Revenue Management (RM) has taken a lead role in the generation of an optimized top line. As it is technologically based and technology has taken over the world, RM benefited from those tailwinds in its rise to supremacy. Such, that most literature, research and general writings have been almost exclusively focusing on it. That is not a problem per se. But RM is merely a fraction of the top line. Sales is the “big picture” and RM is a function of it, not the other way around. Sales must recover its leading role, as without it, RM is nothing but a one-legged body. READ MORE

Transforming historic buildings for hotel use, particularly luxury hotels and boutiques, presents certain challenges and rewards. Buildings that meet the requirements for historic tax credits can be attractive to developers. In addition, retaining an existing building and repurposing it for renewed use is more sustainable than demolishing and rebuilding and the case for adaptive use becomes even more compelling. Creating the identity for a new hotel in an older building repurposed as a hotel brings challenges, especially when the desire is to establish a sense of authenticity. One approach is to develop a curated art collection tied to the location. READ MORE

There's no denying that in the past several years there's been a noticeable rise in hotel brands. Soft brands with distinctive features and unusual offerings have grown, especially, in popularity, perhaps because they so neatly straddle that cumbersome divide between the unusual characteristics of boutique locations and the broad-scale offerings of mega-franchises. As industry notable Stacy Shoemaker Rauen recently said during dash design's debut dashChat podcast, people are excited to see something new and different. They want to be a part of something that shakes things up and draws them in, all of which leaves full-scale hotels that don't elevate their game or have a specific point of view in a precarious position, even while an abundance of brand tiers can be confusing to some. READ MORE

Developing a positioning strategy may seem like a daunting task. After all, there are countless how-to books written about it. Industry magazines are awash with articles about how this hotel did it or that hotel did it. And then there are the presentations at industry conferences, corporate meetings, seminars, webinars, ad infinitum. Not to mention the many consultants out there. All of these sources are valuable and can provide significant insights into marketing your hotel. But the sheer numbers of resources that are available make the whole thing seem mind boggling and complicated. It's not. It's not because there are basically four - and only four -- positioning strategies any hotel can adopt. Think of them as your marketing's Four Strategic Aces. In this article, you'll read about the four different strategies and why your hotel should adopt only one. READ MORE

There appears to be an inevitable collision between two titans. Traditional segment based RM, which is not currently structured to consider each individual customer's background and both their tactical value and lifetime value, currently does not work with the new breed of customer centric customer triggered one to one personalized marketing. Today an unknown customer usually gets the same price and availability as a known customer. This article will propose a solution that should be acceptable to both of these titans - where they will actually work together. Both pricing and availability can be more personalized without changing existing RM systems. READ MORE