Sales & Marketing USA & Canada Opinion Articles - Hospitality Net

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Opinion Article

October 6, 2014

Is Your PR Strategy Like Nero’s?

One of the worst jobs in history had to have been Nero's Public Relations (PR) Officer. Can you imagine trying to put a spin on an image of the emperor serenely playing his fiddle against the backdrop of raging flames shooting skyward from a burning Rome? Ouch! The bizarre part of this story is that historians tell us Nero actually tried to help his people in the midst of the tragic conflagration. When he heard about the tragedy, he rush back to the city from his palace on the outskirts of Rome to coordinate fire-fighting efforts, established temporary shelters for homeless residents in public buildings along with his own gardens, and brought in grains from other cities to feed his citizens. But, none of that ever made the front page of the papyrus scroll. The only image that circulated was that of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. It persists to this day. Why? Because he didn't have a good public relations strategy.

By Bonnie Knutson, Professor in The School of Hospitality Business in the Broad College of Business, Michigan State

Opinion Article

September 25, 2014

Strategist or Tactician?

Which one are you, strategist or tactician? Or, do you even know the difference? It's subtle, but very important to remember. Strategists are the big picture idea generators and recommenders of this world. They are the ones who get the prestige for coming up the winning concept that reaped a heavy payload down the road. Oftentimes a single thought or suggestion can save a whole company or launch it into an entirely new marketplace. Strategic planners, consultants and corporate advisors all fit this role for the purpose of helping an organization find that 'next big thing' to propel it forward.

By Larry Mogelonsky, Partner, Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

Opinion Article

September 17, 2014

Is Revenue Management Only Useful for Luxury Hotels?

In the past, revenue management was a practice that only high-end, luxury properties implemented for two major reasons: first, it was hugely cost prohibitive, and second, it required the hotel to hire a revenue manager to execute the processes (or oversee the revenue management system - RMS). Only properties with large budgets – both for revenue management and personnel – could actually afford to use revenue management to price their properties, leaving smaller, boutique properties struggling to keep up.

By Jean Francois Mourier, CEO of REVPAR GURU, RevPAR Guru Inc.

Opinion Article

September 11, 2014

This is why visitors to your DMO website don’t come back (and here’s what you can do about it)

Every DMO marketer worth her salt knows that the key metrics of a website's effectiveness are reach and conversions, but knowing how to increase these two numbers is an ongoing puzzle for most DMOs. These days the standard DMO website includes several areas of loosely organized content, along with a hodgepodge of external links, booking engines, and social plugins. This approach could loosely be summed up as "more is more", a belief that visitors want something, so let's throw as much stuff on the site as possible and hope they find what they need.

By Brian Sanders, CEO/Founder, LocalNav Inc.

Opinion Article

September 4, 2014

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 128

The Hotel Carter was constructed in 1930 as the Hotel Dixie by Percy and Harry Uris who were active hotel developers in New York City. The Dixie was built as a bread and butter, no-frills hotel with small-sized guestrooms. It had no pretensions to luxury and was created to provide inexpensive rooms in the Times Square area. It included a bus terminal in the basement just below the street floor. The terminal consisted of a large waiting room with an information booth, ticket counters, station offices, baggage storage, checkrooms, lunch counter and automobile parking spaces. Ramps for buses led to and from Forty-third Street. A thirty-five foot turntable served to maneuver the buses into their allotted loading stalls and to reverse them when ready to leave.

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS, Hotel consultant, Stanley Turkel, MHS, ISHC

New York, New York, United States

Opinion Article

September 3, 2014

How Business Travelers Buy: Hotel Pricing in a Social World

With the growing popularity and availability of online reviews and ratings, consumers have more information than ever before when purchasing a hotel stay. In order to build effective pricing and positioning strategies, hotel managers need to understand how consumers are using all of this user generated content with price to make a purchase decision. Dr. Breffni Noone, Associate Professor at Penn State, and I have done a series of studies to understand how consumers use all of this information to assess value, and ultimately, make a purchase decision. Our latest research looked at unmanaged business travelers.

By Kelly McGuire, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), KASA, HSMAI (USA)

Opinion Article

August 29, 2014

Naked Bootleg: Football Play Gives Game Plan to Hoteliers and Restaurateurs

Naked bootleg is a term used in football whereby the quarterback runs counter to his blockers and tries to create a run or pass opportunity with no help from his blockers. With changes in the economy, new products entering our market and brands trying to out smart other brands, we are operating our businesses naked. We are trying to develop new strategies in the ways we operate and market our hotels while trying to stay ahead of game changers such as new technology, savvy customers and new product in our markets.

R. A. Rauch & Associates, Inc.

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Ernest - Lighthouse's AI for hoteliers

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Opinion Article

August 27, 2014

Turning Vacation Influencers Into Brand Ambassadors

Prolific vacation travelers have been there, done that. But there's a certain breed of US traveler that does more than go and do. They talk. They tell family, friends, colleagues and even strangers about their trips, and their power of persuasion influences the vacations others take.

By Bilicic, Senior Vice President, GFK

Opinion Article

August 12, 2014

When it Comes to Customer Satisfaction Cleanliness Matters

The recipe to happy customers is good value and a good location. Right? Earlier this month I explored the question of what factors lead to a good customer experience. I developed a list of 100 brand name hotels in the Philadelphia area and using our RightBid Feedback Collector software collected 113,333 customer votes from leading travel sites like TripAdvisor, Priceline, and Hotels.com. The data set included not only summary ratings for each location on a scale of zero to five, but other summary data such as the advertised lowest booking price, and sub-ratings for location, value, staff, and cleanliness denoted on a scale of zero to one hundred. We then applied multiple linear regression to estimate which factors had the largest effect on the overall customer rating.

By Zach Blatt, Founder, RightBid

Opinion Article

August 5, 2014

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 127: Hotel History: Hotel Theresa: the “Waldorf of Harlem”

Hotel History: Hotel Theresa - The Hotel Theresa opened in 1913 on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem and closed its doors as a hotel in 1970. It was built by German-born stockbroker Gustavus Sidenberg to the designs of architects George and Edward Blum. The Blum brothers were trained at the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and they designed a full-blockfront all-white apartment hotel 13 stories high with 300 rooms.

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS, Hotel consultant, Stanley Turkel, MHS, ISHC

Opinion Article

July 31, 2014

Fact or Folly: A Review of Convention Center Follies

This article responds to Heywood Sanders' book Convention Center Follies. It argues for a more moderate picture of the state of supply and demand in the convention industry, and it critiques Sanders' narrative of convention center development. In his book Convention Center Follies: Politics, Power, and Public Investment in American Cities, Heywood T. Sanders presents a critical account of the convention center industry. He targets local and state governments, business interests, and professional convention consultants as complicit in the systematic over-building of convention centers in an effort to demonstrate that, on the whole, convention center developments represent a misuse of public and private capital.

By Thomas Hazinski, Managing Director of HVS Convention, Sports, & Entertainment Facilities Consulting in Chicago, HVS

Opinion Article

July 29, 2014

Make Training Fun!

As experts in adult learning theory have told us for years, to achieve a transfer of training concepts from the workshop to the workplace requires an interactive, experiential learning approach. This is theory seems even more relevant when training the so-called “Millennials,” who have grown up in an over-stimulated world with a keyboard, joystick, mouse pad and now a touch screen in their hands. When conducting training in the hospitality industry today, trainers find themselves facing a multi- generational audience that also includes Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, making it that much more challenging to find common ground.

By Doug Kennedy, President of the Kennedy Training Network, Kennedy Training Network (KTN)

Opinion Article

July 29, 2014

Mid-Year Review: The Rising Tide of Mobile Bookings – How Hoteliers Can Stay Afloat

In the first half of 2014, the massive shift from desktop to mobile and tablet devices continues its rigorous pace and now over 42% of web visitors and nearly 38% of page views were generated from non-desktop devices (mobile and tablet), while nearly 16% of bookings and 19% of room nights came from tablets and mobile devices.

By Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

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Ernest - Lighthouse's AI for hoteliers

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Opinion Article

July 28, 2014

Have You Made Your New Year’s Resolutions Yet?

Okay, be honest. Are you one of the 317 million adults in the US who do? Now, fess up. Are you one of the 300 million who don't keep it up for at least a year? I'm talking about making New Year's Resolutions.

By Bonnie Knutson, Professor in The School of Hospitality Business in the Broad College of Business, Michigan State

Opinion Article

July 21, 2014

How To Mitigate Dependence on OTAs

On the consulting side of my business, I work with many delightful and hardworking hoteliers. True, we get into numerous discussions on issues such as rate and amenities. Ultimately, these individuals are committed to the crux of hospitality: They truly care about their guests. Nary a day goes by where our meetings are interrupted by a guest request. Seemingly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but important at that moment, discourse and intervention are required. A check-in of a VIP guest? No problem; someone from senior management will be there.

By Larry Mogelonsky, Partner, Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

Opinion Article

July 21, 2014

What can Hotels learn from Casinos? Focus on knowing your guests

Did you know that total consumer spending on gambling at commercial casinos in the US was calculated at $37.34 billion in 2012? $8.6 billion of this revenue was returned to states and local communities in the form of taxes and other levies. The US casino entertainment industry also provides jobs to 332,000 people who earned $13.2 billion in wages, benefits and tips during 2012. It's hard to deny that gaming is serious business. And like all serious businesses, the casino entertainment industry is leveraging predictive analytics to ensure that they stay on a winning streak.

By Natalie Osborn, Senior industry consultant for SAS Institute’s Hospitality and Travel practice, SAS Institute Inc.

Opinion Article

July 15, 2014

The Top Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner

Any hotel that has a high revenue-generating website and a strong digital marketing strategy that drives direct online bookings needs a great hotel digital marketing agency behind it. It’s challenging to find a good digital marketing partner these days. As more and more companies join the market as ‘experts in hotel website design and digital marketing,’ hoteliers are faced with a difficult decision. With serious revenues at stake, we have provided hoteliers with the most important questions to consider when deciding on who to partner with, or whether or not to stay with their current agency.

By Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

Opinion Article

June 17, 2014

HVS In Focus: Airbnb's Inroads Into The Hotel Industry

Airbnb offers accommodations in nearly every major hospitality destination worldwide. Rates are often lower than comparable hotel rooms, and its popularity is rising—what does this mean for hotels?

By Matthew Kurtz, Associate, HVS

Opinion Article

June 10, 2014

Revenue Management: How to Price Your Rooms Correctly Every Time

In today's highly competitive travel industry, implementing effective real-time pricing strategies has become an operational imperative for all hotels, no matter their size, type or star rating. While revenue management has been a hotel buzzword for years, many hoteliers seem to have conflicting understandings about what exactly constitutes revenue management. So, I'm here to remind you of the fundamental principles of revenue management and why revenue management technology is so important for hotels.

By Jean Francois Mourier, CEO of REVPAR GURU, RevPAR Guru Inc.

Opinion Article

May 22, 2014

A Practical Guide to Competitive Set Selection

Determining a competitive set is something those in the hospitality industry do routinely, however, these selections can have lasting effects on market positioning and performance and ultimately, asset value. The three most common reasons for competitive set selections include pro forma development, market positioning and performance benchmarking. Selecting an appropriate competitive set and evaluating this selection over time as market conditions change is a worthwhile undertaking. It is one exercise that shouldn't be taken lightly, but it is often more difficult than it appears to be at first glance.

By Trevor Stuart-Hill, Founder and president, Revenue Matters