While travel and hospitality marketers can be highly innovative, most would readily concede that we don't have a monopoly on good ideas. Once in a while, it is important to look beyond our current practices to learn from marketing innovators in other industries. After all, we're all seeking to build customer satisfaction and engagement - and create revenue - whether the end-customer is a traveler, a banking customer, a donor, or an avid sports fan. Novel marketing approaches from the financial services, sports and entertainment, and non-profit sectors, respectively, can offer the hospitality marketer some good food for thought. READ MORE

Guest wireless is growing by leaps and bounds as today's guests are bringing laptops, tablets, smartphones and even wireless-enabled gaming devices -- all in one room, and sharing a single broadband connection. Additionally, revenue-drivers such as video-on-demand are being cannibalized by on-demand movie streaming services. How can today's hotel keep up? READ MORE

Your property management team should be carefully engineered, similar to a professional sports team, to ensure that important players are in place and that there are not too many superstars. Teams must be crafted to include a variety of personalities, capabilities, skill sets and inclinations; a matrix of supportive and complementary strengths and weaknesses. The leadership challenge is to ensure that necessary role players both understand and are recognized for the value of those roles. READ MORE

You don't have to be in the hotel business very long to figure out that a signature restaurant can be either a financial boon or a balance sheet nightmare. While some operators view food and beverage as merely a necessary amenity, passionate owners and operators view their restaurant as an opportunity to increase the bottom line and engage the local community. How do you make your restaurant or lounge sustainable? How do you successfully draw-in out-of-town guests while also capturing added revenues from the local residents? How do you transform your restaurant into a destination? READ MORE

Breakfast is serious business, especially for hotels. Technomic, in a study done in conjunction with Hotel F&B, estimated hotel breakfast business to be nearly $10 billion a year. But it doesn't stop there, because the value of complimentary breakfasts in the Select Service segment was not factored in. So figure a couple of billion more. This article cites three macro trends that are influencing breakfast offerings in hotels. READ MORE