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Hamilton Beach Commercial Blog

Hospitality

6 Ways Hotels Can Appeal to Bleisure Travelers

Come for work. Stay for fun.

Bleisure—combining business and leisure travel—is an increasingly popular way to see the world. Experts predict the bleisure travel market will grow substantially in the years ahead, reaching $731.4 billion by 2032.

From a guest’s perspective, it’s great to have your company pay for your airfare and then tack on a little vacation at your own expense. From an employer’s perspective, people work harder: 59% of employees said traveling and exploring new places inspired them to be more productive with their work, according to a global survey by Booking.com. And from hospitality pros’ perspective, bleisure travelers are a desirable and profitable customer segment. Here’s how to attract them.

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Topics: Hotel Management, Hospitality, Hotel Trends, hospitality trends, hotel industry trends, hotel guest satisfaction, bleisure, bleisure travel, bleisure travel trends

How to Make Your Hotel a Culinary Destination

Creating a successful hotel F&B (food and beverage) program is hard.

It’s labor-intensive. It requires skill, vision, and market savvy. Volatile food pricing eats into profits. F&B brings in less revenue than rooms do.

And yet, it’s essential. A hotel’s culinary reputation is the magic ingredient that attracts guests and keeps them coming back. How can you elevate your dining and make that magic happen?

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Topics: Hospitality, hospitality trends, Hotel F&B, Commercial foodservice equipment for hotels, hotel dining, hotel f&b trends

The Return of “Slow Travel” and What It Means for the Hospitality Industry

Here are three ways to experience Sri Lanka:

  1. Join a tour that packs in as many temples and ruins as possible. Be sure to ride the famous Kandy-Ella train, pushing other tourists out of the way so you can get cute Instagram pics.
  2. Spend three weeks walking the newly created Pekoe Trail, a 186-mile (300 km) trail through the central highlands that visits tea plantations, wild parks, and remote villages.
  3. Check into a beach resort in Unawatuna. Wake up, surf, hang with the locals. Repeat.

More and more people are choosing options like B or C for their vacations — opportunities to step out of life’s hectic current and live in the moment. It’s all part of the slow travel trend.

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Topics: Hospitality, travel trends, sustainability in hospitality, sustainability in the hospitality industry

Three Key Hotel F&B Trends for 2023

Hotel dining is having a moment.

Hotel restaurants used to have a stodgy, old-school reputation as “a three-meal-a-day café where you just get a club sandwich and a burger,” Ewart Wardhaugh, executive chef at the Epicurean Hotel Atlanta, tells FSR magazine. “But now, the food and beverage within a lot of hotels is just as good as a freestanding restaurant, if not better because they have better support.”

While many hotels’ F&B profits have struggled to rebound post-pandemic, the industry is seeing increases in F&B revenue per occupied room. The drivers: more in-room dining, menu price increases, and event revenue.

Working to boost your F&B in 2023? Look to these trends.

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Topics: Hotel Management, Hospitality, Hotel F&B, 2023 food trends

Adapting Hotel Coffee and Breakfast Service During COVID-19

Great coffee and a satisfying breakfast are among the most cherished amenities hotels offer. What happens now, after COVID-19 has forced hotel operators to rethink the way they serve guests? 

One thing hoteliers agree on: Coffee and breakfast must stay. They just have to be served differently now. We’ll take a closer look at how hotels are adapting to this new reality.

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Topics: Hospitality, commercial coffee urn, pod coffeemaker, commercial rice cooker

How to Buy the Best Hotel Hair Dryer for Your Property

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.

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Topics: Hospitality, hotel hairdryer, hotel hairdryer wall mounted, hotel room hair dryers, Commercial hair dryers

Hotel Innovations in Self-Service Food and Beverage

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!

 

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Topics: Hospitality, hotel coffee, hotel food and beverage, hotel coffee maker, hotel breakfast bar, hotel f and b

Behind the Scenes at Marriott’s M Beta Hotel

When guests enter the Charlotte Marriott City Center, “they’re just jaw-dropped,” says General Manager Crissy Wright. It’s not only that it’s pretty, or that it’s modern — this hotel is the future of Marriott. Called M Beta, it’s the world’s first hotel innovation incubator, a working laboratory for testing new hospitality industry trends. 

Since M Beta opened in October 2016, what has this ambitious experiment revealed? Hamilton Beach Commercial spoke with Wright to find out.

A meeting room at Charlotte Marriott City Center -  all images courtesy of Marriott and published with permission.

 

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Topics: Millennials, Hospitality, Design, Hotel Trends

How Extended-Stay Hotels Are Winning Guests’ Loyalty

Extended-stay, today’s your day.

This once-overlooked market segment is exploding across the United States. In mid-2016, more than 40,000 extended-stay rooms were under construction: the highest number in at least 17 years, Lodging magazine reports. Despite another 20,000 rooms opening in 2015, extended-stay rates grew and occupancy saw only a slight dip. Brands such as Element by Westin, Staybridge Suites, Residence Inn and Extended Stay America are all planning significant expansions. 

Of course, all this growth means more competition. What are extended-stay hotels doing to win over guests and keep them coming back again — and again?

Courtyard by Marriott - Earth City, MO (Photo courtesy of Pinnacle South)
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Topics: Featured, Hospitality, Extended Stay

Hotel Trend Watch: The Rise of Poshtels

Hard bunkbeds. Grimy showers. Loud roommates.

For most people, the word “hostel” brings back decades-old memories of backpacking in Europe or surf-bumming around Costa Rica. Savvy travelers, however, know that hostels have a new face. “Poshtels” offer chic décor, fun bars and hotel-like amenities. And they’re making inroads in the United States. Find out how hostels fit into 2017’s competitive hotel market.


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Topics: Featured, Hospitality, Hotel Trends

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