With all due respect to my favorite Muppet, being green has never been easier. Whether its single stream recycling hitting your neighborhood or building and operating greener hotels, green is the new black when it comes to colors that make everything appear slimmer. Some of my colleagues in the hotel industry will likely insist that green development fattens the cost of construction, but frankly, the argument is as old and out-of-date as the mullet some of us sported in the 70s. Truth be told, green building practices and attaining LEED certification is reasonably easy, cost effective, forward thinking and simply the right thing to do. READ MORE

Sustainability. Reducing Your Carbon Footprint. Greening Your Property. Environmental responsibility. No matter how you phrase it, the movement to embrace environmentally conscience practices is no longer a fad; it is a fact, that almost no lodging facility can continue to ignore. As conscientious hospitality professionals, we must make changes to our operations that ensure our business is environmentally friendly. Most hotel companies large and small started these efforts years ago. Towel and linen reuse programs, recycling plans, energy efficiencies, and other simple steps to show our guests that we were mindful about how our company affects the world. As time passes and we need to deeply ingrain these programs to reduce our carbon footprint into our operations, how do owners and operators ensure that they are seeing the greener $ide of sustainability? READ MORE

Not only do Meta-Reviews provide travelers with a trusted overview of a hotel, but now all of this big data from reviews is structured. This means that it becomes simple to set up searches and filter results for hotels that fit a traveler's specific criteria. So, for example, if I am looking for a family friendly hotel with clean rooms and a central location in Bangkok, I could search for only hotels that fit those exact requirements. It creates a more personalized experience during the search-shop-buy process by giving travelers the chance to drill down to the most relevant results in the least amount of time. READ MORE

Breathing is such a fundamental, autonomic physiological process. We never have to think about it. That is precisely the reason why most of us breathe in a way that is counterproductive to optimum performance and stress resilience. In this article, we will elaborate a little more on the importance of proper breathing and explore a simple technique, very easy to implement, to teach hospitality employees to get their Zen anywhere, anytime in almost any situation. READ MORE

All hotel owners and operators are interested in cutting costs without compromising on guest satisfaction, and many of them also have adopted or are considering sustainability programs. A focused effort to reduce energy and water consumption and costs is good for the planet, good for the bottom line of a hotel or portfolio of hotels, and is the aspect of a sustainability program that typically delivers a measurable ROI. An energy or utilities portal is a web - based information and reporting platform that brings cost cutting and sustainability tracking together. This article will help hotel executives and general managers think about their utility information in a new way, a way that can provide meaningful insights into improving their profitability. READ MORE