Meetings: Five Simple Ways Operations are Going Green and How it Affects the Bottom Line

By Tom Nolan, Regional Vice President, Eastern Region, ARAMARK Harrison Lodging

Going green is especially imperative to the meetings and hotel industries. While hotel and conference customers may not think twice about using a new towel with every shower, leaving the lights on when no one is in the room, or printing out more copies than are needed, companies like ARAMARK Harrison Lodging are taking their environmental responsibility seriously. It is important to keep in mind that the average hotel purchases more products in one week than one hundred families typically do in a year. Add to this the products and services used for learning and training events and it is easy to see why conference centers can have a huge impact on the environment...

Making the Leap from Hotel to Fractional Resort Management

By Tom LaTour, Founding Principal of LaTour Signature Group

In today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive hospitality industry, there are many different roads that can lead top managers to new career heights and greater achievements. One increasingly popular route paving the way to expanded personal growth and professional success is via fractional resort management. One of the fastest growing and most fascinating segments of the lodging industry is shared-ownership vacation resorts, including fractional interest, private residence clubs and destination clubs. According to the latest figures released by Ragatz Associates, this segment grew 8.3 percent in 2007 with sales volume estimated at $2.3 billion -- this despite the dramatic decrease in the country’s overall residential resort industry...

Food & Beverage: Five Hot Trends in the Meetings Industry

By Andy Dolce, Chairman and Managing Director, Dolce International

While food trends may come and go, meeting planners always need to feed their attendees. With travelers’ tastes expanding to more global flavors, today’s successful meeting hotels must go above and beyond the typical banquet fare to wow today’s finicky groups. As hospitality leaders, we have a responsibility to address health and nutrition concerns of our guests. In addition, we need to ensure that we are purchasing items from local vendors when possible and selecting items such as organic meats and sustainable fish. Aside from providing sustenance, culinary experiences for groups can be great team-building activities in both “Top Chef” and “Survivor” scenarios. The value of bonding over a home cooked meal cannot be underestimated. Read on to learn about five hot food and beverage trends in the meetings industry ...

Lighting & Flooring Can Dramatically Affect The Mood of Your Guests & The Value of Your Hotel

By Brenda Lookadoo, Senior Designer, Hatchett Hospitality

What puts you in a good mood? Hotel owners and designers are constantly looking for new answers to that question because they know today’s travelers want their hotel to be as pleasing as their trip. Colors, music, and artwork are among the popular ways hoteliers try to create a special environment. However, two especially effective techniques are within reach and under foot, literally – in the form of lighting and flooring ...

Nervous Service

By Roberta Nedry, President, Hospitality Excellence, Inc.

Nervous Service! Call it shaky, call it uneasy, call it anxious, high-strung, sensitive or walking on pins and needles. These kinds of service experiences make the guest want to TWIST and SHOUT!!! What happens when employees are so focused on their duties, so concerned about management’s expectations, so worried about letting co-workers down? Nervous service can bumble the job! Walking the line between expectations and service delivery can be challenging. How can employees better understand the seamless delivery of service and how they can have fun doing it without the jitters? Can hotels and hospitality organizations “work it on out" ...

The Role of Social Responsibility in Hotels

By Didi Lutz, President, Didi Lutz PR

The impact of social responsibility on any business is enormous. While you are creating programs to benefit your community, for instance, supporting a charitable organization, taking measures to go green, funding children’s initiatives or anything else, your credibility increases greatly as a business. You may think, “We’re in the hospitality business, why should we care about building a playground in another part of town?” The answer is, your hotel is part of the community and the world. We are all responsible. Practicing social responsibility in your business can also help you from a public relations standpoint. Here are some suggestions as to how to start becoming involved...

Liquidity and Risk – 'The Party’s Over'

By Scott Smith, MAI, Vice President, PKF Consulting – Atlanta

The second quater 2008 Hotel Horizons forecast of PKF-HR called for U.S. hotel RevPAR to increase just 1.5 percent in 2008. This pace of RevPAR growth is below the long-term average of this performance indicator. Declining economic fundamentals, fueled by the turmoil in the capital markets, portend a much weaker domestic economy for the months ahead...

Select Financial Performance

By Robert Mandelbaum, Director of Research Information Services, PKF Consulting Hospitality Research and Steven Nicholas CHA

The great investment return that the limited-service segment can provide is probably the worst kept secret in the hospitality business. Gone are the days that any hospitality professional will say, “No one will stay at a hotel without all the bells and whistles of a full-service hotel.” Industry segmentation nomenclature has always been somewhat vague, but over the last few years it has become downright muddy. We have gone from limited-, to select-, to focused-, to the next TBD variation. However, today, most industry participants use the term select-service to define properties that offer either no, or a limited degree, of food and beverage (F&B) service. Typically, these properties are priced in the middle to upper-middle tiers within their respective markets ...

Smart Start Hotel Executive Report: The Last Mile and Beyond

By Roger Lopez, Benchmark Analyst, Gomez

If you have read my previous articles, or seen the Gomez: Hotel Room Search Benchmark, you will be familiar with the three metrics we use to measure website performance: Availability (Success Rate), Response Time and Consistency. Together these three metrics give us an idea of how a website is performing. These measurements are taken from Gomez’s global network of Internet Backbone nodes, featuring Tier 1 data centers with big servers and thick pipes out to the Internet...