Who are the most important people to your business? You might say your employees or you might say customers. I believe that your employees are, because without them, you won’t have any customers.

So why do so many organizations employ people in customer service jobs who shouldn’t be dealing with customers?

I was running some customer service training events recently for people in the hospitality industry. Like all of my events, I encourage interaction with the pa...

Who’s up for a trip on the Hyperloop?

If $20 and a half hour trip got you from LA to San Francisco would you jump on the Hyperloop?

On Monday, LA billionaire, Elon Musk, revealed the design for Hyperloop, his grand USD $6 billion high-speed, solar-powered transit system.

Important: The survey is not done on Skift readers, but general U.S. internet adult population, though Google Consumer Surveys.

This week we asked consumers a somewhat retro and existential question: “Have you used a travel agent to plan a leisure trip in the past year?” The answer won’t come as a surprise to most of the world —

Everyone has heard the expression: “Location, Location, Location”. A restaurant's site selection is as crucial to its success as great food and service. However, many restaurants that open in “great locations”, fail because they don’t adjust their business model to the particularities of that location. 

Choosing a location involves more than picking a place and signing a lease. Your location selection will influence many parts of your busi...

The third world, and I use that term after a lot of though, often sells things and bad things at that. Tonga Health has done a great job of getting this to air after being recognised as the fattest, or up there, community on the planet. This would do well in NZ.

Good work!

And well ...

Who is right? This from APNZ

An argument over a $5 fee has cost a Wellington motor lodge almost $12,000 and censure for wrongful dismissal.

The Employment Relations Authority has found Marina Motor Lodge in Porirua was unjustified in dismissing receptionist Christine Campbell following the dispute in May last year.

The authority heard how the argument between Ms Campbell and motel owner Carol Fearon was sparked by a disagreement over a newly introduced $5 service ...

By L. Aruna Dhir - Ehotelier

Hoteliering is an exciting business with never a dull moment on either side of the continuum, running from good to bad. Hotels are, truly, a line of business on steroids. They never sleep, they never take leaves. There are no summer offs or Christmas breaks; in fact some of the traditional festive times when the entire world seems to shut down are the peak season time for hotels. War or peace, bad or robust econ...

This is a really good article on staff and loyalty.

First things first: Where employees are concerned, loyalty has nothing to do with blind obedience, or unthinking devotion, or length of tenure.

Surprised? Think of it this way. Which employee displays greater loyalty?

    The employee who has been with you for ten years and in that time has learned to do just enough to fly, unseen, under the performance issues radar, or
    The employ...

Voted one of the most influential business ideas ever presented in the Harvard Business Review the Balanced Scorecard enjoys global popularity. There are some management tools that seem to have enduring appeal and the Balanced Scorecard, or BSC for short, is one of those. Over the past 20 years it has seen adoption rates soar. At the same time I have to say that as a tool the BSC is still widely misunderstood and misused by managers.

I have developed over 1,000 scorecards fo...

I was booking into a hotel recently. Well my client was doing the booking I was standing back just watching what was going on behind the reception desk.

There were five young ladies and one young man behind the desk, and I was watching them going about their business.

Efficient – yes. Warm and friendly – no way!

It looked like my client was being interrogated rather than being welcomed as a valued client.

I was watching one of the receptionists ...

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We want to hire more people like this. Looks after himself really well.

The Russell Birdman Festival this last weekend did the trick if the trick was to get people into the twin towns of Russll and Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, Northland. 

From when we arrived on Friday midday, there was a throng of people milling around the tourist shops, and sitting and eating and drinking in almost 'sun' of the winterless north. The towns are about 2 and a half hours north of Auckland, and July the 19th to the 21st is right in the heart of off season.

The Russell Birdam Festival is on the weekend and the weather is looking good. Too often the 'winterless north' gets really wet at this time of the year and it can be a weekend of wild weather.

The Festival was the brainchild of a couple of locals a few years ago and was borne over a few beers. The objective was to have some fun during the Winter and to maybe generate incremental revenue streams by attracting some out of towners - maybe!

Well the Festival is now firmly established...

Online bookings for online travel agents, airlines, hotel, and car rental services have reached an all-time high, setting up this summer to be a record-breaking travel season.  This latest Adobe Digital Index report, which looked at 51.5 billion visits, reveals overall trends that illustrate the movement toward booking travel online and provides insight into the seasonality of online reservations.

Both direct and indirect bookings show double-digit improvement: car rent...

Sovereignty not a bargaining chip

Monday, July 15, 2013 - 12:19

Editor's Comment, by Pesi Fonua

While Tonga's sovereign...

Since its inception in the 1950s, the restaurant industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing industries and amongst the highest revenue churners. Over the past few years a trend was noticed. 90% of the restaurants were individual, whereas 80% were stand-alone owing to tight working schedules, the shift from housewives to workingwomen in turn increasing a family's disposable incomes. The NRA’s (National Restaurant Association) total estimated sales for the Country̵...

Last year Tonga hardly got a mention in retail advertising and it was way off the track for wholesalers to offer much of anything Tonga. Now this year things have changed. Firstly whenever there are adverts featuring South Pacific offerings, there is a good chance that Tonga will be featured. Why is this, and why the sea-change over last year, or previous years?

Firstly, New Zealand Aid last year promised a large chunk of Aid to Tonga in an effort to bolster the resurgence of the indust...

This shows how easy it is to organise and hold a wedding celebration on an offshore destination.

http://bit.ly/1325GY5

Check out the video from TVNZ last night.

Some businesses are good at representing themselves in the media. The simple truth is, creative self-promotion seems to come naturally to some people. For these lucky individuals, there is little need to hire PR representation. But unfortunately, this is not a talent everyone has. While you may be a genius at running a successful hotel, publicizing that facility is in most cases, probably
best left to the experts.

The facts are clear, if you think you might need a PR rep...

Get a load of this! The sound must be awesome and the thrust must be huge: