With the start of a new year, customer acquisition and employee retention are both topics of conversation around many board rooms. Brands that understand the challenges are; hiring consultants to educate them, creating strategic plans to implement, or holding annual planning retreats, to find new solutions. Everyone is looking for the secret to brand loyalty. It is no longer enough to attract the ideal customer; brands must find a way to connect with them emotionally, to turn them into raving fans. Not surprising, it seems the same is true for employee retention. Staff turnover, beyond natural attrition, can be largely attributed to a lack of appreciation or a toxic culture. READ MORE

Running a successful bar or lounge operation certainly has its challenges and pitfalls. Putting the right elements together in a package that appeals to your target audience and has longevity is in itself a huge challenge. If you can get this right, just enjoy the fruits of your labors and don't over think things. Chuck Kelley Partner, Cayuga Hospitality Consultants opines on experiences from his early days as a Lounge Manager and provides examples of what can make the operation successful in the eyes of all stakeholders and what are some of the pitfalls that can derail a successful operation. READ MORE

This article offers practical contributions for hotel executives at all levels of the hotel. Hotel executives will see how hotel leadership not only can directly support financial performance, but it can also cultivate effective technological initiatives, which will enable organizational processes within hotels. I also present hotel executives with a new idea in that when change becomes increasingly valuable, hotel leadership manifests as a catalyst to implement effective changes in hotels' internal resources. Hotel executives leverage positive effects on information technology. Thus, I provide evidence that hotel leadership is used in corporate infrastructure for technological decision-making. READ MORE

Year after year, companies invest in off-site meetings and events to better enable their employees to build in-person connections. Face-to-face interaction has consistently been identified as a critical component to company growth, employee success and overall productivity. In my role at Hilton, I am consistently asking for feedback from my team of sales professionals and our customers. From those conversations, we see several trending themes across the meeting and events industry that we expect will continue to grow in importance in 2020. Let's take a look at what these important trends are... READ MORE

Does it make sense to adopt outsourcing as a strategy? Does it have a future? With asset management becoming a critical stakeholder driven role in business performance, outsourcing has been given a dose of steroids. By marrying key asset management strategies in the execution of an outsourcing exercise, predications of success have become better. Thus, the way forward looks bright for outsourcing and other asset management strengthened strategies as they seek to deliver the year on year growth that stakeholders seem to be obsessed about. Stakeholders could be laughing all the way to the bank with this approach to return on investment delivery. READ MORE