Globally the influence of Millennials on travel and on marketing has been profound. In the US, Millennials are as large a generation cohort as Baby Boomers . In China, they are a smaller generation numerically thanks to the one child policy. But as the first generation to benefit from China's astonishing economic growth, 80s children (as they are known) are a wealthy and high-consuming group. The word Millennial has almost become synonymous with youth. But that is about to change. READ MORE

A lot has been said and written about the "millennial traveler" and how "different" their travel and hotel needs are. How connected and ambitious they are, the young movers and the shakers in the modern business world. In fact, nearly every major hotel brand believes millennial travelers are seeking new places to stay when traveling, new experiences, new ways to connect, new ways to stay healthy while on the road and so on. New millennial brands continue to launch onto the scene. Brands like Marriott's Moxy, Hilton's TRU, Starwood's Aloft and Hyatt's Centric all seeking to be positioned to grab the growing share of millennial traveler. READ MORE

"Oh great," you must be thinking. "Another article about Millennials. Haven't we exhausted this topic already?" Trust me, as a Millennial I understand your frustration. Feeling like you are consistently labeled as lazy, entitled, distracted, and a contributor to the demise of the English language isn't good for one's self-esteem. I am not here to argue with whatever preconceptions that you may or may not have about my generation, instead I want to tell you what I do know, and why it is important for you as a travel brand to at least try and understand the collective "us". READ MORE

The days of having service industry workers wait by the phone to learn if they're needed or not, or sending people home when demand doesn't meet projections, are numbered if not already gone. The efforts of workers' rights organizations to eliminate on-call scheduling combined with growing demand from millennial workers for more flexibility and work-life balance is giving rise to the need for more predictive scheduling practices --- and the advanced technology required to support them. As the service industry is a pretty much a pure “just in time” environment, demand-based scheduling that balances company, customer and staff needs has become more critical with the advent of new employee expectations. READ MORE

While revenue management professionals devote significant investments and efforts towards advancing their hotel's revenue resources, many hotels still struggle with assessing the actual performance of these revenue management initiatives. Namely, how can hotels ensure they are squeezing all the juice out of the proverbial revenue management orange? The hospitality industry has been using revenue management successfully for decades. However, for many organizations, the greatest revenue management challenge is not necessarily of a technical nature, but often organizational. Confronting hotels today is an essential need to align their people, processes and technologies around achieving maximum revenue performance. READ MORE