By reacting too slowly to the development of the web, hotels largely lost the opportunity for direct selling online in the late nineties, ceding control to aggressive third party channels that now dominate online booking and extract high commissions. Only recently are hotels recovering that lost ground online through the use of online marketing and social media to reach the guest directly and lower their cost of acquisition. If hotels learn from the past and react quickly now to the explosive growth in the mobile market, they can avoid a repetition of the same mistake and begin serving their customers directly on mobile. READ MORE

Location-based games like Foursquare, Facebook's Places, and IMGuest are growing in popularity and evolving into more social venues daily. There are more than five million Foursquare users today and that number is growing daily. Hotels have a unique opportunity to benefit from this new channel. Find out how claiming your venue can help you drive more traffic to your restaurant, sell more weddings or create more employee engagement. It's simple and for now, it's free. READ MORE

You have arrived, your moment of anticipation is here, you are about to open the door to your sleeping chamber for the evening and your temporary living quarters. You are about to experience perhaps the strongest impression making moment of your hotel stay. You have activated your contribution to the REVPAR of that property. You are entering - The Bedroom. What makes the guest room experience memorable? What are the dos and don'ts of bedroom service and how does each department/role of the hotel impact that intimate space? What kind of service will you experience in the bedroom? Read on... READ MORE

Now that budget season has concluded for most operations and a plan has been made for the 2011 year, there is still much to consider for those who wish to prosper in this otherwise rather fragile economy. Having created a blueprint for the annual business in the budget, it is now important to work to stay in sync with that defined budget plan as well as the ongoing forecast on a day by day basis. What then should a property expect in daily operations information that can be reviewed in such a useful report? What is the information that Hotel Managers at all levels should utilize to make proper daily business decisions that are in line with the more detailed established budget plan for each week, month and remainder of the year? READ MORE

There's no getting around it-social media is here to stay. The question is: How can our industry use these powerful new tools to achieve our communications and marketing goals? Perhaps Einstein, in his infinite wisdom, had the answer-long before anyone put the words "social" and "media" together. Imagination, he said, is more important than knowledge. In the online age, this concept means that people who know how to use social media creatively are destined to surge ahead of those who only have knowledge of the tools. Keeping that in mind, check out six innovative ways to make social media work for you. READ MORE

The credit world is considered by many to be in turmoil. Real estate values as measured through investment sales are below the lofty heights of just months ago. Residential absorption is dismal in many markets. Nevertheless, the possibilities for mixed-use development, anchored by an imagination catching array of amenities, remain strong, both domestically and internationally. In such a climate, the hospitality industry is attracting interest from experienced developers, owners and operators to be sure. However, there are new players in the game who see the allure, but are less familiar with the rules. This article provides a brief overview, both historic and current, of the law relating to hotel management agreements. READ MORE

There is a common misconception among smaller independent properties that a mobile app is expensive and only useful for larger hotel brands. In this article I explain why this isn't true and discuss how a hotel app can be a powerful marketing tool for hotels of any size and star rating. This article also provides an overview of the mobile market today, and outlines what your hotel needs to do to meet your mobile guests' increased expectations. READ MORE

Since mobile devices are always with us, our sensitivity to privacy is much higher. Mobile messaging done incorrectly will likely be seen as abusive and damaging to your brand. There must be a coordinated effort to deliver the right information at the right time - and only with the recipient's explicit permission. For these reasons, the biggest opportunity I see in mobile communications is using it as a service channel - not as a direct sales or marketing medium. Let's examine how mobile messaging can be used for service. READ MORE

Contending with today's powerfully evolving mobile landscape, small chains to independent hoteliers are faced with a new challenge of quickly acquiring expertise in a 24/7 marketing environment, created by the rapid evolution of technology and the never-ending opportunities to deliver higher levels of customer-centric initiatives with more efficiently generated revenues. Now with the new year, it is apparent that a paradigm shift is happening in consumer-direct marketing, eCRM and alternative "hand held" distribution channels, due primarily to the immense popularity of smartphones. READ MORE

The key to success is in leveraging mobile technology to create highly targeted and customized messages for 1-on-1 personalized marketing, which the guests truly appreciate and value as thoughtful and meaningful, making their life easier and simpler. Any hotel company that is able to master this would emerge as a sure-shot winner with highly interactive relationships with their customers, resulting in deeper and more profitable engagements. The ringing phone with a telemarketer at the other end is passe. READ MORE

Right now your employees are using social media to share what's happening, what they think, and where they've been. They're engaged for both their personal use, and in some cases for their job. This article looks at ways to chart your hotel's social media governance, shares a database of 163 policies from a leading social media consultant, and checks in with a Director of Digital Marketing from a well-known hotel to find out his thoughts on the matter. One thing is for sure, when it comes to hotel social media policies, one size does not fit all. READ MORE

It's a competitive market online for hotels these days. What can you do to attract online travel shoppers, set your property apart and produce more hotel bookings? The answer, as a growing number of hoteliers have found, is to tell your story in a unique and compelling way -- tell it with video and get that video in front of as many shoppers as possible. Considering that hotel shoppers are clearly demanding video and your competitors are jumping in with both feet, it may be time to begin incorporating video and video syndication into your own marketing and e-business strategies. Such moves can generate impressive returns. READ MORE

If your would-be customer has started her hotel search by typing in a query to Google, Bing, Kayak, or another search engine, you need to make sure that your hotel comes up near the top of the search engine's results page. As you probably can guess, the reason you need to be near the top of the results page is that searchers rarely scroll down the page. In fact, in a study of web searchers' eye movements, a team at Cornell University found that the "hot spot," where users focus most heavily, is an area in the upper left corner of the page-essentially the top two or three of the unpaid, or "organic" hits. READ MORE

Hotel guest rooms are a critical area of focus under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Do not incorrectly assume your hotels are ADA compliant because they have designated "handicap accessible" rooms on a low floor with accessible showers. The standards for guest rooms are detailed and rooms that were formerly ADA compliant may have been rendered inaccessible due to alterations and renovations. Additionally, the new 2010 ADA regulations and standards impose significant requirements affecting guest rooms. Are your hotel rooms accessible and ADA compliant? READ MORE

One of the biggest challenges in hotel pantries and gift shops is that the people who are responsible for making it succeed have little to no retail experience. They are excellent at booking rooms, meeting the needs of guests, managing teams and budgets, but when I ask them how they went about selecting the pantry assortment they offer, they quickly confess that it is arbitrary at best: a combination of brand standards, sourcing availability, and whatever they were hungry for that day as they shopped the aisles of Costco. READ MORE