Daily Digest for Thursday Mar 26, 2009


Featured News
A Call for Immediate Action Regarding a Threat to Organic Food
Appointments & Promotions
Seasoned Designer Joins Apollo Renovation Team
Changes in the Rezidor's IR Organization
HFTP Extends Board Application Deadline to April 4
Preferred Makes Six New Appointments
Langham Promotes Katie Benson to Regional VP
Business & Finance
Change Coming for Australia's Major Owners
Hotel Investment Activity Across Canada Drops
Global Hotel Prices Drop 12%
Tropicana and Creditors Reach Agreement on Reorganization Plan
HREC Arranges Sale of Houston Hampton Inn
Holiday Inn Melaka Joins Earth Hour
Las VegasTakes Pro Meetings Stance
AHLA: Senator Will Not Support the Employee Free Choice Act
Starwood Hotels Moves Downtown
Hotel Openings & Acquisitions
Novotel to Open in Manado, Indonesia
Park Inn comes to Saudi Arabia and Oman
Homewood to Build in Birmingham Area
Equities Opens Hampton in Brunswick, GA
Aloft Deal for Chapel Hill, NC
Former Holiday Inn Now Doubletree Collinsville/St. Louis
Hotel Packages, Renovations, & Awards
Shangri-La to Launch CustomStay
Life Heritage Resort Hoi Debuts Life Spa
Chicago Ritz Unveils New Guestrooms and Suites
Millennium Bostonian Finishes $25 million Makeover
Doubletree in Times Square Hilton HHonors Reward Offer
Conference & Event News
Keeping Ahead in Current Economy is Focus at Controllers Conference
CHTA Sets Speakers and Agenda for Investment Conference
EMCVenues to Host MEET USA-MidWest - May 28 – 29
U.S. Travel Association Announces Six Finalists for Innovator of the Year
Products & Services
Bridgeport Conference Center Partners with UniFocus
A Customer’s Perception Starts in the Lobby
Convention & Visitor Bureau News
Sample Sumptuous Sonoma County
New Reasons to Visit Sonoma's Wine Country
Read more of today's headlines ...


Spas, Health & Fitness
Critical Steps to Open Your Spa Effectively
By Gary Henkin, President & Founder, WTS International
Spas are as susceptible as any service business to the challenges and pitfalls of today’s difficult economic environment. The perception was that spas and the luxury service segment (hotels, retail products, restaurants, etc.) were reasonably insulated to severe economic downturn. We know now that this isn’t the case, and spas are facing challenges that didn’t exist just six months ago. In order to position your spa to maximize the chance for operational and financial success, one should pay more attention today to the pre-opening and planning phases. Creating a delineative identity in combination with a well thought out timeline for opening will give your spa the best chance for a successful launch.
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Front Office Sells!!!

Sales people spend hours on the phone trying to get a lead. They send hundreds of emails daily trying to get the meetings’ planners to the hotel. They invite travel agents for lunch and Fam Trips. They send gift cards to the corp travel agents.

They do all the hard parts and don’t do the easy ones!

In every hotel, there is a guest who walks into the hotel for different reasons; resturant, bar, visiting, or attending a conference.
Some of these walk in guests stop by the front desk looking to see a room. Front desk usually calls sales if anyone can show the room, but 99.9% the sales coordinator says: all of the sales managers are busy!

So the front desk agent goes up with the walk in guests to show them the room.

Front desk agents are not trained enough to be sales persons. They don’t know the right questions to ask in order to get the sales lead. As result of this, the hotel lose a potential business because no one from the front office team will follow up with the guest. On the other hand, sales people ask hundreds questions about the business, where did the guest stay before and so on.

Sales team should scheduel a manger everyday to cover all walk in guests. They can create a walk in calendar and every sales manger covers it one day. You can not afford to turn down any kind of business!!

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DD vs Starbucks!

DD is running a huge ad campaign against starbucks.
I am one of so many people who love DD coffee, but still go to starbucks.

A lot of people agreed that DD coffee was better than starbucks and it was also cheaper. But why we still go to starbucks instead of DD. The answer is service.

Starbucks gives a five star service through professional well trained team.

On the other hand, DD employees seem confused and a little bet rude.

If you go to any starbucks in the world, you will find almost the same product and the same style of service. That means starbucks corp spent the money and time to bring its entire employee at the same level.

But DD in Manhattan is totally different to the one in Queens for example.

You cannot use DD gift cards at some DD stores!
Some DD stores don't accept credit cards!

DD should spend the money for training and improving its service instead of attacking starbuck.

DD does not have to proof to people that its coffee is better than starbucks

All DD has to do is to bring people to its store and the quality of coffee and service will talk

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Subway is a FAST food place

Subway is trying to convene us that it is not a fast food place like Burger Kings and KFC, but it is a restaurant. I don’t know how the marketing people at Subway expect us to believe it.
Subway is a good fast food place and it is not a restaurant unless they meet the basic detentions of a restaurant!!

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Mouth to mouth Marketing

Since I am a big fan of Seth Godin, I will keep talk about the purple cow. In one part of his book he talked about Mouth to Mouth Advertisements. He said that the best and the cheapest way to advertise are mouth to mouth. When you offer a good service that is it. Every one will talk about your good service. People trust each other and they don’t trust advertisements. If you have the best sales force on earth, and they are trying to sell very good products, they will have hard time doing it because they are sales people, and most of us don’t like sales people. On the other hand, if your best friend tells you about a good restaurant or a nice hotel, you will run to try the restaurant and stay in the hotel. I bought my Toshiba laptop because friend of mine told me that it was better than Dell. I told another friend about Toshiba so he bought one for himself. How many times did you stay in a hotel because some one you know told you that the hotel was good and the service is exceptional? TV ads are dying right now. When we are watching the Super Bowl as Mr. Godin Said, we wait till the commercials come so we can run to the bathroom or get more snacks. So we don’t watch the commercial. Companies waste too much money for TV ads instead of using this money to improve their services.

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