Looking to renovate? Make sure you consider the ADA when doing so. In this article, Christine Samsel, Jonathan Sandler and Allison Gambill of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck walk through ADA compliance considerations for renovations. They provide guidance on how to determine which Title III ADA standards apply to which portions of your facility, including how renovations may impact compliance requirements and common ADA compliance problem areas. This article builds upon their prior articles related to (among other things) website accessibility issues, including guidelines for making your website reservation system accessible to the disabled.

Familiar faces and friendly smiles have a way of making good impressions better. There’s no question how essential customer service is. When matched with personalized service, this can instantly elevate the level of any experience. This article reviews how employee satisfaction and customer relationships work, win and build greater employee happiness and customer service experiences. This also examines the underlying principles of employee tenure, company commitment and how employee terms meaningfully impact the performance of business.

The design style, ambiance, services and amenities usually associated with hotels are finding their way into buildings and facilities other than hotels and resorts. Owners and operators of Hospitals, Senior Living Communities, Airports, Student Housing, Office Buildings and Residential Buildings are all finding that their users are demanding more in the way of a hospitality experience than their traditional, and often institutional, trappings provide. As with hospitality design the process for these other building types involves an approach that incorporates innovative design to please, delight and engage the intellect, creating environments that are experiential by nature.

Hotels do a wonderful job of hosting meetings and events. They provide a multitude of services from sleeping rooms to board rooms. They serve three meals a day and offer a physical place for the event to take place. But now, hotels must play an even bigger part in the meetings industry. In order to stay competitive, hotels must become an integral part of the meeting experience. From education to networking and entertainment, hoteliers can innovate and develop solutions before meeting planners ask for them. This changing dynamic transforms hotels from passive to active partners for planners and the organizations they represent.

Some people say that there is no such thing as bad press. However, in some cases, bad press could potentially damage a brand and continue damaging a brand now that information available on the internet may never be erased – or forgotten. A hospitality player’s response to bad press should include formulating a plan beforehand so that a hospitality player may respond to bad press in an organized manner. Once any bad press is discovered, the next step may be determining how best to respond. Certain bad press may be actionable to the extent that a hospitality player may seek relief from it through a lawsuit.

A sophisticated labor management system can do more for a hotel than control labor costs. By enabling more accurate forecasting—and adjusting staffing to accommodate its ebbs and flows—the right system can double as a revenue optimizer in key profit centers. This article explains how to use an LMS as an intelligent tool for maximizing revenue in a hotel’s food and beverage operations.

Philanthropy has recently mixed its way into the multi-billion dollar adult beverage business; and restaurants, bars, hotels and liquor brands are making marked impact on causes around the country. Customers are becoming "givers" with little to no effort, while businesses are building goodwill within their communities and among their beneficiaries. Armando Cabral, general manager of Ty Lounge at Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara, explores establishments from Portland to New York City (with a stop in Las Vegas, of course) to see who is doing what, where, for whom and why.

Most of the projected growth in the Caribbean region is expected to come from foreign visitor spending and the United States has remained the most important supplier of tourists to the Caribbean region. However, what happens when these foreign visitors return to the United States and bring lawsuits against the resort in their home states? Defending lawsuits throughout the 50 states is financially and logistically burdensome. This article offers best practices for hotels in the Caribbean to protect themselves from claims brought in the US, preemptive measures and how to get the lawsuits moved to their home turf.

Optimization, a cornerstone of Revenue Management operations, is the action of making the best or most effective use of a hotel’s inventory while guiding the simultaneous action of revenue and profit growth. It ensures the best and most effective use of strategies and tactics in order to balance supply and demand and deliver the optimal business mix. Optimization relies on intelligence gathered during forecasting, a process that indicates changes or variations in booking pace of a segment or segments, in order to deliver an updated action plan. It then moves on to investigate external factors that influence demand providing thus with a complete view and understanding of all dynamics.

GDPR is defined by the EU’s Data Protection Agency and “regulates the processing by an individual, a company or an organization of personal data relating to individuals in the EU.” A new world of GDPR compliance is now upon us. We must pay attention in order to prevent an infliction of hefty financial penalties or perhaps even damaging negative word of mouth. In our world of lodging and hospitality, the issue of personal data and privacy protection has been rampant and now marketers have to be even more in tuned to potential consequences. Hospitality companies must become hyper-aware of digital marketing practices and management of customer personal data.