jochen ehrhardt
Does Quality Assurance, as We Know It, Have a Future?
Jochen Ehrhardt | October 6, 2020
By Jochen Ehrhardt Hotel group revenues are down by as much as 90% across the boards for the second quarter of 2020. The third quarter isn't looking much better, with many hotels only re-opening in the fourth quarter. The global demand-reduced crisis is here to stay and any recovery to 2019 levels is expected to take years, not months. As a result, hotels are forced to cut costs wherever possible: Anything that is not considered an essential part of the core business is put to the test. Quality Assurance falls into this category, raising the question whether traditional Quality Assurance hasn't been an anachronism for some time anywa...
User Engagement or Guest Engagement?
Jochen Ehrhardt | February 19, 2020
By Jochen Ehrhardt As an aficionado, visiting hotels is the greatest pleasure. As a perfectionist, however, inspecting hotels with great names that look tired is not so much fun. As we know, "tired" can be fixed at the cost of everyone's time and the owner's money. The real issue in hospitality is the human factor and getting it right is paramount, especially for luxury offerings: In a perfect world, this ought to be management's top priority. Is it really? Let's do the reality check. Hotels that cater to a very demanding clientele receive support from a host of different external advisors: To monitor guest reviews and all kinds of ment...
Is Benchmarking Really the Holy Grail of Quality Assurance in Hospitality?
Jochen Ehrhardt | December 18, 2019
By Jochen Ehrhardt Benchmarking, according to Wikipedia, “Is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time, and cost.” This begs the question, "What are companies using benchmarking for?" According to Bain & Company, benchmarking is used to: “Improve performance.Benchmarking identifies methods of improving operational efficiency and product design; Understand relative cost position.Benchmarking reveals a company’s relative cost position and identifies opportunities for improvement; Gai...
The Risks in Relying Solely on Guest Reviews
Jochen Ehrhardt | September 24, 2019
By Jochen Ehrhardt In today’s world, everybody seems to have an opinion about the quality of hotels and there is no shortage of avenues for voicing those opinions. Online booking sites, (meta-) search platforms, as well as the hotels themselves encourage hotel guests to share their impressions. Hotels have long realized that guest reviews are valuable information that needs to be taken seriously and is indeed quite helpful feedback for improving their offerings. However, this is only the second-best guest feedback there is, after, of course, collecting it face-to-face during the hotel stay. Collecting face-to-face feedback obvio...
Why Don’t Luxury Hotel Brands Truly Differentiate? Have They Run out of USPs?
Jochen Ehrhardt | June 18, 2019
By Jochen Ehrhardt When Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, once famed co-owners of Studio 54 in New York, opened the Morgans Hotel in 1984 followed by the Royalton and the Paramount Hotel, both designed by Frenchman Philippe Starck, they created instant hits by ushering in a new era of so-called Boutique (Lifestyle) Hotels with “lobby socializing” like never seen before. These cool, hip, and chic spaces drew a crowd of like-minded hotel guests, including the author, as well as residents. For the first time, “luxury” became affordable and hotel bars were no longer money-losing must-haves but New York’s most sophisticated gathering ...
A New Look at the Direct-Booking Game for Hotel Chains
Jochen Ehrhardt | March 5, 2019
by Jochen Ehrhardt In recent years, hotels have been waging a war on Online Travel Agencies such as Booking.com, Expedia, Ctrip, and Agoda in order to win back their customers by offering a wide range of perks, including discounts, in exchange for booking directly with the hotel. "Book direct" has become the new mantra. As hoteliers found out quickly, luring back consumers is not as easy as they had hoped. The larger OTAs have at least two very powerful arguments in their favor: Users can choose between hundreds of thousands of hotels in a consistent and easy-to-navigate environment. Hotels and hotel groups could not do anything about t...
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