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By Lizz Chambers|December 6th, 2017|

Are you the person in your organization who seems to inspire trust? Are you known as the empathetic and trustworthy person who associates come to with workplace issues that may be sensitive in nature? Do you pride yourself on keeping a confidence while facilitating corporate change?

Usually, your associates will come begging confidentiality and they’ll need to know that that is exactly what they will receive, so long as it doesn...

Targeting future audiences is a longstanding marketing strategy, and that’s exactly what the casual dining restaurant industry is doing in a current effort to survive. Cracker Barrel’s Holler and Dash, is a new chain with a fast-casual concept built around fresh-baked biscuits. With bare-brick walls and concrete floors, H&D is targeting a younger demographic than its parent chain.

This is part of an industry-wide shift by outdated restaurant chains to reinvent themselves...

Leadership always starts with great communication, so amazing bosses use these phrases daily.

By Elle Kaplan

CEO, Lexion Capital Management@ellekaplan

Whether you're managing an intern or running an entire business, your employees' success (and your own skin) depends on your leadership.

Thankfully, the solution for motivating your team and squashing any issues is right at the tip of your tongue. It all starts with communication -- the skill e...

Try finding a hotel mystery shopper willing to dish on one of their stays. Ask them to reveal the dirt on the unkempt suite, the coquette of a concierge, or the wilted flower that sullied the room service tray. You can’t. According to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) there are some 30,000 of them in the U.S., hired by luxury hotel brands to check-in anonymously and ...

I often get questions from my circle of friends and relatives about where to find travel deals or which website or mobile app to choose to get insider tips or travel off the beaten path. I guess it makes sense, considering I have always worked in the travel industry and I specialize on the travel and hospitality marketing side of things. Yet, many of my friends seem surprised, perhaps even shocked...

“Second place is the first loser.” –Dale Earnhardt, American Racing Legend (1951-2001)

We all admire Google. Alphabet, its newfangled parent company, trades places with Apple as the world’s most valuable corporation, with a market value that exceeds half a trillion dollars. Google has its paws into literally everything.

While much is made of their self-driving car, Google Glass and other audacious new devices or app...

When it comes to hotel marketing, there is never a dull moment, in particular when it relates to online distribution. For the past decade, it’s been an ongoing tug-of-war between hoteliers and online travel agencies, better known as OTAs, such as Expedia, Booking, Orbitz or Travelocity, not to mention Google, TripAdvisor or even Amazon (for a brief moment, in 2015). And I won’t even mention that whole other debate about the sharing space, with HomeAway, Airbnb, One...

Soft branding is a popular trend these days, showing no signs of slowing down at all in the face of billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions.

Unquestionably, soft brands fill a specific demand within the traveler mindset – those who desire an independent property to add an extra layer of exclusivity to their trips while also expecting certain standards to be upheld. It’s a fascinating space and one that has yet to reach full maturity or capacity.

With popular culture focusing more and more on preventive health and fitness lifestyles, there is increasing demand for hotels that place importance on wellness (far beyond pampering). Buzzwords such as eco-luxury, gluten-free, cleansing, detoxification, vitality and mindfulness are all part of the wellness dictionary becoming commonplace in the hospitality industry.

More than ever, ...

In the hospitality industry, nothing is more important than providing a quality customer experience. Travellers are now turning to social media during every step of their journey, from the moment they begin their travel plans through to the point they upload their post-holiday photos and beyond. Intelligent business owners are evolving their social media to focus on building strong relationships with this loyal customer base by engaging in real conversations with them, in tu...

By Wayne West   - March 10th, 2016

Hotel management isn’t rocket science; it’s blocking, tackling and caring. It can’t always be distilled into a formulaic approach. Too often management teams lose sight of their primary objective: to deliver excellent service to their associates who in turn deliver excellent service to their guests and to the community at large.

It beg...

It's one of the main causes of shock and awe among travellers. You've just arrived at the hotel where you've booked a room and the check-in clerk asks to take an imprint of your credit card to pay for any incidental charges you might incur. This is a pre-authorisation, a pre-auth in hotel speak, and it's likely to happen even if you've paid for the full price of the room in advance.

They might also...

Reputation is everything in business, but never has your most valuable asset been more fragile than in the age of the Internet. Will Rogers was before his time when he said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.” He had no idea how literal that single minute would one day become with the advent of online business reviews.

Today, with the click of a mouse, an a...

In the past two or three years, I was fortunate to speak at a variety of travel industry events about the state of online distribution and the challenges stemming from the hotel/hostel/B&B relationship with online travel agencies (OTA). In my home province of Quebec, this has become a pressing issue that various hotel associations have put at the top of their agenda. It also affects restaurants, attractions and increasingly, vacation rentals. Yet I realize this is an equally debated to...

The bed is freshly made. There are drinking glasses next to the sink. Magazines are lined up on a shelf under the television.

But nobody will be staying here.

The purpose of this room, a 13.5sq m prototype in an unfinished office building in Alexandria, is to help hotel executives figure out exactly what they do - and don't - want to replicate at the Pod Hotel when it opens in Washington...

“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” – Stephen R. Covey

When I turned the last page of Kevin Kruse’s new book “15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management”, I was inspired. My mind kept coming back to the notes I made on the pages of the book and the changes I was about to make to my routine the very next day.

In his book Kruse interviewed 7 billionaires, 13 Olympic athletes, and 23...

The internet has changed the way consumers make their purchases in that people can research their options online and read the opinions of their peers. These opinions, or reviews, are far more influential on a consumer’s purchasing decision than any content created by the organization simply because the organization has little control over said content. And this applies to the hospitality industry just as much as any other sector.

By Hannah Edensor

One day after Quest Serviced Apartments relaunched as ‘Quest Apartment Hotels’, we decided to get the lowdown on the industry by speaking exclusively to Quest ceo Zed Sanjana.

And what an industry it is, with Airbnb, online travel agents, and a competitive landscape – all vying for the modern business traveller.

“C...

Hoteliers work vigorously to find ways to increase bookings. In today’s highly digital era, the online website is a hotelier’s strongest tool to attract more guests to the property. Over the past few years, the number of online bookings, especially from phones and tablets, have increased at enormous rates.

Unfortunately, there are still many hotels who negatively affect their booking frequency; and...