From bespoke fashion to technology that adapts to individual biometrics to cars and homes designed to their owners' specific needs and wants, customization and personalization are synonymous with luxury and cutting-edge innovation. Increasingly, hotel brands and any company associated with travel are having to address this ever-growing trend. CallisonRTKL's Hospitality Sector Leader Clay Markham weighs in on the trend for customizable travel, how it works from a design perspective, what technology makes it all work, and what kind of personnel and skills the hotel of the future will need to succeed. READ MORE

Anurak Community Lodge in southern Thailand is winning plaudits for its ecological best practice efforts. Located adjacent to Thailand's Khao Sok National Park – home to a magnificent rainforest ecosystem older than the Amazon – the lodge takes an innovative yet practical approach to sustainable tourism. Its back-of-house operations are built on simple, but effective, recycle, reduce, reuse policies and procedures. The lodge has also cultivated strong community relations with its neighbors. Its latest initiative is its Rainforest Rising project to return a palm oil plantation on its grounds to native forest cover. READ MORE

Leadership has always been at the forefront management training. The four functions of management depict leadership as one of the four. The four that seemed to stand the test of time are controlling, leading, planning, and controlling. Leadership, being the core of management, has manifested itself into the forefront of many hotel executives. Leadership can help hotels to achieve a sustained change and eventually a higher degree of effectiveness. In the absence of effective leadership, hotels are not capable of effectively implementing changes at the competitive level. Hotel leadership is crucial to business success----both from a performance and management level. READ MORE

Legislation is being passed worldwide that seeks to protect consumer privacy; most notably, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Hoteliers, these laws may well apply to you, even if you don't have any properties located in the Golden State or EU. Long story short, for those in the hospitality space, If your bookings include CA or EU resident, you must be mindful of how guests' personal information and data are collected, processed, shared and retained, and poised to implement comprehensive data privacy programs at an organization-wide level to ensure legal compliance. As for the latter, if you haven't done so already, the time is now. READ MORE

User Generated Content (UGC) is a double-edged sword for every hotelier. It's invaluable as far as it delivering positive, authentic guest testaments to future hotel guests. However, it can also elevate a hotel's pain points into the public domain. As hoteliers focus on the balancing act of leveraging guest accolades and damage control, it's easy to lose sight of the impact that UGC ultimately has on room revenues, as well as the potential ways in which hoteliers could be maximizing UGC to further enrich the guest experience and better the property's exposure among potential new guests. READ MORE