Tag Archives: Hotel Branding

by | April 21, 2015 · 10:12 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Hotels’ Lessons For Marketing to Multi-Generational Travelers”

“The marketing world is getting older and younger all at the same time but not in all the same places. The demographic picture is like a two-humped camel: a large group of Boomers (born 1946-1964)IMG_4934 and Millennials (born 1982-2000). The big opportunity for brands is strategically managing both of these groups at the same time. That applies to any number of stay occasions, including multi-generational trips together.

As summer inches closer in the U.S. so do the waves of grandparents and their families ready to relax and flex their spending power on vacations.

Multi-generational travel already has a strong showing at hotels and destinations around the world and if the 80 million people who will be considered older Americans by 2020 are any indication, this market will undoubtedly continue to flourish.

One Hotel’s Strategy 

Preferred Hotels and Resorts, previously Preferred Hotel Group, released the results of its national survey in December on U.S. multi-generational travelers. The findings emphasize that even though hotels need to think of this market holistically, the way properties communicate with the various generations should be differentiated.

“Millennials, for example, don’t want to feel like they’re being specifically marketed to,” said Lindsey Ueberroth, president and CEO of Preferred Hotels and Resorts. “This market stays longer and spends more. Grandparents are the ones who are paying for these vacations but it’s the millennials who are influencing where they’re going.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1yOELpK

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by | April 16, 2015 · 9:23 am

Hospitality Industry Conference Update: “Northern California Hotel & Lodging Conference”

norcal-banner590-2015

CH&LA and AAHOA have once again partnered to present the annual Northern California Hotel & Lodging Conference.  This year the event is moving back to the DoubleTree San Jose.  Each year this event gathers together over 300 hoteliers who enjoy the free educational seminars, updates on industry topics and to attend the trade show.

The show will include the usual abundance of networking opportunities, general session luncheon, and of course the trade show, the largest of its kind in Northern California.  Over 100 vendors will be eager to show off the latest industry products, many who offer special rates and discounts for this conference.  There will also be a reception in the trade show at 4:00 pm, with appetizers, soft drinks, no-host bar and lots of networking.

To get a glimpse inside one of our California Hotel & Lodging Trade Shows, click here.

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by | April 15, 2015 · 8:59 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Attract Millennials With Millennials”

“I see folks around me in the hotel industry, and they’re bouncing between jobs.… When we are bringing on this staff, it’s important to show them there is this upward mobilityInforgraphic Attract millennials and there is a reason you should be here for more than two years,” he said. “I think that’s important and maybe this whole jumping around between jobs is getting a bad rap about loyalty.”

Front-desk associate or freestyle rapper? The two need not be mutually exclusive—particularly as operators seek “rock stars” to provide a more authentic level of service to guests who increasingly want that real experience.

Who better to know about what millennial guests, in particular, want than hoteliers who belong to that generation?

“I always harp on with my corporate staff, I want people at the front desk who have a rock-star personality,” said Ravi Patel, the 29-year-old president of Hawkeye Hotels.

He has just that in Del, a front-desk associate at one of Hawkeye’s hotels who dabbles in freestyle rap on his off days. Working alongside Del is another double-duty performer who spends part of his time as a bartender.

“These guys know exactly what it is to be really engaged with your audience,” Patel said. “So now whenever I see the surveys come in from that hotel, it literally names off, ‘Oh yeah, I talked to Del, and he told me what he does in Des Moines.’ It’s really capturing a different kind of associate as well and getting them to work for you.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1b3hlSV

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by | April 13, 2015 · 9:13 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Survey Finds Social Media Boosts Hotel Occupancy by 2x”

“The hospitality industry has experienced the impact social media can have on their business, both positive and negative,online engagement but these findings allow properties to quantify the impact of taking action on reviews—and make it easier to justify additional investments in social media engagement,” said Aurelia Setton, Medallia’s general manager for hospitality.

Hotel properties that actively engage with social media reviews grow occupancy at double the rate of properties that don’t, according to a study released by Medallia. The study examines customer and business data from more than 4,400 hotel properties worldwide to understand and quantify the impact of social media engagement on a company’s revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and social reputation.

Results Overview
The study found a direct relationship between responsiveness to social media reviews and occupancy rate. Properties that responded to more than 50 percent of social reviews grew occupancy rates by 6.4 percentage points, more than twice the rate of properties that largely ignored social media reviews. These socially engaged properties also outperformed the hospitality industry as a whole, which achieved a 4.3 percent occupancy growth rate during the same period.

For more: http://bit.ly/1cphmkq

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by | April 7, 2015 · 1:26 pm

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “4 Ways to Differentiate Your Hotel”

“If you can’t find anything fun that is truly local, then expand the circle of your list to include the county, the state or even the region in which your hotel is located.due diligence Then figure out how to inexpensively incorporate at least three of those items into your property.”

If you spend any time paying attention to trends in our industry, the buzz words you’ll likely come across include “unique,” “authentic,” “artisanal,” “sense of place,” “local,” “craft,” “experiential,” “discovery,” the latest iterations of “boutique” and “lifestyle,” and the single most overly and incorrectly used word in the English language, “curated.”

Today’s trend words all have one definitional element in common: They all are somewhat synonymous with “different” in one way or another. Guests are looking for different experiences in the different cities they visit, particularly road warriors. “Different” in that context doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” just not “the same.”

If this is not your year for a major renovation, and you won’t be turning your lobby into an experiential gathering place or your restaurant into an eclectic journey of discovery, there are still things you can do to be different and successful.

For more: http://bit.ly/1Ph7h84

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by | April 1, 2015 · 10:20 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “The Threat Most Hoteliers are Ignoring”

“That’s particularly true when hoteliers begin marking their competitive differentiation on price20150327_AirbnbNYC—the average price of an Airbnb listing in NYC hovers slightly above $200/night and is well below the average cost of a hotel room in, say, Manhattan.”

“Is anyone worried about Airbnb?”

Nary a hand was raised when Mark Woodworth asked that question from the main stage at the Hunter Hotel Conference. The head of PKF Hospitality Research had to peer into the sea of some 1,200 attendees, hand above his squinted eyes like a sailor gazing into a foggy horizon, to find any. There were maybe five in all.

“Well, I’m going to talk about it anyway,” Woodworth said.

He was right to do so. The peer-to-peer accommodations platform is a threat to both demand and rate. We’ve documented that fact time and time again. Hoteliers just don’t want to hear it.

This dismissive attitude is based on the fact that it takes a lot of Airbnb supply to truly steal share. To reach that mass, Airbnb needs a strong concentration of willing hosts in high-demand markets such as New York City and San Francisco.

For more: http://bit.ly/1CNEnao

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by | March 30, 2015 · 10:47 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “The Good, The Bad, and Especially – The Ugly. Why Responding to EVERY Review is Essential to Your Reputation”

“Address the comment, validate their frustration, apologize for their poor experience, and find a way to make it better.feedback This will, of course, depend on what the grievance is exactly, but it’s probably an easy fix, and your response to the issue will be there forever for all future guests to see.”

Feedback, constructive criticism, or maybe just plain old criticism. Are you shuddering at the thought? If you are, stop, because though it may be hard to take sometimes, it’s essential to the success and well-being of your hotel. That’s right, criticism whether good, bad, or even ugly, is a necessary tool for you and your management team to have and to use. Without feedback, you’ll never know what you’re doing well, and what you could do better. Listening to all comments and responding appropriately and in a timely manner is one of the best tactics for hotel reputation management.

Regardless of whether your hotel has received a positive or negative review, you must give equal attention to both. Don’t be arrogant. Mistakes are made everywhere in life, misunderstanding and miscommunication happens no matter what. Therefore, never turn up your nose at a grievance, large or small. Many potential guests will judge a hotel’s customer service based on how the hotel responded to previous guests comments and reviews. Therein lies the true value of responding to all comments – to show future guests you have responsive management, that you care about your guests and any issues that may arise.

From our very own experience, here’s a quick list of best practices when it comes to responding to reviews

For more: http://bit.ly/19qiItu

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by | March 24, 2015 · 10:31 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Hotels Are Getting Ready for Apple Watch”

The Accorhotel Apple Watch app will work in connection with a smartphone to manage reservations, access hotel information and property maps,apple watch and notify guests when a room is ready for online check-in. IHG’s Apple Watch app is a port of its popular smartphone language translator. It will convert the words a user speaks into the watch into 13 different languages and even offer phonetic pronunciation help as well as a range of common phrases.

At an event in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple released more details on its new watch and showed off a few apps. Along with displaying the weather, making calls (as long as your phone is nearby), and tracking your fitness, the watch will also support Apple Pay, a mobile payment system that processes credit card transactions without the need to swipe an actual card. Ahead of the event, Marriott announced it would be the first hotel company to use Apple Pay, and would roll it out this summer at select Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard, Residence Inn, and Edition properties in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.

Apple Pay uses the near field communication (NFC) chip in an iPhone 6 or Apple Watch to communicate with specially equipped card readers, providing more security than old-school magnetic card swipers. While this could be a huge money maker for Apple, with analysts predicting that mobile payment systems will process $700 billion in transactions by 2017, it also offers hotels a new tool to measure guests’ habits and preferences.

For more: http://bit.ly/1OwUcqT

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by | February 17, 2015 · 9:46 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “5 Trends in Hotel Design”

Developers with sustainability goals can use the LEED credit list and become certified, but Beckman says those things aren’t always sensible. He sees a bigger payoff in selecting sites that are polluted and need fixing.HotelIndigo1-620x330 “Now, you’re taking care of a site that has had some industry on it and has left some residue behind that needs to be cleaned up,” he says. “So you’re doing something positive for the urban environment, for the city, and for yourself.”

As the U.S. economy continues to strengthen, the architecture and design industry is gaining momentum. Gordon Beckman, principal and design director at John Portman & Associates, an architectural and engineering firm with more than 60 years of expertise in designing hotels and other buildings, discusses opportunities and trends in hotel design.

All About Authenticity
Hotels across the country are focused on providing locally relevant and authentic experiences. As a result, lobbies have evolved into active social hubs with flexible spaces for work and play, featuring cafés, bars, libraries, computer stations, game rooms, and more. “The more interactive things you have, the better—whatever you can do to connect people and make it less of a hotel and more of a place,” Beckman says. By incorporating flexible design elements, hotels can more quickly adapt to consumers’ changing tastes and preferences. “There’s a certain flexibility that gets built in to allow for change, because more and more people see hotels as an evolution of place rather than a static brand.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1DmhV9L

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by | February 13, 2015 · 11:50 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “How Technology is Changing the Hotel Concierge”

Marriott International’s Renaissance Hotels has adopted a hybrid approach that combines technology and personal service:Concierge a global hospitality program called “Navigator” that provides guests with resources allowing them to be “in the know” and to discover a destination’s hidden gems

The role of the hotel concierge might never disappear entirely, but advancements in technology (and changing attitudes from the guests who use it) are supplanting the need for human contact in many hotels around the world.

“The current role of the concierge is to provide information and services to guests,” said Kevin Murphy, chairman of the Hospitality Services Department at Rosen College of Hospitality Management in Orlando, Florida. “Their role will never diminish, but it’s going to be a much more specialized type of service that they’re providing.”

According to Les Clefs d’Or, an organization for professional hotel lobby concierges, there are 595 concierges wearing the group’s crossed gold keys insignia in the United States, a 14% increase since 2009.

For more: http://bit.ly/1zBaoMM

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