At the end of the day there are three main areas in which the hotel has an opportunity to trigger meaningful and memorable brand experience; service (especially the arrival/departure experience), physicality (especially the guest room experience) or tactile (especially the food and beverage experience). Yet many hotels pay little or no attention to the F&B operation as a brand amplifier. In fact, increasingly hotels are giving up on F&B and outsourcing the foodservice operation in one way or another. This article discusses how to develop experiential operationalization programs for F&B that leverage and amplify the brand at the same time. READ MORE

Hotel food and beverage is a hot topic. The success of the Food Network has elevated the profession of Chef to near cult status. Guests are more excited and knowledgeable about food and beverage than ever. They are dining out frequently and sharing their experience with others. In fact, sixty percent of postings on Instagram are about food and beverage. It is not enough to be good anymore, you have to be great. Your food has to be fresh, relevant and compelling or you will be out of business. In this article we take a look at some of the emerging trends in hotel food & beverage. READ MORE

The best thing about Gen Y sommeliers and wine waiters is their enthusiasm. And the worst thing? Their enthusiasm. Youth has ever been a period of intensely romanticized responses. No one has ever felt a love like this - captured such a clarity of insight - no one has ever felt so angst-ridden and bereft - no one has ever tasted a wine like this with such purity of focus and appreciation.No one has ever loved/lost/felt/tasted as intensely as this. Youth has despaired through history over this self-evident (to them, at least) truth. With Gen Y, however, this attitude is through the roof, living as they do in a social media-created echo chamber that consists largely (perhaps only) of like-minded tastes. READ MORE

We are living in a golden age of dining, so why are we still dealing with traditional three meal restaurants in hotels? In 2016, I think it's fair to say that dining and restaurants have firmly entrenched themselves as key players in our culture. Chefs have long established themselves as members of the celebrity class. Every major network seemingly has some sort of cooking, travel or food related show. And hundreds and thousands of blogs, yelp channels, instagram feeds, and publications are dedicated to tracking, celebrating, and recreating it all. More important, rising costs in major cities, a sustained interest in local products, READ MORE

After striking silver in Nevada and becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world, James Fair, an ambitious Irish immigrant, aspired to build a palatial residence in San Francisco atop Nob Hill. Almost 40 years later, his daughters, Tessie Fair Oelrichs and Birdie Fair Vanderbilt, decided to build a grand hotel on the “Fair Mount” to honor their late father, who had acquired the premier property decades earlier. The hotel was within days of being completed when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the Bay Area on April 18, 1906. Fires that followed ravaged more than 80 percent of the city, including the interiors of the Fairmont, but the grand marble and white granite shell survived, standing high on the hill as a beacon of hope for all of San Francisco. The owners vowed to restore the hotel and open it a year later—which they did. READ MORE