Biophilia, a love of life and the living world, continues to gain popularity in today’s modern built environment – especially as our population continues to urbanize. As a result, businesses, hotels and apartment communities across the world are incorporating biophilic design by infusing direct and indirect natural elements to create environments that promote health, wellness and productivity. While this design concept is already transforming the hotel industry, hoteliers can leverage design strategies from multifamily and residential communities to effectively create spaces that elevate the human-nature connection and guest experience to convert one-time guests into repeat visitors. READ MORE

More and more food and beverage operations in hotels are having an active online presence by making their websites more mobile friendly, thus more accessible to smartphone users. Adding to that, social media also has a huge part to play in the food and beverage industry’s revenue. Also, apps like Open Table and Yelp now make it possible for customers to make reservations in the palm of their hand. Food and beverage operations aren’t just using technology to bring customers to them, many are providing their servers with smartphones to take orders. Smartphones are creating more efficiency within the food and beverage operation, which all means boosts in revenues. READ MORE

Site integration is a crucial step in designing a hotel and, when applied appropriately, has the power to impact guest satisfaction as well as the owner's business objectives and can even translate into a real value and return on investment. In this article, Cristine Henderson, AIA, NCARB, Associate Vice President at Hoefer Wysocki, shares the most important considerations when applying site integration in a hotel's design. Considerations include designing to increase the building's overall visibility and accessibility, while incorporating local inspiration and environmental influences. A designer's skills, creativity and mindfulness produce opportunities to build hotel interiors and exteriors that reflect and make use of local surroundings and enhance the overall guest experience. READ MORE

Once summer ends, travelers start researching and booking flights and hotel rooms for holiday travel, an ideal time for brands to step up their digital marketing strategy and utilize new ways to increase sales. Programmatic performance marketing with a strong emphasis in native search enables advertisers to make smarter bidding decisions and allows brands to transform into digital publishers by selling comparison search ads to competitors. In this piece, Brett Tabano, MediaAlpha Senior Vice President of Marketing, will explore native advertising from the advertiser's and publisher's perspective, as an organic way for hotel brands to become more efficient and profitable. READ MORE

Hoteliers using Google Business Listing as a marketing tool increase their potential viewership of the hotel's online listing. Franchises like Marriott, Hilton, IHG and Choice Hotels International all use sales revenue management forecast tools that help franchisees maximize their potential. Independent Hotel & Motel properties have to do things the old school way by creating excel spreadsheets with forecasted P&Ls and data from STR Reports. Oracle Taleo Central Human Resource Management System has been helping the hospitality industry weaponized their HR by giving even the smallest operators the ability to run like a sophisticated company. READ MORE