history

Five Year US Hotel Occupancy – Average Rate – RevPAR Comparison

by RobertKCole on January 7, 2011

First, thanks for all the positive feedback from my earlier post, What’s Wrong With the US Hotel Industry Recovery? Regardless of the pithy and enlightened analysis provided (my personal and unbiased self-assessment) there was a select group of readers that remained unappeased.

More Numbers
Creative Commons License photo credit: Patrick Gage

For those who requested a broader statistical comparison, all I can say is 'You want more numbers... Are you serious?'

There appear to be two categories of hotel industry data aficionados – gourmets and gourmands. You may know them better as the Smith Travel Research, Colliers PKF and PricewaterhouseCoopers fanboys & fangirls you see hanging out by the stage at the Hotel Data Conference.

The gourmands revel in devouring every data point in sight. They like their data raw and in large quantities. One would imagine these folks drink their wine from boxes and buy sides of beef that they cut themselves. Not afraid of getting their hands dirty, they have no use for utensils, but prefer to dig their teeth directly into their meal like lions savaging their prey.

The gourmets are a but more refined – They savor the nuanced flavors of the freshest, meticulously prepared, and most creatively presented information available. They prefer the finest cuts from the finest chefs, with portion size and cost being irrelevant as long as the quality is there. They even look at well aged data like wine – given expert handling and loving care, even the oldest statistics can yield valuable insights and points of comparison for the latest growths.

Despite my initial inclination to help organize interventions to get these individuals into some form of hospitality stats junkie 12-step program, I cooked up a few more data dishes as a belated holiday buffet. continue reading →

Tagged as: average rate, history, hospitality, hotel, occupancy, recession, RevPAR, statistics, travel, trends

Be the first to comment

What’s Wrong With the US Hotel Industry Recovery?

by RobertKCole on December 20, 2010

If the US economy is in recovery, why is the US hotel industry still in rehab?

Online Hotel Booking Junkie
Creative Commons License photo credit: nataliej

It starts out innocently enough... A couple spot promotions and internet-only specials. Then it spirals into merchant rates, opaque deals and most-favored nations clauses - such goes the story of hotels becoming online travel volume junkies...

A year ago, I authored a post titled US Hotel Performance – Time for a Baseline Reset? – it was a follow-up to a post from four months earlier titled US Hotel Industry Recession Enters New Rate Erosion Phase.

In the 12-16 months since those posts were written, I am very pleased to report that hotel demand in 2010 has grown more rapidly than predicted by myself, Smith Travel Research, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Colliers PKF Hospitality Research – I love being wrong – especially among such esteemed company.

However, this better than expected uptick has resulted in considerable discussion painting a rosy picture of the US hotel industry recovery. Based on many glowing reviews citing double-digit occupancy percentage (Occ %) growth and solid increases in Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR), one can easily arrive at the conclusion that the US hotel industry recovery is in full swing and that the industry is nearly back to normal.

Unfortunately, most of these evaluations only reference US hotel industry performance relative to 2009, which was the worst year on record for hotel performance. It is not particularly beneficial to benchmark the industry against those record depressed levels, so it is much better to frame the recovery relative to hotel performance in earlier periods.

On that basis, the US Hotel Industry has recovered to somewhere near 2005/2006 business levels.

2011 will undoubtedly be a challenging year for the US hotel industry. Certainly results will exceed 2010, and be well beyond the despair of 2009, but nowhere near levels that could lead one to characterize the hospitality business as healthy. continue reading →

Tagged as: average rate, history, hospitality, hotel, occupancy, recession, RevPAR, statistics, travel, trends

Be the first to comment

Mastering The New Five P’s of Marketing – Tom Patty on How Not to be a Casualty of the Revolution

by RobertKCole on November 3, 2010

In the mid 1990′s, Tom Patty, President and World Wide Account Director for Chiat/Day, the hottest advertising agency of its time, authored a superlative treatise on the urgent changes necessary for marketing to be viable in times of dramatic change.

Casualty of the Revolution
Creative Commons License photo credit: ScaredyCatPhotographer

Don't be a Casualty of the Revolution. The travel industry should have been listening 15 years ago. Apple was.

He even addressed the topic to the travel industry when he presented the keynote address at the 1995 Travel and Tourism Research Association meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida. His target? Marketing’s venerable Five P’s:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Packaging
  • Place
  • Promotion

If you were thinking there were only Four P’s (excluding packaging) you are really out of touch. The Four P’s were introduced as the key elements of the marketing mix in 1960 – times have changed… your business school really should have invested in new textbooks.

If you happen to be a bit more cutting-edge, you may even subscribe to the concept of adding a Sixth P – People – to the mix. (This has been an integral component for social computing strategists.)

Fifteen years ago however, Patty proposed that a completely new approach to marketing was required to shift from a product orientation to a brand orientation.

He highlighted four key factors necessitating the need for marketing revolution -

  • Globalization of Competition
  • Real-time Technology
  • The Demand for Agile Management
  • Changing Economic Structures

Those issues sound a lot more like 2010 than 1995.

So, with the 2010 PhoCusWright Conference‘s theme “Chaos Calls, Navigating the New,” there is no better time to revisit Patty’s wholly original and still relevant case that the New Five P’s should be:

  • Paradox
  • Perspective
  • Paradigm
  • Persuasion
  • Passion

After successive acquisitions, site updates and the passage of time, the original Chiat/Day website and Patty’s inspirational document has seemed to have eluded Google’s extensive index.

As a public service, the document has been recreated in its entirety from an old printed copy from my files. Hopefully the document will provide marketers with a renewed vision of the future – not just from a 1995 perspective, but one that may be even more applicable in 2010. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, customer relationship management, history, innovation, insight, marketing, strategy

Be the first to comment

A New “Location, Location, Location” for the Hotel Industry

by RobertKCole on October 27, 2009

Ninety years ago, Ellsworth Statler, father of the modern hotel industry, was quoted as saying “There are three things that make a hotel famous – location, location, location.”

statler & Waldorf
photo credit: PopArtUK

E.M. Statler promoted his hotels based on 'location, location, location'. A century later, new locations may be virtual, but no less essential

Many today might argue that the complexities of today’s travel industry dictate a much more sophisticated approach to marketing and promotion.

I disagree – the future of hotel marketing will still be led by those that master “location, location, location.” The major difference is that the definition of the three locations will have changed dramatically over time.

An underlying reason for this change is the paradigm shift driving new interactive media based marketing processes:

  1. Get found
  2. Get followed
  3. Get engaged

These three stages have created hotel industry’s three new critically important “locations:”

  • Search Engines
  • Social Media
  • Location Based Promotion

E. M. Statler changed the hotel industry in two radical ways: First he revolutionized hotel design and development; then he ran guest-centric operations where the customer was king. Remarkably, his philosophies are just as relevant today. continue reading →

Tagged as: history, hospitality, hotel, seo, social media

Be the first to comment

The World’s Most Infamous Hotel Stay?

by RobertKCole on August 23, 2009

Forty-two years ago – on August 23, 1967, drummer Keith Moon spent his 21st birthday at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan following a concert by his band, The Who. The stage was set for one of the most legendary collisions between the hospitality industry and a touring rock ‘n roll band.  What started with a warm birthday greeting on the hotel’s sign eventually devolved into the world’s most infamous hotel stay.

Keith Moon - Welcomed at the Flint Holiday Inn; before his global ban...

Keith Moon - Welcomed at the Flint Holiday Inn; before his global ban...

A little background on the changes that occurred in 1967 for the young and/or uninitiated:

  1. The summer of 1967, was transitional for rock ‘n roll – The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1 – a recording Rolling Stone Magazine called “the most important rock & roll album ever made…”
  2. The world’s first massively attended rock concert, the Monterey International Pop Festival ran from June 16-18, 1967 in Northern California, attracting 200,000 over three peaceful days. The event introduced American audiences not only to The Who, but Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding.  “The Summer of Love” followed with 100,000 hippies flocking to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.
  3. The Who have arguably been called the godfathers of hard rock, but were the undisputed pioneers of instrument destruction.  Their performance of “My Generation” on the prime time Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour – filmed three weeks after the incident in Flint – provided a literally explosive introduction to prime-time American audiences (things start disintegrating around the 4:00 minute mark.)

  4. Keith Moon was the drummer for The Who.  As Jeff Weiss of Stylus Magazine put it, “if Moon wasn’t the best drummer in rock history, he’s certainly its most original.”  Raving Tales of Keith Moon Insanity written by Andy Secher and originally published in the January, 1979 issue of “Hard Rock” magazine provides a good perspective on his escapades.  Never prone to moderation, he died in September, 1978 at the age of 32 of an accidental (and massive) drug overdose. For trivia buffs, Keith was also the inspiration for the manic Muppet drummer “Animal.”
  5. Holiday Inns, in 1967 was the world’s largest hotel chain, with nearly 1,000 properties – comprised primarily of roadside motels.  Its “Great Sign” was not only an icon for the company, but the travel industry as a whole in the 1960′s.

And the rest, as they say, is rock & roll (and hotel industry) history… continue reading →

Tagged as: history, Holiday Inn, hotel, innovation, inspiration, rock 'n roll, room damage, security, travel

Be the first to comment

Origin of the Word “Travel” (This explains so much…)

by RobertKCole on August 12, 2009

Don’t you find it odd that almost all travelers periodically find that traveling can become an incredibly laborious effort – at some points, a pursuit that some say borders on torture? People have been traveling for thousands of years, and we still have not quite gotten it right… How could this be? Is this only a recent phenomenon?

Tuol Sleng - Torture Room
Creative Commons License photo credit: Mendhak

The room appointments and service standards needed a little attention?

To borrow some philosophy from Slumdog Millionaire, there are four possible reasons travelers encounter difficulties when away from home:

  1. They are Cheated
  2. They are Unlucky
  3. They are Stupid
  4. It is Written

From personal experience, I know points 1-3 certainly occur from time to time, and occasionally in tandem during travel… Point #4? – The Travel Gods could not be so cruel as to smite us with such challenges.

There must be more to the story… continue reading →

Tagged as: history, insight, torture, travel

Be the first to comment