HotStats Limited · 15 Aug

Financial performance in the hospitality industry is traditionally measured in absolute terms: actuals for the relevant KPIs are compared against their budgeted numbers and, from this assessment, action plans are developed to correct course when needed. Moreover, in the presence of changes in market conditions, budgets are revised to make goals reflect the new business environment.

AETHOS Consulting Group · 13 Aug

The CFO is typically the second most important role in a public company behind the CEO. That is clearly the case in the gaming industry. As most industry leaders know, AETHOS conducts a study of gaming CEO pay each year, so we decided to look at the state of CFO pay as well. Our analysis included 33 public gaming companies, that includes operators and manufacturers. The data represents CFO total direct compensation, including base salary, short and long-term incentives and other pay, reported in percentile format and includes cuts at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles for each component of compensation. The raw data is provided here.

The Hotel Financial Coach · 12 Aug

"If Service is Beneath You - Then Leadership is Beyond You." I cannot find an owner on Google for this statement, so I am going to claim it as mine. If someone already coined this phrase I will let it go, if not it is mine. The reason why is because it is the foundation for the transformation I experienced as a financial leader. It is also the basis for the work I do with hospitality financial leaders and their non-financial departmental managers. Let me explain to you what I mean and how these words are the very essence of creating a financially engaged team in your hotel.

Travel Tripper/Pegasus · 12 Aug

A raft of new data privacy laws have come into force over the past few years, and many have had a major impact on the hospitality industry. This January, hotels need to be aware of another piece of legislation — the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Vizergy · 7 Aug

On May 25, 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in an effort to protect consumer data for all citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area.

The Hotel Financial Coach · 6 Aug

In my recent travels working with clients and delivering keynotes as well as financial leadership workshops for management teams and hotel associations, I noticed an interesting way that more than one client used to "subsidize" their meetings—reducing their costs—and I wanted to share it with you.Having your regional meeting, national meeting or hosting your association event is expensive. There are travel costs, perhaps speaker fees and venue costs. Depending on the type of event there can be accommodations, meals, audiovisual and meeting room rentals. For companies, there is also lost productivity cost associated with having people away from their day role in selling your hotel or managing their team. These all add up to some serious dollars and justifying the costs can sometimes be questionable.We all know how important meetings are but there is no question about the expense. What I have learned is some clever operators are using an age-old system to cut their costs for meetings.What I noted recently with one client that hosted a statewide conference was the level of sponsorship. I have spoken at and attended many hotel conferences and this one really stood out. With few exceptions, everything had a sponsor. The keynotes, breakout sessions, receptions, coffee breaks and meals all had sponsors. In most cases the sponsor was clearly noted in the program, the use of their name and logo being front and center.With group events the sponsors were given a moment to thank the attendees and the association.These partners all had a clear message for the association members. The message was of appreciation and dedication to the spirit of hospitality and the members' challenges and the partnership they enjoyed and appreciated with the association members. Not a sales pitch but one of we are all in this together and we appreciate you and your challenges. Sponsors even mentioned local political issues and health of the owner and operator's business in thanking the members. It was all powerful stuff and very much in line with the goals of the association and its members. Never once did it feel like a sales pitch or a product or service endorsement.Reflecting on this, it is obvious to me that the sponsors all had their "message" crafted and coordinated which resulted in a real and tasteful partnership message.I know when the sponsor of my event introduced me they made specific reference to the challenging situation that hotels were experiencing with minimum wage rates and the government recent and future planned increases. In partnership with members, the sponsor told the audience that they heard their concerns and to help they brought me to the conference to speak about a system that everyone could use on labor productivity measurements specifically for hospitality. You could feel the appreciation for the sponsor. This was so well done because of the alignment with the members' challenges. My sponsor was a wireless provider - go figure.Another great example of a company meeting using sponsors was an annual regional meeting of 10 hotels where the owners of the management company, corporate executives, GMs, assistant GMs and sales managers were all gathered for two days of meetings and team building. What stood out was again the use of sponsors. I delivered a workshop on the morning of day two. While being introduced by the VP of operations, he thanked the audience for the previous night's paintball event and the sponsor for the evening. I was taken aback by the ingenuity. The sponsor for the paintball was an amusement park and several of the hotels packaged admission along with their rooms. What a great way to thank the hotels and their sponsor.Now it is time to talk about me. The VP tells the audience he knows how hard they all have been working on improving their financial literacy and to help them with this cause he brought me in to lead the morning session on Hospitality Financial Leadership. In conjunction with my workshop, their sponsor was the management company's accounting software provider. He mentioned the company by name and he also spoke about the level of progress and all the hard work that the operators had undertaken with their monthly financials and daily reporting. This blew me away. I should have charged more.At the morning break, he had a coffee vendor take a moment to speak to the attendees. The coffee man spoke about his family-owned business and how much he appreciated the support of the hotels and how he felt the use of his product in several of the hotels had helped his retail sales. He wanted to show his appreciation with the sponsored coffee break as well as by giving each person a cool stainless steel coffee container. All of this played right into the theme of the conference which was built around being part of the community and making a difference in people's lives.Having a meeting can be expensive but with some planning and attention to the alignment of goals, it can also be an opportunity to do more business.

Tourism and More · 2 Aug

The Tourism/Visitor industry is a one of the world's great industries. Large industries, however, mean that there are large cash flows and large amounts of cash often mean multiple lawsuits and other legal problems. Often local CVBs or tourism offices are unaware of their own nation's laws and obligations. This ignorance of the law can be very costly. Tourism Tidbits does NOT give legal advice, and it strongly encourages all readers to ask specific questions to a licensed tourism legal professional. Please note that the information found below is only meant to be useful in helping tourism/travel professionals to obtain the correct needed legal advice to stay out of court or to defend oneself once in court. -Take the time to ask you legal team to develop a series of questions about tourism law? What questions are you not asking? In what areas of the law are you ignorant or ought you to have more information? Then do a tourism law legal assessment with your legal staff, professional or department? With what laws are you failing to comply? What are the consequences of a compliance failure?-Review the statues concerning your aspect of the tourism industry on a regular basis with a qualified legal expert. Often tourism bureaus hire lawyers and legal experts who have never studied their part of tourism law. As tourism and terrorism become more intertwined it is essential to know your city's, state's or nation's legal requirements. For example, there is a section of the US PATRIOT act and published in the Federal Registry of Friday May 9th,2003 (Vol.68, Number 90m p.25092) which specifies casino's legal duties in anti terrorism. Casinos that chose to ignore this act may be faced with a very difficult situation. -Develop a tourism/travel legal information exchange. Tourism law is so complicated and changes so quickly that many legal experts are simply overwhelmed by it. Therefore there is no "one stop legal shopping". Instead develop with other local professionals a listing of who is an expert in various aspects of tourism law. Develop tourism law exchanges and remember that a legal mistake in any one part of the tourism industry can impact the entire industry. Do not forget to include the local police departments in these seminars and work with its members so that the local police department does not act (or fail to act) due to legal confusion. -Review your obligations and duties with your legal staff. How are these different within different types of law such as maritime law, international law, airline codes, local property law, contract law or statutory law? Then make sure that you understand legal subtleties. For example you should know if there are differences between a local person as a guest in your hotel or a visitor as a guest? Do you know your rights and obligations with a trespasser? How are you expected to treat a VIP and is there a clear definition of who is and who is not a VIP? -Know what help can you expect from a government regarding damages? In some nations, tourism is considered a critical asset and governments have special agencies to help with recovery. For example, in the US Homeland Security and FEMA may be able to provide funding which will aid you in avoiding a costly lawsuit. The smart tourism/travel professional takes the time to meet with government agencies to learn of all of their services and what legal help these agencies can provide.-Know what types of damages can you be accountable for and for which types of damages can you not be held accountable!. Tourism is different from other types of laws in that the victimizer and the victim may not be in the same community? What are your rights and obligations if you are sued from a different locale? How can you protect your community from someone who comes into it, victimizes it and then leaves? Are there different laws dealing with how locale interacts with physical damages or financial damages or emotional damages caused by a ruined vacation? -Do you know what are your assets? Many tourism assets are non-tangible assets? For example, is your locale's reputation an asset? How much damage someone coming to do harm might do to the reputation of the locale? What is the asset damage multiplier effect? If your business goes under how much are other tourism related businesses impacted by your error or having suffered an attack? -Make sure that you understand the differences between a criminal act and a terrorist act. These two negative events have very specific definitions in different nation's laws and the legal consequences are determined by how the courts may define the event. It is essential that you review with your legal team these differences and understand what your rights and responsibilities are should either of these two events occur. -Take the time to review what is happening in the world. Are you aware of the tourism risks that your particular industry is facing? All too often tourism/travel professionals are stuck in the old paradigm that stated that tourists were afraid of security and the less mentioned the better. Today's world is different. It is essential that your visitors understand that you locale worries about all aspects of security, from food safety to terrorism, from mismanaged property to crime on the streets. The best way to avoid or win a lawsuit is to take the time to do good risk management and know what are your obligations.Again, please consult a licensed legal professional before making any decision. The above is merely to present questions for you to consider with your legal professional.

HotStats Limited · 30 Jul

There are myriad acronyms in the glossary of hospitality financial analysis, but two in particular haunt hotel managers like a specter: ADR (average daily rate) and RevPAR (revenue per available room).

The Hotel Financial Coach · 29 Jul

Creating a financially engaged leadership team takes time, commitment, respect for fair play, resources and a sense of adventure.When creating something new, for me there was always an element of the unknown. In writing my book, it occurred to me that if I had a book like this 25 years ago, some of the guesswork would not have existed.

Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited · 24 Jul

Call me old-fashioned. To me, a hotel's guest list is completely confidential, released only on a need-to-know basis. This protects not only the guest's privacy but also the hotel from the likes of paparazzi, over-zealous bill collectors and jealous spouses. And as it concerns high status guests, privacy is tantamount to loyalty.

RevUp Hospitality · 23 Jul

Travel and Tourism accounted for approximately $8 Trillion of the world economy in 2018 and 10% of the worlds work force a 6% increase from 2017 and no foreseeable signs of slowing. The travel industry is directly tied to global consumption growth and as wealth and populations continue to grow, demand for travel products will continue to expand. With statistics like this it should come as no supersize that there is a rush to jump into the market, the industry has a long history of failing to drive change and transform internally. "The travel and hospitality industry as a whole has taken a lot of criticism for its inability to drive innovation from within," — Lio Chen Managing Director of Plug and Play Travel. But this may be about to change, many of the major players have begun taking notice and since 2008 the "travel-tech" sector has attracted over $19B+ in investments and with Amazon and Google both deciding to step back into the industry these numbers are only going to grow. While it's been slow moving Travel Tech is likely on the verge of bringing T&T into the modern era. Plug and Play has a vertical dedicated to travel startups, Airbnb is only the first in a series of tech companies to start disrupting the status quo. The market is prime for disruption as personalization, AI and Blockchain are all integrated into what will be a new era of tech innovation.

The Hotel Financial Coach · 22 Jul

Tis the season and most hotels are already well under way with their annual grunt work to prepare a 2020 plan for the regional and corporate teams to review and then it is onward to ownership seeking their approval. In most hotels, this process is a protracted drawn-out marathon of such epic duration that it leaves a streak of several weeks, if not months, for some to endure. Revision after revision is the norm and everyone along the path squeezes a little more until there is nothing left to give anymore.

HotStats Limited · 19 Jul

Nothing irks people more than paying for something they don't need or use. I once paid $50 for a pair of pants I never ended up wearing—but that's on me. I'm to blame. It's another thing altogether when you are forced to pay for a pair of pants that you didn't want in the first place.

JMBM · 15 Jul

Hotel Lawyer: We hate to say "we told you so" on Resort Fee litigation

The Hotel Financial Coach · 15 Jul

Accounting was a trade that had a global language much like carpentry or plumbing. There were universal rules that applied and these principles were exactly the same in the hotel business. That was good news. Accounting principles are universal. The way in which accounting is done throughout the world is a direct by-product of these principles: “Accounting principles are the rules and guidelines that companies must follow when reporting financial data. The common set of U.S. accounting principles is the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).”