Tag Archives: Online Branding

by | April 1, 2015 · 10:20 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “The Threat Most Hoteliers are Ignoring”

“That’s particularly true when hoteliers begin marking their competitive differentiation on price20150327_AirbnbNYC—the average price of an Airbnb listing in NYC hovers slightly above $200/night and is well below the average cost of a hotel room in, say, Manhattan.”

“Is anyone worried about Airbnb?”

Nary a hand was raised when Mark Woodworth asked that question from the main stage at the Hunter Hotel Conference. The head of PKF Hospitality Research had to peer into the sea of some 1,200 attendees, hand above his squinted eyes like a sailor gazing into a foggy horizon, to find any. There were maybe five in all.

“Well, I’m going to talk about it anyway,” Woodworth said.

He was right to do so. The peer-to-peer accommodations platform is a threat to both demand and rate. We’ve documented that fact time and time again. Hoteliers just don’t want to hear it.

This dismissive attitude is based on the fact that it takes a lot of Airbnb supply to truly steal share. To reach that mass, Airbnb needs a strong concentration of willing hosts in high-demand markets such as New York City and San Francisco.

For more: http://bit.ly/1CNEnao

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Filed under Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

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by | March 30, 2015 · 10:47 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “The Good, The Bad, and Especially – The Ugly. Why Responding to EVERY Review is Essential to Your Reputation”

“Address the comment, validate their frustration, apologize for their poor experience, and find a way to make it better.feedback This will, of course, depend on what the grievance is exactly, but it’s probably an easy fix, and your response to the issue will be there forever for all future guests to see.”

Feedback, constructive criticism, or maybe just plain old criticism. Are you shuddering at the thought? If you are, stop, because though it may be hard to take sometimes, it’s essential to the success and well-being of your hotel. That’s right, criticism whether good, bad, or even ugly, is a necessary tool for you and your management team to have and to use. Without feedback, you’ll never know what you’re doing well, and what you could do better. Listening to all comments and responding appropriately and in a timely manner is one of the best tactics for hotel reputation management.

Regardless of whether your hotel has received a positive or negative review, you must give equal attention to both. Don’t be arrogant. Mistakes are made everywhere in life, misunderstanding and miscommunication happens no matter what. Therefore, never turn up your nose at a grievance, large or small. Many potential guests will judge a hotel’s customer service based on how the hotel responded to previous guests comments and reviews. Therein lies the true value of responding to all comments – to show future guests you have responsive management, that you care about your guests and any issues that may arise.

From our very own experience, here’s a quick list of best practices when it comes to responding to reviews

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Filed under Employee Practices, Guest Issues, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Hotel Restaurant, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology

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by | March 24, 2015 · 10:31 am

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Hotels Are Getting Ready for Apple Watch”

The Accorhotel Apple Watch app will work in connection with a smartphone to manage reservations, access hotel information and property maps,apple watch and notify guests when a room is ready for online check-in. IHG’s Apple Watch app is a port of its popular smartphone language translator. It will convert the words a user speaks into the watch into 13 different languages and even offer phonetic pronunciation help as well as a range of common phrases.

At an event in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple released more details on its new watch and showed off a few apps. Along with displaying the weather, making calls (as long as your phone is nearby), and tracking your fitness, the watch will also support Apple Pay, a mobile payment system that processes credit card transactions without the need to swipe an actual card. Ahead of the event, Marriott announced it would be the first hotel company to use Apple Pay, and would roll it out this summer at select Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard, Residence Inn, and Edition properties in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.

Apple Pay uses the near field communication (NFC) chip in an iPhone 6 or Apple Watch to communicate with specially equipped card readers, providing more security than old-school magnetic card swipers. While this could be a huge money maker for Apple, with analysts predicting that mobile payment systems will process $700 billion in transactions by 2017, it also offers hotels a new tool to measure guests’ habits and preferences.

For more: http://bit.ly/1OwUcqT

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by | February 27, 2015 · 10:14 am

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Hotel Room Piracy Shows Dramatic Increase”

“There’s no reason anyone should book outside the block, and if you do, we cannot be responsible. When we see 30 rooms held with no name, immediately there’s a red flag.calla lily inn palm springs - 01 Yes, sometimes organizations do that, as they need the rooms, but a red flag goes up nonetheless,” Dominguez added.

Meeting, incentive, convention and exhibition business is under attack by pirates.

To be more specific, event room blocks are increasingly feeling the effects of room block piracy, in which third parties—sometimes thieves out to steal credit card information and sometimes more legitimate sources—effectively funnel attendees away from official host hotels.

The practice results in host hotels having no record of these attendees’ reservations; attendees themselves thinking they made the booking through a legitimate source, and meeting and event planners often having to pay attrition fees for not fulfilling room-block agreements with host hotels.

Suffering are the attendee, who loses money to the pirate; the hotel, which might have replaced “non-bookings” with less-valuable business, and the event planner and event itself, which run the risk of ruined reputations.

For more: http://bit.ly/18uSCWq

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Filed under Conferences, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

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by | February 19, 2015 · 8:40 am

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Tips to Keep Hotel Data Hackers at Bay”

Also of concern to hotels is the Dark Horse Virus, Shortz said. This virus is meant to capture sensitive data business travelers might have on their devices.data hack She said it presents itself as a system update when a user logs onto a hotel’s Wi-Fi network and is prompted to type in their name and room number…Data hacks will continue to happen in the hotel industry, the presenters said. During an interview with Hotel News Now following the session, Garfinkel said it’s not a matter of if a hotel company is hacked, but when.

Lara Shortz surveyed the crowd Tuesday at the Hospitality Law Conference and asked attendees to raise their hands if they’ve been involved in a data breach.

“If you haven’t raised your hand, you should,” Shortz, an attorney at Michelman & Robinson, said during a session titled “Anatomy of a hospitality data breach.”

The session was especially timely given reports that White Lodging was again targeted by data haxkers. In 2014, malware was found in the food-and-beverage outlets of 14 of  its hotels a year ago.

For more: http://bit.ly/1G81ko8

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Filed under Conferences, Crime, Employee Practices, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Theft

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