Ever wonder what planet your new hires are from? For most, it is called Millennialland. It is my homeland, and it is a whole different world than where Boomers and GenXers were born. So why are your younger workers from this strange land so hard to understand, manage and retain? Why is it that they lack the loyalty of those who came before them? Why do they need so much handholding in the workplace? And where does this tremendous sense of entitlement come from? Being born in a certain generation does not give everyone in that cohort the same personality. It is more about the fundamental similarities they hold due to the time in which they grew up, and the way their parents raised them. Allow me to explain. READ MORE

Do your hotel financial statements give you the information you need to effectively run your business? Do they have an effective summary statement with departmental profits, flow thru analysis, proper room segment statistics, labor productivity, do you have payroll segmented by management and hourly classifications, do you have separate supplemental payroll and benefits, do you track arrivals and departures? Most statements I see do not have most of these critical elements. They're lacking these incredibly effective elements that can easily be added. How would these elements add insight and value to your business? Let's explore this READ MORE

Analytics continue to be one of the most-discussed topics in the Revenue Management industry and as the backbone of any solid revenue management discipline, this makes sense. With that said, how do we really use analytics, and why is this measurement so important to building a solid revenue management foundation? Perhaps the most obvious answer is that humans - the drivers of revenue management - measure experiences through perception. This may not be intentional, but we are emotional and irrational creatures by nature. Analytics help us take an unbiased approach to our business in more rational and data-driven ways. Simply put, analytics give us the foundation needed to arm hoteliers with the ability to price efficiently and effectively without experiential bias. READ MORE

The hospitality industry is swimming with data. Torrents of data are churned out daily from traditional marketing research, social media, email and rating apps such as Yelp. We all prefer to make fact-based decisions, but unfortunately, there are times when the facts simply don't matter. Perceptions, no matter irrationally formed, are always more important when it comes to brand choice, particularly in the hospitality business. That's why qualitative research must have a place in hospitality brand's marketing mix. READ MORE

Employee engagement in the U.S. is a mess. Gallup tells us only 32% of our employees are engaged, and that figure has hardly budged over 15 years. Worse, Deloitte says we are about to spend $1.53 billion a year to “fix” it. Unless we get smarter, we'll be flushing that fortune instead of fixing. It gets worse. Again according to Gallup, those remaining 68% are either sleepwalking or sabotaging. So unless your company is different, two-thirds of your employees aren't giving their all. One has to wonder: How much better would our economy be if we solved employee engagement? READ MORE