At Viceroy Zihuatanejo, in 2015, I began forming a new vision for our resort spa to help guests achieve true wellness. I knew we needed to offer much more than just providing traditional spa treatments and services because achieving true wellness would require a resilient attitude and rejuvenating lifestyle to help balance our guests' physical, mental and spiritual energy. In other words, true wellness encompasses an on-going vibrant, stress-reducing way of living that leads to happiness and contentment. I also realized that just dispensing healthy facts would not necessarily lead guests to adopt healthier, wellness-oriented lifestyles. Instead, guests seeking wellness would need to feel inspired and empowered as well as being educated. READ MORE

With the summer storm season upon us, it's especially important for hotels to be prepared for hazardous waste emergencies caused by severe weather. Preparation for such events is crucial for safely and compliantly handling emergency spills. Not only is proactive planning for environmental emergencies valuable from a compliance standpoint, but it can help minimize the damage inflicted within your hotel and the surrounding area, as well as reduce the risk to the health of your guests and staff members. READ MORE

If your hotel has a reasonable amount of meeting space (+10,000 ft) and your banquet business is a significant contributor in your Food and Beverage Department (+20% of F&B revenue), you are going to want to separate local banquet business from group banquet business on all of your financial statements, forecasts, budgets and daily reporting. At this moment you may be asking, “Why would I want to do that? That sounds like a lot of work.” There are some very good reasons to make this practice a standard in your hotel. I see many hotel financial statements and most are missing the boat because they do not separate group and local banquet revenues. Separating this reporting and setting it up properly provides powerful information you can use in your hotel to make better decisions and ultimately be more profitable. READ MORE

Is "Challenging Assumptions" the key to cracking customer experience? Booking.com thinks so and others do too. Love them or hate them - and yes hotels over the years have had a pretty tetchy relationship with booking.com – but few could dispute how successful a company the Amsterdam upstart has been. For successful tech companies building a solid and loyal customer base is far less about trusting your gut than having the right data and testing and learning from it. Flattened company hierarchies are also seen as important in getting the best from teams and, as a result, building more successful customer relationships based on personal preferences. READ MORE

The global spa movement, which includes wellness tourism, amounts to upwards of $3 trillion dollars per year. What physical and strategic elements are key to driving bottom-line performance at traditional and wellness-focused spas? Relaxation and a sense of wellbeing are at the heart of the spa and wellness market. Hence, it's no wonder that hotels, resorts, and spas have begun to reorganize their operations around wellness. The benefits, in the form of a stronger bottom line and appeal to demand segments, extend not only to guests but to hoteliers and hospitality companies, as well. READ MORE