Hotel Business Review: Week of Sep 26, 2016

Ken Edwards
  • Human Resources, Recruitment & Training
  • The Impact of Training on Your Bottom Line
  • By Ken Edwards, Owner and CEO, HMBookstore and Tristar Hotel Group

  • Training is an important aspect in every hotel as it is the basis for cultivating superior guest service, maintaining costs, retaining employees and increasing profitability. While some owners and operators may question the return on investment (ROI) of training, the effects of not placing importance on consistent, ongoing staff training can be far greater over the long run. Preparing employees for situations, outlining role responsibilities and explaining how they are important in overall success can lead to happier employees, alleviate misunderstandings, skirt potential issues and result in better guest experience. That leaves more time for staying focused and creating a positive guest experience. Read on...

David Ashen
  • Architecture & Design
  • Less is More: Streamlining Design
  • By David Ashen, Principal and Founder, dash design

  • When designing today’s hospitality venues, whether they’re fully outfitted resorts, boutique hotels, or beach side bungalows, hoteliers are finding ways to streamline design and simplify the guest experience. Muted colors and minimal furnishings in combination with earthy textures, expansive views of the outdoors, fresh scents and liberal doses of natural light not only foster a sense of peace but also help today’s travelers set aside everyday distractions for the serenity that simplified living provides. In this article, David Ashen, partner and founder of dash design, explores how today’s hoteliers are making the most of the trend to simplify. Read on...

Lorraine Abelow
  • Public Relations
  • Powerful Spa PR Campaigns Drive Revenues
  • By Lorraine Abelow, Founder and President, Abelow PR

  • Since spas in hotels have the potential to be a major source of income, it pays to have a powerful PR and social media campaign to get your spa in front of your target market. Public relations agencies with strong ties to influential media outlets, such as Martha Stewart Living and Organic Spa, will provide you with the feature coverage you need to distinguish your property from the competition. Social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest are also crucial components to success because of their image-rich delivery. Here are some useful tips that will drive more traffic to your website, attract additional guests and dramatically increase your revenue. Read on...

Paul van Meerendonk
  • Revenue Management
  • Revenue Management Health Check: How Does Your Hotel Measure Up?
  • By Paul van Meerendonk, Director of Advisory Services, IDeaS Revenue Solutions

  • It is commonly accepted today that revenue management is critical to the successful operation of any hotel. However, while the adoption of this strategic approach to pricing - and the advanced systems that support this - are becoming more widespread, there is still no industry standard for how to evaluate revenue management outcomes. This lack of universal criteria around how to assess revenue management can pose challenges in trying to sell the success of a program within a hotel, as well challenging how to accurately benchmark a hotel’s revenue performance against its competitors. Read on...

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SEPTEMBER: Hotel Group Meetings: Demand is Trending Up

Dan Berger

A decade ago futurists and armchair analysts were convinced that the internet would move face-to-face interactions online and therefore kill the meetings & events industry as we know it. Instead of joining together under one roof, we’d educate ourselves via webinars, make new connections exclusively over LinkedIn, and swap catered lunches for granola bars and iced-coffee at the office. So, what happened to this dystopia? Today, it’s evident that technology is having the opposite effect on events. We’re actually seeing that modern connectivity and social networking is driving higher demand for face-to-face interactions. In the past, we predicted that broadband would make in-person meetings redundant. Read on...

Ben Premack

Meetings and events need not be designed around stuffy, windowless rooms involving information overload and ten-minute stretch breaks. These types of gatherings are neither engaging nor fun for anyone. Today, meeting planners want more than just a location; they want a flexible venue in a desirable destination which offers an array of amenities and add-ons for groups looking to make their out-of-office gathering one to remember, and even envied. Well thought-out and customized corporate meetings and events that feel more like a retreat can create new opportunities for employee growth, networking, and creative-thinking – all while boosting productivity and morale. Read on...

Jim Vandevender

As hotels head into the fourth and final quarter of 2016, sales operations and revenue management teams are beginning to look toward next year. Budgets and marketing plans are beginning to be developed that hope to capture the lucrative high demand group market, drive RevPar and meet occupancy and ADR forecasts. But questions loom. Which segments will remain robust and fruitful? Will the high demand within corporate, for example, begin to ebb with the hotel construction pipeline in full swing supplying more and more inventory in most cities? What subsets within corporate group will continue to drive demand and which ones will be the new emerging provider of group room night opportunities? Read on...

John Hess

Social responsibility enables a culture of caring within organizations in all sectors of business, including the financial services, manufacturing, and retail industries. At organizations of all sizes, from large Fortune 500 companies to small startups, individual team members find satisfaction in helping others and often appreciate the opportunity to do so, because acting with purpose provides a shared experience that is positive and contagious. As the groups business continues to evolve and sales professionals and corporate planners explore the latest bells and whistles, such as 3-D Selfie Stations, to get meetings attendees engaged and excited. Read on...

Coming Up In The October Online Hotel Business Review


Feature Focus
Revenue Management: Measuring All Hotel Revenue Streams
Revenue Management is a dynamic and ever-evolving profession and its role is becoming increasingly influential within hotel operations. In some ways, the revenue manager's office is now the functional hub in a hotel. Primarily this is due to the fact that everything a revenue manager does affect every other department. Originally revenue managers based their forecasting and pricing strategies on a Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) model and some traditional hotels still do. But other more innovative companies have recently adopted a Gross Operating Profit per Available Room (GOPPAR) model which measures performance across all hotel revenue streams. This metric considers revenue from all the profit centers in a hotel - restaurants, bars, spas, conference/groups, golf courses, gaming, etc. - in order to determine the real gross operating profit per room. By fully understanding and appreciating the profit margins in all these areas, as well as knowing the demand for each one during peak or slow periods, the revenue manager can forecast and price rooms more accurately, effectively and profitably. In addition, this information can be shared with general managers, sales managers, controllers, and owners so that they are all aware of and involved in forecasting and pricing strategies. One consequence of a revenue manager's increasing value in hotel operations is a current shortage of talent in this field. Some hotels are being forced to co-source or out-source this specialized function and in the meantime, some university administrators are looking more closely at developing a revenue management curriculum as a strategy for helping the hospitality industry close this gap. The October issue of the Hotel Business Review will address these significant developments and document how some leading hotels are executing their revenue management strategies.