Christian Urbat is Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group's senior VP of technical services. In this article he discusses components of what goes into ensuring a hotel provides a successful and memorable experience for every guest. Hotels are like theaters; they require the perfect stage setup (space planning and design), the appropriate costumes (uniforms), a story to tell (menus and service sequences), and lighting that highlights the product and the experience we are producing. READ MORE

L'AND Vineyards redefined luxury in a unique place: The Alentejo. It brought nature inside, offered the chance to make local wine, and reinterpreted the landscape in design, cuisine, and its own natural products such as soap, oil, and even shampoo. Luxury is now more genuine natural, and local - for people now travel not to find what they find near their homes - but that is new, real, and distinct. That is what we tried to do with L'AND Vineyards - and after a year - our guest tell us we are succeeding. As a result, the construction of L'AND Reserve, in Alqueva, Europe's biggest dam and artificial lake, starts this year and the opening is planned for the end of 2014. READ MORE

There will always be a need for meeting space. Even in the age of virtual meetings and rapid proliferation of social media, business people are finding that they still need human contact with face-to-face interaction for bonding, engagement and relationship building. Face-to-face meetings allow participants to associate body language with what is being discussed in order to assimilate the whole message. READ MORE

The hotel industry is moving from price transparency, where consumers had easy access to compare prices across the competitive set, to value transparency, where consumer-driven commentary on hotel experiences is widely available. Now that consumers have new information to use when making purchase decisions, revenue managers are struggling to figure out how the availability of user generated content (UGC) factors into decision making, and whether it changes consumer reaction to price. This article describes the results of research into the interaction of UGC and price, giving insight into how revenue managers should incorporate UGC into their pricing strategy. READ MORE

Renovation projects could actually turn out to be the litmus test to determine whether a business can re-invent itself. And reinvention is commonplace in these days of availability glut. The customer has an embarrassment of riches in terms of choices and that drives prices down. If you need to position yourself distinctly, a regularly upgraded product (asset lives are finite and need nurturing) is the least you can ensure. Remember the customer is king. And if the king decides that your product is tired, your survival is at stake. So, put that money back in your asset and win the king's preference. You can then laugh all the way to the bank. READ MORE