In the world of travel, guests want to be able to feel like they’re coming home when they go to their hotel room, looking for all of the creature comforts that they thought they’d just leave behind in their everyday life.  But, when it comes down to it, no one wants to come to a room that’s stale and uninviting with under-par amenities and the inability to connect to the outside world.  Here are some of the most sought-after amenities when travelers search for a hotel:

Today, the biggest amenity that most every traveler looks for in a hotel is free in-room WiFi.  In our technological, always-have-to-be-connected age, there are so many people who use the Internet for everyday tasks, such as email, banking, and even phone calls—let alone travel-related extras like making hotel reservations, checking in for flights, planning an itinerary, or finding a restaurant.  Today, quite literally almost everything is done through the Web, so being able to access those important facilities in the comfort of your hotel room is essential for most travelers.  While some hotels offer WiFi on a pay-per-day system or free in common areas only, going the extra step by offering (and promoting) free in-room WiFi will bring a lot of people knocking on your door.

Television anyone?  The best in technology is the HD screens we have in our home, right? Most travelers expect the same at their hotel.  Offering a large-screen HDTV with a plethora of channels, including premium ones either included or available for purchase, travelers will be able to catch up on local news, learn about things to do in the area, and maintain a sense of what’s going on at home.

One of the easiest ways to win people over is with food.  Free food.  And travelers, who might be crunched for time, overwhelmed in a new location, or stressed because of all of the go-go-go, are no exception.  Hotels that offer free noshes and drinks win many a guest over. Have a nice spread as a welcome, offer free breakfast and room service, stock the guest rooms with high-end coffee products, and you’ve got yourself a winner with both leisure and business travelers.

Recognition of name brands—especially luxury ones—goes a long way and really makes travelers feel like they’re getting something special.  One of the best ways to take your property, and your guests’ experience there, to the next level is by offering luxurious toiletries.  Many hotels out there are doing it—and not just the super-big 5-stars either.  The Hotel Chandler in New York offers Aveda, a plantbased product line, while  the Ritz Carlton Hotels have partnered with Bulgari and W properties offer Bliss products.  But if you don’t have the budget to offer designer toiletries, just ask a local artisan to help you out.  Some smaller hotels in San Francisco provide guests with products from the  homegrown San Francisco Soap Company, which are not only fantastic, but also lend a sense of community and help out a local business.

Exercise enthusiasts rarely want to stop exercising when away from home.  Properties with fitness center access and spa facilities are also at the top of the list of amenities for the modern traveler.  When hoteliers offer fitness centers with the latest and greatest equipment, a lot of guests will come to stay.  If you throw in a few TVs that guests can watch while exercising, that’s even better!  After a long day at a conference or sightseeing, a nice deep-muscle massage coupled with a mani/pedi at the on-site spa will thrill many a traveler.

When wanting to cater to modern travelers, the hotelier should keep all of these fantastic amenities in mind. Couple any or all of these with some premium front desk service and a concierge on site and you’ll have constant new business from both leisure and business travelers.

One of the biggest hoteliers in the world, Kempinski Hotels, is trying to get another contract for a new resort in Colon Province, Panama.

As Kempinski Hotels plans to focus on tourist destinations, this Panama plan follows the previous networks in Western Hemisphere such as Rio de Janeiro, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.

Dealing with this business, Kempinski Hotels (http://www.kempinski.com) has cooperated with the Two Oceans Group for the development, which will be located on the coast of Caribbean Sea, close to the town of Protobelo on the Northern Isthmus of Panama. The hotel will be ready to compete with other hotels in Panama City.

Here, the guests will be pampered with natural views from the surrounding rainforest and the beautiful hues of the deep blue sea. The location is also strategic because it only takes 60 minutes to reach the airport. The Kempinski Hotel in Panama will be equipped with 106 luxurious rooms and suites, each of which will offer amazing ocean views.

Besides hotels Panama City, there will be also 75 Kempinski Residences, 40 of them built right on the shore. The residences will be connected to each other by terraces. Residents will also be able to enjoy an abundance of facilities, including boutiques, restaurants, and plazas.  There is also a spa area, a pool, and various water sport facilities.  With all of this, guests will never feel isolated as if on a faraway island.

Reto Wittwer, President and CEO of Kempinski Hotels, said that when the property opens in 2015 it will be Kempinski Hotels’ first presence in Latin America after almost 15 years of absence and that this is a right moment to re-develop the market.

From the other side, the director of Two Oceans Groups, Ulrich Shwark, affirmed that this Kempinski resort will redefine the term of luxury in Central America. What could Kempinski hotels bring to Panama? Shwark said that this resort will help strengthen the value of the development offer and that guests can be assured of the maximum service from Kempinski.

Overall, Kempinski Hotels has 62 hotels, 42 of which are under the final development in Europe and some regions in Asia. For both business and leisure travelers, it’s comfortable living in these hotels because they have everything that travelers need. This group hotel has become a permanent member of Global Hotel Alliance (http://www.gha.com/).

With such a long track record, Kempinski Hotels aims at serving guests who expect excellence and value individuality. Kempinksi is also focusing on a long-term strategy to create sustainable value.

Stated in the introduction of Kempinski Hotels’ website, the company has promised to respect the cultures specific to each region, country, and property where they build. In order to be one of the world’s most desirable and luxurious hotel collections, Latin America has become one of the places where Kempinski wants to expand their business.

Another important point hoteliers should keep in mind is security. Travelers always consider the security of a property or a neighborhood when deciding on a preferred hotel.

Even if hoteliers find that their hotel is in the middle of dangerous or criminal area, they can still offer their guests a safe environment and resolve the problem by using the right strategy.

As of the publication of this article, there is still no exact data showing violence and crimes that has happened inside hotels, but there is some information issued by the US Justice Department Bureau of Justice Statistics which states that over 500,000 soft crimes have occurred inside hotels, including rape, robbery, and theft.

How can hoteliers maintain hotel security in the midst of these crimes while they are also concerned with their property’s security?

Experts on hotel security have some suggestions to share with hoteliers. They are:

• Guidance or training

The best way people can help with hotel security is through guidance and training for those who are responsible for the security system inside the hotels. Anthony C. Roman, the CEO of Roman and Associates, which provides services for the management program of investigation, security, and risk, said that the entire hotel staff–not just those responsible for the property–should have the same training to protect the hotel and its guests, as well as to aid victims.

• Technology

In this era, technology plays an important role in how well security can be maintained. So, it’s highly recommended that a company layer the technology as well as layer the rules when it comes to the hotel’s security system. Hotels should always put cameras in the hallways and by the doorways to all of the rooms in the hotel. Installing a panic button can be a brilliant idea too. Roman recommends that hotels use devices with a GPS system so when those buttons are pressed, the staff knows the exact location of the victim.

• Empowerment

The last, and most important, thing hoteliers need to do is empowering all of the staff by telling them what is going on in the hotel–good or bad.  If something bad happens, follow up with the staff to keep them in the loop. Hoteliers should also encourage and motivate the staff, showing their support, so that they don’t hesitate to act in the heat of the moment.

Hotel safety isn’t just about protecting the hotels’ assets. The people coming in and out of the property also need to be looked out for.  And remember, security isn’t just for the guests’ sake, employees can also become crime victims while on the property.

Overall, a hotel’s reputation is based on the guidance afforded to the employees, guests, visitors, and the physical structure of the premises. Considering the fact that the number of crimes has increased over the years, hoteliers should strengthen their security techniques and methods to avoid the image of being vulnerable, which will affect the number of guests coming to the hotel. 

If it’s true that the progress of worldwide tourism mirrors the health of the economy of individual states, it is just as true that every hotel owner or hotel manager in Italy should absolutely not be caught off-guard.

Always be on top of new trends, sniff out leads, and search to take advantage of the most competitive parts of the market. In this sense, we want to focus today’s post on the always-thriving majority of the market that comes with the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

In this new confederation of states, which represents the nations with the biggest economic development in the world (we should also note that all of the most recent billionaires around the globe hail from these countries), the average income continues to grow, therefore also raising the potential amount of tourist spending.

The growth of spending from these countries has just about doubled in the last few years and is forecast to grow exponentially between now and 2016.
The tourists who spend the most are undoubtedly the Russians, who in the sector of leisure travel spent something close to a billion Euro between 2011 and 2012. Livening up some of the most famous locations in Italy, they are considered some of the most avid users of online tourism.

Business travelers, on the other hand, are dominated by Indians, who arrive in Italy for meetings and conferences throughout the entire year. Although the e-commerce in India has shown slow development, the travel sector has been the exception, yielding more than three-fourths of the overall transactions done online.

Regarding the Chinese, there is still not enough data to make a comparison with the other countries of the confederation, but according to an evaluation done by eMarketer, Chinese travelers in 2016 will spend significantly more than the other BRIC countries combined.

With this being the state of our future, the big question is: are all of the members of Italy’s hospitality world ready to welcome these new trends throughout the market?

This is the advice we leave you with today, in the hopes that a country like ours, always in the forefront of tourism, doesn’t stand and watch while the rest of the world cuts into the cake.

Researching a hotel that will be the centerpiece of a vacation or business trip is always a big undertaking, especially if one has the objective of capitalizing on and optimizing maximum enjoyment.

Within the enormous chaos generated by the dizzying development of the Internet (with mobile devices keeping people connected 24 hours a day), especially in the travel sector, there are always many ‘essential’ modes of hotel research.

Those sites represent one of the ultimate technological frontiers to reach the field of hospitality, and it is just in this complex and highly-competitive scene where you find ProntoHotel, one of the metasearch engine leaders in the area of hotel comparison shopping in Europe and around the world.

A page capable of always finding the best offers and most convenient rates in real time, ProntoHotel’s mission is to save users time and money while they search online for a hotel.

ProntoHotel’s hotel search engine can bring travelers to every part of the world, thanks to the vast options the site places at hand: more than 46,000 different destinations and nearly 400,000 hotels, numbers not seen in other websites of this kind.

Thanks to the technology behind ProntoHotel’s powerful metasearch engine, with a few simple clicks each guest can find the best hotel that meets all of their preferences, including a broad choice of amenities, in the city of their dreams.

A travel website completely created by professionals within the online travel sector, ProntoHotel operates knowing that users are first and foremost travelers, and therefore tries to best understand their real demands.

While ProntoHotel puts the traveler at the center of the attention, it also allows hotel owners an ample opportunity to exploit their strengths and expand the chances of receiving reservations.

Whether you are a traveler or hotel owner, make yourselves comfortable, turn on your computer, and ProntoHotel will take care of the rest!!

Many people worldwide are interested in living a healthier lifestyle, which isn’t just limited to diet and exercise.  People are also becoming more and more concerned with the environment and are making smarter choices to help ensure its protection.  Business across the board and around the globe have taken note, altering their options to clients and their practices as a business.  But is there a demand for hotels that have green programs for their properties? Are there any benefits to hoteliers if they do go green?

As a hotelier, you should be pleased to know that you could actually increase your bookings by nearly 10% within a year while increasing your site visitations when over half a million people come by to check out your property by promoting green hotel.  With this information in mind, it does seem as if green hotels are preferable to those that are not.  Therefore, what would be the best programs for your property that would entice more guests to come for a stay?

When you reduce your laundry, you have the ability to save the hotel nearly 20% on your water and sewage bill.  One of the easier ways in which to be a green hotel, and to save on water usage in the meantime, is by offering guests a linen reuse program.  This can be done by simply having the guests leave a provided sign on their door stating if they would like new bedding and towels or if they would like to reuse what they have.

Of course, while there are many travelers looking to go and stay green on their vacation, there is the other side of the coin where other guests want to be pampered daily with a new set of everything from towels to linens.  It can be a bit tricky for the hotelier to balance the two and go green without ignoring the other clientele.  That’s why the option for guests to participate or not can be the least offensive way of taking care of everyone.

But then there are the things that won’t affect an individual guest’s stay but will improve your green reputation, including finding an alternative energy source.  For instance, the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, NJ, installed a 32,000 square foot solar array to charge its electricity.  Hoteliers could also look at hydroelectricity or wind power to energize their properties.

Sure, this is a big way of showing your guests and the world that you really intend to go green and remain that way, but the changes don’t have to be so huge.  You can change smaller things within your hotel, including:

• Food composting and recycling;
• Switching to CFL, QL, and LED lighting to reduce your emissions of white noise.
• Offer guests the option of replenishing toiletries every day.  This will cut down on your plastic consumption, carbon footprint, and costs.

Some hotels that don’t have a huge amount of revenue to use to develop their green program and look at simple things to do to save the environment. For instance, if your property offers a breakfast to its guests you could use 100% biodegradable dinnerware and tableware, things you have to require for dining services anyway.  Making a simple switch will  say a lot.

Whatever choice is made by the hotelier for their hotels to go green, it will most assuredly be welcomed by nearly all who come to town for a stay. As a business owner and a hotelier, you have the opportunity to make a huge impact on the planet.  Make it a good one.

As a travel agent, it can be quite time consuming to find the perfect hotel for your client’s stay. Their preferences may be easy to provide for such as something in a downtown area of a major metropolitan city, or maybe they have a whole list of demands for their trip.  Amadeus has come out with Hotels Plus (Multisource) for your agency’s use in assisting all types of customers.

Amadeus brings us a fantastic web-based program in Hotels Plus, the first GDS selling tool for hotels that’s accessible through the Internet. It has intuitive navigation so you don’t need to worry about getting lost on any pages as you go through the research process for your clients.  You can bookmark your favorite sites and forget about all of the IATA codes—you can just enter the city or region instead.  There’s even an autocompletion tool so you don’t need to worry about typos either.

Sometimes customers want to stay near a certain landmark or within a certain area of a city.  Art lovers might want to be near the Louvre, while theater buffs might want to stay in the heart of Broadway in New York City.  With Hotels Plus, you can search by city, region, or with the help of an ingenious map search feature. Zero in on what your client is looking for on the map, find the hotels nearby, and book a room. It’s that easy!

Each property Amadeus has listed within Hotels Plus has grand detail so that you can offer your clients much more information than ever before.  Nearly 80,000 properties are in the database and agents can pull up photos of each location, as well as amenities, nearby things to see and do, and the text is quite descriptive.  The photos are actually offered by way of map, satellite, and bird’s eye views.  What makes all of this really terrific for the customer is that as an agent you can email the five most-favored properties to the client for their review.

Amadeus has set up Hotels Plus with interactive tools to best aid the travel agent in booking not only hotels but also travel packages as well.  Travelers will find that they can book hotels, air, and cars, plus purchase tickets for local activities through their travel agent.  This one stop shop attitude can bolster the reputation of not only the travel agency but also anyone who actually lists their company within the database.

Hotel facilities, breakfast indicators, and ratings are also included within the program. Whether your agency caters to customers who want a brand name hotel or an independent boutique hotel, Amadeaus’ Hotels Plus can show you the way.

New types of travelers are making their way to Tel Aviv, and hoteliers have noticed. Several new boutique hotels are opening within the city to cater to those not wishing to stay at the brand-name hotels along the coast. Since Israel itself is a small country, the epicenter of a metropolitan area such as Tel Aviv is going to be a bit crunched for space. This is where launching boutique hotels is a bit of a brilliant idea.

There is a growing number of younger tourists as well as businessmen going to Tel Aviv these days, and by introducing a few dozen smaller, trendy hotels into the marketplace, hoteliers are able to cater to those clients’s needs. A lot of the new properties are designer hotels housed in converted apartment buildings, thus there hasn’t been an influx of new buildings. These hotels are based near or on the main street in Tel Aviv, keeping businessmen close to business and giving tourists a chance to get their feet wet and dive into the local culture.

Smaller hotels give guests a homier feel and these boutique hotels cater to that whimsy. They’re generally made up of 10 to 60 rooms and are largely housed in Bauhaus-style buildings. A few of them are designed and named after people important to the Jewish creative culture. For instance the Diaghilev is named for Sergia Diaghilev, a Russian art critic, and the Berdichevsky is named for a famous writer.

Visiting Tel Aviv isn’t just about hitting the beach any more. Since Tel Aviv is fast becoming a technology mainstay in the region, there are a lot of younger businessmen coming to the city. So the market and location is perfect for these smaller hotels, bringing people into the city and closer to the growing nightlife. And you’ll also find the same mainstay corporate rooms and hotels here! Businessmen aren’t the only travelers making more visits to Tel Aviv, the gay and lesbian crowd is also getting bigger.

Even local travelers like the newer, smaller hotels because of the personal touches that are offered as a great benefit to the guest’s stay. History buffs will really like the newer hotels as well, since many are housed in historic buildings. Imagine what stories the walls can tell!

All these newer boutique hotels, coupled with the upgrades on infrastructure in the area, make Tel Aviv a sought-after city to visit. New highways, fun nightlife, a closeness to all the city has to offer, plus some mighty fine beaches, travelers and hoteliers can’t miss with Tel Aviv!

Wikivoyage and Mobile Wallets are just a couple of the newest things technology has to offer the hotel world. Adobe has also unveiled a new cloud that can track with extreme detail the traffic to one’s site, allowing the hotel industry great leverage in marketing.

WikiVoyage is a neat little app mostly released with Smartphone users in mind. Users have the opportunity to schedule their own itinerary all from the one app. For instance, you can pick your flight, hotel, and activities of which to partake all in one swoop. You can even purchase tickets to events.

The closer technology gets to releasing the mobile wallet to consumers, the more hoteliers can look at this as a marketing tool. So many people in this newest century wish to do everything electronically, whether it’s using a desktop computer, a tablet, or their smartphone. When owners of mobile devices call a property they, most always ready to book a room right away, and recent data indicates a huge amount of business comes from the smartphone user. The idea of having everything “now” and at their fingertips is pleasing, and the mobile wallet only adds a sense of completeness to those desires.

Social media is also a tremendous driving force in marketing. Consumers like to chat online, as well as share photos and experiences. By turning to this medium, hoteliers can reach more people and show them just how much a property and location have to offer them on their next holiday.

Every marketing plan devises its entire structure around data. Real-time data, therefore, is the most treasured piece in the marketing puzzle not only for hoteliers, but for any company. By knowing exactly who is coming to your site, when they arrive, how long they stay on certain pages, and what they are doing while there will bolster your business to the maximum by letting you focus in on the needs of the consumer. A couple of fabulous ways in which to benchmark are Google Analytics and the newer Adobe Cloud. You can check your own property against your competition to see where you stand with site traffic.

A recent article on hotelnewsnow.com featured Melissa Moody, a travel development manager at Google, said that the average consumer goes to slightly more than 17 sites and clicks on a little more than 4 search results before coming to a decision and actually making a reservation. Therefore, you will want to make sure your property is advertised on the top sites such as ProntoHotel.com. By cutting down on how many sites the consumer hits before making it to you, your property can be assured that you will land the business and not someone else.

The Adobe Marketing Cloud is another item to look at for real-time data. With the Cloud, hoteliers have access to all the data in one spot rather than over multiple software programs. You can have it automated to send you daily, weekly, or monthly reports. The same February article also quoted Tamara Gaffney of Adobe, who found some remarkable information from testing on 31 different hotel sites.

On average a hotel site gets 300,000 to 800,000 daily page views. Of those visits, nearly 60,000 are unique with a bounce rate of less than 45%. The worst site, which would be the least user friendly, came out with a 91% bounce rate. With these latter figures, hoteliers need to realize the importance of making a website pleasing and easy to follow. Make sure you address their needs with your site. If you can’t grab their attention right away or if you can’t meet expectations, then your website may not be useful at all.

The devices that consumers use can also be tracked with the Cloud. This allows access to information such as knowing that the majority of site traffic comes from a mobile device or tablet. These devices also are held by consumers ready to purchase right away, so the bounce rate is quite low. Similar properties can be compared easily with the Cloud, allowing hoteliers to know what “the other guy” is up to in marketing.

These technological advances will allow hoteliers the opportunity to see what external sites refer a traveller to their own home page as data is gathered click-per-click. These are all tremendous tools that can make rather than break a property.

A February report from Jones & LaSalle’s Hotels and Hospitality Division answers this question. Does is really matter to nearby hotels how many people want to come to town for a convention? Let’s take a look at the information that was discovered to see whether or not the number of hotel reservations dramatically increase during conventions.

Convention centers with recent expansions show the most increase in the revenue-per-available rooms. With up to a 4% increase, this can mean dramatic income for hotels located within the center. The entire market area will actually be able to benefit with these kinds of numbers.

Of course, the larger the market, the larger the revenue. When all the circumstances are in a property’s favor, there is a potential of an $80 million increase within five years. Not only will this help the hotel market, but also the cities in which they reside. The more people that come to town to stay, the more consumers there are to spend at restaurants, points of interest, and other events and activities.

The report also found that the major growth occurs over a three, to five-year period, so immediate results should not be anticipated. Hoteliers should also take a look at the fact that if the convention centers become full, they have the opportunity to bring more meetings and smaller conventions into their own hotels. Expansion and remodeling to accommodate such business events can greatly benefit a property.

Hoteliers needn’t worry about having strong competition in their cities either. Even though hotels may be in close quarters, that just means more travelers will come to town. Most people looking to reserve hotel rooms are looking for proximity to events, as well as other happenings. So, if there are more choices, it won’t hinder a property when it comes to increasing income.

Do conventions drive demand? They sure can! Make sure the properties nearby offer the businessmen and travelers everything they need, make it “pop” out at them, and you can increase your revenue year after year.