Hospitality

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

The idea of learning something new while on vacation is nothing new. Hotel guests have been perfecting their golf swings and swirling wines for decades. But there’s a new trend among hotels to offer ever more in-depth and hands-on learning. At hotels around the country, you can live your fantasy of becoming an artist, or a British pastry chef, or a master mixologist — even if only for a day.

Here are 10 hotels offering creative, hands-on workshops guests won’t soon forget.

In the hospitality industry, disruptors are nothing new. There was a time (pre-WWII) when only the wealthy stayed at hotels, as Chip Conley, head of global hospitality and strategy at Airbnb, pointed out at a recent conference. Ordinary Americans stayed in boarding houses.

Now, ordinary travelers are using Airbnb and other home-sharing services. Airbnb demand is still less than 2 percent of hotel demand in the United States,  but it’s growing fast. How can hotels compete?