Picture this – an engineer brought the actual solution to the person who approves repairs. It was a simple part-replacement job. The part required a purchase order, however, and the department’s monthly line was already spent. So the answer was no, even though the diagnosis was right. Being right meant spending money on something that…
Five minutes sounds harmless. In a hotel where 100 people are affected across a full operating day, five avoidable coordination minutes each add up to more than one complete shift. The commercial question is not whether employees are busy. It is whether their time is producing guest value. I learned the cost of a five-minute…
A hotel stay starts long before a guest reaches the front desk. It begins when they compare rooms, read reviews, check the map, weigh the price and decide whether the loyalty benefits are enough to make booking direct worthwhile. By the time they arrive, the brand has already made a promise: this stay will be…
Running three beach studios taught me that becoming a hospitality operator is not mainly about adding more properties. It is about building reliable systems around every stay. A hotel direct booking strategy is one of those systems, but a website alone is not enough. A guest also depends on accurate availability, coordinated cleaning, clear arrival…
Graveyards of hospitality are littered with concepts and ideas that never quite took off, or simply died quietly after much fanfare. In a world where investment cycles are getting shorter, and interest rates remain stubbornly high, it is the reliability and predictability of basics that continue to attract and build loyalty of ever-better-educated consumers. Yet,…
Everyone in this industry is talking about a crisis right now and depending on who you ask, it’s a completely different one. Owners blame tax and wages, staff blame being run into the ground for less real money than they made last year and guests say the service isn’t what it was, despite paying more…
Andi Newcomer was working around 60 hours a week and operations were running fine. Events were booked, clients were happy, the conference centre was in demand. The problem was that she had no way to see where the performance was coming from. Best Western Boulder Falls Inn is an 84-room hotel in Lebanon, Oregon, built…
Everyone knew AI would dominate the conversation at HITEC 2026 in San Antonio. What surprised me was how quickly the discussion has moved beyond chatbots, virtual concierges and one-off productivity tools. The real story is now governance. As hotels begin deploying dozens of AI-powered workflows across revenue management, marketing, reservations, maintenance, finance and guest communications,…
If your property has function space, you’re already better positioned than most standalone venues to capture short-lead event business. You have the rooms and catering infrastructure in place to turn bookings around quickly. Yet a good deal of this business goes to faster competitors rather than better ones. Planning cycles are compressing Short-term booking windows…
Wellness and spa are definitely reasons to book a hotel. But do guests select a property based on its gym facilities? Let’s fire off two examples off the top to support the affirmative: EVEN Hotels: an upscale brand under IHG that’s pivoted against the K-shaped barbell distribution problem of hotels gravitating towards select service and…
