Penny Wise and Pound Foolish – The Hotel Edition
Let me paint a painfully familiar picture: We’ve got hotels who…
By Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito
Opinion Articles
The Internet is Quietly Adopting the Ad Tech Playbook — Without the Ads
As AI revolutionizes how people plan and book travel online, the algorithms determining which content surfaces in AI-generated summaries are beginning to mirror the dynamics of digital advertising. This shift, however, will lead to a future where advertising plays a less dominant role than ever before.
By Nick Slavin, CEO and Co-Founder, Curacity
Hospitality in the Baltics: Independent Hotel vs Chain Hotel
Comprising Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – conveniently listed in alphabetical order from north to south – the Baltic region is a captivating corner of Northern Europe to the east of the Baltic Sea, where medieval towns, pristine coastlines and vibrant cultural scenes converge.
By Jonathan Gough, Content Team Lead, Lighthouse
Is AI Killing Your Hotel Sales?
When group leads start to dry up, most hotel teams scramble to tweak their RFP process, refresh their offers, or blame seasonality. But what if the real problem isn’t internal … it’s invisible?
By Susan Tucker, Partner & COO, The Lure Agency, Lure Agency
Blended Travel as the Big Boost for All Segments in 2025
Bleisure has been a buzz word since well before the pandemic, but since that event catalyzed the adoption and acceptance of remote and hybrid work, the notion of blending traditionally disparate travel segments has taken on a whole new, and lucrative, meaning. Entering 2025, though, the concept of combining business and leisure – hence the portmanteau bleisure – no longer really encompasses all the different travel behaviors and sources of revenue that hotels can activate.
By Larry Mogelonsky and Adam Mogelonsky
Do’s and Don’ts of Converting Travel Browsers Into Bookers
It happened again: A potential guest landed on your hotel’s website, spent time browsing your room options, checked availability, and even clicked through to your booking engine. But then they left without completing their reservation.
ChatGPT Booked My Hotel While I Made My Coffee
Earlier this morning, a hotel reservation was made under my name. But to be accurate, I didn’t make it. It was executed on my behalf by the recently launched ChatGPT agent, an autonomous AI system capable of parsing ambiguous input, retaining contextual preferences, scanning through massive datasets in real time, and translating a loosely expressed intent (in this case: “find me a place to stay in Rome”) into a concrete, optimized, executable outcome.
Just Because a Person Can Do Something, It Doesn’t Mean They Should
There seems to be a lot of controversy and questions surrounding AI being used to support customers. The customer experience can be enhanced with AI, but it can also derail and cause customers to head to the competition.
By Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert, Keynote Speaker and Bestselling Author, Shepard Presentations, LLC.
Wimbledon lessons for hoteliers: Service, tradition and operational excellence
Wimbledon is not a hotel. But it understands service better than most.
By Kristina Liebute, Marketing Content Writer, Mews
Global Guest Satisfaction Hits Record Highs in Q2 2025
The positive trend in guest satisfaction continued in Q2 2025, pushing the Global Review Index (GRI) to a new record of 86.9% globally. This growth was driven by strong performance in North America, the Middle East, and Oceania, with 3-star properties showing the most significant gains (+0.6 pp). However, this peak in satisfaction tells only part of the story, as global review volume grew by a meagre 0.4%. This disconnect was most evident in the sharp drop in review volume in North America (-3.0%) and Europe (-1.2%), reflecting a potential downturn in arrivals for North America and a more complex market reality for the EU.
By Bruno Saragat, Sales Engineer, Shiji
The Most Ignored Metric in Revenue Management? Return on Time Invested
Let’s talk about the one metric nobody puts on their dashboard, yet it drives everything and frankly make you go coocoocaca in the head and give you a burn out or gives you a life that you do not need to take holidays from.
By Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito
The 4Ps of Revenue Management: The Virtuous Circle to Boost Your Bookings
Have you ever wondered why so many hoteliers struggle to maximize their revenue despite putting in a lot of effort? As a revenue management expert, I often see properties focusing on minor tweaks without having a clear strategic framework. Today, I want to share with you a proven method to significantly boost your profitability and bookings: the 4Ps of Revenue Management.
By Hrishikesh Bapat, Head of Product, LodgIQ™
From revenue manager to revenue strategist: how to make more hotel revenue
The role of revenue management is evolving fast. The days of focusing solely on room rates are behind us. Today’s most successful hotels are thinking holistically – monetizing every part of the guest journey, designing offers around guest needs, and running controlled experiments to refine their strategy.
Winning Clients by Simplifying The Hotel Experience: How Convenience Drives Success
An event planner from a local company—let’s call it Golden Group—reaches out to your hotel’s sales team in urgent need of a room block and conference space for a quarterly strategy meeting, just a few days away.
By Enari Bryant, Sales Manager, Brick Hospitality
Peak Experiences at Hotels Mean Peak Wellness
A question that guides our approach when the two of us are working with hotel owners and executives to achieve their financial goals is: What’s your property’s reason to visit? Traditionally, this has been a feeling or a desired emotional outcome, while more recently centralized and structured data from across the guest journey can allow a hotel or brand to quantity this reason to visit in order to use data to guide operational improvements or capex. The acronym for this that we are promulgating is R2V.
By Larry Mogelonsky and Adam Mogelonsky
Train smarter: Boost frontline performance while reducing costs
Companies spent $21.9 billion on frontline training in 2023. That number is expected to climb to $46.7 billion by 2028. But despite that investment, only 44% of employees feel like their organizations invest in their development.
By Eric Jackson-Sarkany, Senior Manager, Marketing Programs, Axonify
Google now indexes Instagram content: What this means for hotels & SEO strategy
It used to be that when someone searched for your business on Google, your Instagram pages wouldn’t appear. That’s finally changing, as Instagram has decided to allow Google to display public posts, reels, and videos in external search results.
By Apollos Gause, SEO & Growth Innovator, Cendyn™
The Five Stages of Rate Parity Acceptance
Rate parity is an evergreen topic. I wrote an article on rate parity for hotels in 2023, and all the way back in 2015. It’s an issue that seems to stir up a lot of concern at the asset management and property levels. Even as I write this, there are hotel industry professionals Googling rates and taking screenshots in the Google Hotel ads section to bring to their next revenue management meeting. Seasoned revenue managers are mostly ignoring these emails loaded with screenshots, as we have already addressed rate parity to the highest degree possible. Plus it’s hard to explain to our bosses that their belief that “we control our rates and distribution” is not quite true.
By Vikram Singh, Global Hotel Commercial Leader, Vikram Singh
OTAs aren't stealing your guests. You’re giving them away.
A hotel general manager is scanning her monthly report, once again feeling growing frustration about the rising number of OTA guest bookings her properties are experiencing - and the fees that came with them. Direct bookings were down last month and OTA commissions were higher than ever, leaving her feeling like the OTAs are winning.
Don't worry, it's just a tracking problem
Recent changes by Apple are sending a bunch of marketers into a frenzy (again). UTMs might be cut off, attribution windows might shrink, and everyone’s scrambling to figure out how they’ll “track the funnel.” It’s like every year we’re surprised that privacy is making tracking harder, and yet somehow we still act shocked.
By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates