Lucas Höfer is the Group Director of Systems and Innovation Management at Ruby Hotels, a brand that provides what it calls “lean luxury.”
When the first ChatGPT demo was released in November 2022, like many people, it immediately caught the eyes of leadership at Brittain Resorts & Hotels. They saw an instant ability to rely on generative AI to make team members across the company more efficient.
Located in the heart of Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona is a blend of Spanish charm and Asian influence. It's a luxury hotel set in a renovated modernist building, with interior designs by Patricia Urquiola. Key features include an award-winning spa, a rooftop terrace, and multiple dining options including the two Michelin-starred Moments restaurant. The hotel combines elegance with contemporary aesthetics, creating a unique, stylish ambiance that stands out among others.
Capsule Hotel is an innovative hotel that operates in Lucerne, Basel and the Zurich airport, in Switzerland. The brand is mixing the best of both worlds by taking the revolutionary concept of a capsule hotel with the quality of Swiss products.
Royal Garden is a luxury hotel located in London in the iconic Kensington High Street. The hotel has 400 bedrooms with unparalleled views of the London skyline. The Royal Garden is proud of its awesome location in a borough with an array of shops and restaurants to suit every need and walking distance to three world class museums, Kensington Palace and adjoining Gardens. But hotel fame and success are not just about location, it is about being internationally recognised as London’s most flexible 5 Star Hotel offering excellent value where distinction in service comes naturally. The hotel staff of 300 employees works hard every day to make them feel at home taking care of each detail. Its green policy is constantly exploring new sustainable opportunities to reduce carbon print. All of this makes The Royal Garden Hotel the perfect choice for enjoying your business or pleasure stay.
Hotel marketers looking to implement the holy grail, a 360-degree personalized marketing strategy tailored to each guest, are faced with a substantial set of challenges. At a hotel attached to an indoor water park – with restaurants, arcades and outlets to boot – the number of potential roadblocks increases exponentially.
The Mandarin Oriental is a chain of premier business hotels, designed for corporate and high-end guests. The Mandarin Oriental currently has 29 properties, stretching across North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In order to fully service the needs of its guests, the company needed to ensure that the quality of its Wi-Fi was as high as its other guest services.
After spending a few years in a global pandemic, travelers have never been hungrier to see the world and have a great hotel experience wherever they go. One of the best ways for hoteliers to ensure guests are having incredible, personalized experiences is to keep teams engaged by utilizing technology to deliver the latest and greatest in industry innovation.
You’ve heard it before: Compared to other industries like retail and banking, the hotel industry has traditionally been slow to adopt modern technology. But owners and operators received the ultimate wake-up call in March 2020 and, out of necessity, swiftly turned to digital tools to more effectively communicate with guests and keep the doors open with fewer staff members.
It’s a common thread throughout the hotel industry: Operators are looking to remove much of the back-office work from staff at the property level and take on more of that responsibility at the regional or headquarters level.
In 2011, Rick Hayduk, a long-time and experienced hotelier, was inspired to open a hotel that employed individuals with intellectual disabilities with the goal in mind of positively impacting the lives of others and giving everyone a chance for forward advancement in the hospitality industry. After learning the ins and outs of the hospitality industry for over three decades and becoming a true hospitality veteran, Hayduk opened The Shepherd Hotel in April of 2022 with the help of Rich Davies, a third-generation real estate developer, and incredibly involved Clemson Alumni.
In 2018, Blackstone Group purchased the Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore of Oahu with big plans for a new, five-star Hawaii destination. The midmarket hotel wasn’t the main draw, instead it was all about location, location, location – Turtle Bay sits on prime seaside real estate in a surfing mecca, with five miles of beachfront and 20 miles of trails.
The Ibis Budget Tbilisi Center, part of the Accor chain, is perfectly positioned for leisure and business guests and close to everything the Georgian capital offers. Only a twenty-minute drive from the airport and just a one-minute walk from Rustaveli Avenue, this brand-new 158-room hotel has a lobby bar and a restaurant.
At Tennessee-based McNeill Hotel Company, an owner-operator of 24 branded hotels across the U.S., change management was already underway prior to COVID. Leadership had outlined a plan for centralization - moving many of the back-office operations away from the property level and under the purview of the centrally located leadership team based outside Memphis.
At Tharaldson Hospitality Management, it’s all about staying current with hospitality technologies, finding the best people to work at their properties, and overall providing the best hotel experience possible.
Our world runs on bold ideas – but bringing new ideas, especially those which aim to break the molds we’ve grown most accustomed to, is a feat that requires a great deal of heart. That is, perhaps, the best way to explain the evolution of The Shepherd Hotel – a one-of-a-kind luxury hotel located in downtown Clemson, which started as a big idea with an even bigger heart. Founded by Rich Davies, a third-generation real estate developer, and Rick Hayduk, a seasoned luxury hotel leader, the Shepherd Hotel not only fills a gap in the Clemson community by offering a home-away-from-home to visiting sports fans, Clemson University students, and their parents, it also exists to change the lives of an under-engaged portion of the population.
Sharing information with owners might not rank as OPERA Cloud's top benefit for hoteliers, but it's certainly key to making them happy.
There are many reasons why, as manager of Hotel Mesikammen in Finland, I opted to become an early adopter of cloud-based technology and switched to OPERA Cloud property management system in 2019 - and embraced its new hotel distribution solution just this past summer.
Whether it's 1870 or 2022, hospitality always has been about enhancing service to meet guests' needs.
North Star Lodging Management (NSL) is both a ground-up developer and first-rate operator focused primarily within the hospitality sector. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, NSL has completed a number of custom, ground-up hotel developments across the Eastern United States since its inception in 2015 and currently manages a portfolio of four hotels throughout Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. Since 2017, NSL has utilized M3's Accounting Core, Document Imaging, PMS Mapping, and Professional Services. In addition to using M3's software and services, NSL also leverages M3's industry partners, including Paymerang, since 2021, and HotStats, since 2022.