HOTELS

As my colleague Derek Gale noted the other day, I'm apparently now HOTELS' designated advertisement blogger because I blogged about a commercial once. That's cool, I watch a lot of TV, so I'll take that niche and run with it.

YouTube-happy Marriott is making a play for viral marketing with this latest offering, which isn't so much a commercial as it is a somewhat bizarre TownePlace Suites video, featuring a breakdancer named David Elsewhere. (I'd never heard of the guy, but he apparently has quite the following.)

It's a bit of an irreverant cross between two other Marriott brand campaigns—there's this Cirque du Soleil-styled ...Read More

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The Wall Street Journal takes a cursory look at the economic picture for our industry this week, positing that hotel management companies are in a much better position to weather a recession than are property owners.

The article quotes a J.P. Morgan Chase analyst saying that, historically, less real-state intensive businesses do better in economic downturns, partly due to their having lower leverage and higher margins. It also notes that another analyst sees long-term investment potential in real-estate-light hotel operators (namely Marriott International Inc. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.), and that in general, management companies have a much easier time diversifying markets than do owners, particularly REITs.

Indeed, the article paints...Read More

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The technology focus of this month’s issue of HOTELS is also the hottest buzzword in the industry: green. The real story of green, like most niches of hotel technology, is less about the products themselves than about the innovative ways hoteliers are applying them to create a better guest experience, as well as an improved bottom line. And when you’re talking green, there’s the added benefit of helping the world, which is a nice bonus.

Case in point, The Talbott Hotel in Chicago has installed InnCom’s ecoMode energy management systems—a creatively simple gadget in its own right—and is inviting guests to use it on a volunteer basis, wi...Read More

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With an economic picture as uncertain as the one we’re facing right now, it’s easy to feel pessimistic about the hotel industry’s financial future. Some developers will be inclined to get out now, while they still can. But if you can manage to weather the short-term bumpiness, the future for our industry is incredibly bright.

A study in this month’s Harvard Business Review is about as bullish about hotels as can be imagined. Using the World Tourism Organization’s ...Read More

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The successor to the Windy City’s former House of Blues Hotel, the dazzling Hotel Sax Chicago, is building an eager following among the online community of technology enthusiasts. Dubbed by some in the media as “Hotel Microsoft” for its top-to-bottom commitment to bringing expensive consumer electronics into the mainstream, Sax is poised to get a strong share of the city’s tech-savvy (and thus high-spend) visitors.

The six-month-old Sax threw an impressive coming-out party Friday night, complete with self-tours of open Xbox-ready guestrooms and the requisite plethora of young ladies grooving in hallway silhouette boxes. Special kudos to the hotel F&B staff, whose delightfully simple yet creativ...Read More

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The widely read online magazine Slate recently had its advertising critic (yes, there is such a thing) review the latest batch of Holiday Inn Express commercials, which play up the select-service brand’s hot breakfast bar concept. The commercials have been running since February.

Slate’s critic, Seth Stevenson, calls the HIE spots “vaguely lewd” but nevertheless gives the campaign a grade of B+. The vague lewdness—these commercials are by no means “adult content,” mind you—comes in the form of business travelers who congregate in the hotel’s dining room and...Read More

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The name Ben Nash probably isn’t familiar to too many in the hotel industry. But he hopes to change that before long.

The 25-year-old Nash is CEO of V3 Hotels, which just recently broke ground on its first property, a US$60 million Hotel Indigo in Brooklyn. That’s right, I said 25-year-old CEO.

While very young, Nash does have at least one industry peer—Sandals Resorts International CEO Adam Stewart is only a tad older—but unlike Stewart, whose father was an industry icon, N...Read More

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Hoteliers doing business in America or with American hotel companies should take note of some fairly significant precedent-setting court cases.

The first case, out of Maryland, involves the question of a management company essentially competing against itself with different brands. Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. last month was ordered to pay US$10.4 million to Karang Mas Sejahtera, owner of The Ritz-Carlton, Bali Resort & Spa, after KMS successfully argued that the opening of Bulgari Bali Hotel some three miles away constituted unfair competition. ...Read More

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Everyone’s favorite cartoon family, The Simpsons, takes a subtle, light-hearted shot at the hotel industry’s ubiquitous branding in the episode “E Pluribus Wiggum,” which aired Sunday in the United States.

In the episode, which satires the American electoral process, Homer and company attend a focus group presentation held at a hotel with the intentionally long-winded name: “Residence Inn by Hyatt Embassy Suites by Courtyard by Marriot—A Starwood Hotel.” Marriott is indeed misspelled, most likely an error by the animators. The meshing of seven hotel brands from four companies, however, is less a mistake than an example of the charming “Simpsons” quality of just not caring whether it makes any sense.

...Read More

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Somebody in the Travelodge marketing department deserves a huge raise.

Seemingly every few weeks, Travelodge’s UK division gets a mention in the mainstream press worldwide thanks to some quirky promotion or unusual news item. The vast majority of these are sheer publicity stunts, of course, but who cares? Give Travelodge credit for understanding how to cut through the clutter and make its name known.

Here is a quick sampling of some of the more amusing of the Travelodge promotions from the past few months.

• Travelodge To Hire Out-Of-Work Santas As Managers. The campaign, dubbed “Save a Santa,” would place 100 mall Santas into managerial vacancies by next year. Why? Because Santas inherently have good customer relat

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The role of social media in the hotel industry came up several times during a recent hotel brand convention in Las Vegas, with hotel owners eager to know if the whole Web 2.0 thing is for real. I was amazed at how many of my counterparts in the trade media dismissed social media as a fad. During a rant about social media, one editor even remarked, without a hint of irony, “I just don’t get it.” And therein lies the problem.

Social media is no more a fad than the Internet itself. Just as was the case with the Internet a decade ago, Web 2.0 seems to be a useless concept to the bulk of people who are not tech geeks or under the age of 35. But just as people who in 1995 didn’t think the Internet would last must feel awfully sheepish today, businesspeople who don’t put any stock into social media now will be behind the competitive curve before the...Read More

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Best Western International’s recently completed North American convention in beautiful Montréal was a strikingly introspective affair. In his address to the 2,000 or so member owners in attendance, President and CEO David Kong unveiled the results of a study from a third party consultant that concludes Best Western is in serious danger of falling to the bottom of the mid-scale sector unless tougher brand standards and a greater consistency of quality are enacted.

This is not a particularly shocking realization, to be sure. Brands exist as a kind of promise to customers of a relatively standardized experience at any given property; of course, this becomes particularly tricky with a membership organization like Best Western, wherein member hoteliers pride thems...Read More

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