Travel is experiencing a comeback, but with that comes a newfound sense of anxiety from travelers who have spent the past year at home. In order for the hospitality industry to return to its pre-pandemic numbers, it's important to understand the new habits that travelers have acquired the past year and welcome guests back with a reimagined experience that has comfort and ease built into all touch points. READ MORE

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to the hotel industry in so many ways. If hotels were able to weather the storm, how and when do sales and marketing activities get revived? How do hotels do more with less and what can be done to prove that your marketing and advertising initiatives are working? I don't have all the answers but I'll share my thoughts and opinions on this subject after spending the last 20 years selling and marketing hotels across the country. READ MORE

Alain Spieser, Marketing and Communication teacher at the Geneva Hotel School, gives his perspective on how Covid 19 crisis affecting hotel sales & marketing activities has influenced the fast pace development of more extensive and efficient use of Digital tools. Can the guest experience be digitalized? READ MORE

Along with operations, the pandemic thrust sales and marketing staffs front and center, as they worked creatively to reach guests through a maze of enhanced cleaning and safety standards, local regulations or, in some cases, consumer trepidation. This article will consider how we can reach both leisure and group guests under today's challenging hospitality environment, and what guest engagement might look like moving forward. READ MORE

After experiencing 15 months of a global shut down, what have we learned? How do we reopen? Are we actually experiencing a "new normal" or is it business as usual? In planning how to do this, the hotel industry can take a lesson from Steve Job's playbook in launching the "Think Different" advertising campaign. The innovative concept was brilliantly conceived and executed to drive the point of the power of a different perspective. READ MORE

To continue to drive strong bookings post-pandemic, hotel sales & marketing teams need to stay true to delivering their core message while also getting creative to explore new media opportunities and community partnerships. As consumer travel habits continue to shift, staying mindful of your hotel's strong strongest attributes will allow you to focus on travelers who are ready to book. READ MORE

Attracting top talents is always one of the most difficult tasks in the hospitality industry, even with a strategic process in place. While many Top Executives are made redundant and looking for new positions elsewhere this year, and a business that might come back looking very different, the task of making strategic hiring decisions is one that deserves special attention. READ MORE

Buckle your seatbelt! The rebound is coming and here is some horsepower to help fuel it. By leveraging specific data and segments, outside staffing solutions and social messaging, you can combat limited brand support, conflicting forecasts and less seasoned staff. This article will most likely surface some ideas or tasks that you know need to be done and that keep getting postponed for later. READ MORE

Many marketers have used the pandemic as a crutch to get more exposure for clients, but to be effective today, we need to shift our messaging towards recovery, rather than the hardship we've all, collectively, experienced in the past 14 months. Here are 4 ways that marketers can improve their messaging to help hospitality companies discover the road to recovery. READ MORE

The pandemic has not only challenged our operational leaders – it has forced our sales and marketing leaders to fundamentally change how they work. Learn three prominent Sales and Marketing insights that we as a company have gained throughout the pandemic, and how we see those insights shaping our future revenue generation efforts. READ MORE

Direct booking has been a staple in the hotel industry for brands looking to build a stronger connection with their guests. But as we move forward into a future that increasingly focuses on user profiling's privacy and ethical concerns and a shift to a "cookieless world", the need for and value of first-party data becomes more evident. READ MORE

As the travel industry gets ready for post-COVID economic recovery to come into focus, natural language processing technology - deployed to analyze online reviews and guest feedback - provides a data-driven solution to help hotels improve hygiene standards, ensure impactful staff training, and successfully personalize the guest experience. These, in turn, can help operators craft safe, post-pandemic experiences that match the expectations of business and leisure travelers alike. READ MORE

As travel loyalty programs mark their 40th anniversary, are they still viable? Loyalty proved profitable even during the pandemic, and it is now more important than ever for hotels to preserve their guest relationship versus letting the online travel agencies become an intermediary. Owning the customer journey is still one of the most effective marketing tools for hotels to utilize. READ MORE

If we accept that the customer will change because of this terrible pandemic, then it follows that hotels will need to change, reimagine and reboot how they market and sell their brand. In this new article, Conor Kenny challenges many of the cliched sales and marketing methods that are no longer relevant and will make you rethink, question and plan for a new world order and vastly different guest expectations. READ MORE

If Radar O'Reilly of M*A*S*H* fame were here, he would sense three forces moving the hotel industry into the future: Knowledge is King; Living Longer and Aging Better, and More Time for Leisure. In this article, you will find new ways of thinking about how your hotel can take advantage of these tailwinds. READ MORE