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Credit Card Security is a Major Issue - Hotel Associations Issue Joint Statement on Data Protection Jun 11, 2013: Three major hotel industry associations, including the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA),
Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG), and Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) today issued the following joint statement to hotels regarding organized cyber crime attacks on credit card data. It identifies actions that hotels -- and not their system vendors -- need to take immediately in order to minimize their vulnerabilities and to avoid the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs and fines that typically result when just a single hotel system is breached

Five Tips To Increase Your Hotel's Exposure On OTAs Jun 4, 2013: Depending on your strategy and needs, using OTAs is an easy yet effective marketing tool that can really boost your online presence and occupancy. While OTAs are not the best approach for building ADR, having complete, up-to-date listings across OTAs is crucial for taking advantage of the "Billboard Effect" and for having a holistic hotel online marketing strategy. That said, here are five simple steps that you can follow to further increase your hotel’s presence on these important channels.

How to Turn Bad Customer Service Into a Win-Win Jun 4, 2013

Despite your best attempts at providing stellar customer service, mistakes happen from time to time. Sometimes circumstances beyond your control result in unhappy customers. If you don't turn these bad experiences into something positive, your customers will head out the door and straight for your competitors. But what if there was a way to turn these mishaps into an overwhelmingly positive experience, possibly even earning your company some word-of-mouth props and new customers?

20 Ideas for Improving Your Hotel May 20, 2013: viHotelBlog
These 20 hints for hoteliers are a selection from Terence Ronson’s Dos and Don’ts for people in the industry. Even if they don’t all apply to your business, I hope they should highlight the benefits of reviewing established practices (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is not a recommended approach), keeping up to date with technology, and making sure you think about the little details that will make your hotel stick in the minds of your guests.

GLOBAL READER DEFINITIONS OF HOSPITALITY May 7, 2013

I recently shared my definitions of the word HOSPITALITY in a column and asked readers to contribute their definitions. The response was very positive and I am pleased to share a sampling of the responses from a diversity of people and places.

A web site is absolutely useless unless search engines can find it. May 2, 2013: Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or “organic” search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier the site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.

Forget the Metrics, How About Making Money? - Apr 23, 2013: Every revenue manager has a different opinion on which revenue management metric is the 'best' - in fact, there are probably as many opinions as there are revenue managers

10 occurrences that could ruin a guest’s stay Apr 16, 2013

Story Highlights

Although guests won’t complain about small annoyances, they are enough to ensure those guests don’t come back to your hotel.
Offer complimentary bottled water in guestrooms to avoid angry guests seeking it out.
One of the biggest turnoffs to guests is not having enough outlets to charge all their devices.

Effective Room Forecasting is Key to the Hotel’s Future Performance Apr 8, 2013

Forecasting future demand in the lodging industry is crucial because it leads to an efficient planning for, and decision making to all the departments, and most importantly it is one of the drivers of pricing.

Uncertain Times Call for Return to Backyard Basics Feb 25, 2013: HOSPITALITYEDUCATORS.COM FACULTY MEMBER DAVID BRUDNEY HAS GENEROUSLY AGREED TO SHARE SOME OF HIS EARLIER COLUMNS THAT GENERATED READER FEEDBACK AND INTEREST

Hospitality Tip of the Week: Customer Service - ''Wendy Story" Feb 18, 2013: A true story about Customer Service A HospitalityEducators.com Resource

We are in the experience-creating business Feb 13, 2013: Everyone agrees it’s important to focus on RevPar growth, penetration and bottom line improvement. “No brainers,” of course. But what do we focus on to achieve those improvements? How do we do this? Is re-flagging or going independent the answer? Hire a consultant? New management? Proactive local sales calls? Form new marketing alliances? New guest tracking?
Maybe all we need to focus on is adding new facilities and amenities, e.g., high speed Internet access? fitness rooms? business centers?
HOSPITALITYEDUCATORS.COM FACULTY MEMBER DAVID BRUDNEY HAS GENEROUSLY AGREED TO SHARE SOME OF HIS EARLIER COLUMNS THAT GENERATED READER FEEDBACK AND INTEREST