Caja Madrid, a shareholder of NH Hoteles SA, will force Gabriele Burgio to will step down as chairman of the Spanish hotelier, El Confidencial reported. NH Hoteles will hold a board meeting today to discuss the issue, El Confidencial said, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter.
Horst Schulze, chairman and CEO of West Paces Hotel Group and the former president and COO of The Ritz-Carlton Group, spoke on leadership during Monday’s convocation at Liberty University. Schulze has been called a living legend in the hotel industry. Born in Germany, he left home at 14 to work as a busboy in a hotel 100 miles away. He came to America in 1965 and worked for Hyatt Hotels Corporation and Hilton Hotels before leading Ritz-Carlton operations worldwide. He gave students a “simple formula” for success: have a vision, be committed to that vision and initiate the steps it takes to get there.
On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations—all well-known landmarks—the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the horrific attacks in the world's collective conscience.
The HVS Executive Search Leadership Series: Talent Management. Ken Greene, President & Managing Director Asia Pacific for Wyndham Hotel Group speaks about their Count on Me programme and what it takes to rank 2nd on Fortune's list of Most Admired Companies
Depending on what your career is, your personal life and work life may or may not cross paths. Working in the hotel industry, it’s inevitable that ours do. We own, operate, market, sell, research, teach about and write about hotels from 9-5 Monday through Friday; then we stay in them when we travel or take vacation from the office. Our friends and family don’t have to work in our industry to know a little about it.
Labor-management battles, once fought on picket lines and behind closed doors, are now being waged in cyberspace. Borrowing from the union's playbook, Hyatt laid out its latest offer to hotel workers on YouTube last week. Hyatt also played the video continuously on television monitors in employee cafeterias of properties in Chicago. Hotel workers said the video, which featured actors speaking in English, Cantonese and Spanish, caused a stir by noting that a $1,000 employee bonus expired Dec. 20.
People like to complain: the weather, the economy and that old standby, the boss. But at downtown Portland's Hotel Monaco things are different. Craig Thompson, the general manager of the 221-room property, is rarely in his office enjoying the perks that come with being a big shot. At 60, Thompson hustles like an intern striving to impress.
When the city of Los Angeles four years ago made airport-area hotels retain their employees after any sale of the hotel, politicians promised that the law wouldn’t spread across the city. Nevertheless, Councilwoman Janice Hahn now wants the City Council to extend the worker-retention ordinance to cover all large hotels in Los Angeles. And local business leaders and hotel executives have few reservations about their anger.
The board of French hotels company Accor SA said Wednesday it is replacing its Chief Executive, Gilles Pelisson with Denis Hennequin, CEO of McDonald's Corp. in Europe. Mr. Pelisson, who oversaw the company's split from its vouchers business, spent five years at the helm of Accor, the company behind the Motel6 budget chain in the U.S., Sofitel luxury hotels and the Novotel brand. During his stint as CEO, Mr. Pelisson restructured the company, selling off noncore assets and hotels properties, replacing them with long-term leases, and separating the highly cash-generative vouchers business into a separately listed company, Edenred.
For the last few weeks, Florencia Tabeni has survived on little sleep as she prepared her new hotel, the JW Marriott Marquis Miami, for its grand opening. Tabeni wanted every detail to scream luxury -- from the full-size basketball court to extra large guestroom closets to the stainless-steel pool. When its doors opened on Oct. 25, the 41-story hotel became the first Marquis in the JW Marriott brand. Its most unique feature is its ``hotel within a hotel.'' The Hotel Beaux Arts Miami rises above the 39th floor and targets an exclusive clientele such as CEOs, high-profile entrepreneurs and celebrities.
Cornell focuses on what path hospitality students need to be on to become future leaders in the hospitality industry and beyond. In the educational journey Cornell’s focus is on offering a set of experiences instead of a linear educational path. If the Cornell Hotelschool does its job correctly, most of the students will enter the hospitality industry, but those who don’t are going to flourish because we gave them a wonderful rounded business education, which can take them from Wall Street to Google.
Before two luxury hotels, the Andaz 5th Avenue in Manhattan and the Elysian Hotel in Chicago, opened their doors in recent months, both added something extra to their usual employee training practices: they hired improvisational comedy experts. The Benjamin, an upscale business travel hotel also in New York, took a similar tack to help its staff better serve guests, offering them a series of life-coaching sessions this summer.
This interview of Niki Leondakis, chief operating officer of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, was conducted, edited and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Do you remember the first time you were a boss? A. I was in college at UMass, and I was promoted from a server to a shift-supervisor position at a restaurant called the Hungry U.
With fewer positions available to a growing pool of qualified college graduates, it’s become a buyer’s market out there, and hospitality employers have taken notice. But what are the major chains looking for in their ideal candidate? To find out, HotelNewsNow.com asked two industry professionals tasked with hiring new talent—Sherry Vidal-Brown, executive VP of HR for Accor NA; and Steve Bauman, VP of global market talent acquisition for Marriott International.
By all accounts, the announcement Wednesday by Choice Hotels International of its intent to close its call center in Minot within the year and transition to a home-based customer service business approach came as a shock to its 350 employees, who were advised by corporate officials not to speak to the media.
Thousands of people seeking work in the service sector compete for positions at new and renovated hotels. As hotels and restaurants continue to bleed jobs, thousands of people are applying for newly opened positions, overwhelming hiring staff and pointing up how hard the recession has hit service-sector workers. Nearly 11,000 people have applied for 400 jobs at the swanky W Hollywood Hotel & Residences slated to open in Hollywood early next year. About 3,500 have applied for 550 openings at the new Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles near Staples Center.
It’s the first day of class at Cornell University and its prestigious School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, NY, and the school’s home, Statler Hall, is buzzing with students as the realities of a new school year and the memories of summer switch mental positions. Nowhere is that psychological transition more obvious than on the faces of the freshmen. You can spot them a mile away, shiny new backpacks, apprehensive gait and all. It is these freshmen that represent the future leadership of the hospitality industry. Yes that’s an easily-stated, eye-rolling cliché for any freshman class in any school. But when it comes to Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration students, it’s actually born out to be true.
Industry figures have paid tribute to British Hospitality Association (BHA) chief executive Bob Cotton, after it was announced last week that he would leave the position in 2010.
I am entering my second week of teaching Special Event Management at the Florida International University Tianjin Center, a branch of the Florida International University (FIU) School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, in Tianjin, China. The school is a joint venture between the government of China and FIU and is training 1,000 students to become hospitality industry professionals in a country where tourism is booming.
Next time you stay at a Sofitel, a Novotel or, if your company is really suffering in the recession, a Formule 1 in France, take a look around at the staff. Hotels, along with most other parts of the travel industry, are notoriously image-focused. This is why you always get the resting actors and models between assignments behind the check-in desk. Other, less toothsome individuals are consigned to work back of house, where they have little chance of coming face to face with a paying client.