If you haven’t already realized, there’s a very eager and knowledgeable community of writers ready to spread the good word about your hotel. The concept of the travel blogger is yet another to evolve from the Internet, and I’ve witnessed their numbers grow leaps and bounds within the travel world. If you look at how well they leverage the web and social m...
Online travel agencies are primarily geared towards FITs and leisure travel, but such websites do not intrinsically broach the meetings and events marketplace. That’s where companies like Cvent (www.cvent.com) and other similarly-designed electronic platforms are making strong inroads. Like everything else, the meetings segment has been turned upside-do...
Social media is, well, social media. You can't avoid and everyone's talking about it. My biggest headache is that there's just too much of it! Stepping up to the plate are the social media monitoring companies with sophisticated software to help refine and summarize the endlessness of online data. However, this is a relatively new field, and as a result, in...
Apple is big—the biggest company in the world in fact. It’s easy to look at such a massive corporate brand and say, “We should be more like them!” Correct, yes, but also naïve. After all, what can Apple, a cutting-edge phone and computer company, possibly offer to hoteliers? As it turns out, quite a lot. One such piece of advice was recently spelled o...
Hotels continue to define novel approaches to further differentiate themselves from competitors and other properties. The concept behind this is to deliver one truly unique facet to the travel experience, thereby giving guests a common affirmation to draw upon for word-of-mouth, online reviews and return visits. Here are ten highly memorable and personal ex...
Recently, Great Hotels of the World (GHOTW) (www.ghotw.com) has ushered in an exciting new phase with its campaign to enter the North American hotel representation firm marketplace. I've been courtside for this, especially now that I've had the chance to properly interview GHOTW's Managing Director- Americas, Marshall Calder. Aside from brushing over Mars...
Do logical and hospitality mix? For an industry that prides itself on the emotional experience, such left brain enterprises like statistical analysis seem all too illusory. Yet, such data-driven mathematics can yield tremendous results, first and foremost by narrowing your target market to maximize the efficacy of your marketing engine. I've emplo...
After many years of traveling the hotel world it takes a lot to ‘wow’ me. While staying at the Fairmont’s Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City (www.fairmont.com/frontenac-quebec), however, one employee showed such warmth, poise and professionalism that I had to take notice. I’m talking, of course, about Santol, their canine ambassador. The Mira Foundat...
Meeting consumer expectations is everything. It's the basis for good reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations and return visits. The problem is that expectations are changing so rapidly that it's becoming increasingly difficult for hoteliers to understand what exactly guests want, let alone actually meet those requirements. To help address this issu...
In the last decade, we’ve witnessed incredible strides in nutritional food offerings in the supermarket and in restaurants. Going in the complete opposite direction is the burger. With ample amounts of meat, cheese and grease, burgers have never been synonymous with healthy snack foods. Eating healthy is crucial, but so is indulgence. Instead of tryin...
