First and foremost, we are happy to report that everyone at HeBS Digital is safe and sound.

Some of us are back at work today; others are working remotely from Brooklyn, Queens or New Jersey.

Currently, there is no power in Manhattan below 40th Street and much of Long Island's coastal neighborhoods.

Many people here in New York are temporarily relocating themselves to area hotels to escape mass power outages or to a generous friend's house with power.

In the past 48 hours we've learned a couple things from Hurricane Sandy that can help any hotelier prepare for the next disaster.

First and foremost, prevent your site from going down by investing in cloud hosting and a content delivery network (CDN) platform. This type of hosting translated to"distributed" hosting across the U.S. and Canada thus prevented down times due to natural disasters and power outages.

Cloud hosting and CDN not only provides 2-3 times faster download speeds, which are very important for your website search engine rankings, but also ensures "fluid" bandwidth use to accommodate spikes in traffic and guarantee that there is no interference from other websites.

Being online during critical times can help users find the information they need in a timely and reliable fashion.

Second, be prepared to give back. A good example of this is for New York hotel clients to offer "Good Neighbor" or "New York Resident" specials – offering a discount to locals displaced by the storm – or provide amenities to those staying long-term.

Proactive steps such as these go a long way towards building brand equity and goodwill. In times like this, focusing on helping your fellow citizens and not solely on the bottom line is the right thing to do.

HeBS Digital, is a leading hospitality industry full-service digital marketing, hotel website design and  online channel strategy firm, based in New York City.

HeBS Digital has pioneered many of the best practices in hotel Internet marketing, social and mobile marketing, and direct online channel distribution. The firm has won over 220 prestigious industry awards for its digital marketing and website design services, including numerous Adrian Awards, Davey Awards, W3 Awards, WebAwards, Magellan Awards, Summit International Awards, Interactive Media Awards, IAC Awards, etc.

Contact HeBS Digital's consultants at (212) 752-8186 or success@hebsdigital.com.

www.HeBSdigital.com