HOTELS

With Katrina’s three year anniversary looming and Gustav gearing up for a Labor Day battering of the Gulf of Mexico next week, (the biggest since Wilma in 2005, they fear,) I thought that it might be appropriate to blog a little bit about hurricane and other natural disaster preparedness. 

Isn’t it always the things that we can’t predict that keep us up at night!? Mudslides, floods, forest fires, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, even sink holes the size of three football fields have a way of causing constant anxiety even among the best of us. In cases like these, we can get unbelievably good at tempering our anxiety with this all-time favorite: “It surely won’t happen thi...Read More

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After an amazing week in China, checking out the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China as well as plenty of Olympic events, I have returned home. 

I have a camera full of photos capturing the amazing sights that I witnessed, but ultimately, it will be the people who I met and the places where I stayed the night that will be largely responsible for the impressions of Beijing that I keep.

With that, my eyes were opened once again as to the influence that our industry holds as emerging markets become one global market.  I took away some real statements about China and their growth as a country through the design and i...Read More

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Having opened offices in Hong Kong in 2007, learning about the nuances of Chinese culture and customs has been a constant opportunity for growth.

I learned this week that the number eight is considered lucky in China. In fact, a day is considered lucky if it sounds like a word that is positive. For example, the words for the number eight are 'ba' in Mandarin and 'paat' in Cantonese, which sound similar to the words for prosperity: 'fa' in Mandarin and 'faat' in Cantonese.

Yesterday, 8.8.08, truly was my lucky day, as I spent the day in Beijing, taking in the amazing sights of the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics.



And so, for today&r...Read More

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I am usually a pretty positive guy. But I can’t mince words here. Last week I experienced what turned out to be one of the worst airline travel experiences of life.

I was traveling to New York City for a conference sponsored by Google and planned to return to Chicago in time for a late dinner with my family. Upon arriving at O’Hare, I learned that my flight had been canceled. After my consent to fly into Newark, I was able to find a different airline to bring me to the Big Apple in time for my conference.

The conference was incredibly informative. I enjoyed my day a great deal and was glad to have made the jaunt--until I arrived at LaGuardia.

I will spare you the blow by blow lest this blog become a novella, but in short, my flight was canceled and reassigned, and canceled and reassigned, and then canceled again (Note: It wa...Read More

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Having just returned from the Midwest Lodging Investors Summit in Chicago last week, the tone of the two days was clear. We heard again and again, “Good times will come again, we promise,” and “no one is quite sure when.”

Whether recovery comes in 2009 or in 2010, every graph and pie chart presented over the two days said the same thing: The phoenix will again rise from the ashes. It reminded me of what we saw in the hospitality industry in the early '90s and even more strongly following the challenging days of 9/11. These were scary times in our industry’s history and many doubted their end. Bunkering down and protecting our assets is a vital measure during a time like this. However, strateg...Read More

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As my three founding partners -- Andrew J. Fay, Ariane Steinbeck, Julius van Heek -- and I first hung out our shingle in 1988, we built Gettys, a hospitality design firm that possessed some key differentiators from our competitive set. Paramount among these differences was the importance of our clients’ profitability.

Even in those earliest of days, we were always more interested in creating shareholder value than building monuments to ourselves. In the hospitality design business, beautiful and smart interiors are important, but it is the price of admission. The issues that affect the profit of a property are much broader and span from space optimization to maximizing operational savvy and, in many cases, ultimately a great resale value. After 20 years in business, we have never had a client who wasn’t...Read More

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