The last two years have been a turbulent period for hotel operators. Some hotels have struggled to bring customers in, while others have adapted their operating models and have prospered. Those hotels that have struggled must now ensure a laser-sharp focus on efficiency.
The last two years have impacted the hospitality industry significantly with staffing shortages, government restrictions, supply chain issues and the unpredictability of customers as they continued to weigh up the risk and reward of socialising indoors.
Having written hospitality and sales training articles for over two decades now, I’m often asked “How do you continue to come up with new ideas every month?” Truth is that it’s actually quite easy when you’re out on the road conducting training just above every week, spending time with the real experts in this industry such as the frontline superstars who make it all happen for guests.
At the Hotel Data Conference in August, there were several panel discussions focused on the state and return of business travel. The one that piqued my interest was not the one focused on “Bleisure” but a much more demurely titled “The return of business (transient) travel”.
What hotels don’t promote a good night’s sleep nowadays? While the offerings have gone from the erstwhile novel introduction of Westin’s Heavenly Beds to today’s perfunctory pillow concierge, hotels have yet to fully tap this well. Those brands that do wholeheartedly continue down this path will come to realize tremendous revenues for their efforts.
The hospitality and service industry involves developing and adapting solutions and services that create better value and user experience –services that improve customers' satsifaction, thus quality of life. One of the best ways to achieve this is through service design with processes like rigorous service concept validation. However, you must identify an opportunity or gap in market first before designing a service as the solution. You must be able to identify the best opportunities and develop the best and most viable solutions with service excellence at the core of your service design.
Airport hotels - properties located near or within airport premises - are becoming increasingly common around the world, including in India. The concept, which was first introduced in the US in the early 1930s to provide convenient accommodation for airline crew and passengers, has emerged as an important sub-segment in the hotel industry in recent decades. As in other countries, airport hotel supply took off in India as airport infrastructure improved.
You've conducted your research through interviews, questionnaires, or surveys. All the data is in order. You've studied and analyzed everything you have, identifying patterns, themes, and customer challenges your service can solve. The next thing is to determine how valid whatever you're doing is in helping solve the problem at hand and how it resonates with your target customers. Does the service fit into the market niche you want to venture into? How will it perform against competitors? How do your target customers feel about the service? These are the basics of a service concept validation process.
With the steady recovery in corporate travel, the concept of bleisure travel, also known as blended travel, is re-gaining popularity. Prior to the pandemic, bleisure was primarily a millennial trend; however, as flexible work arrangements and remote work have gained traction, bleisure has become more common and acceptable across age groups and among professionals from various industries. As a result, the global bleisure tourism market, which accounts for 30%-35% of the global business travel market, is expected to reach US$ 497.5 billion in 2022 and will grow at a 19.5% CAGR over the next ten years.
Indigenous tourism is a burgeoning pillar within Canadian travel, growing at four times the pace of other tourism sectors and contributing more than $1.7 billion to the GDP from over 1,875 businesses (prior to the pandemic). And despite the crushing impact of the past two years, there is more interest than ever from Indigenous entrepreneurs to take their place in the Canadian hospitality industry. Supporting these ventures in turn presents lucrative opportunities for investors, brands and management companies.
“If you don’t make time for your wellness, then you’ll be forced to make time for your illness” The crux of this column is to help you, the hotelier, profit from the ongoing convergence of scientific research, medical technologies, supply chains and societal awareness that are leading to a revolution in life-extending possibilities.
Tom Magnuson and his wife, Melissa, now spend part of the year in London and part of it at Lake Pend Oreille. Magnuson Hotels’ U.S. headquarters remains in Spokane WA.
My business partner and I started working together somewhat serendipitously. In 2008, I quit my corporate job as Vice President of Sales for a prominent management company and was ready for my next adventure in consulting, hoping that it would allow me to have the work-life balance that I was so dearly craving.
Hilton rolled out a tiny 160-square-foot hotel room that is on wheels (Chang, 2022). The “pop-up,” movable hotel room was designed for golf enthusiasts at the 2022 RBC Canadian Open between June 9 and 12 and the Women’s Open in August. The hotel room was built onside on a custom trailer that is situated on the green near the third hold.
Many of us have hardly left our country of residence, if at all, in the past 2-3 years. This year, the headwinds have changed, consumers are craving to finally get away and the statistics are starting to reflect a strong determination to do so. To decompress from the past few years, a far-flung location is on the wishlist for many, but whilst the virus seems to have become all but a distant memory, the subsequent challenges it has brought are all very real and ongoing with regards to our summer vacation 2022.
Our objective at the Hospitality Operator Forum is to help you, the professionals of the sector, to contemplate and to anticipate. To do this, we need to look at what is happening around us in order to adapt our trajectories. We have discussed the need to update the lines along which we think. However, we never know exactly which line of thinking is the best one for our needs, it’s a matter of trial and error.
“He’s over there! I think it’s an emergency!” Emerging from the elevator, I did not want to hear this. Despite the impression left by television, cardiac arrests are usually fatal. Outside a hospital, about ten percent survive.
Adversity, they say, is a bigger and stronger teacher than the good times. And the Pandemic has served its purpose towards this quite well.
A guest at the Hyatt had fallen ill and cancelled a flight. He had recovered, but the airline insisted on a doctor’s note before allowing him on board.
Lease agreements are a less common type of contract in the Indian hotel industry, as opposed to mature markets like Europe, where they are widely used due to the presence of several institutional hotel investors and owners. In fact, some European hotel companies, such as Pandox, have grown by focusing primarily on the leased model.