This installment of the Travel Disruptors series spotlights an accommodations company that wants to use design and technology to build a better-traveled world open to all.
Prepared Leaders (those who have worked to ready themselves and their organizations to withstand crises) should be open to all input and perspectives that can help create a solution and improve outcomes, wherever that input and those perspectives surface within the organizational hierarchy.
If you’re ready to take your business from being a thought leader to a market leader and beyond, success hinges on a robust marcomms plan. To define the right way forward for your business, there are some big questions you and other leaders in the company will need to answer.
As 2022 comes to a close and we gather with industry experts, peers, and colleagues to prepare for the year ahead, we find ourselves looking upon a terrain that is no longer desolate but thriving. With this in mind, I’ve rounded up a comprehensive list of what I expect to be the most important hospitality industry statistics and trends, leading us into this next chapter.
In the face of a crisis, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard worked with his team to create a new solution. Here's how other leaders can do the same, writes Wharton Dean Erika James.
Hotels are focusing on people as well as the planet
Recently, I found my latest writing inspiration while I was back at one of my favorite stops, the amazing Nizuc Resort & Spa in Cancún, Mexico. During one of my classes, we were discussing what I have always called 'the longest two-foot journey – from the head to the heart,' referencing that it is not enough to 'know' the principles of hospitality, but rather one must live by them every day.
The global eco-wakening is driving a greener future with over 87% of Americans seeking more sustainable hotels and travel
For as long as I can remember, it has been common to refer to people as having a particular type of “energy” such as by saying, 'Oh, she has such good energy!' or 'He is such a negative person.' Yet after three decades of presenting hospitality training workshops, I have come to understand and refer to this concept in a new way: a human 'vibe.'
As more and more technology startups enter the hospitality market, 'innovation' and 'disruption' have been the talk of the industry, but what do these terms actually mean? Whereas innovators develop 'new products, processes, or business models to create value for customers or employees, 'disruptors,' according to Professor Kim, take it a step further by 'significantly [changing] how the industry works.'
Technology innovations, changing customer demands, and new competitive threats are pushing hotels to offer increasingly personal, uniquely tailored experiences for every guest on every visit.
As a hospitality industry trainer specific to the lodging industry, I am always interested to learn what the word itself means to people across the spectrum of culture, language, and other human demographics. When I started out years ago, I first researched the word itself. Various dictionary definitions told me that it meant 'Treating guests with warmth and generosity.' When I researched the root of the word, which originates from the Latin word 'hospes,' I learned that it originally referred to both the guest and the host.
'You know, David, what you are up to is magic. Like me, I can see you spent the first 50 working for someone else and now you have turned the corner and the next 50 is for you.'
It is time for the lodging industry to reimagine both the title and role and to transition from Revenue Manager, which implies a passive role in 'managing' revenue that is generated elsewhere, to a more active label as 'Revenue Generator Manager' (RGM). While we’re at it, perhaps our leading association, HSMAI, should even rename its Revenue Optimization Conference as the Revenue Generation Conference!
What We Can Expect at this Year's Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition & Conference in Orlando
Four irreversible trends are redefining excellence in service operations. For today’s leaders, they could be a transformational opportunity - or an existential threat.
The input is revenue. The output is profit. And the latter is what matters most. You can’t have profit without revenue, but how you manage that input dictates how much or how little your output becomes.
One of the bright spots for the hotel industry amid the pandemic was the ability to hold - if not drive - average daily rate, particularly in leisure-led, drive-to markets. It is something that evaded hoteliers during prior calamities, including 9/11 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, when hotels slashed rates in an attempt to win back demand. It proved a faulty strategy.
Business travel is returning, take it from my family who are experiencing me being back on the road again. Despite recovery happening at a different pace across the world, some markets are slowly emerging from the risk zone and business travelers are dusting off their hold all bags, looking to take that next trip.
Despite best efforts, there is an assumption that COVID will become an endemic disease, meaning it’s here in perpetuity, like the flu. That means one thing: better get used to it. If it’s Omicron one day, it could be Upsilon next. For the hotel industry, that means rolling with the punches - hard or soft. The dark days of 2020 are - touch wood - never coming back and as 2022 casts off, the year ahead appears brighter, if not still bumpy.
Having been in the profession of hotel training for over three decades, with an average of six clients a month, one can imagine I have stayed in a lot of lodging facilities across all segments. I am often asked 'What is your favorite hotel ever?' To me, picking out a favorite hotel is like being asked to pick a favorite child; we love them all, right? (Well, most of the time, anyway!) But I must admit, I do have a very short list of a select few that truly stand out.
Few areas of life have evolved more than travel or been as central to the evolution of societies, birth of new cultures and global innovation. Travel exists to proliferate experiences and bring people together. And you don’t have to look very far to chart an astronomical growth curve. In 1970 just over 310 million passengers had flown on a plane worldwide. By 2019 that number grew to 4.5 Billion
In a year full of abnormality, 2021 ended on a more settled note. The global hotel industry’s climb back to profitability has not been easy, but it trudged back and, despite a dearth lack of corporate and group travel, ended 2021 almost back to 2019 levels - the recognized baseline of recovery.
This article serves as a reminder that we carry a tremendous responsibility at a time when travel is being rebuilt. It is the hospitality industry more than any other that makes people feel unforgettable feelings. In navigating the balance between physical distance, technology, and emotion, many hotels have introduced live messaging and survey tools to enable contactless communications and real-time feedback.
During the last few months of 2021, Amadeus commissioned research among leisure travelers in key domestic and outbound travel markets to better understand traveler expectations and better advise agencies on how to grow and recover in 2022.