How Airbnb Is Crushing Traditional Hotel Brands.
In April, I wrote one of my first ever articles about Airbnb’s impact on the hotel industy; It started as a response to the Euromonitor report highlighting how little impact it was going to have: I fully disagreed |
The New Generation of Business Travelers.
Exclusive Feature: With one more month left in the year, all eyes are focused on what's to come in 2014; In the travel industry, that means putting a plan in place that attracts new consumers, retains repeat guests, and ... |
Profit-based Segmentation, Omnichannel Retailing, and Same-day Deliveries.
Profit-based segmentation is absolutely critical for retailers, both for traditional business, and for omnichannel and possibly same-day deliveries |
The Price is Right: Incentives That Stimulate Switching Behavior.
The right price often makes the difference between a sale and a switch; in fact, across five different product or service attributes analyzed (price, service agreement, selection, feature or quality), offering the best price held the most p... |
Moving from Customer Service to Customer Experience.
Most of us already know that customer service is not good enough — it is no longer a differentiating factor; The brutal business reality is that three quarters of your customers would gladly do business with your competition — even if they ... |
Brand Ethnography: Keeping a Step Ahead of Consumers.
Recent news on the Orwellian capabilities of smartphones to track almost precisely where consumers are at a given time expectedly brought on privacy fears aided by reports of unprecedented intrusion by government agencies into peoples' live... |
A New Breed of Traveller: How Consumers are Driving Change in the Hotel Industry.
The way we live and the way we travel are no longer mutually exclusive; Hotels used to be places of celebration, where rooms would be equipped with gadgets and technology that the common person would not have at home |
Chinese Consumers Seeking More in Luxury Offerings.
Exclusive Feature: Seems the world's wealthiest travelers are also the least impressed with their luxury options; so, what does this mean for hotels and travel companies operating in China and Hong Kong? |
How Does India Innovate?
Innovation isn’t easy; globally, at least 90 percent of new product introductions fail in the year they launch |
Reaction Power: Good Advice for Customer Service in Hotels.
Exclusive Feature: Many situations in daily hotel operations teach us power in reacting on anger, disappointment, violence, and so forth; however, the best ability to react is usually required in cases when it is getting pe... |
Are Loyal Customers Worth More?
Standing out in a world of choice isn’t easy; earning consumer devotion to a brand or store takes more than just offering a good product: Price, packaging, customer service and reputation are just some of the factors involved in a consumer’... |
Consumer Boom?
Three different themes to consumption growth recently in the news point to a boom in consumer spending in diverse areas and aspects |
How Many Ways to Say 'We Thank You'?
Exclusive Feature: How do hotels say 'thank you' to their guests? In this day and age, they blog about it, sometimes they tweet it and in some instances, they put up a friendly Facebook post |
OTAs Increasingly Bid on Hotel Trademarks.
BrandVerity recently released a study evaluating the paid search activity of online travel agencies (OTAs) and big hotel name brands and the results were revealing: OTAs frequently bid on hotel brand names, and these ads appear multiple tim... |
A Hi-Tech Bridge to Customers.
Drawbridge, a tech company based in San Mateo, CA claims to have successfully created a cross-device ad tracking technology designed to let marketers target what individual consumers like based on their online activity as they go from deskt... |
Mobile Still the Way to Go for Hotels.
Exclusive Feature: Seems the mobile traveler has made a big impression on hotels, so much so that hotels are investing more in a mobile-optimized site |
Millennial Travelers Spending More, Setting New Travel Expectations.
Exclusive Feature: With each generation there's a new set of expectations; no where is this truer than in the travel industry |
Would a Poor Customer Experience Make Your Customers Cancel Their Membership?
My friend Julie just cancelled her gym membership, and it’s flagged up 5 important lessons on how to retain your valued customers |
Is The Official Hotel Rating System Sinking Into The Past?
The inspection and classification of lodging facilities emerged in the early 20th century and in the following decades, tourism authorities of many countries established and implemented individualised official hotel rating systems |
To Close or Not to Close.
Exclusive Feature: Off-season for many hotels is a critical period when there is the attraction to shut down; off-season in a hotel means the time of brutal truth |
Popularity vs Profitability: Continuum or Condundrum?
Facebook's wildly exponential growth in users virtually from its inception compares relatively unfavorably to its slow transformation to a profit making engine |
Customer Satisfaction Sets the Stage for Future Hotel Stays.
Exclusive Feature: As a hotel: when you think about customer satisfaction, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it the immediate interaction with your guest from the moment they walk in the front doors, or doe... |
Social Responsibility and ROI.
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is an oft discussed and written about topic but it is unclear if the debate on its impact to the bottom line can be settled definitiely in the affirmative |
How High Will Hotel Fees Go?
Exclusive Feature: Just how many fees are hotels really charging? And how many more do they plan to implement? If there's one common complaint from travelers, it all centers around hotel fees |
What Hotels Have to Deal With.
Exclusive Feature: Guests rarely take all their belongings with them when checking out, here's the list of things left over – and some more lists: |
Warning to Hotels: Don’t Post Fake Reviews.
Review sites like Google, Yelp, Citysearch and even TripAdvisor have taken a huge hit recently in the media for publishing fake reviews |
Digital Retail: Analyzing the Effect on Retailers.
In this report, we explore how the internet and mobile technology are reshaping consumer behavior; social media is more than an information source— it is a key selling tool |
The Small Guests Who Do Not Pay.
Exclusive Feature: For a few years now, the global hospitality industry is being confronted with a problem that we nearly had forgotten |
Lost in Translation: Cross-Country Differences in Hotel Guest Satisfaction
The reality of contemporary hotel operation is that hoteliers need to make comparisons across diverse countries regarding differences and similarities in guest satisfaction |
Looking Ahead in Asia: Hot New Hotel Openings.
Exclusive Feature: Asia is still the apple of the travel industry's eye; Over the past five years, Asia has seen the most growth in hotel openings, mostly in China |
Locating Customers for Service.
LBS (Location based services) have been touted for the past couple of years as a significant customer service enhancement tool with companies like Foursquare often grabbing headlines about their initiatives in this area |
What Makes Private Labels Click in India?
While India’s retail industry continues to scale new heights each year, the private-label area in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) arena has shown incredible consistency and potential |
Predictably Irrational Customers.
That consumers' purchasing decisions are irrational is old hat: an abundance of examples across industries attest to it |
'The Times They Are a-Changin' (Again) - Part 2 of 2.
A few weeks ago, I shared some insights about our changing world in hospitality and hotels in relation to world events |
Customer Central: Why User-Generated Content is so Important.
Getting to know what your customer wants is essential in the ever-shifting, increasingly competitive world of travel |
Show Your Face – and Get Recognized.
Exclusive Feature: Hilton does already take use of Face Recognition Technology, others are on the run to use that tech tool soon, but do we really want or at least need this? It is one of these hot technologies, which we ... |
'The Times They Are a-Changin' (Again).
Wikipedia describes the song 'The Times They Are a-Changin' as the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan |
Technology Has Us on Auto-Pilot.
This morning the phone rang, that in itself was a surprise since I am now more accustomed to hearing the little beep that signals an email message or a text has arrived as opposed to the sound of my phone ringing |
Hotel Renovation is Back - Doing More with Less.
The great recession of 2008-2009 was the biggest threat to the hotel industry in at least a generation; How bad was it? According to Jones Lang LaSalle, the US transaction volume plummeted to levels not recorded during the past 15 years, ... |
Hotel Concierge: Your Guests' Ultimate Guide.
Exclusive Feature: The hotel concierge wears a lot of hats: They're reservation takers, ticket holders, schedulers, organizers, keepers of lost-of-found and problem solvers |
Engage with Customers Before They Arrive to Give a Better Experience.
Making the effort to connect and engage with your customers before they even arrive can lead to an all-round better experience, not just for your customer, but for you too |
The Employee Curiosity and its Effect on Differentiation.
One of the advantages which the Hotel obtains from experiential hospitality is to perceive the guest in a different way, achieving to get to his emotional world where never before anyone had searched and hence, discover what never before an... |
More than just Black and White.
Exclusive Feature: Colours do make a difference, especcially in Hotels - The White House in Washington, DC would have to be actually black: Black is a 'statement of power' - at least that do say the authors of a remarkabl... |
Cyber Crime Fighting.
Enterprises have to go on the offense to protect themselves from a rising tide of cyber crime; collective intelligence and the application of human judgment supported by advanced security analytics can help |
A Mobile Shopper's Journey: From the Couch to the Store (and Back Again).
We already know that mobile shopping is growing, in step with the growing group of smartphone and tablet owners, but what kinds of activities are mobile shoppers pursuing? Considering the varying mobility between tablets and smartphones, ... |
Seven Cardinal Sins Committed by an Hotelier!
Hoteliering is an exciting business with never a dull moment on either side of the continuum, running from good to bad |
Where Are The Most Socially Conscious Consumers?
Companies looking for consumers with a social conscience—or those who are willing to pay extra for products and services that give back to society—will have an easier time finding eager consumers in India and the Philippines than in Russia,... |
Customer Service Might Not Be Perfect, but it Can Be Excellent.
Perfect customer service is a goal; it's not reality: It may be attainable sometimes, but there will always, at some point, be a mistake, a problem or a complaint from the customer |
How to Make All of Them Sleep With Us.
The most expensive hotel room is an empty one – and thus yield management was invented |
No Tall Tale: Pricing Power by Storytelling.
The Harvard Business Review's blog has a post on how to raise prices (in any industry) by telling a story; a closer look at the facts on the ground reveal it to be anything but a tall tale |
The ROI of Great Hotel Wi-Fi.
You already know you need to improve the Wi-Fi in your hotel; for the last 6 years there have been reports on top of reports about insufficient Wi-Fi being a hotel’s 'Achilles’ heel', and surveys have shown that guests’ demand for a great W... |
