Take preventive action!
•Make sure job descriptions accurately represent the real duties of the managers and other salaried employees at your property, Conine advised. Communicate expectations to employees to make sure they stay within those responsibilities.
•Look carefully at state and federal rules and standards regarding who qualified for salaried exempt status, Lipkin said. If a salaried employee qualifies for overtime pay, either modify your operation or pay that person on an hourly basis, where you compensate them appropriately.
•Conduct a “lawdit,” Sherwyn said. Hire a firm that specializes in labor and employment law to look at your job classifications, descriptions and actual work conducted by each employee. They’re familiar with this complex area of law and can provide you with direction should they find any violations.
2. Retaliation
Scenario: An employee files a complaint alleging sexual harassment in the workplace. Two weeks later, that same employee is fired for poor performance. She sues the employer, alleging her termination was because of the sexual harassment complaint—thus discouraging other employees from filing similar complaints in the future.
“Such a series of events makes it relatively easy for an employee to complain that there were related,” Conine said.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Monday, March 19, 2012
Hotel customers are demanding more personalized service
Changing consumer habits and individual preferences are creating opportunities and challenges in the hotel industry, based on the fact technology is giving guests a formidable power to dictate—and get—exactly what they want.
“The speed with which things are changing today is exponential,” said Roger Hill II, CEO and chairman of Chicago-based hospitality design, procurement and branding firm Gettys. “And what was successful yesterday may very well not be successful today. So that means hoteliers have to make sure that they understand what is happening all around them so they can stay ahead of their competition.”
That can be a daunting task, said Susan Helstab, executive VP of marketing at Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. “The shift over the last three years in what consumers expect the companies they do business with to deliver for them is really frightening, in terms of how quickly those expectations have changed and how high they are,” she said.
The overarching general trend is toward the pursuit of perceived value, based on individual tastes and preferences, rather than just rate, said Peter Yesawich, a veteran hospitality researcher and analyst who is now vice chairman of Orlando-based hospitality marketing services firm MMGY Global. “And what that means,” he said, “is that shopping behavior is very aggressive now for consumers when they’re booking hotels.”
In fact, Yesawich said, the sweeping changes in consumer behavior represent a genuine sea change for the industry. “And it’s being driven by transparency in pricing and the consumer’s ability to find alternatives.”
Luxury segment leads the way
Although major trends such as a more informed consumer and a powerful desire for a personalized experience reach across all three basic market categories, nowhere has the change been more dramatic than in the luxury segment.
The biggest change in consumer behavior during the past year, Helstab said, is the ever-increasing use of tablet devices and smartphones. As a result, Four Seasons revenues from iPad transactions increased by 200% from 2010 to 2011, Helstab said, and she expects an equal jump this year.
In turn, partly as an aftereffect of the recession, “consumers have become much more resourceful in seeking and finding value,” said Janet L. Smalley, VP of portfolio strategy and research for luxury and full-service brands at Marriott International. “They have also aligned themselves more with luxury brands that have a truly differentiated brand value proposition. They’ve started to require hotels in the luxury segment to deliver an experience that is worth what they’re going to have to pay for it.”
A key element of that experience will be personalization, or customization, as it was identified in The Luxury Consumer in the New Digital World: Then & Now, a study completed by Four Seasons earlier this year. In the study, one-third of respondents said they expected products and services to be customized to their individual needs and desires.
Jonathan Frolich, GM of the Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel in New York, sees the same trend.
“Consumers are craving authentic local experiences and an emotional connection, whether that be through food, art, fashion, events or people,” he said. “They are moving away from a desire for traditional 5-star, white glove service and toward a more relaxed and personalized kind of service where staff are more like ‘local insiders’ and ‘hosts’ rather than people of servitude.”
Based on the findings of its recent research, Four Seasons is working hard to empower consumers to self-serve based on their own interests. “We have to give them both the tools and the content so that they can indeed customize their experience,” Helstab said.
On the Four Seasons website, Helstab said, they can gather information on how someone visits, serving those potential guests content on their next visit that is more relevant to them. For example, if a guest was on the site searching at spas at every hotel or was more interested in the destination, “… the next time they visit, we can bring forward the specific kind of information we already know they are most interested in,” she said.
Creating a guest experience
Hill cited Gettys’ recent renovation work for the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai as another example of how distinct preferences are driving market trends and innovation. “At times, it’s very much a business hotel,” he said. “But at other times, it’s an extremely leisure-focused hotel. So, in our new guestroom design, we created a way for (the guest) to be able to maximize value by offering rooms that are more personalized, based on the type of traveler.”
Hilton Worldwide also is looking at the food-and-beverage offerings in its upscale Homewood Suites and midmarket Home2 Suites brands, said global head of brand management Bill Duncan.
“Food really matters in any hotel,” he said. “But it’s particularly important in the extended-stay category. It’s incredibly important to the value proposition and consumer decision making. And in our research, we’re finding that its importance is being elevated. It’s now a higher priority in a consumer’s consideration set, and they’re also becoming more vocal about it.”
Hilton is analyzing its menus and delivery of services for both brands. And among the upcoming changes will be more regional variety to address individual geographic preferences, Duncan said.
In a similar move, Hampton Inn recently regionalized its breakfast offerings on a market-by-market basis, said Gettys principal Dan Pierce. And client The Henry Hotel in Detroit, a member of the Autograph Collection, also is beginning to analyze its F&B product in a way that better matches up with identifiable guest preferences.
Gettys also is working with Hard Rock’s all-inclusive division. At the Hard Rock Punta Cana Resort in the Dominican Republic, Gettys helped the hotel develop a personalized wedding package with celebrity wedding designer Colin Cowie. “That’s a good example of how you’re going to see destination resorts address these changing consumer habits and a desire for personalized experiences,” Pierce said.
Guiding owner/operators
Given the profound changes and the business opportunities—and challenges—they represent, owner/operators are looking to their brands for leadership and guidance, Yesawich said.
“They’re waiting for their brands to lead the way,” he said. “It’s very difficult for them to address these issues on an individual property-by-property basis because what they might do could conflict with brand standards and so on. So they’re waiting for guidance.”
At the same time, however, Pierce said, the traditional way in which hotel companies dealt with franchisees also is changing.
“We’ve been working with the Hampton Inn brand for the last 18 months, and they are demonstrating that there is a new paradigm as it relates to the interaction between the hotel brand and the hotel owners,” he said. “Traditionally, that relationship was somewhat ‘top down,’ with the brand pushing things down toward the franchisee. But what we’ve learned from our Hampton Inn relationship is that consumer trends and patterns of behavior are evolving so quickly that it’s no longer viable to just pass stuff from the top down. It has to be a collaborative approach to identifying and addressing all of these emerging trends.”
Hotel brands should constantly be listening to their owner/operators and engaging them in constructive dialogue to make the brand stronger, he said.
Despite all the dramatic and ongoing changes that are the subject of so much analysis and debate, one thing has not changed, said Hilton’s Duncan: the well-defined market value of the old-fashioned virtues of the hospitality industry.
“The basics still matter—smiles, knowing a guest’s name, a clean suite and bathroom, and providing good service when a guest needs it,” he said. “Those are still the real drivers of the market and they are not changing. That is an incredibly important factor based on the research we’ve done over the last year. And we find that amazing because of all the talk about new trends that are having so much impact on the market. And we also find that the importance of those ‘basics’ is actually increasing in the marketplace. So we believe that you have to make sure you have those basics right before you start thinking about the ‘innovation du jour.’”
“The speed with which things are changing today is exponential,” said Roger Hill II, CEO and chairman of Chicago-based hospitality design, procurement and branding firm Gettys. “And what was successful yesterday may very well not be successful today. So that means hoteliers have to make sure that they understand what is happening all around them so they can stay ahead of their competition.”
That can be a daunting task, said Susan Helstab, executive VP of marketing at Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. “The shift over the last three years in what consumers expect the companies they do business with to deliver for them is really frightening, in terms of how quickly those expectations have changed and how high they are,” she said.
The overarching general trend is toward the pursuit of perceived value, based on individual tastes and preferences, rather than just rate, said Peter Yesawich, a veteran hospitality researcher and analyst who is now vice chairman of Orlando-based hospitality marketing services firm MMGY Global. “And what that means,” he said, “is that shopping behavior is very aggressive now for consumers when they’re booking hotels.”
In fact, Yesawich said, the sweeping changes in consumer behavior represent a genuine sea change for the industry. “And it’s being driven by transparency in pricing and the consumer’s ability to find alternatives.”
Luxury segment leads the way
Although major trends such as a more informed consumer and a powerful desire for a personalized experience reach across all three basic market categories, nowhere has the change been more dramatic than in the luxury segment.
The biggest change in consumer behavior during the past year, Helstab said, is the ever-increasing use of tablet devices and smartphones. As a result, Four Seasons revenues from iPad transactions increased by 200% from 2010 to 2011, Helstab said, and she expects an equal jump this year.
In turn, partly as an aftereffect of the recession, “consumers have become much more resourceful in seeking and finding value,” said Janet L. Smalley, VP of portfolio strategy and research for luxury and full-service brands at Marriott International. “They have also aligned themselves more with luxury brands that have a truly differentiated brand value proposition. They’ve started to require hotels in the luxury segment to deliver an experience that is worth what they’re going to have to pay for it.”
A key element of that experience will be personalization, or customization, as it was identified in The Luxury Consumer in the New Digital World: Then & Now, a study completed by Four Seasons earlier this year. In the study, one-third of respondents said they expected products and services to be customized to their individual needs and desires.
Jonathan Frolich, GM of the Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel in New York, sees the same trend.
“Consumers are craving authentic local experiences and an emotional connection, whether that be through food, art, fashion, events or people,” he said. “They are moving away from a desire for traditional 5-star, white glove service and toward a more relaxed and personalized kind of service where staff are more like ‘local insiders’ and ‘hosts’ rather than people of servitude.”
Based on the findings of its recent research, Four Seasons is working hard to empower consumers to self-serve based on their own interests. “We have to give them both the tools and the content so that they can indeed customize their experience,” Helstab said.
On the Four Seasons website, Helstab said, they can gather information on how someone visits, serving those potential guests content on their next visit that is more relevant to them. For example, if a guest was on the site searching at spas at every hotel or was more interested in the destination, “… the next time they visit, we can bring forward the specific kind of information we already know they are most interested in,” she said.
Creating a guest experience
Hill cited Gettys’ recent renovation work for the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai as another example of how distinct preferences are driving market trends and innovation. “At times, it’s very much a business hotel,” he said. “But at other times, it’s an extremely leisure-focused hotel. So, in our new guestroom design, we created a way for (the guest) to be able to maximize value by offering rooms that are more personalized, based on the type of traveler.”
Hilton Worldwide also is looking at the food-and-beverage offerings in its upscale Homewood Suites and midmarket Home2 Suites brands, said global head of brand management Bill Duncan.
“Food really matters in any hotel,” he said. “But it’s particularly important in the extended-stay category. It’s incredibly important to the value proposition and consumer decision making. And in our research, we’re finding that its importance is being elevated. It’s now a higher priority in a consumer’s consideration set, and they’re also becoming more vocal about it.”
Hilton is analyzing its menus and delivery of services for both brands. And among the upcoming changes will be more regional variety to address individual geographic preferences, Duncan said.
In a similar move, Hampton Inn recently regionalized its breakfast offerings on a market-by-market basis, said Gettys principal Dan Pierce. And client The Henry Hotel in Detroit, a member of the Autograph Collection, also is beginning to analyze its F&B product in a way that better matches up with identifiable guest preferences.
Gettys also is working with Hard Rock’s all-inclusive division. At the Hard Rock Punta Cana Resort in the Dominican Republic, Gettys helped the hotel develop a personalized wedding package with celebrity wedding designer Colin Cowie. “That’s a good example of how you’re going to see destination resorts address these changing consumer habits and a desire for personalized experiences,” Pierce said.
Guiding owner/operators
Given the profound changes and the business opportunities—and challenges—they represent, owner/operators are looking to their brands for leadership and guidance, Yesawich said.
“They’re waiting for their brands to lead the way,” he said. “It’s very difficult for them to address these issues on an individual property-by-property basis because what they might do could conflict with brand standards and so on. So they’re waiting for guidance.”
At the same time, however, Pierce said, the traditional way in which hotel companies dealt with franchisees also is changing.
“We’ve been working with the Hampton Inn brand for the last 18 months, and they are demonstrating that there is a new paradigm as it relates to the interaction between the hotel brand and the hotel owners,” he said. “Traditionally, that relationship was somewhat ‘top down,’ with the brand pushing things down toward the franchisee. But what we’ve learned from our Hampton Inn relationship is that consumer trends and patterns of behavior are evolving so quickly that it’s no longer viable to just pass stuff from the top down. It has to be a collaborative approach to identifying and addressing all of these emerging trends.”
Hotel brands should constantly be listening to their owner/operators and engaging them in constructive dialogue to make the brand stronger, he said.
Despite all the dramatic and ongoing changes that are the subject of so much analysis and debate, one thing has not changed, said Hilton’s Duncan: the well-defined market value of the old-fashioned virtues of the hospitality industry.
“The basics still matter—smiles, knowing a guest’s name, a clean suite and bathroom, and providing good service when a guest needs it,” he said. “Those are still the real drivers of the market and they are not changing. That is an incredibly important factor based on the research we’ve done over the last year. And we find that amazing because of all the talk about new trends that are having so much impact on the market. And we also find that the importance of those ‘basics’ is actually increasing in the marketplace. So we believe that you have to make sure you have those basics right before you start thinking about the ‘innovation du jour.’”
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Comp set selection key to driving strategy
REPORT FROM THE U.S.—There is a big difference between who you think your hotel should compete with and who it does compete with. When determining true competitors, you should always head toward the latter—with a healthy dose of logic, analytics and perspective guiding your way.
That was the message championed by panelists Tuesday during “Who Are My True Competitors?” a webinar presented by HSMAI University in conjunction with HotelNewsNow.com.
“Sometimes you have to understand that a 120% index is not always great or reasonable,” said Orly Ripmaster, managing director at STR Analytics, a sister company of HotelNewsNow.com. “Being better than average doesn’t necessarily mean you’re overachieving.” It might simply mean you’re in the wrong competitive set, she said.
Hoteliers must remember why they formulate competitive sets in the first place. When chosen correctly, they will help owners, GMs and revenue managers better understand their property’s “actual, honest performance” as benchmarked against competitors, Ripmaster said.
Aspirational comp sets can be helpful, but only if hoteliers are trying to keep tabs on the high end of the market, she said. The standard comp set should accurately reflect a hotel’s current level of performance.
“Make sure you’re very honest and removing all ego and removing all assumptions from that,” Ripmaster concluded.
Viewing local competitors through the guests’ eyes can be a helpful exercise, said David Bland, senior director, Hospitality & Leisure Group for Alvarez & Marsal Real Estate Advisory Services LLC.
“Know your competitors as well as they do or better. Know them through the guest eye,” he said.
Hoteliers should visit properties in their competitive sets to see what services and offerings they provide and how their hotels stack up. This is especially important coming out of the downturn, Bland said, when many properties have delayed renovations or upgrades and might no longer fit as true competitors.
From information to strategy
Even the best comp set is useless if it doesn’t translate into action, said Klaus Kohlmayr, senior director of consulting of IDeaS, a revenue management consulting company. Hoteliers should take the information they glean from comp set analyses to guide strategy using the following five steps:
1. Understand your competitors
How does a property compare to key competitors in the following measures:
•product/place/price/promotion;
•objectives and strategies;
•strengths/weaknesses; and
•reaction patterns.
2. Evaluate the level of danger
Hoteliers should first look at segment overlap. Does the given hotel target the same corporate accounts as its competitors? If so, to what extent?
Secondly, they should determine how much influence a competitor has to steer away certain accounts, Kohlmayr said.
If, for example, Hotel A is within the same five-mile radius to a local corporate account as Hotel B, they both likely will be competing for that account—hence, strong segment overlap. However, if Hotel A is only a block from the corporate headquarters and Hotel B is four miles away, Hotel B probably has less power of influence. Hotel A should respond accordingly by driving up rates for the local corporate account.
3. Evaluate products and services
After considering the most important services they offer guests, hoteliers should then determine how those services match up against the offerings of key competitors. This will allow hoteliers to determine any competitive advantages they might have in the market, as well as where their competitors rank in order from most competitive to least competitive, Kohlmayr said.
4. Research your price positioning
Any number of analytic tools—or hotel websites and online travel agencies—allow for an accurate, overall look at where a hotel’s price falls against its competitors.
5. Put it all together
Once they have compiled the necessary data, hoteliers will be better able to drive rate gains, target certain accounts, or leverage previously unseen market segments, Kohlmayr said.
Beyond the local market
“The industry is becoming more and more complex,” Kohlmayr said. Hoteliers must respond by looking outside their local markets to competitors in the broader global and online communities.
“You not only need to look at your pricing and your ranking and positioning in your hotel, but also your ranking and positioning out in the wider world,” he said. “… You also need to increasingly start looking at your reputation.”
Hoteliers must consider social media, OTAs and TripAdvisor in any comp set analysis, Kohlmayr said.
Establishing multiple comp sets can help hoteliers gauge performance on a regional or national level, Ripmaster said. If a property has an extremely large convention space, for example, it would make sense for that property to benchmark against a handful of similar properties throughout the country.
That was the message championed by panelists Tuesday during “Who Are My True Competitors?” a webinar presented by HSMAI University in conjunction with HotelNewsNow.com.
“Sometimes you have to understand that a 120% index is not always great or reasonable,” said Orly Ripmaster, managing director at STR Analytics, a sister company of HotelNewsNow.com. “Being better than average doesn’t necessarily mean you’re overachieving.” It might simply mean you’re in the wrong competitive set, she said.
Hoteliers must remember why they formulate competitive sets in the first place. When chosen correctly, they will help owners, GMs and revenue managers better understand their property’s “actual, honest performance” as benchmarked against competitors, Ripmaster said.
Aspirational comp sets can be helpful, but only if hoteliers are trying to keep tabs on the high end of the market, she said. The standard comp set should accurately reflect a hotel’s current level of performance.
“Make sure you’re very honest and removing all ego and removing all assumptions from that,” Ripmaster concluded.
Viewing local competitors through the guests’ eyes can be a helpful exercise, said David Bland, senior director, Hospitality & Leisure Group for Alvarez & Marsal Real Estate Advisory Services LLC.
“Know your competitors as well as they do or better. Know them through the guest eye,” he said.
Hoteliers should visit properties in their competitive sets to see what services and offerings they provide and how their hotels stack up. This is especially important coming out of the downturn, Bland said, when many properties have delayed renovations or upgrades and might no longer fit as true competitors.
From information to strategy
Even the best comp set is useless if it doesn’t translate into action, said Klaus Kohlmayr, senior director of consulting of IDeaS, a revenue management consulting company. Hoteliers should take the information they glean from comp set analyses to guide strategy using the following five steps:
1. Understand your competitors
How does a property compare to key competitors in the following measures:
•product/place/price/promotion;
•objectives and strategies;
•strengths/weaknesses; and
•reaction patterns.
2. Evaluate the level of danger
Hoteliers should first look at segment overlap. Does the given hotel target the same corporate accounts as its competitors? If so, to what extent?
Secondly, they should determine how much influence a competitor has to steer away certain accounts, Kohlmayr said.
If, for example, Hotel A is within the same five-mile radius to a local corporate account as Hotel B, they both likely will be competing for that account—hence, strong segment overlap. However, if Hotel A is only a block from the corporate headquarters and Hotel B is four miles away, Hotel B probably has less power of influence. Hotel A should respond accordingly by driving up rates for the local corporate account.
3. Evaluate products and services
After considering the most important services they offer guests, hoteliers should then determine how those services match up against the offerings of key competitors. This will allow hoteliers to determine any competitive advantages they might have in the market, as well as where their competitors rank in order from most competitive to least competitive, Kohlmayr said.
4. Research your price positioning
Any number of analytic tools—or hotel websites and online travel agencies—allow for an accurate, overall look at where a hotel’s price falls against its competitors.
5. Put it all together
Once they have compiled the necessary data, hoteliers will be better able to drive rate gains, target certain accounts, or leverage previously unseen market segments, Kohlmayr said.
Beyond the local market
“The industry is becoming more and more complex,” Kohlmayr said. Hoteliers must respond by looking outside their local markets to competitors in the broader global and online communities.
“You not only need to look at your pricing and your ranking and positioning in your hotel, but also your ranking and positioning out in the wider world,” he said. “… You also need to increasingly start looking at your reputation.”
Hoteliers must consider social media, OTAs and TripAdvisor in any comp set analysis, Kohlmayr said.
Establishing multiple comp sets can help hoteliers gauge performance on a regional or national level, Ripmaster said. If a property has an extremely large convention space, for example, it would make sense for that property to benchmark against a handful of similar properties throughout the country.
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