How can you align your brand strategy with your landscape maintenance strategy to deliver a consistent guest experience among your different properties? Part of the answer is selecting a landscape maintenance provider with the expertise, resources and geographic reach to continuously deliver on your brand promise to your guests. Whether you are considering a geographic expansion for your hotel chain or thinking about ways to consolidate your landscaping to create a single, unified brand experience, here are some thoughts to consider: READ MORE

Over the past decade, the hospitality industry - like the rest of the commercial real estate industry - has begun incorporating the use of environmentally friendly, green materials into the design and renovation of existing spaces. The result has been new hotels that are not only aesthetically pleasing - but also sustainable buildings that are making a positive impact on the communities in which they are located. The breakthroughs in green construction have been remarkable. Some international hotels, for example, have been able to reduce energy costs by constructing sod roofs consisting of mud and other organic materials. Other hotels have found ways to minimize waste runoff through innovative engineering techniques, while still others have increased energy efficiency through use of natural and ambient lighting. READ MORE

While it is true that the general manager's role has changed radically over the past 30 years, this new role is really an amalgam of old and new. In today's luxury hotel and private residence club, this person plays the innkeeper role, as homeowners have brought about the need for the traditional innkeeper to maintain personal relationships for the property. The new general manager also has to handle a more complex business model, so all operations, from finance to marketing, require different knowledge and management. Now, too, this person serves as a real estate professional because the entire project thrives on this knowledge and sensibility. Entering the industry with the mindset of a traditional hotelier, one focused solely on managing the hotel, no longer makes sense with the advent of new, more productive models. READ MORE

Imagine a world in which Hilton, and Sheraton, and Marriott join Howard Johnson's, Statler, and Americana as fading icons of a time gone by. What started as product niching, through concept restaurants and boutique hotels supported by internet, is now a sea change in how the buying public is perceiving hospitality. The benefits of yesterday's standardization - reliable cleanliness and reservations - are now simply the expected attributes of any player in the game. Today's increasingly travelled and savvy mid-scale and high-end customer no longer settles for "no bad surprises," seeking instead to be delighted outright. Increasingly, it is design, lifestyle harmonization, ambience, service style and delivery, creativity, flare and finesse that distinguish the winners from the losers. READ MORE

Have you read reviews of your property on the Internet? If you haven't, the experience may be a real eye-opener. At even the finest resorts and hotels, reviewers (past guests) often complain about rude or inefficient service from hotel staff. But at resorts where staff is friendly and welcoming, reviewers will often dismiss dated furnishings or other concerns to rave about the people who made their stay special. What does this mean to you? It means that your staff members really are your most important asset. And if that's true, shouldn't that be where you're investing your time and energy? Developing and maintaining an effective employee communication and training protocol may be the highest yielding management effort you can make. You just need to give employees the tools, information, and feedback they need to get the job done. READ MORE

Demographics has played an ugly trick on the hospitality industry. Today, our profession is facing the daunting challenge of replacing Baby Boomer managers, departing in record numbers to retirement or to consulting, with green Generation Y high school and college graduates. It has been estimated that the industry will need more than 200,000 new managers within the next five years in the US alone. (The interim generation, Generation X, is only 3/7 the size of the Baby Boom so cannot possibly slot into all the management positions becoming available.) Just when traditional hospitality is hardest pressed to make itself attractive to this teens and twenty-somethings cohort, it has been abandoned by the media and has quietly disappeared off the radar screens of most of today's youth as they plan for (or stumble into) their future careers. READ MORE

Maybe not yet, but I predict soon, the stodgy, old hotel franchises with the "our way or the highway" mentality will be a thing of the past. They will be as useless, and broken-down as the coin-operated vibrating beds that were once popular at hotels and motels across the country. With the advent of the Internet and advanced technology, hotel membership brands and new, loosely structured franchises are flourishing. Third-party websites, Global Distribution Systems, and strategic alliances allow these new hotel companies to operate at a fraction of the cost of a typical franchise. READ MORE

We all know the first rule of thumb for survival in the service industry is "customer service is king'; and we have heard the complaints lately about how it's deteriorating at rapid speed. Most companies are finally realizing that cost-cutting methods may work in the short run (i.e. automated phone messages as opposed to a live person on the other end to take calls), but they tend to fail in maintaining customer loyalty in the long run. We've been there, done that, and learned from it. But what's not really being addressed is the customer service that takes place within the corporate office. READ MORE

Singer Bob Dylan said it best when he penned the now-famous catchphrase - these times are a'changing. I'm a big advocate on change. I like the challenges and advancement it brings to my personal and professional life. The business world is evolving with the advent of technological advances; the financial industry is changing its course to adapt with the growing global marketplace and unification of currencies; and the hospitality industry is incorporating all of the abovementioned changes into its mission plans to better serve its guests. It goes without saying that in order for enterprises to be successful, there need to be leaders at the helm. Some say leaders are born, others believe they are trained; but I believe that with the right tools and encouragement, leaders can come into their own in the hospitality industry. READ MORE

When I started in the lodging industry more than 30 years ago at the age of 18 as the youngest general manager of a Holiday Inn, it was generally believed that the road to the franchising ivory tower was the straight and narrow. And at the time, that was probably true - as there were fewer big name hotels around, the travel industry was not as robust as it today, and the concept of capitalism had not reached global proportions of the 21st century. Franchising, in those days, was a new concept and was cautiously and steadily making the American dream a reality for young entrepreneurs. READ MORE

The hospitality industry has yet to recover from the events of 9/11. Since that tragic day, the revenues of the major hotel operating companies have declined sharply. Only now is the industry seeing a return to profitability and increasing ADR and occupancy. However, a lingering issue continues to haunt the industry - the fear that a terrorist attack could target a hotel and the realization that the prevention of such an attack is a daunting task. Hotels can no longer do business as they once did. They must confront the new reality of terrorism and take measures to protect their guests from harm and themselves from liability. In confronting the very real threat of a terrorist attack, hotels also face a range of complicated related issues. What is a hotel's liability to its guests if an attack occurs on the hotel premises? How proactive must hotel management be in anticipating and thwarting an attack? How do the additional security measures taken by hotel management get funded? READ MORE

Whether it's a five-star resort or a two-star hotel, customers rate location as the number one deciding factor when booking a hotel according to a recent consumer survey by HotelClub, a leading online accommodation specialist. But as everyone knows, within the "location" category there are many choices. With today's online virtual tours customers can get a fairly accurate evaluation of the details of your location in advance. Obviously room size and d'ecor, attractiveness of common areas and available amenities are critical in that evaluation, but the exterior appearance of the grounds, everything from flowers to plantings to trees, is also important to your hotel's image. READ MORE

From a financial perspective, the lodging sector in the United States is healthy, according to PKF Hospitality Research. The current market and industry conditions dictate some tightening in the lending community, however, and there's certainly no lack of competition for funding. Capital just isn't as abundant as it's been for the past few years, and you'll need a more aggressive and comprehensive method to attract these investors. Following are 10 powerhouse steps to attract investors to your property. I encourage you to evaluate every aspect of your hotel, including its overall appearance, functionality, operations, and profitability. Readying your property for new opportunities is a lot of work, but once you have investors lined up, it'll be worth all the effort. READ MORE

Every hotelier has dreams of entrepreneurial endeavors. Every entrepreneur has his own recollection of his successes, the path that lead him to those successes and the challenges that he has faced along the way. CLIA, The California Lodging Industry Association, is made up of many such entrepreneurs. Men and women that have started with a dream, something small, and turned it into a strong, independent, growing and thriving example of the "Great American Success Story" Over the next few articles I will chronicle this process drawing from some of my own experiences as well as some of the stories and experiences that have been shared with me by great people that I have encountered in the Industry. READ MORE

In a recent New York Times article, it was reported that a 74 year old traveler spent the past several years on various adventure vacations, including climbing the 19,300 foot Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro and pitching a tent in a sandstorm in the Gobi Desert. She has also traveled to Mongolia, Madagascar and Peru in recent years and is planning trips to the Andes and Ethiopia. What does this mean for the travel industry? Increasing longevity creates new economic opportunities in the near term. According to a U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey, consumers age 50+ have accumulated more wealth and have more spending power than any other age group in history. In addition, they spend more than $1.7 trillion on goods and services each year. READ MORE