May 13, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

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

May 1, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

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

April 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

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

April 1, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

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

March 17, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

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