Lodging Leaders

STR recently reported the hotel construction pipeline for the U.S. was up 5.5 percent in October. It was the lowest year-over-year increase in lodging construction activity in six months. Despite the slowdown, construction companies say they are as busy as ever. However, they do anticipate a leveling off of new builds over the next couple read more

U.S.-China trade war. Design-savvy online furniture retailers. Hurricanes. Marijuana. These things and more are having an impact on hospitality purchasing. And they’re influencing the prices of hotel FF&E and OS&E as well as the cost of construction. In this episode of Lodging Leaders, we talk to specialists in procurement and logistics to find out the read more

It’s a given in today’s technological age that you operate a hotel business that depends on technology to process customer credit card purchases and to store personal information about your guests that helps you serve them better. In addition, you probably are aware of cybercrime and that nefarious hackers frequently target payment systems. You’ve done read more

Taco Bell made headlines when it opened a 70-room pop-up hotel in August in Palm Springs, California. It was a marketing scheme that lasted four days. The day The Bell Hotel began to accept reservations, it sold out in two minutes. The guaranteed novelty of staying in a Taco Bell hotel obviously paid off for read more

Though average daily rate in U.S. hotels continues to grow year over year, hotel operators are not so eager to increase room prices these days. STR and Oxford Economics forecast ADR will increase by 1.9 percent this year and 2.2 percent in 2020. While an increase is usually viewed as a positive, the joy is read more

It’s often said the U.S. hotel industry is a street-corner business. With that point of view, it may not take much for a hotel operator to panic and set off a price war on your block. The industry fell victim to mindless discounting in the days immediately after 9/11 and during the depth of the read more

At the peak of a great upward climb from the Great Recession, the U.S. lodging industry is seeing a leveling off in business performance. During the 25th annual Lodging Conference in Phoenix last week, many industry experts talked about a new normal of muted revenue gains and thinner profit margins as expenses continue to grow. read more

Is your hotel a fun place to work? Do your employees look forward to spending their day at your hotel? If the answers are no, then your business is in trouble. Do you have difficulty keeping good employees? Do you see staff members whispering in huddled groups? Do you or your supervisors work behind closed read more

More than 20 years ago, a team of hotel industry consultants and asset managers got together to figure out how much hotels in the U.S. spend each year on property improvements and maintenance. The idea was if owners and operators know in advance what it will cost to keep a hotel property up to date read more

When Robb Monkman was a college student, he and his roommates were robbed at gunpoint. The home invasion and hostage taking rocked Monkman to his core and determined the course of his career. Monkman is founder and CEO of ReactMobile, which provides electronic security devices, or panic buttons, for businesses, including the hospitality industry. ReactMobile read more

“Active shooter” is a term used by law enforcement to describe a situation in which a shooting is in progress. The classification calls into action protocols relating to response and reaction – not only by police but also by citizens, says the FBI. In the case of an “active shooter,” everyone’s response and reaction can read more

When it launched five years ago, crowdfunding for real estate development was a hot topic, especially among hotel developers seeking new ways to pay for their projects. Though it’s not creating the same level of buzz as it did when it first became a federally sanctioned option in 2014, crowdfunding remains a viable tool in read more

Hotel developers and investors seeking new ideas might do well to remember history. More travelers today want an immersive experience not just in the places they visit but in the hotels in which they stay. And they’re willing to pay more for it. Historic hotels often give guests what they crave – a sense of read more

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That career adage is about 100 years old, but it still rings true today, especially when it comes to social media. If you’re not tuned into social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s time to reconsider. With more than 3 billion people read more

Most people the world over think of the United States as a multicultural melting pot. We are still quintessentially American, but from north to south and east to west, our cities and outlying communities are dotted with districts defined by residents’ ethnicity and culture. Today, the more developed and culturally defined areas are attracting visitors read more

“Equal opportunity for people of color in the United States remains an unrealized goal.” That is the opening statement in a recently released study by NAACP. The same opening statement appears in the organization’s 2012 report on diversity in the U.S. hotel industry. The 2019 study titled “Opportunity & Diversity Report Card: The Hotel & read more

Independent hotel supply in the U.S. has decreased in the past 10 years, reports STR. The lodging-data company reports independently owned and operated hotels account for less than 40 percent of all hotels. About 1 percent of those close each year. But that trend may take a turn. It appears more and more hoteliers who read more

Last week, part one of our report on Airbnb looked at the home-sharing giant’s impact on hotel business performance. We reported on a study that shows for every 100 percent increase in Airbnb accommodations in a market, hotel RevPAR declines by an average 3 percent. We also reported a growth in the number of whole read more

More than 10 years ago, the short-term home rental industry began to shapeshift with the birth of Airbnb. The technology company has quickly grown from a small peer-to-peer home-sharing platform into a virtual behemoth with more rooms than any hotel company on the planet. Today, Airbnb has more than 4 million listings in nearly 100,000 read more

It’s no secret the hospitality industry in America is in dire need of skilled employees. Many hotel owners and operators continually seek ways to attract and keep talent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the hospitality industry has a turnover rate of nearly 75 percent per year, compared to a healthy rate of 10 to read more