Travel industry marketers are setting their sites on the customer, following in the steps of other industries such as retail and using digital platforms to strategically target and message across the customer journey. The advances in customer experience we see today are the result of platform and technology availability. Knowing customers like to be treated as individuals is not a new concept in customer service. Not long ago personalized treatment was reserved for face-to-face conversations and luxury experiences. Digital has evolved, but the concept remains the same. To both the traveler and the marketer, customer experience is differentiation, timing, relevancy. READ MORE

To establish a good relationship you must first understand the foundation on which the relationship is built. For example, one of the greatest personal debates we face in the franchisor-franchisee relationship centers on character. Do you believe that it's possible for a person to possess both a public and a private character, even if very different? What you do in private is your own business, as long as it doesn't affect your public performance, right? Not necessarily - especially when your individual personal performance impacts your business performance. Those who build a business relationship on character will be those who swim upstream. READ MORE

It's easier to keep a guest smiling if you know a little something about them. Would you buy a gift for somebody without knowing anything about them? Of course not. So why try to service a guest that way if you don't have to. Collecting guest data is on the minds of many marketing and revenue manager these days. Not a day goes by that the term "Big Data" isn't mentioned in one of the many hospitality blogs or press releases. But what does it all really mean? But you don't have to have a data analyst on staff to make these simple things a reality. READ MORE

Twenty years ago, I read a story in a book by Peter Glen titled the story made such an impression on me in 1996 that I can still recall it vividly today: A customer became frustrated when he was unable to locate a salesperson at a hardware store and decided to resolve the situation by, at the top of his lungs, yelling a single word - “HELP!” - just once. Suddenly people appeared from remote corners of the store: salespeople, managers, maintenance workers, and even customers responded. Glen's story exposes the frustration that we, feel whenever we can't locate an employee to assist us. READ MORE

The interruption cultural norm makes its way to the workplace and causes a string of adverse issues. It can have a mammoth consequence on the hospitality industry where the human element is status quo and interruptions unavoidable. With the ubiquitous presence of technology, non-job related interruptions have been rampant. On the job task interruptions from within, like wavering of a thought or a preoccupied mind cannot be dismissed either. Bottom line - if one is allowing the undesirable interruption culture to seep through the organization there is an undesirable impact to one's profits. So why permit such ethos to churn within the enterprise? READ MORE