Tag: Hospitality Industry

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.

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.

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.

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.

NYC & Company is a destination management organization in New York City that puts together programs that attract tourists to the city.

New York City, industries like hotels, restaurants, retailing, and Broadway shows all come together and finance NYC & Company, which then creates programs for marketing the city abroad.

They have done very creative partnerships with London. They exchange some advertising space on buses in New York City. So New York City buses are promoting London, and the same thing happens in London.

Reasons to come to New York City are plenty: there are attractions such as Central Park, 9/11 memorial museums, and events like the New York City Marathon in the first weekend of November, Fashion Week, and many others.
During these times, it’s very hard to get a hotel room, and even if you do, they’re pretty expensive.

Industries have to come together to make it attractive for consumers to come to New York City, because we compete against the likes of Paris, London, and Tokyo.

Luxury Hotels in New York City
NYC has 14 historic landmark hotels. There are the big ones like the Marriott Marquis, Sheraton, and Hilton, all of which have about 2,000 rooms.

There are also very boutique hotels with up to 20 rooms like the Casablanca library hotel at Times Square.

So how do consumers choose? They usually look at TripAdvisor and see the ratings! Interestingly enough, the #1 rated hotel on Trip Advisor is a small 10 room hotel on 44th Street.

There is a group of small hotels which get very high ratings on TripAdvisor.
Restaurants in New York City
There are about 26,000 restaurants in New York City, many of them in Manhattan. Every year, about 26% of this inventory of 26,000 restaurants closes and something new comes.

It’s a very competitive and creative market! If you want to be an entrepreneur in restaurant business in New York City, you have to create and innovate.

Companies like STL Steakhouse and Jonathan Siegel are at the forefront of innovation. Jonathan Siegel has created an amazing new concept: a steakhouse for ladies, breaking away from the traditional Smith & Wollensky style of older gentleman serving in long white coats and people with huge steaks. Instead, steaks are smaller and there’s seafood.

People come for food, but they also come to see other people. There are also very interesting restaurants that are vegetarian, and you have pockets of restaurants, like in Chinatown, which are very authentic, Little Italy and Koreatown.

While in New York City, you’ll never go hungry! You can get the total culinary experience for the six nights, seven days. This includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s your choice where you’re going to eat. Variety is key: you can’t be at McDonald’s every day for every meal, even if it’s a Happy Meal.

First, decide on the criteria, and it can differ. For breakfast, it could be maybe grab and go, fast. For lunch, it could be something healthy. For dinner, something where it’s more about the atmospherics, the feeling, the mood of the place, and the food.

In a one-page memo, you can give us the list and links to those restaurants. If you have a favorite dish or have some preferred aesthetics of a restaurant, illustrate that.

Why do people travel? There are so many reasons for travel. It could be for special events, occasions, to see new sites, or just visit an interesting city. Let’s take New York City, for example. One of the greatest global cities in the world.

The idea for global tourism is that people leave their home country to experience something interesting that they can’t experience back home. And if you look at the list of the most popular international destinations — France is number one at 85 million international visitors, followed by Spain, and then the United States, at about 75 million. New York City itself gets about 13 million visitors a year.

So why then, do people come to New York City? It’s an amazing place, for one. Diversity. Different cultures. Chinatown. Little Italy. Koreatown. But, there are also very interesting sites too. Central Park is probably the most popular site because it’s open, free, and provides such a contrast in a park experience. Take for example, a traveler from Finland, who might view Central Park as akin to a Finnish forest in the middle of skyscrapers.

And there’s also the 9/11 memorial and museum. The One World Trade tower. And a lot of museums. The famous Metropolitan (Met). The Museum of Natural History. There are many sites here to choose from. A common travel custom now is for the tourist to act like a local and experience things that the locals do. Consumers find these experiences to be authentic. And that’s something that New York City can offer a lot of.
And now thanks to social media, you don’t even have to do a lot of advertising anymore.

In creating your destination marketing plans, look at various sources that rate and rank the most popular attractions and activities in New York City. You don’t have to choose the most popular ones, but use some criteria to choose the ones that you would actually have as part of your vacation plans. For instance, you’ll be traveling to New York City for one week. Find out what you would do during those six nights and seven days. Then describe this in a one-page memo in terms of the criteria you used.

The experience phase of the wheel of travel happens in the real world with physical products and services. They all rely on some type of real estate. Whether it is a theme park or driving from an airport to a city center, it is all about real estate. Furthermore, anything that happens at the experience phase relies on some sort of real estate. Staying in a hotel is a piece of real estate. Individuals going to eat at a dine-in restaurant is a piece of real estate.
The Companies That Invest in Hospitality
There are various companies that specialize in the hospitality and travel real estate of the general real estate market.
Some of these companies are the owners or professional investors who know how to invest in and maintain assets, such as hotels. We refer to companies like Host Hotels & Resorts, which emerged after Marriott spun off its real estate. Now, it has become a professional investor and asset manager of hotels.
Another company is Park Hotels, which is a real estate investment trust. They only own and professionally manage hotels. They manage any investments, renovations, and maintenance of the assets.
Consultants in the Hospitality Industry
Many consultant companies actively advise individual owners or investors. They provide various services, including valuation, food and beverage, tax, and debt advisory services. One of these companies is Hotel Valuation Services (HVS). Founded by Steve Rushmore, VHS is a legend in the industry that began in New York. It has spread globally with offices in London, Brazil, Hong Kong, and many more places.
Joes Lae, LaSalle (JLL) does consulting services like VHS but is also very active in brokerage. Brokerage is about making a buyer and seller meet to make the transaction. They advertise hotels and other properties to potential buyers and connect them with the sellers.

The wheels of travel are constantly going through waves of innovations. When we think about innovation, we think about design thinking. Design thinking is a methodology that helps us develop innovative solutions to pain points.

The reason we talk about hospitality, travel, and tourism from the perspective of the traveler is that we want to empathize with the traveler. Empathy is one of the first steps in the design thinking methodology. It enables you to think about the travel journey from the traveler’s point of view. You can then identify the things that just don’t work, the pain points.

Think about the wheel of travel as if you were the traveler, and go through it from that perspective. For example, identify yourself as a young independent traveler that is traveling alone. Think about that and think about the dream phase. Think about the planning phase, the comparison phase, the booking phase, the travel phase, the experience and stay phase, and the post-trip review phase. Empathize with that young independent traveler throughout the travel wheel. Then identify all the pain points you can think of. Identify the things that don’t work, things that require too much effort with very little payoff, and things you’d like to change.

Once you’ve identified the pain points, think of a solution to fix them. That’s how innovation works. Think of the customer pain points using the design thinking methodology.

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At the XXX (please insert inaudible name here) Center, all of our programs are rooted in that innovative framework. We’ve designed them with one goal – making people job-ready but also innovative and entrepreneurial.

We have an innovation lab at the XXX (please insert inaudible name here) Center. We would be very happy to take you through our lab that is designed to have our students become the innovators of tomorrow. We also host entrepreneurs that start in a garage with an idea and then scale up to become a larger disruptor in the travel and hospitality wheel. One example is Askblue.

Askblue is an artificial intelligence that takes a deep dive into all of the data available on the cloud. It’s mines that data and enables a completely automated concierge service that is free from any human inputs. It offers concierge services in hotels but also in restaurants.

Imagine you’re in your hotel room and you’re wondering, “Oh, when is checkout time?”

Traditionally, you might call the front desk or find an information sheet somewhere in your room. With Askblue AI, you can simply say “When do I need to check out?” Askblue would then tell you that checkout time is 12:00 tomorrow. Askblue goes into the cloud and takes that information from the hotel website. You don’t have to do the searching, you just have to Askblue.

That’s one of the examples of the innovation that we see every day in hospitality, travel, and tourism.

The wheel of travel is changing and it’s providing a host of wonderful job opportunities. This ranges from existing jobs such as hotel general manager, front of house receptionist, or an investor or a consultant in real estate development..It also includes newer jobs, such as working for social media or the new artificial intelligence companies, ensuring that the customer service takes full advantage of what the data can give them.

Even from the Second World War palace hotels in the ’50s and ’60s, the model of traditional hotels has changed over time. From the internationalization of hotel chains, the proliferation of brands, the emergence of online travel agents, and to the cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning – the wheel of travel is changing constantly.

Hospitality, travel, and tourism is not just fun for the customer. It also can be really fun to experience as part of the business. Whether you want to take on a traditional career or whether you want to be an entrepreneur, there are ample opportunities in the space.

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Trade shows are a way for people to come and see the latest offerings from their favorite companies. Managing trade shows and business events effectively results in revenues for both the hospitality venue and the exhibitors.
Know your attendees
When designing a trade show or business event, you must think about your attendees. There are the consumers who come to visit the venue, and there are the exhibitors that come to present and/or sell their products to a captive audience eager to buy.
Determine how long the trade show will run
You also need to determine how many days that the show will run, and which visitors will be eligible to attend for those days. Some trade shows are open to the public for all days. Other trade shows, like the New York Times Travel Shows, only allow travel trade partners (e.g., travel agents, tour operators, etc.) to attend on the first day, and then opens it up to everyone for the remaining days.
Booth rentals and revenues
The hospitality venue generates revenues via ticket sales from the visitors and booth rentals from the exhibitors. The venue space is parceled out into different areas and rented to the exhibitors, which then bring their magic to fill and transform the space to create an experience for the visitors.
The booth space is especially important. A visitor will generally spend more money at booths located in the center of the exhibition hall rather than a booth tucked away into a corner somewhere.
Each exhibitor and their staff need to think about how they can entice visitors to choose their booth over the others. One idea is to provide giveaways. There are also companies that cater to special lighting or special carpeting for trade shows specifically with the purpose of enticing visitors.

Conventions play a major role in the hospitality industry. As professionals plan their travels, there’s a lot of specifics event planners need to keep in mind.

Corporate conventions usually take place in the same location every year. For example, if you’re a tech company that is located in Silicon Valley, a lot of your corporate conventions will probably take place in Silicon Valley. It’s very different from association conferences.

Think of my dentist. We have dentists that are located all over the United States. The association that hosts the annual meeting for these dentists will probably want to rotate where the location of the convention will be.

For example, one year it will be in the Northeast and, the next year, it might be in California. It is very important to choose a location that is appealing to people. Because if you, as a dentist, decide where you might get your annual education or training, you might prefer to go to a place like Hawaii over a cold place in the winter, like Detroit.

So, a lot of associations think very carefully about which locations they select and, the destinations work closely with the organizers to attract them. There is also seasonality in terms of days of the week. If we think of conventions, the most popular days for conventions to be hosted are usually Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Those are peak times. A lot of the venues, such as hotels and convention centers, will be very busy during those times.

The reason is that if you are attending a convention as part of your profession, you want it to take place during working hours, during the working day. You might have to travel to that convention.

If I’m based here in New York and I need to go to a convention in Florida, I might want to leave the day before. So by starting your convention on a Tuesday, it means you give people travel time on Monday. By ending on a Thursday, it means, again, they can travel home on Friday, and they still have their weekend.

Many conventions will also take place anytime between March to May and then again between September to November. Staying away from the main holiday periods. You want to make sure you host a convention at a time when a lot of people are around, not when they’re all traveling or when they’re on vacation.