The hotel company Marriott is a global leader with 29 brands, 6,800 locations in 150 countries, and various lifestyle brands. They also have an element, which is an extended stay. They have Aloft, a sort of an innovator in this space for Gen X and millennials. Then they have Moxy, which is probably targeting Generation Z, which will be a customer group in the future. So those are the brands. And then they also have AC Hotel, which is a company they bought. It’s a European Spanish company. And that profile, sort of a Spanish lifestyle with tapas and other Spanish cuisines in New York City.
How Does the Consumer Differentiate These Brands?
And having 29 brands, it’s a challenge because of consumer demand- the same consumer might be a business traveler during the week and leave a traveler during the weekend. The brands need to position themselves very clearly in the marketplace. The challenge is that the same customer can use the brand for different purposes.
Luxury
Within Mariott’s luxury category, there are two subsets. St. Regis and Ritz Carlton fall in the classic luxury subset. They also have distinctive luxury, which is the joint venture between Bill Marriott and Ian Schrager.
Ian Schrager is an innovator in the 1980s after Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton created the first boutique hotel in San Francisco with the theme. And then Ian Schrager and his partner, Steve Rubell, who founded Studio 54, got stuck with the hotel. That’s how that segment started to evolve. Ian talks about host boutique hotels, which are also called lifestyle hotels. So what makes them different? The consumer who considers a lifestyle brand has a solid affinity for it because it is part of their lifestyle.
Lifestyle Brands
Lifestyle brands emulate the customer’s life versus traditional brands that offer a standard fare. A customer seeking a New York City experience may choose two hotels, where they’ll stay for, say, seven days. The hotels they pick will be ones that really cater to their needs and desires.

Dr. Jukka Laitamaki is a clinical professor at New York University SBS Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality. His background is management consulting and he holds a doctorate from Cornell Hotel School. His expertise is in strategy, branding, and business development.

With his background in management consulting, Dr. Laitamaki was with McKinsey and Company and Service Management Group, and worked in the hospitality industry in several sectors in Europe and the United States. As a professor, he has taught in all six continents in executive programs.

An avid world explorer, Dr. Laitamaki has traveled to a total of 63 countries. He has also spoken at the United Nations. His most recent research is on sustainable tourism and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites. He has focused on Cuba which has 11 sites and four historic city centers.

Sustainable development, especially in tourism hospitality, is very important to Dr. Laitamaki. The principle that we should leave this planet in a better condition than we received it for the future generation is important. UNESCO does wonderful work in preserving many historic, cultural, and natural sites.

Sustainability in the hotel sector is also important because it saves energy. More consumers, especially millennials, are looking for environmentally conscious companies. Companies like Marriott, for instance, has a brand called Element, which is an extended stay brand. Element is very energy efficient and uses recycled materials for their buildings from floor to ceiling.

With this online hospitality education course you will learn about the tourism industry. You will learn about global destinations as well as a lot about New York City. Why do consumers come here? You will learn about hotels and how consumers choose hotels, cruises, and car rental services. You will learn about this growing industry and how it’s transforming.

How do you know what makes a great hotel? Well, consumers can use TripAdvisor. They can look at consumer reports. And they can find out what the most preferred brands are. If you look at the JD Power list, you’ll see all the best hotel companies. These comparison companies use specific criteria to rank hotels. Often it is based on the service, location, loyalty program, and facilities provided. But there could also be other criteria considered.

Think about restaurant ranking lists. For instance, the Zagat survey is a respected publication that ranks and rates restaurants. They look at the food service and decor. And they use a zero-to-five-point scale. Bernardin and other New York restaurants usually top global restaurant rankings. So, these are just some of the ways to set a benchmark and make your restaurant or hotel successful. Similarly, you can use a list like the 6A to help make your destination successful globally.

To understand what makes a hotel successful, you need to follow and understand your customer’s journey. Firstly, they dream about staying in a destination and hotel. Then they do their research. Following this, they choose the hotel, make the reservation, travel to the hotel, check-in, stay and check out. Finally, the hotel keeps in touch with them by asking them to review their stay and persuade them to sign up for their loyalty program.

During their stay, the room experience is essential. Rooms don’t have to be big to be good. A small room can have efficient service. If you are in a luxury hotel, the room has more amenities. So, again, the room is important. As is the food and beverage service. What services does the hotel provide? Remember, overall service quality is also critical.

Administrative processes are also vital to making your hotel successful. The check-in process, the check-out process, and overall customer satisfaction. Not to mention the cost and the fees. How much do you pay for a hotel? Because above all else, it’s always about value for money.
Yes, people in New York City pay over $1,000 for a room at the Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, St. Regis, or Peninsula. And that’s because they offer value for the price, and they feel it’s a reasonable, fair rate.

However, in comparison, at independent hotels like Moxy and Lifestyle hotels, people may pay $200-300 for a night’s stay. So you’re likely not expecting as much. However, it is still good value for money as although what you get in those hotels is less than the more expensive hotels above, it’s relatively competitive for the rate you pay.

When you consider all the criteria above, you will understand precisely what it takes to have a successful hotel that people want to stay at.

New York City competes against Paris and London. These are all known cities.
But if you want to start a tourism destination, there are six things that need to happen. I have developed this framework called the Six As.

The first is awareness. You need to build it. How do you do that? You may want to have some world-class events taking place in your destination. For instance, Finland organizes crazy competitions like marsh football. Teams play football in a marsh and then in a swamp. They also organize a wife-carrying competition. You carry your wife, and you have to be legally wedded.

In addition, they organize throwing cell phones and rubber boards, which gets the country publicity — global publicity. So, that would be one of many ways to create buzz and awareness.

Then, you need attractions. New York City has an amazing set of attractions, from Central Park to museums.

Then, you need activities. In New York, you have a fashion week, a lot of trade shows, and the New York City Marathon. So these are world-class activities, that also bring awareness to the destination. More often than not, they’re the reason to visit New York City.

Out of those attractions and activities, you can form associations or consumer forums associations, which is basically their perception of the destination. When you hear the word New York City, what comes to mind? It could be the New York City Marathon; it could be some of the movies (e.g., When Harry Met Sally).

So, New York City is a place for movie making, which helps put the destination on the map. And there are actual tours; people go around New York City to hunt down the places where the movies were made. That’s a great way to create associations.

Then, you need access. Access is, especially for international tourists, the flights. How many direct flights from your home country come to JFK or Newark? And then how do you get to the hotel? How is ground transportation organized? In this case, airports — like LaGuardia — are behind the many international airports. But they are investing in this. So, we need to have very good access from the airport to the city and back.

Finally, it’s affordability. That’s the A number six. How much does it cost?

I benchmarked places like Arctic destinations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska. I measured all these items, including affordability. Of course, you take a perspective. In my case, I studied a tourist from New York City who wants to go on an arctic holiday.

The most competitive was Iceland. Alaska was the most known. But when it came to activities and attractions, Finland offered the best. So, this is the way to do it.
You can calculate the actual cost using search engines like Kayak, which gives you the airfares and four-star hotel rates.

I did one about jazz festivals around the world. You have to factor in how much it costs for five days to attend a jazz festival in Havana, Montreal.

These are the necessary things. In summary, the six A’s you need are awareness, attractions, activities, associations, access, and affordability.

Hotels have begun to view the home-sharing industry as an alternative and a competitor. They’re also making sure guests know many of the desirable hotel amenities. Security, housekeeping, and round-the-clock service are not available at many home-sharing services.

Hotels offer a wide range of services. They also employ a large number of people. Home-sharing services began as a fee-based online matchmaking service for tourists seeking lodging. A local host with a spare bedroom or apartment wanted to rent it out for a few dollars.

Airbnb can scale extremely quickly because it doesn’t need a lot of host-owned and managed real estate. Home-sharing doesn’t need a massive network of housekeeping, maintenance, sales, and marketing services. Airbnb has grown to be larger than many hotel companies. This is due to the number of units available and the number of guests they can accommodate.

When you consider the hotel industry from the perspective of ownership, corporations like LaSalle and Sunstone aim to buy hotel assets, have them properly operated, and profit from them. In contrast, an apartment owner might list a unit on Airbnb or a similar service to rent for a night. Yet, that individual is unlikely to buy a property to turn it into an Airbnb investment.

A hotel ownership company wants to create an attractive real estate return. An Airbnb host usually wants to reduce part of their monthly ownership expenditures. There was no incentive to earn a real estate return like there is in the hotel investment market. This trait alone aided the expansion of the house-sharing companies.

Everyone knows Airbnb.

Founded in a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment, Airbnb is now valued at more than $22 billion.

The great opportunity for a hotel alternative was recognized by the Airbnb founders when they realized that San Francisco needed more hotel rooms. With insufficient availability, the founders believed that alternative accommodations should be available for anyone travelling, whether for business or for leisure.

The founders thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if people shared their homes with travelers? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a platform, or a marketplace, for renters and travellers to meet?”. With these questions, Airbnb was born.

The founders started by creating a basic platform where people could post their couch or bedroom for rent to travellers coming to San Francisco at a busy time. They created a value proposition of alternative accommodations that were not only easy to book but also much cheaper than hotels. Over time, the experiential aspect was added with the notion of living like locals, staying with locals, and meeting locals. It was this experiential aspect that really helped Airbnb overall.

Starting in San Francisco, Airbnb eventually grew and expanded into other key American states, and eventually they achieved globalization and entered Europe and Asia. As Airbnb grew so did their offering, with different services, experiences, and attractions added to the platform. They also started hiring hospitality executives to train Airbnb employees and hosts on how to act and think so they could compete with hotels. This was one of their key differentiators. Now, Airbnb is regarded as one of the most well-known alternative accommodation platforms.

The key to Airbnb’s success? Persistency. The founders truly believed in their idea, and they never gave up pursing it. In the beginning, the founder’s received 150 rejection letters when seeking funding money. But these rejections never stopped them for pursuing their ideas, and eventually they received the funding. Persistency was their key to success.

We are going to talk about the seven rules of building a successful business. We’re also going to use an example company that everyone knows: Airbnb.

The number-one rule for building a successful business is to recognize an opportunity. Airbnb founders, when they were starving students in San Francisco, realized that there are many citywide combinations where people cannot get hotel rooms. So, they came up with an idea.

They bought an air mattress for their apartment and made money off of it. That’s why it’s called Airbnb.

The number-two business rule to creating a successful business is to evaluate said business with critical thinking. Airbnb’s founders — one is an artist, another is an engineer — evaluated the offers after they got their first customers for a citywide convention. They thought “Hey, wait a minute! This might be an opportunity. How can we make it bigger and better for everyone?”.

Number three is building a team. It is one of the most important things in business because, as a leader, you’re as successful as your team. So, Airbnb owners started hiring older and talented individuals in the San Francisco area.

Number four is to write the business plan. It is the roadmap to success. So you have to write it with its components to show your company’s mission and idea’s vision.

Number five is gathering resources, and one of the most important resources is financial. They are what you need to create your company; anywhere from human to material resources.

Number six is to decide the ownership. Airbnb founders didn’t start the company by themselves. They had different partners. So, you have to decide the owner, the ownership structure, and the main shareholders. This is important, especially when you start with a friend or a colleague.

The last rule is to create wealth. Once you start creating value for any industry, people will recognize that you and your company are solving an existing problem and that you’re creating solutions with your ideas. Consequently, you’re going to create wealth, not only for yourself but for society as well.

To summarize the seven rules for creating a successful business: Start with an idea; recognize the problem, how to solve it; who can help you solve this problem, and then, write a business plan. Once decided, look for resources; anywhere from financial to human resources. Lastly, create wealth and value for your market and your society.

Hosting a successful business event or convention is an important part of hospitality management. There are a variety of types of venues, including the following:
Convention Centers
Convention centers are typically larger in size, allowing them to host very large meetings and conventions. A good example is the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.
These spaces are generally a bare boned concrete space that can be set up the way you want to bring your event to life. A stage can be brought in, and very often there’s roll out seating that can be tiered, in rows, or with round tables.
Hotels
Some business events or conventions don’t require the amount of space that a traditional convention center holds. Hotels come in all shapes and sizes, different star ratings, and different styles from traditional to very modern. They generate revenue from renting out event space in either a ballroom or smaller meeting rooms. The ballroom can be divided up into smaller areas or can be fully used and set up with staging, lighting, and production elements.
Guests for the event may also need a room to sleep in and need to eat during the day. This is a great way for the hotel to market and maximize revenues by selling other services that it’s already offering.
Unusual venues
Event organizers sometimes choose unusual venues to make sure their event stands out from the competition. Examples would be a museum, a zoo, or a theme park. These unusual venues provide a surprise and something that will make people take note. These different atmospheres and décor can provide a more personal venue for your event.
Cruise ships are another notable example. In the wintertime they may be docked at the harbor. You now have everything you need for a large convention including rooms, big spaces, big theaters and meeting rooms. The ship also doesn’t have to leave the harbor.

When we think of MICE, the C in the term stands for conventions or conferences. This is a gathering of professionals who come together to discuss a specific topic. The United Nations General Assembly is a good example.

Conventions come in a variety of types and sizes. A corporate convention is the first type. Companies such as Apple and Microsoft, and any other corporation you can think of organize these. They want to gather their employees, shareholders, or investors to discuss a new product they’re introducing, for example.

However, there is a second aspect of conventions: associations, which are slightly different. Associations are groups of people who come together for a specific interest. Perhaps you have a family member who works in the medical industry, such as a dentist. A dentist will be a member of a dental association, and these organizations provide continuing education for individuals in the field.

Consider this: if a dentist has been out of school for a few years, you want them to be up to date on the newest research and treatments for dental issues.

These types of associations also hold annual conferences, and they can be enormous. The International Contact Lens Association, for example, has a yearly meeting that attracts over 10,000 participants.

Different destinations across the world will compete for the right to host that convention over all others. That’s 10,000 people who will need a hotel room, food to eat every night, shopping, and transportation. It’s a lot of spending for destinations to attract that kind of convention.