The future of boutique hotels is bright. The traveling public continues to prosper and have growing discretionary dollars. It has demonstrated a strong appetite for experiential travel with an affinity for cities, architecture, and history that helps provide context for their present day reality. Product supply has not appreciably affected demand and increasingly should segment; as cities increasingly create differentiate their core into specific districts each with their own identity, so too will boutique hotels find new homes. As a product type, boutique hotels are becoming institutionalized with associational representation such as the National Trust's Historic Hotels of America. And finally, they are benefiting from an ever successful marriage of energized marketing and design focus on creating experiences. READ MORE

If being in the moment is so important, why can't or don't more of us do it more often? How come our minds keep wandering, we become impatient or angry with the person in front of us, or bored, or any other attitude? These are all a departure from being there comfortably in front of another person and really tracking with what he or she is saying, doing, and needing. Well, 20th Century pill-pushers have most of us convinced that these modern potions and elixirs will fix our wandering attention. Yet every single person I have seen on these legalized drugs or trying to shake their addiction is a mass of random thoughts and introversion that make it very difficult indeed to be in the moment, observing calmly, computing and acting rationally. With 80% of the US population on these drugs and the rest of us beginning to enjoy them in our water supply, I'd say we had one reason people's attention is not always in the moment. READ MORE

"The new year is expected to usher in a flurry of job hopping," announced USA Today. A large staffing firm quantified the percentage of disaffected employees as being "more than half," while a retained search firm put the number at precisely 42 percent. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 38 percent of HR professionals believe employee turnover is increasing. To date, few if any organizations have seen a mass exodus from their ranks. In truth, talent shortages will begin to catch many employers unaware - but that problem is not across the board, nor will it happen all at once. As is often the case, the devil is in the details. READ MORE

In the fourth quarter, 2006, it was reported at the annual I-SPA convention in Las Vegas Nevada, that spa revenues had officially eclipsed golf revenues as a free standing revenue silo within the leisure and recreation industries. As hoteliers this is not just a red flag but rather a neon sign on The Follow the Money Trail. The depth of the industry continues to evolve. For instance, many spa treatments available at the ubiquitous strip-mall day spa have a comparable cousin offered at the regional resort, the experience enhanced with thicker robes, crown molding in the treatment rooms and more extensive landscaping to view from the pedicure thrones. Further, it is not uncommon to have a variation of either of the aforementioned treatments offered with a medical focus in the local medical spa. READ MORE

Unwittingly, hotels have found themselves amongst the best placed service providers to benefit from the emergence of men as beauty care consumers. Men's attitude towards beauty care has been transformed over the last decade and has fuelled high growth rates in the professional beauty market in that time. Men now account for more than half of salon sales while a fewer years ago they were not even considered as a category. This market has quite literally fallen into salons' laps as it was created mainly by the women who prodded and persuaded the men in their lives to use professional hair and skin care services. READ MORE