Hotel Business Review: Week of Apr 21, 2014

Raul Chacon
  • Human Resources, Recruitment & Training
  • Tools of the Trade: Training to Increase Safety, Decrease Risk
  • By Raul Chacon, Director, Loss Control, EMPLOYERS

  • Nearly 90,000 hospitality and leisure workers had a nonfatal occupational injury or illness in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 26,500 of those injuries involved workers who fell, slipped, or tripped while on the job and missed days of work as a result. Workplace injuries can be costly in terms of out-of-pocket expenses, lost productivity and potentially higher insurance premiums. A recent survey by EMPLOYERS® found that 35 percent of small businesses cite workplace safety as one of the top risks they worry about. By investing proactively in safety programs and training, hotels can not only reduce workplace accidents, but potentially increase employee retention and improve work productivity. One of the keys to reducing injuries and controlling costs is for management to take a proactive versus reactive approach to safety. Following are proactive measures and training insights that hotel owners and managers can implement to improve workplace safety and reduce their workers’ compensation insurance and other injury-related costs. Read on...

Fabian Bartnick
  • Revenue Management
  • Changing With the Times: The Need for Hotel Marketing and Revenue Management to Converge
  • By Fabian Bartnick, Senior Hospitality Consultant, Asia Pacific, IDeaS – A SAS Company

  • We are currently in a digital age. The proliferation of new technologies and the uptake of them by guests is changing the booking landscape so quickly that even technological adept hospitality managers can find it difficult to keep up. The biggest change in recent years has been the rise and heightening reliance on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as the social media apps offered on these devices, which are available at any time in any location. The transformation in the use of technology is also turning traditional sales, marketing and revenue management on its head and demanding a more holistic approach to how hotels run their business and interact with consumers. Read on...

Jonathan Barsky PhD
  • Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt
  • Collecting Feedback From All of Your Guests
  • By Jonathan Barsky PhD, Partner, Market Metrix

  • Hospitality companies are faced with almost endless opportunities to pick up customer feedback. But collecting feedback isn’t like it used to be. New technology has changed how we communicate and offers an expanding array of options. As a result, customers have embraced different technologies and ways to connect with each other. So how do you reach all of your customers? No single method of collecting guest feedback works with all guests. By using a combination of feedback methods – email and mobile surveys, contacts during the guest stay, facility usage data and even simple observation – your company can get a complete picture of your entire customer mix. Read on...

APRIL: Cultivating Guest Satisfaction and Retention

Michael McCall

Customer loyalty programs have become a 6 billion dollar a year industry, and yet for many firms they remain an expensive customer benefit that is unconnected to the firms overall marketing strategy. In this brief report a number of mechanisms are proposed that may help firms to retain customers and increase overall satisfaction. Read on...

Dawn Wells

Juggling the needs of guests, the personalities of associates and the demands of owners makes the daily life of a general manager anything but routine. As a multi-tasking GM, where do you start? Award-winning GM Dawn Wells, a seasoned professional in Charleston, South Carolina, shares her the insights and experiences working with associates that have resulted in top guest satisfaction scores at her hotel. She notes that showing the staff that you care is an important first step. Giving encouragement and recognition to her team coupled with building and maintaining relationships combined to make a difference with her associates, guests and ultimately the hotel’s bottom line. Read on...

Sapna Mehta Mangal

Counterfactual thinking is an overlooked cognitive notion that can adversely or favorably sway a hotel guest’s satisfaction and retention level. Research has shown that counterfactual thinking can magnify customer satisfaction or customer dissatisfaction levels. Counterfactual thinking is a conduit to a range of human emotions like feeling of regret, anger, and relief. These emotions in the context of hotels can be linked to a guest’s post purchase service evaluation. Examples of counterfactual thinking, alongside with guest satisfaction, and retention levels is also laid out. The write up helps to bridge these conceptual gaps, and other related issues to establish pivotal connections among these otherwise unrelated concepts. Read on...

Tom Conran

A hotel is more than a building. It’s a place. It should not be viewed as a commodity but rather a distinct buying proposition with meaningful benefits. By creating and delivering the right kinds of experiences it can accomplish that mission and be transformed from merely a physical space to a dynamic destination and, as a result, become the preferred spot for guests and travelers. The key to doing this is to develop an “experience framework” that details the proposed positioning of the hotel. Once established, the various contributors and property attributes should individually and collectively align and reinforce the experience proposed. Read on...

Coming Up In The May Online Hotel Business Review


Feature Focus
Hotel Sustainable Development: Integrating Practices for the Environment and the Bottom Line
The term “sustainable development” was first coined in 1987. In a report entitled, “Our Common Future,” the Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as follows: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This definition immediately caught on. In the business world, it is sometimes referred to as a triple bottom line – capturing the concept that investments are profitable, good for people and protective of the environment. Within the hotel industry, companies have taken an active role in committing themselves to addressing climate change and sustainability. Hotel operations have realized that environmentally sound practices not only help the environment, but can lead to cost reductions, business expansion, and profit growth as consumers increasingly seek environmentally sustainable products and services. In a recent survey by Deloitte, it was noted that 95% of respondents believe that the hotel industry should be undertaking “green” initiatives. Additionally, 38% of respondents said they made efforts to identify “green” hotels before traveling, and 40% said they would be willing to pay a premium for the privilege. These results suggest that consumers want and expect sustainability in their travel plans. In response to these trends, many hotel companies and on-line travel agencies have even begun offering their consumers an opportunity to purchase carbon offsets to reduce the environmental impact of their trips. The May issue of the Hotel Business Review will document how some leading hotels are integrating sustainability practices into their hotels and how their operations, consumers and the environment are profiting from them.