Just like people, brands need to be carefully nurtured and managed, and just like people, they get old and tired and need reinvigorating. In today's State of Brand world, every hotel owner/manager has to perform a regular health check on the hotel's brand. I don't mean just looking at occupancy levels, rack rates, or even food and beverage revenues. I mean fully understanding the health of your brand image, internally and externally. This means doing regular refresher sessions on the state of your brand for all key leaders to ensure that they are passionately connected and understand who they are and where you are going as a hotel. In this article, you'll see how the State of Brand has evolved over time and where it is going in the near future. READ MORE

Remember when free Wi-Fi was considered cutting-edge? Now, of course, most hotel guests expect it—if not in their room, then certainly in the common areas of the property. Hotel technology is evolving rapidly. Digital solutions are becoming the norm for solving common pain points in accommodation management. In particular, mobile technology and cloud-based software services are revolutionizing both the guest experience and the job of the hotelier. That will continue to be true in 2016. The year ahead promises to bring more developments in mobile and digital solutions for hospitality, as well as continued emphasis on the direct channel. READ MORE

Until the early 2000s, hotels were often owned by individuals, small groups of investors, or the companies under whose flag they operated. In that era - circa 1960s through the early 2000s - there was a significant alignment of interests between those traditional owners and the in-branded hotel managers. This alignment was not surprising because hotel-owning brand managers had to comply with the very policies and practices they dictated for their brand-wide standards. However, by the start of the new millennium, the players and landscape began to change as the hotel chains began divesting themselves of their hotel assets and the well-financed private equity investor became a central player. READ MORE

For the past decade, employees who earned over $23,660 per year generally were exempt from federal overtime requirements if they were paid on a salary basis and performed certain well-defined duties. The United States Department of Labor (“DOL”), however, recently proposed changing its regulations to more than double this minimum amount to $50,440 per year. If the regulation becomes final, it will have a substantial effect on how hotels pay their managers, assistant managers and supervisors. This article discusses the impact of the proposed changes. READ MORE

The current economic uptick has led to an extremely competitive hotel sourcing environment over the last couple of years. Both our client contacts and our team of travel buyers are facing similar challenges as we look to find adequate space for upcoming meetings, events and incentive trips. A 2015 Successful Meetings Trends Survey showed that meeting planners' second most common concern was negotiating with hoteliers in a seller's market. READ MORE