the hopes, dreams, and performance of everyone they are fortunate to serve. At our innovative leadership academy, each attendee will: -Be assigned a certified executive coach to work with both before AND after the Academy -Be actively engaged in 2 full days of learning with my team and I about how to become a stronger leader. -Take the acclaimed Gallup StrengthsFinder Online Assessment (to ide...
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