The key to retaining good talent in the hotel industry is in developing and maintaining a positive organizational culture. We all know what it is like to work in an environment with a positive organizational culture. The feeling is infectious and the energy is electric. When employees are happy, they come to work and display an enthusiastic attitude about being a part of something special. In addition, they display loyalty and commitment and produce results. If happiness exists as a result of a positive organizational culture, an employee will likely stay with the hotel as opposed to leaving for an opportunity at another hotel. READ MORE

Great hotel salespeople are hard to find. Our Sales Leaders and Talent Recruiting Professionals commit time, money and energy recruiting for high performing, passionate and productive salespeople. Our best salespeople consistently drive revenue, inspire confidence and loyalty with our customers, generate new business, increase brand trust and contribute to the company culture. Conversely, turnover is expensive and negatively impacts our property's performance. Successful leaders must cultivate engaging environments and maintain high business standards to retain their salespeople and to create successful teams. READ MORE

This discussion suggests the formalization of human resource metrics in a lodging property as an effort to optimize decisions, cut costs and support the goal of the hotel's leadership. Many of the larger lodging operations, brands etc. have already adopted and implemented some of these metrics and processes in human resources. However, there are smaller properties without corporate assistance that will need to align their human resource processes in accordance with defined metrics to better compete for the highest quality candidates. READ MORE

It started as a favor: a local politician looking to help a constituent find a job. As Steve Wynn's HR guy, I was responsible for hiring lots of people and told him I had some ideas: try this guy out as a laborer and see how it works out. The referral turned out to be a gang-banger wanting to go straight: but his buffed up physique, tats and missing-eye-without-an-eye-patch were intimidating. Fortunately he was more soft-spoken than gruff, and definitely sincere. I took him to meet a hiring manager who over-reacted a bit when he first saw him, but like me, decided to give it a try after hearing his story. Moral of this story: don't judge a book by its cover when thinking about giving someone a second chance. READ MORE

Even though it's been almost 18 months since the U.S. migrated to EMV smart-chip based payment technology, many businesses - for various reasons - are still hesitant to get on board. Many hotel property management system products don't support EMV acceptance, even though almost 80 percent of credit cards are now issued with smart chips. In fact, credit card issuers prioritized which cards were issued with chips first, which included high-limit international or travel cards - the types of cards being used often in hotels. Without the ability to accept EMV transactions, business owners - including hoteliers like you - are seeing liability shift chargebacks for which there is no defense. READ MORE