This article discusses marketing tactics to improve events. The pre-con meeting with other staff members is key to making sure everything is communicated to the proper departments. Another great tactic is add-on's during the meeting. Marriott invented Red Coat Direct which allows immediate on site ordering of additional supplies or requests. Anticipation of needs is a must. Being able to negotiate comps is a wonderful way to enhance the meeting experience. Lastly, being able to utilize free marketing by encouraging attendees to post on their own social media is a wonderful way to spread the word. Using meeting hashtags is a great way to entice engagement.

Hotels are at risk for cyber attack. It can cause a customer to lose trust in your brand and make public relations difficult to control. There are different types of attacks that are more prominent for hotels and that includes: Phishing attacks, ransomware, POS and credit card attacks, and DDoS. In order to protect your hotel you need a CISO to monitor the system and make updates. In addition you will need infrastructure updates and secure procedures to protect against attacks.

This article describes the challenges that hoteliers face when it comes to accounting principles. There are four major issues that arise: Enterprise Resource Planning, Staff Variations, Data Overload, and Core Challenges. Choosing the proper system to manage your finances is an important issue when dealing hotel accounting. Taking into consideration your varying staff levels into the financial arena is also important. In addition you must choose what data is important to your financial success. Once you determine the data to use its very important on what you do with it. Its important to have someone on staff that will understand how to interpret the information and make it useful. If no one is on staff then the choice to outsource the task will be the next option.

This article discusses the relationship between airlines and GDS corporations.  Airlines are going a different route to drive customers to book direct by tacking on additional fees to consumers for using the booking sources.  This came as a surprise to the GDS corporations and they have since been trying to work together with certain airlines to have the fee waived for using their site ie: expedia.  With so many add on options when booking flights, such as baggage, seat upgrades, and in flight entertainment, many GDS companies are working with airlines to offer bulk packaging on their sites as well to provide a bump in revenue for both industries.  If both industries continue to maintain a good working relationship the future will be bright for them. 

I recall as a kid joking about the future when robots would be taking over the jobs. Well that time has come as hospitality industries are hiring robots. Robots are taking the time to complete the monotonous tasks and allowing more time for the humans to focus on guest experience. The robots are beneficial in that they can store and recall information more efficiently than the human employee. They can interact with the guests when asked questions and can provide much of the same information a human employee would. The factor to consider when hiring a robot is the initial expense, how long would it take to recuperate your investment. But on a positive note, turnover would decline because you are less likely to terminate a robot.

Computer skills are listed on almost every job description posted. However, companies are now being more selective when choosing the candidate that will be more cost effective for their organization. Employee turnover is becoming more expensive especially if it is a seasoned employee with the database knowledge for the organization. Each employee comes with a cost to train, if the employee enters the job with prior computer knowledge the fees associated to hiring that person are less. From a personal standpoint, when looking to hire a front desk agent and two agents apply one with prior experience on Opera PMS and one without, I would hire the agent with experience. This is a cost savings measure for me on labor as the experienced employee would require less training time. In my opinion, a 2 week notice is very rare in our industry or with the new generation in general. Therefore causing employers to be in an urgent state to hire when one employee leaves. Finding the appropriate candidate with prior computer based knowledge is only more enticing with that in mind.