May 15, 2006
Articles
A Change Wave Is On the Way
Call it a hunch, an educated guess or an appreciation of history, but I believe the lodging industry is on the cusp of major shifts in its performance,...
USFS CHARTS GROWTH
A record 300 general managers and franchisees from Microtel Inns & Suites, along with representatives of 80 Hawthorn Suites, attended an upbeat USFS conference...
TWELVE: Style + Tech
The place to stay when you visit the four-square-block private development known as Atlantic Station is TWELVE, the first venture of the Novare Group....
BRANDING BRIEFS
Accor North America Seven franchise Accor properties opened recently, including Motel 6s in Lafayette, In: Stoughton, WI; Bee-ville, TX; Dalton, GA; and...
GROWTH IS EMBASSY'S GOAL
Jim Holthouser loves a challenge, and he can even find one with a brand that has led its segment for decades. Earlier this year, Hilton named him senior...
HI EXPRESS BEEFS UP BEDDING
The bedding wars continue. Two more chains Holiday Inn Express and BridgeStreet Worldwide introduced new bedding packages to their systems. Holiday Inn...
NICK HOTELS ON THE MOVE
SpongeBob SquarePants and his cartoon pals may be cavorting soon at a hotel near you. Denver-based Miller Global Properties LLC recently bought out the...
New York's Tranquil Hotel
While Manhattan isn't typically known as a center of tranquility, the Affinia Gardens, A Tranquil Suite Hotel, is trying to change that notion. Following...
Upcoming Industry Events
MAY 15-16 IAHI/IHG Mid-Year Meeting, InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco. Information: www.iahi.org MAY 16-17 Timeshare & Resort Investment Conference-Canada,...
TRANSACTIONS
Holiday Isle Investcorp and Ceebraid-Signal Corp. purchased Holiday Isle, a 151-room hotel and marina complex on Islamorada in the Florida Keys, for $98...
Your Online Hotel Real Estate Resource
Whether you're buying or selling lodging real estate, the new Online Real Estate Today website from Lodging Hospitality is the place to go. The site has...
CHEFS WHIP UP AN HISTORIC MEAL
You could say it was an historic event as four chefs from National Trust Historic Hotels of America properties collaborated on a dinner in early March...
SENTIMENT STAYS STRONG
The Lodging Executives Sentiment Index (LESI) continues to reflect the strong expansion in the hotel industry. This month's mark of 86.1 compares to last...
FROM THE LH BLOG
Here's a sampling of recent entries from Lodging Hospitality's blog, The Front Desk. Check it out at www.LHonline.com/blog Unions speak louder, faster...
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
Choice Hotels promoted Stacy Ragland to vice president, franchise performance. She had been director of franchise sales. The company also hired Shaun...
Fairfield Adds First Spa
Fairfield Resorts wants its owners and guests to be both relaxed and healthy. To make that happen, the timeshare company with 500,000 owner families plans...
Timeshare Briefs
Interval International announced several new affiliation agreements with timeshare and condo-hotel properties, including the Inn at Pelican Bay in Naples,...
WHEN THE CUSTOMER SAYS NO
I recently asked a young sales person how she was doing on the solicitation of a corporate meeting she'd been working on for a long time. She told me...
The Complexity of Condo Hotels
Condo hotels have quickly become a concept with which we're all very familiar. This booming trend has transformed the hospitality industry, and it shows...
Cendant's Upscale Gambit
The affable, gregarious Peter Strebel has ambitious plans for Wyndham, the legacy hotel brand that marks Cendant's entry into the high-end market. A self-styled...
A Flood of Money
At no time in the history of the hotel industry has so much money been available to build, buy, redevelop and reposition lodging properties. Yet, unlike...
Bathroom in a Box
Big in Europe and Japan, spurred by sky-high labor and construction costs, the prefabricated bathroom for multi-unit construction is pretty much a novelty...
Meridian: Guest Focused Quality
Necessity is the mother of invention. For the Collinsville Hotel Venture (CHV), owners of a 228-room, full-service property in St. Louis, it was necessity...
Taking Stock
It makes perfect sense: leverage the power and expertise of the hotel industry's largest procurement company and offer a value-added proposition comprehensive...
What's Coming in Your Back Door?
A lot of hotel owners worry about profits that escape through the back door. The concern, of course, is employee theft of everything from toilet paper...
Auctions Redux
Since I wrote about the auction as a viable alternative to conventional sales of hospitality properties (LH, November 2003), a number of transactions...
10 Growth Chains
Growth is a constant for Americas Best Value Inn and Hilton Garden Inn. For the second year in a row, the two flags posted the largest growth in the number...
Transformation in the Lodging Industry
Lodging is in the midst of a profound, multidimensional business transformation that will affect virtually every part of the industry. New skills, capabilities...
Expotel Hospitality Services: Bigger Is Not Better
Both leaders of Expotel have been with the company for three years and their work to market Expotel as a premiere management company is starting to pay...
WHY VOIP?
Here are a couple of reasons: to provide a platform for new business processes and to reduce costs. Internet is already entrenched in our business. Voiceover...
EPA HONORS HI MARRIOTT
For the second year in a row, the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort and Spa won the Energy Star seal of approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency....
Newmarket Speaks in Tongues
Newmarket International has modernized its flagship Delphi sales and catering software, incorporating multilingual capability in order to give the Portsmouth,...
Tech Bytes
The Frisco, TX Holiday Inn Express, the Microtel Inn & Suites in Tampa, FL and the Safar Inn in Clearwater, FL are using Oxford Media to provide digital...
INNOVATIONS IN HOTEL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Signature Authentication Using a unique algorithm, Signishell from CSSN captures detailed measurements of a signer's rhythm, speed, pressure and acceleration...
VENDOR NEWS
LXR Luxury Resorts selected TIG Global as its agency of record to manage website design and Internet marketing services for the company's 23 properties...
