Team members who work the hardest and often are paid the least are our room attendants. While there are opportunities for them to supplement their incomes with tips, these industrious individuals more often than not leave rooms empty handed. Even though there's a well-accepted method of calculating tips for servers across the U.S., hotel guests are either unclear on what an appropriate tip for a room attendant should be or simply unaware that it's customary to tip room attendants. With that being said, should hoteliers educate their guests on proper tipping etiquette to increase the likelihood of guests tipping room attendants? READ MORE

A tourism crisis occurs when circumstances in a destination pose a change which is potentially destructive to the destination and to its tourism industry. Destinations can exploit the window of opportunities linking destination branding to their crisis management strategies. Branding is an essential tool for positioning the destination, and in order to be effective, a need to re-study the destination marketing strategy is crucial. For the firm execution of place branding is essential to examine and map culture, customs, characteristics and every feature required that can benefit place image. Preferably, a place branding project intends to build an overall perceived image, apart from priorities in mission when it comes to targeting tourism, investments, etc. READ MORE

Over the last few years, travel and hospitality were at an all-time high, and the industry's biggest concern was the over-tourism of some of the world's most beautiful destinations. Fast forward to the COVID-19 global health pandemic, which has forced us to reevaluate the ways in which we think about, talk about and approach travel, resulting in a redesigned hotel sales and marketing landscape. In this article, Jamie Sigler O'Grady, founding partner of top hospitality PR firm J Public Relations shares her insights on how hotels must set aside everything we once knew about marketing and communications to best predict where we will go as we navigate these unprecedented times. READ MORE

Along with many other budgets, marketing budgets for 2020 have been drastically cut to make up for a lack of revenue due to COVID-19 and travel restrictions. If you find yourself struggling to research marketing trends and evaluating your website performance, there are a lot of useful and free digital marketing tools available. In this article, Stephanie Smith from Cogwheel Marketing outlines TEN marketing resources that hotels can start using right now and will not cost a dime. These free marketing tools analyze your website performance, provide trend data and ways to analyze what the competition is doing. READ MORE

The novel coronavirus pandemic has changed everything. Forward-thinking hotel owners and operators have moved past the initial urgent priorities of the early days and weeks of the shutdown to begin addressing planning and preparation for what's next. That planning includes not just operational changes, but fundamental shifts impacting every part of the sales process, from staffing to staying connected with guests. Smart hotel management professionals are sharpening messaging to address evolving guest priorities, becoming more flexible, more creative, and finding new ways to add value, as you will read in this article by Chesapeake Hospitality's Clifford Ferrara. READ MORE