Considered to be a luxury service to the hospitality industry, most hotels, restaurants, airports and even banquet halls, include the service of valet parking. Although this is a value-added service to your clientele, its ultimate costs and risks are a growing concern for the hotel or restaurant owner. While some establishments choose to employ their own staff as attendants, more are leaning toward contracting outside firms who use their own employees. Although outsourcing this risk does lessen some of the liability headaches, both in-house and outsourced services have the same everyday problems that may ultimately end back up on the establishment's doorstep. READ MORE

Buying Business insurance for any business is a complicated process. Whether you're a small entity with one location or a multi-national corporation, insurance is never a topic of likeability. Encompassing a language of its own, insurance has defined itself to be understood only by the few and mostly by those that are in the industry or working directly for it. Those of us who have had the pleasure of learning about insurance have been educated more or less through the process of trial and error, prior claims and their brokers understanding of their clients need base. While the diversity of types insurance is endless, one common factor remains true with all businesses, the necessity to provide proof that they are in compliance with their insurance responsibilities. Whether it is workers compensation, general liability, directors and officers or property coverage, no business can escape the obligation to be able to produce a Certificate of Insurance. READ MORE

Shortly after 9-11, in an address at Georgetown University, former U.S President Bill Clinton said: "Don't you think it's interesting that in this the most modern of ages, the biggest problem is the oldest problem of human society - fear of the other. And how quickly fear leads to distrust - to hatred - to dehumanization, and to death." Travel is the best and truest form of one to one, people to people diplomacy with the potential to shatter the isolation and fear of the other to which President Clinton refers. In its most authentic form, it serves as a means of dialogue at a personal level, providing us with the opportunity to experience the welcome and hospitality of other peoples and cultures, their human values and qualities, their kind deeds, and what is different in their lives. READ MORE

"The trend has greatly increased in the past year or so and the absence of available financing has caused it." - Charles Reiss, a pioneer in the business who started working on condo hotel projects several years ago as part of the Trump Organization, also previously President and COO of the Sunshine Group. As an active advisor to clients in the hotel debt and equity capital markets, I find the above statement particularly troublesome. It is no secret that hotel capital, both debt and equity is abundant in part due to relatively healthy lodging fundamentals, drastically reduced hotel loan delinquencies, positive forecasted investment returns especially relative to other commercial real estate sectors and potentially a longer hotel investment cycle due to predicted lower supply growth. If creative financing or a lack of alternate financing is the impetus behind the condo-hotel craze, this is pause for concern in light of the superabundance of capital in the market. Before reading further, it should be noted that condo-hotels can and do work in certain circumstances. Such circumstances are few and far between to warrant the type of attention that has been droned on this niche within the lodging sector. READ MORE

If your gut reaction to paying an 8%, 7%, or 6% cap rate or even less is one of nausea, you have probably been comfortably sitting on the sidelines over the past couple of years. Today's capitalization rates can not be viewed in a historic vacuum. A confluence of three forces has driven hotel valuations to where they are today... How long capitalization rates remain this low is a function almost entirely of what happens in the US Treasury market, assuming the operating environment continues its robust forecasted growth and supply remains constrained by historical standards due to higher real construction costs. READ MORE