Hospitality

Check out our most popular content for the year on the Hospitality blog -- here is your recap of our top posts from Hamilton Beach Commercial®.  

Read on...and if you see content you like, be sure to join the HBC Community for regular updates, whether it's Beverage, Food, Hospitality or Recipes.

The coffee urn is an unsung hero. It’s people’s first stop at the hotel breakfast bar, the conference catering table and the early-morning meeting. You plug it in, turn it on and it does its thing — day after day and week after week. No one ever really pays attention to it… until something goes awry.

How can you fix problems with your commercial coffee urn? And how do you know if you should upgrade to a newer, shinier model? Here are four signs to look for.   

On TripAdvisor, we stumbled across a hotel review titled: “Amazing hair dryer, but terrible beds!” The reviewer didn’t sleep well, but nevertheless rated the hotel three stars:

“The reason I'm not giving this facility a 2 is because I LOVE the hair dryer... yes this is silly, but so many hotels have the worst blow dryers ever... I want to take this one home.”

Hotel owners should take note. While a blow dryer isn’t the most important object in the guestroom (we’d argue that the coffee maker earns that title), it has the potential to change your guests’ attitude, for better or worse. These key questions will help you choose a hotel hair dryer that fits your property and your budget, while helping all your guests have good hair days.

A bad cup of hotel coffee will mess up your whole morning.

You turn on the in-room coffee maker, desperate for some caffeine to prepare you for the long day ahead. To your dismay, you find your cup filled with a liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee (to paraphrase Douglas Adams).  

It’s watery. It’s weak. All you can do is grimace and drink it, or put on some pants and stumble down to the lobby to find something stronger.

Don’t inflict this on your guests! Hamilton Beach Commercial®’s (HBC) hotel coffee makers are designed to maximize coffee extraction for a more satisfying cup — and more satisfied guests. Here’s how we do it.

People don’t want to deal with people.

That’s the stark truth underlying many hospitality innovations: text-based room service, apps that allow hotel guests to request amenities, and grab-and-go markets in lobbies.

This move toward letting guests serve themselves dovetails with increasing labor costs for hotels, as it becomes harder to hire and retain stellar staff. But here’s the challenge: Can self-service F&B impress guests?

“If you’re going to do F&B in a hotel setting, be bold. Be passionate about it. Take risks, and do something terrific,” Anthony Langan, corporate director of beverage & food, boutique & lifestyle hotels for Vision Hospitality Group, said at the 2018 Southern Lodging Summit.

Is it possible to deliver bold and terrific food and beverage in a self-service format? Of course!

We’re a little weary of the word “curated.” Maybe you are, too. But hotel guests have come to appreciate — even expect — a thoughtfully personalized experience when they stay at a finer hotel.

Hotels have deployed all kinds of tech to meet this demand, including guestroom AI (like Alexa for Hospitality), apps to control room preferences, and the Internet of Things. But guests want more — especially when they stay in luxury hotels, says Wouter Geerts, a travel industry consultant for Euromonitor International: “The understanding of what luxury is has totally changed. We live in a very individualistic world, but people are seeking ways to be part of something.”

Here are three ways that hotels around the world are shaping the guest experience to be more personal, more memorable and more transformative than ever.

Check out our most popular content for the year on the Hospitality blog -- here is your recap of our top posts from Hamilton Beach Commercial®.  

Read on...and if you see content you like, be sure to join the HBC Community for regular updates, whether it's Beverage, Food, Hospitality or Recipes.

Hip London-based hostel brand Generator recently announced that it doesn’t want to be a hostel company anymore. “The moment we call ourselves ‘hostel,’ it limits us in certain markets,” Generator CEO Alastair Thomann said.

So is Generator a hotel company now? No. Instead, it will simply be called “Generator.” More than a hotel branding quirk, the change reflects the widespread convergence in the hospitality industry, Thomann said, in which hostels are becoming more like boutique hotels (aka poshtels) and boutique hotels are offering dorm-style accommodations. These experiments in community-driven, non-traditional hospitality also enable hotel companies to better compete with Airbnb and its cousins.

So, when is a hotel not a hotel? Let’s look at some ways hospitality companies are bending their brands.

“Alexa*, close the blinds.”

“Alexa, what time does the gym open?”

“Alexa, can I get some more towels?”

Soon, dialing "0" for the front desk will be an artifact of the past. The latest trend in hotel tech is artificial intelligence for guest rooms: conversational AI systems that can handle guests’ common questions and requests. This innovation is about to go mainstream, as Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality is being tested at select Marriott, Westin, St. Regis,  Aloft, and Autograph Collection hotels (including the Charlotte Marriott City Center, the hotel innovation incubator we’ve featured.) How does this system work, and what are the benefits of adopting it?

Starbucks is getting rid of plastic straws. McDonald’s, too. But what about the hospitality industry?

Hotel chains, cruise lines and tour companies have lagged behind in efforts to eliminate plastic straws and other single-use plastics. But that’s changing, as major players like Marriott and Royal Caribbean are seeking out new ways to phase out these environmental hazards. Practically speaking, how difficult is it to make this change? And does it really make a difference?