More Hotel Mogel: Essays in Hotel Marketing & Management

By Larry Mogelonsky and Adam Mogelonsky

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a watershed moment for hotels around the world. Weathering the short-term consequences of a global travel shutdown required a deft hand in management, while
navigating any organization toward success in the recovery period demands even more intellect and creativity.

There are now so many new challenges facing the hospitality industry and the situation is changing almost every day. With technology playing a pivotal role in the hotel of the future, all managers must also have a firm grasp of how each platform and device works in order to determine what is best for their organizations while still operating on a lean budget.

As presented in this sixth book in the series, More Hotel Mogel gives hoteliers the latest tools to prosper in this rapidly evolving period. While analyzing the current trends and looking at how the coronavirus has affected every operation, the authors also examine what underscores modern guest behavior and how best to appeal to customers so that you can maximize revenue at any property.

This is not an introductory textbook on the hotel industry, but rather a compilation of selected topics that highlight current success stories, blunders to avoid and unique ideas to help hotels in the post-pandemic world. The goal throughout is to make aspiring hoteliers and seasoned professionals think about how to boldly grow their businesses in this brave new hospitality world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728370545

Larry Mogelonsky

Larry and Adam Mogelonsky are a father-son consulting team constantly in search of ways to perfect the hotel experience. Sometimes that means incorporating new technology or new amenities, but more often than not it means optimizing the assets a property already has and getting back to the basics of working in a service culture. After a formal education in engineering and business plus a stint as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble, Larry’s first brush with the industry was during his half-dozen years a top ten advertising agency where he was the team leader for the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts account. Smitten with the hospitality bug, Larry then founded LMA Communications Inc. in 1991 as a boutique firm specializing in hotels and tourism with clients across the globe. Since its inception, LMA has been recognized with over 75 awards from HSMAI (Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International) for its creativity and strategic business acumen, as well as being awarded TravelClick’s Worldwide e-Marketer of the Year. Before joining his father in the family business, Adam attained an undergraduate degree in pre-medicine and was working as a physiotherapist for several years. Starting as a junior copywriter and digital strategist right at the time when social media was becoming a major marketing platform for brands, Adam rose over the years to become an account director for LMA’s various hotel clients. More recently, Larry and Adam formed Hotel Mogel Consulting as a way of helping solve critical issues and working closer with property owners, operators and industry suppliers. Together, they strive to offer the best strategies for their clients, all while never losing sight of the core drivers of a great hotel experience and what will lead to long-term success. Concurrent to their consultancy practice, both Larry and Adam are active hospitality writers and public speakers, with articles written by Larry then edited by Adam and multiple speaking engagements given by Larry around the world each year. Over the past decade, they have published over one thousand unique articles in: Hotels Magazine, Hotel-Online, Hotel News Now, Hotel Executive, eHotelier, Hotel Interactive (now rebranded as Hotel Community), HospitalityNet, Hotel Technology News, Today’s Hotelier (Asian American Hotel Owners Association), Hotelier Magazine and Canadian Lodging News. Each week their newsletter, aptly named The Hotel Mogel, reaches thousands of hotel executives and senior managers. In addition to periodicals, Larry and Adam have published five prior books addressing operational and marketing issues for hoteliers. Entitled Are You an Ostrich or a Llama?, Llama Rules, Hotel Llama, The Llama is Inn, and The Hotel Mogel, having sold thousands of copies combined. All five texts are currently available for sale online. As a part of their speaking tour, Larry has been a keynote speaker at worldwide industry conferences including HITEC, Hospitality Innovation Planet, BTO Italia, Hawai’i Lodging & Tourism Association, Hotel Data Conference, Visit Florida Governor’s Conference, Cornell Hotel Research Symposium, HVS Eastern Europe, TTG Italia and Hospitality Day Italia as well as numerous corporate events and university seminars. Larry’s talks motivate audiences through his passion and vision with creative reinforcement focused on satisfying guest needs. Both Larry and Adam reside in Toronto. Larry lives with his wife, Maureen, of almost four decades and their 145-pound Bouvier des Flandres named Hondo, while Adam lives downtown mere blocks from all the greatest hotel developments in this booming city. Contact them at [e-mail] and [e-mail].

Book preview

© 2020 Larry Mogelonsky & Adam Mogelonsky. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   09/24/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7055-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7056-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7054-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Remember Your Turtles

The Don’ts Guide to Hospitality Leadership

How Long Before Your Hotel is Flygskam

Three Lessons for Hotels from the British Royal Navy

COVID-19

And Then COVID-19 Happened…

This is Definitely Not the End for the Hotel Industry

Pulling the Switch on Hard Decisions to Combat COVID-19

Strategic Coronavirus Operational Planning

COVID-19 is a Hotel Crisis with a Digital Marketing Offshoot

In a Quarantined World Local Leisure Reigns

Cleanliness Theater for the Post-Pandemic World

Promoting Your Hotel Brand in a Socially Distanced World

The COVID-19 Crisis Highlights the Need for Hotel Call Centers

Is Coronavirus a Boon for Direct Bookings

Win Guests by Knowing Their Post-Coronavirus Travel Behaviors

Coronavirus May Kill the Airbnb Superhost

Tech Companies Helping Hotels in Times of Need

Travel Debts Mean Big Business After Lockdown

The Growth of Golf and Other Socially Distanced Activities

Beware the Post-Pandemic Cruise Surge

Utility Players as a Way to Save Hotels on Staffing

Boldly Getting Back to Business

Building Your Post-Covid Welcome Back Package

Home Sharing May Take Your Post-Pandemic Guests

How Housekeeping Opt-Out Might Change Post-Coronavirus

Don’t Be Fooled by Covid Hotel Statistics

Preparing the Year Ahead for Post-Covid Hotel Luxury

Take Local to the Extreme

Long-Term Consequences of Extreme Covid Measures at Hotels

To Upsell or Not to Upsell a Covid Amenity

Value Reigns in the Hotel Recovery Phase

Guest Service

Separating Good from Great GMs in Two Questions

Excelling at Hotel Management Means Keeping Your Best People

Five Necessary Steps to Support Guest Communications with Tech

How Guests Interpret WiFi Service

With Hotel Bottled Water, Every Drop Counts

Acknowledging the Social Origins of the Fitness Center

Value Luxury as the Core Guest Demand

Some Notes on Crafting the Perfect Hotel Event

Understanding the Future of Alternate Accommodations

Twelve Fundamental Lessons from the Cruise Industry

The Power Of ‘Because’

Is Guest Privacy Still Sacrosanct

Branding

How to Fundamentally Reinvent a Hotel

In Search of Performance Perfection

Design Strategy for the Next Phase of Boutique Hotels

This Year Should Be a New Brand Embargo

Recapping the Starbucks Roastery Concept

Should Hotel Brands Have Their Own Retail Stores

Dark Omens Underpinning Recent Hotel Trends

Sales & Marketing

Hotel Marketing Made Simple Through Playing Cards

Ten Questions to Ask Your Sales and Marketing Team

Has Marketing Become Secondary to Hotels

Rewriting the Job Description for Director of Marketing

Storytelling is Specificity in Guestroom Sales

Is PR Still Relevant in a Digital World

Is Your Hotel Bleisure-Ready

Bringing Experiences into the Meetings Business

A Slow Start for Experiential Meetings

Sustainability as a Modern Pillar of Branding and Marketing

Hotel Sales Legal Savvy

Improving Your Valentine’s Day ROI

From a Year on the Road

Hotel Marketing in the Summer of Covid

Getting Bullish on Group Travel

Autumn Offers Worth Driving For

Gearing Up for a Heated Holiday Getaway Season

Technology

Becoming the Disruptor by Learning from Them

Are You Loud or Silent in the Panic Button Debate

Using Sleep Science to Differentiate Your Hotel

Beware the True Capex of IoT

Panic Buttons are the Tip of an Infrastructural Iceberg

Safety Buttons are a Reputation Management Imperative

Making Painful Chargebacks a Thing of the Past

Airbnb as the Literal Canary in the Coal Mine

Never Accept Credit Card Payments over the Phone Again

Relieving the Overwhelmed with Covid Response Hotel Software

Why You Now Need Guestroom IoT

Avoiding a Hotel Shutdown Calls for Compliance Technology

Verified Clean Technologies as the Necessary Step to Bring Groups Back

Internet Marketing

Hotels are Guilty Until Proven Guilty with Online Reviews

Booking Engine Personalization to Adapt to the Experience Economy

Merchandizing Romantic Getaways

Recommend a Friend to Your Hotel

Upgrading Your Booking Engine to Fight the Home Sharing Onslaught

Is Amazon Your Next Hotel Distribution Channel?

Upselling the Frugal Guest

How Guests Purchase after the Path-to-Purchase

Your Website as ADA’s Latest Frontier

Are Social Influencers a Hotel Marketing Sham?

Distinguishing Between an Influencer and a Guest Looking for a Free Weekend Stay

Can Your Hotel Stand Out in a Sea of Ghost Kitchens

Get Guests to Spend with Online Contactless Payments

Airbnb to Take the Supermarket Approach for Post-Covid Success

Operations

Three Fundamentals Taught by Hospitality

To Renovate or Not to Renovate

HVAC from Hell

Simple Steps Hotels Can Take for Climate Consciousness

Fixing Your Washroom Experience

Using Bathroom Amenities to Differentiate Your Property

Modernizing the Minibar

Growing Wellness Revenues in Four Quadrants

Lest We Forget Our Human Capital

Reviewing Your Personal Injury Protocol

The Imminent Hotel Labor Crunch

Hotel Employee Retention is Critical

Ongoing Training is the New Normal

Introducing the Concept of Micromentorship

Quizzing Your Team on the Trades

The Intrinsic Value of Wellness and Training Seminars

Effectively Managing an Aging Workforce

Why Outsourcing Hotel Staff Doesn’t Always Work

Where Should Staff Live for Remote Resorts

Top Issues and Solutions for Your Housekeeping Department

Making Housekeeping a Career

Addressing Gender Inequality in the Housekeeping Department

Evaluating Housekeeping in Minutes per Room

Food & Beverage

Food as the Reason to Visit

No One Eats the Same Way

The Server Makes All the Difference

The WiFi-Free Hotel Restaurant

Does Your Hotel Need a Plant-Based Restaurant

Making Juice an Evening Occasion

Food for Love with Menu Personalization

Managing F&B While Changing Brands

Carving a Foodie Destination from a Mountaintop Resort

In Vino Veritas: Your Wine List Sucks

In Vino Veritas: Olives and Other Accompaniments

In Vino Veritas: Baco the Other Noir

In Vino Veritas: Elevating the Mixologist

In Vino Veritas: Designing the Perfect Wine Tasting

In Vino Veritas: The Benefits of Wine Apps

In Vino Veritas: Summer Wine Starts Now

In Vino Veritas: Show Me the Bottle

In Vino Veritas: Wine and Tomato Tastings

In Vino Veritas: The Problem with Food Wines

In Vino Veritas: Wine Needs Education

In Vino Veritas: My Sober Curious Rebuttal

In Vino Veritas: By the Glass Strategy

In Vino Veritas: Off-Color Wines Sell Big

Examples of Excellence

Looking Back on the Great New York Hotel Race

In Search of Hotel Excellence: Ashford Castle

In Search of Hotel Excellence: Hotel Hayden

In Search of Hotel Excellence: Hotel Lugano Dante

In Search of Hotel Excellence: Hayfield Manor

In Search of Hotel Excellence: The Merrion Hotel

All the President’s Suites

Tackling a Kitchen Closure at the Falcon Hotel

Renovating for Results at a Savannah Hotel

Glossary of Terms

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Also by the Authors:

Are You an Ostrich or a Llama?

Llamas Rule

Hotel Llama

The Llama is Inn

The Hotel Mogel

This book is dedicated to Reuben Abramowsky,

Larry’s godfather and dearest friend who recently passed.

FOREWORD

Aerial view of a historic castle surrounded by lush greenery, gardens, and a large lake. Tennis courts and expansive lawns are visible in the foreground.Elegant vintage bedroom in black and white, featuring an ornate canopy bed, chandelier, antique furniture, patterned walls, and classic art portraits.

Ireland’s Ashford Castle opened as a hotel in 1939 but can trace its routes

back to 1228. The property has been voted as the world’s best hotels by

Viruoso Travel Week and the third best by Travel & Leisure in 2015.

(Photos are copyright of the hotel and cannot be

reproduced without its permission.)

Remember Your Turtles

Many years ago and before I was smitten by the hospitality bug, one of my advertising agency clients was a manufacturer of stationery supplies. The company’s approach to retail sales was to offer three classes of products, loosely defined as good, better and best-of-class. When a customer approached the point of sale, he or she was then afforded a selection with incremental pricing decisions – pay a little extra and get a better product like a slightly thicker paper or a reinforced edge.

The basis for this approach was that there was a clearly identified benefit with each associated rung of the price ladder so that customers could logically deduce exactly what they needed and be satisfied with their decision.

Hotels tend to operate in a similarly scaled manner, with good being the limited-service properties, better being full service and the best being the luxury segment. Many brands fine tune this distribution with semi-differentiated brands that exist in between the limited and upscale ends of the spectrum.

However, nowadays with so many brands cluttering the center of the scale, it is often hard for the consumer to make a decision based solely on the product attributes. Location aside, why then would one consumer choose – to use the largest hotel company in the world’s family of brands as an example – between a Marriott or a Renaissance, or a Courtyard versus a Residence Inn? And let’s not get started on how the Starwood integration continues to aggravate this.

When the consumer is offered too many choices like this, they tend to subconsciously panic, very much like a turtle that, when threatened, retracts its head into its protective shell. In this case, more brands do not make for better guest satisfaction. Rather, we are only confusing the customer with spurious information and infinitesimal points of differentiation, so much so that there is no clear delineation between good, better and best.

The end result is that customers will always wonder what could have been had they chosen otherwise. To further complicate this purchasing decision pathway, brands are rarely advertised on a unique, individual basis. We aren’t arming them with enough information to properly know the difference between, say, a DoubleTree and a Hilton Garden Inn.

With no emotional drivers to help nudge them one way or the other, it’s no wonder that consumers are opting for platforms that help streamline their decisions. This first came into play with the OTAs where all you needed was a location and your dates of travel, then the aggregate system would sort your options for based on whatever criteria you had, irrespective of brands. And now we have alternate lodging platforms or ISBFs like Airbnb where, even though the physical products themselves have immense diversity, it’s a one-stop-shop search portal with a fantastic user experience to guide customers to the credit card finish line.

The point is that brands need to stand for something, especially now after the great reset we have all gone through following the pandemic. The Westin Heavenly Bed™ was an example of a brilliant idea as it was consistent with a key hotel attribute – a fantastic night’s stay. Travel Brilliantly™ for Marriott, while memorable, is too broad, meaning that it may not have as much sticking power. Still, any campaign is better than none, and I for one would like to see every brand have a true USP that gives us all a reason to poke our heads out of our shells and book.

So, remember your turtles and remember the paradox of choice when it comes to decision making. This applies not only to a hotel organization’s chosen brand direction but nearly everything that can be sold to guests. For example, how many room categories do you have and are they properly clustered to simply the buying process? In the restaurant, is your menu too long? You can tell this by gaging how much time it takes for customers to make their decision.

It’s high time we started to share our knowledge of the hospitality industry with those customers who are seeking newer purchasing pathways as a means to help reduce any stress associated with accommodations selection. Today’s world is faster and more distracted than ever before, and you must swim with the tide by streamlining everything that you offer to reduce confusion and increase overall sales.

Much of this book rests upon this principle as well as many more that underpin customer behavior. Besides a strong focus on marketing, sales and operations, a large portion is also devoted to how COVID-19 has all but permanently transformed our business. Technology is likewise integral to how we operate, thus necessitating a section to show what’s available, what’s possible and to increase your knowledge base. The point throughout is to get you thinking about how to best execute the programs and initiatives that will help to advance your organization’s goals and your career as a hotelier.

The Don’ts Guide to Hospitality Leadership

One overriding-yet-indirect maxim that has vast implications for leadership development is, ‘If you aim to do everything good, then you will do nothing great’ (often attributed to Zig Ziglar, a famous American salesman). Expressed another way, when you try to do too much, the result is that you will overextend yourself and no singular task will get the attention it needs to make it a genuine success.

While you can undoubtedly see how this adage might apply to other aspects of hospitality – particularly service-oriented operations and marketing – it can nonetheless help to strengthen a hotelier’s leadership style through the process of elimination.

While other literature will often instruct on trying new approaches or adding to your repertoire with tips and tactics for properly managing a team, why not flip the nail on its head and discuss what not to do? In this sense, by learning to abstain from certain activities, you will end up simplifying your day-to-day and focusing on what actually works.

So, for this ‘don’ts guide to hospitality leadership’, each of the four sections starts with what a senior executive is doing wrong then offers a possible course correction involving the removal rather than the addition of specific practices.

The General Numbers Manager

This individual bases everything that he or she does off of data and concentrates on the minutia of what these figures may or may not infer. Such a hotelier makes a habit of perusing daily reports for small variances then, like a weathervane, rapidly responding to any push or pull.

In this day and age, it is all too easy to fall back on the numbers because they can be directly quantified to project cost savings or potential revenue increases. Such temptations are becoming more prevalent as senior executives’ bonuses are often structured around how good a P&L looks at the end of the year.

However, we are all in a business that deals with fundamentally irrational beings – otherwise known as people! – thereby rendering omniscient forecasting impossible, no matter what machine learning software or adaptive intelligence algorithms you apply to a given situation. And this problem will only proliferate as we increase the amount of data points that we measure and integrate into our systems.

The first and most obvious step here is to look at the overall trends and what they mean in a broader sense rather than immediately drilling down to each minuscule data point in search of correlations. Along these lines, do not react on a whim to what may or may not be revealed by these numbers. Hospitality is, and will always be, about the people.

The Budgeteer

Closely related to the data-centric individual, everything for this hotelier is based upon whether or not the budget is achieved. Such a person ends up becoming mesmerized by the budget’s monthly data, making short-term decisions to reflect each of the twelve parts of the cycle.

Through a gradual process of drinking too much of one’s own Kool Aid™, a senior executive with this mentality ultimately becomes exceedingly parsimonious, where all current operations as well as any new initiatives must be reflected in definitive cost figures. All line items must be trimmed and there’s always a cheaper way to accomplish a given task, such as frequently changing suppliers or bidding them against one other for the lowest price and replacing long-term staff with temporary labor.

While slashing costs is commendable, a critical drawback is that the guest experience suffers. In a people-oriented business, growth is dependent on the relationships you build – those with your guests as well as those with your suppliers and your team. So, if you are willing to rotate vendors as you would a deck of cards, do you really expect these corporate partners to give you their best? Moreover, such a flippant attitude has a way of reflecting back onto your customers, working to erode your hotel’s loyalty.

It may already be obvious, but the principle here is to not be spendthrift to the point where it hinders positive relationship building. Don’t focus on pennies; this will only make you pound-foolish, as they say. Instead, much like the adage in the opener, look to only support those programs that you can give your full support.

Prim and Proper

Such an individual has his or her airs. That is, this person doesn’t like to get his or her hands dirty and has no genuine interest in the rest of the frontline team. Often, a hotelier like this will not be receptive to or will only acknowledge constructive criticism or fresh ideas. These are the managers who do not truly listen but just smile or nod without really caring.

This type of ‘elevated management’ where the leader view himself or herself above other members with a lower rank has no place in the modern work environment. We are all one team with one goal – to offer our guests an unparalleled guest experience.

So, do not separate yourself from the rest of your staff. On the contrary, assimilate yourself. The more you come to know and empathize with every employee, the more likely your team will be to perform at its best and bring forward their ideas which may help keep your organization one step ahead of the competition.

The Desk Master

As a team leader and manager, there will always be a reason to stay put behind your desk with your office door closed. Whether it’s a conference call, sorting through emails, browsing daily reports or reviewing long-form documents, we are all highly susceptible to a butt-in-chair approach. What tends to follow, though, is that we become overly structured and by the books, seeking verbatim guidance from brand manuals and unable to think independently.

The general manager position at any hotel is not a desk job. In fact, administrating everything from your office is a surefire way to become out of touch with your operations and all the other quotidian happenings at your property. While foregoing the desk altogether is quite difficult nowadays with physical distancing and remote work both largely still in effect, strive to make your rounds often if not daily, and virtually if need be.

After all, a time-honored hallmark of many luxury hotels is the personal attention that each guest receives from senior executives, especially the general manager who is more than likely to be present for both check-in and check-out as well as surprise checkups during mealtime. Do not hide behind your desk, and instead try leading your hotel from the lobby or by inserting yourself into electronic communications in order to deepen your relationships and visibly inspire other team members to be great leaders just like you.

How Long Before Your Hotel is Flygskam

It started with the removal of plastic straws then the switch from single-use bathroom amenities to dispensers. Inch by inch, item by item, operation by operation, the sustainability screws will be tightened throughout your hotel over the coming decade as climate change and ‘climate justice’ takes centerstage at the UN, in regional governing bodies and within customers’ minds.

Whatever your personal beliefs are and what you feel is the best course of action, the fact is that more and more people across the globe are making conscious decisions every day to change their lifestyles in the name of preserving the environment.

With this ‘voting with your wallet’ mentality, consumers are eating less meat or dairy, buying from brands that identify as sustainable and opting for recyclable products or those made from recycled goods. The underlying sentiment is still quite positive in that any little bit makes an impact. But as the weather gets weirder, the floods get worse and seemingly indominable forest fires in places like the Amazon Rainforest or Australia blanket the news, all this could soon turn quite dark.

Obviously, COVID-19 has decimated flight routes and shifted our priorities, but once regular travel cycles have returned many will be quick to point out how much lower global carbon emissions were during the lockdown. This will motivate a resurgence in climate activism because it highlights how well we can course correct if we all do our part.

One such trend that has emerged from Sweden is the idea of ‘flygskam’ or ‘flight-shaming’. It used to be that journeying across the globe on vacation or traveling for business was a privilege that you worked your hardest to attain, and then were able to talk or brag about within your social circles. Then came the one-two punch of cheaper flights and social media, together making air travel far more affordable than it ever was to thereby compound the number of flyers and cajoling more people into taking a dream vacation through the silent coercion of their friends’ photos or those of celebrities living it up abroad.

All told, in 2019 we had a record number of people willing and able to feed the tourism industry as well as talk about it online. But as the emissions from airplanes and all other ancillary consumption related to travel have been identified as key contributors to global warming, it became a practice within one of the world’s most environmentally conscious countries to scorn those who travel excessively.

Thinking about absconding to Thailand for couple weeks to hop around from tropical beach to tropical beach? Think again, because the moment you post about it on Instagram or TikTok, your fellow compatriots may lambast you for contributing to the death of ecosystems, and you may even lose a few friends in real life as a result.

While this is undoubtedly a small and relatively isolated movement at present, if the past few years are any indication, these things have a tendency to grow at an exponential rate once they start hitting closer to home. After all, how long did it take for the youth climate strikes to go from one impassioned adolescent Swede sitting on a park bench with a sign to a worldwide protest organized entirely by high school students through the internet?

My point here is that flygskam will not stay put in only targeting the airlines. These sorts of trends will inevitably come to influence, scorn or outright boycott numerous aspects of the tourism and corporate travel industries, maybe even attributing its own ‘hotellskam’ neologism.

I can hear them now. Why did you stay in that spacious and elaborate suite when a basic, more ergonomic and less energy-exhaustive room will do just fine? Shame! Why did you rent a non-electronic vehicle when a ‘clean’ alternative is only a few dollars more per day? Shame! Why do car rental companies even stock non-electronic models anymore? Shame! Why did you fly to another city for that business meeting when a video conference call would suffice? Shame! Why did you and your hubby opt for a destination wedding on an exotic island instead of hosting it closer to home? Shame! Why is your hotel or hospitality brand not taking stronger measures towards having a neutral carbon footprint? Shame!

This all may seem a bit radical right now, but hopefully it’s clear what the endgame is for this prognostication. The result is that you must be proactive when it comes to sustainability initiatives lest you soon find your hotel alienating certain guests or blacklisted. Even though in many cases this may not have a tangibly negative affect on your property’s bottom line, it will still be a PR nightmare.

The key here is to take action over the decade ahead so that you are keeping pace with where the public sentiment is going. Yesterday you went through the ordeal of eliminating plastic straws and retrofitting your guestroom showers to dispensers. Today you are dealing with new Covid measures. Tomorrow it may be smart thermostats or finding ways to reduce paper usage throughout your hotel, both coincidently also help with viral safety. And the day after that it may be more efficient laundry machines or a large-scale environmental assessment to improve water conservation. Then there may even be a few boutique or lifestyle hotel brands that decide to go 100% plant-based in their restaurants.

Just as the problems associated with climate change won’t be solved in a day, so too will upgrading your hotel to more green standards. Form an internal committee if you have to. It requires constant attention from all operations as well as the leadership to make it a priority. In bringing this to your attention in the introduction, my hope is that you will keep sustainability efforts on the back of your mind throughout this book.

Three Lessons for Hotels from the British Royal Navy

They used to say that the sun never set on the British Empire, and I would hope the same for your hotel. Despite being a relative backwater island rife within internal struggles during the Middle Ages, somehow the United Kingdom rose up to be a global seafaring empire for hundreds of years backed by the might of its navy and the meritocratic system underpinning this military branch.

Putting aside the revisionist evidence that takes into account the numerous atrocities that the British Empire committed in the name of conquest – specifically during the Raj Era and the Scramble for Africa as well as supporting the Atlantic slave trade prior to its abolition – we can all nonetheless learn a ton about how to grow any organization into our own veritable empire by following some examples from Her Majesty’s Naval Service.

As a history buff myself, we can look more granularly at three prominent individuals in chronological order who served in this time-honored institution to see how naval lessons may apply to a business in the hospitality industry.

Example One: Admiral Byng

John Byng was a lifer in the Royal Navy, entering the service in his adolescence while his father was an admiral and rising through the ranks during the time when the British were ascending to the top echelon of worldly nations. However, it was his perceived failure to reinforce a garrison against the French during the Battle of Minorca for which he is remembered in that he was the only man of his rank to be court-martialed then executed.

While Byng did indeed have a worthy argument in his favor about not being provided enough resources for his fleet to secure the Mediterranean island, his actions nonetheless reveal a person who gave up before committing every ounce of strength. And the government chose to make an example of him in order to galvanize other officers of rank into being more aggressive in achieving their objectives.

While I would never advocate that you make any sort of toxic sacrifice within your organization in order to instill the sense of fear into the other executives, the bottom line is that the qualities of a leader reverberate throughout a company’s culture. If an admiral isn’t willing to see a battle through to the bitter end, then neither will any of the supporting officers.

When you go about choosing a new member for your team, we often say we want a passionate individual, but really we want a scrapper; someone who will dog it out through the long, hard days without giving up then still have enough ambition left over to be proactive about pushing the needle an inch a day.

Example Two: Captain Cook

We all know James Cook as the sailor who ‘discovered’ Australia and claimed the continent for the British Empire, but there are many other factors behind his coincidental landing in Botany Bay that history seldom mentions.

For context, understand that Cook’s ship, The Endeavour, was terribly equipped for battle – small and fast but mostly crewed by noncombatants such as artists and botanists, and definitely nowhere near a match for a Spanish, French or Dutch man-o-war out on the open ocean. Thus, his primary mission was not one of conquest but to test the efficacy of a new piece of technology, the sextant, for use in accurately measuring latitude. It was more of a secondary footnote in his briefing to claim any newly discovered lands for the British, for which high command was expecting something more akin to Tahiti in size.

The hidden lesson from the story of Captain Cook is that of the critical need for experimentation. You never know what lucrative opportunities you will uncover through new initiatives and investing in technology. While the sextant was important, establishing Australia as a colony may have been far more vital to the wealth of the empire.

Moreover, historians would gladly note that if the British hadn’t landed near Sydney then the French or Dutch would have likely claimed the continent within the next couple years. For you this means that while it’s all well and good to talk about technological innovation, you do in fact have a proverbial gun to your head at this very moment because if you don’t act now then your competitors will.

Example Three: Viscount Nelson

Like Byng, Horatio Nelson was lifer in the Royal Navy, having started his seafaring career at the prime age of 13 as an ordinary seaman. Unlike Byng, however, he didn’t come from means – having to share his modest, small-town family upbringing with ten other siblings – nor did he have a father in a high-ranking position to cushion his upward trajectory through nepotism.

Nelson is thus a quintessential success story, right up until his untimely yet heroic death from a sniper’s bullet at the climax of the Battle of Trafalgar. One of the most prominent figures to stand against Napoleon Bonaparte, Nelson is in part remembered as the product of a very finely tuned meritocratic naval system that rewarded hard work, intelligence and commitment to serving a higher cause.

As it relates to hospitality, it is so often said that you cannot train for passion and that you must instead seek out and nurture those youth in your organization who already have this internal drive. But, taking Nelson’s example into account, I ask which came first, the career or the passion? When he joined the navy in his adolescence, I doubt that it was a vigorous affection for such a dangerous line of work guiding his decision but rather a more primal need for some form of income to support his family. From there, the passion grew within him, with the transparent system of compensating good work with promotions serving to perpetuate his core motivation.

Think about this in terms of how you retain top talent and how you mentor new recruits. For all you know, your hotel may already have its own Horatio Nelson in its midst, but if you don’t have a solid system in place to continually move these individuals up the chain of command then you are going to lose them. Ambition is a double-edged sword in this regard as said employees are what will propel your business goals forward and yet they will inevitably leave you for more prosperous career pathways if they are not constantly satiated with increased responsibilities and monetary recompence.

COVID-19

Luxurious, spacious living room with high ceilings, a chandelier, tall windows, and elegant furnishings. Opens to a balcony with a scenic view.Black and white photo of an urban waterfront with modern architecture, a boat labeled 'Odyssey,' and dramatic clouds, creating a serene and nostalgic atmosphere.

In the heart of a city hard hit by COVID-19, the Boston Harbor Hotel

has had to deftly weather the crisis through diligent management at

all levels. Pictured here is its new Presidential Suite, a residence that

affords guests a remarkable combination of space, luxury and privacy.

(Photos are copyright of the hotel and cannot be

reproduced without its permission.)

And Then COVID-19 Happened…

In December 2019, the new decade ahead looked bright for hospitality. Both ADR and RevPAR figures were steadily trending upward in most markets. Construction of new properties was at its peak, with many older hotels undergoing ambitious renovations and more exciting product innovations on the horizon. While there were certainly major problems lurking in the shadows, we had time to tackle these in a diligent and prudent manner.

The shutdown of global travel starting roughly in late February 2020 and stemming from the COVID-19 (referred interchangeably here with ‘Covid’ and ‘coronavirus’) outbreak in Wuhan, China hit the hotel industry like a sledgehammer. Needless to say, this was and still is a gamechanger. Hospitality will never quite be the same.

The purpose of this section is to chronologically highlight the best of our published writings from the beginning of the pandemic in early March through to the summer months. As a retrospective, this section shows how awareness of a situation evolves during a crisis and how ideas – both beneficial and speculative – can take hold in a matter of weeks, thereby stressing the need for hoteliers to stay on top of industry happenings.

The theme throughout is that no matter the circumstances a hotel organization must confront, there is always an opportunity to creatively adapt and survive any hardship. In this particular case, we emphasize how various technologies can help hotels meet the new standards for viral safety as well as how managers can find a positive angle to shape their customer messaging. Essential to this is to act quickly and decisively, as deliberating or procrastinating in today’s rapidly changing world is the real death knell. Our hope is that by giving you the right knowledge, you can not only act fast during any scenario, but also do so in a manner that will ensure your company’s success for many years to come and without having to backtrack.

This is Definitely Not the End for the Hotel Industry

While major events were being canceled throughout the first quarter of 2020 as the coronavirus gained public awareness, the panic only truly set in after the initial outbreaks in Italy and South Korea followed by the shutdown of most international flights in mid-March. Hotel occupancies dropped precipitously within 48 hours. No one really knew what would happen. Many thought hospitality as we knew it was finished. Everyone was afraid for their jobs and their families. The industry needed hope above all else.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain cleverly retorted to false rumors of his death. While we hoteliers are in the darks depths of this unprecedented calamity, our industry’s bright new dawn is just about to crest over the horizon.

The travel and hospitality business will come back. It might take a year, but we’ve weathered the OTAs and the shared economy’s disruptive effects, and we will weather this one too. By our training and gumptions, hoteliers are witty, scrappy and resilient. We have the resources, the locations and the staff to make the recovery happen. But it is not going to be easy and will take just about every smart mind we have, coupled with a smidgen of good fortune to right this ship as soon as possible.

If you own a hotel, run a management company or are an operator, rest assured that you are not alone. We all are in the same proverbial sinking ship, so we must rally together.

While everyone is scrambling, so too has my consulting agency been doing just that to provide triaged solutions for hotels that have seen their occupancies suffer an apoplectic drop. The basics of our program is outlined below and I encourage everyone to look at their respective businesses to see which of these elements make the most sense. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation and each property requires discerning minds to determine the best course of action.

• Small properties need to micro-focus on their past customer base. In moments of indecision or fear, people will naturally revert back to the familiar. Better the devil you know, as I often quip. As people emerge from isolation, their first step, after a happy return to their favorite local restaurant, may be to the comfort of your property. It may take some time before people become more adventurous with something new or untested, so fall back on what your CRM can tell you.

• Those who are members of a loyalty program should be targeted using geographic origin markets that are located within short drive distances. These are the ‘rubber tire’ markets that are less than a day away and without the need for