Mövenpick Resort El Quseir/Egypt has been recognized as the “Best Environment Hotel” 2012 in the Middle East and North Africa, at the prestigious MENA Travel Awards Ceremony. The MENA Travel Awards has become the leading professionals’ choice awards honouring and awarding Top Performers in the Middle East & North Africa region’s hospitality and travel industry.

The hospitality “Think Tank” MKG Hospitality Group awarded Mr. Khem R. Lakai, the founder & CEO of GATE (Global Academy of Tourism & Hospitality Education) College with the award “Most Innovative Training Program – 2011” at the “World Hospitality Awards 2011” held in Paris on 21st of November.

Mr. Lakai, who is a Swiss School graduate and also a certified hospitality educator (CHE) tells us that this event provided an opportunity to showcase Nepal for a different reason, i.e.professional education and it changes the narrative of the country indicating what this country can become in the future. I am thrilled to represent my nation to the world and I would like to express one simple message that “hospitality education is dignified and holds tremendous potential for the future of Nepal and we can also compete in the world.”

For the past few months some 80 international students of more than 20 different nationalities who currently study at IMI University Centre in Luzern, Switzerland have collected data to create the the world's first crowd-sourced student guide. The iPhone App is a collaboration with Luzern Tourism which also has its own tourism city guide and covers much more than just the best places to have your pizza or beer. It’s about Swiss culture, stories about Heidi and even answers questions like: "Do Swiss people really eat most chocolate of all nationalities?". The Student iPhone App also collects many of those insider tips which only international students currently living in Switzerland can know about, having lived abroad for such a long time.



The app is now a free download on the Apple App store from: http://bit.ly/e8byM6 (Direct Link). Alternatively search for “Luzern” and you will easily find the IMI University Centre iStudent Luzern app on the Apple iPhone Store.

ZAGG is one of Switzerland’s success stories: a week gastro fair with ongoing live competitions in culinary and service. For many years ZAGG has been building up an audience of specialists who are interested in gastronomy and food, and is now in its 16th year. ZAGG hosts the European Culinary Challenge, the Swiss Barkeeper Championship and many more exciting exhibitions of culinary talent. As N Schmidiger in the official ZAGG guide wrote: “Chefs become more and more showmasters in the current media. We want to bring it back to where it belongs, a lot of work and a lot of craftsmanship and less of a show!”.

Mobile technology is no longer something we are simply anticipating. The development of new technologies and ideas has brought about higher expectations from your potential guests. With the increase in smartphone use and android applications, it’s evident: the mobile trend is here…and it is here to stay.

This explosion of the mobile web over the last 10 years places an important burden on hoteliers to implement a mobile-ready website. Why? The growth of mobile usage among the travelling public is increasing at an astonishing rate. The statistics speak for themselves – the number of mobile subscribers will surpass 5 billion in 2010, over 70% of the population. Every day, more and more people are surfing the internet from their mobile device for travel related purposes. By not being a part of the mobile world, your hotel has limited exposure and will miss out on reservations. Research demonstrates that around 10% of hotel guests with mobile phones with data plans have used them to reserve rooms. Furthermore, mobile bookings are expected to exceed $1 billion in 2010.

Situation Status – Hospitality Industry Attains #1 Rank for Data Breaches

Hackers are becoming more sophisticated and targeted in their attacks, finding what works and repeating it over and over again with the “low hanging fruit”. According to Trustwave’s Global Security Report 2010, they’re going after the hospitality industry in a big way. Thirty-eight percent of all attacks in 2009 were against hotels and resorts last year, making the hospitality industry the #1 target for breaches. Ninety-eight percent of all 2009 breaches involved credit card numbers.

There’s little doubt that hotels are particularly vulnerable to today’s savvy cybercriminal. Consider the number of payment channels used by hotels—web, telephone, in-person and mail order. And consider the number of reasons hoteliers need to store cardholder data for guests’ convenience—reservation hold, incidental expenses, loyalty programs and charge-backs—to name just a few examples. If the cardholder data is not protected within all applications and databases, data breaches will continue to occur at an alarming rate.

On 12th August 2010, Yahoo! announced a partnership with leading online travel experts Expedia, who will provide a travel booking engine on Yahoo!’s sites across Europe (UK and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Through the partnership Yahoo! Travel users will enjoy access to more than 123,000 hotels and 450 airlines making it easy for them to find the right deal for their holiday.

For the first time, Yahoo! users will be able to view deals for hotels, flights and car hire, using Expedia’s dynamic ‘e-packaging’ search technology, which offers travel combinations to provide even greater savings for consumers. This coupled with the easy to use filtering system and hotel reviews from Expedia guests it will provide the perfect accompaniment to Yahoo!’s premier travel which is experiencing an increase of users of 115% month on month *. Users will also gain access to a new ‘Deals Module’ with offers that are updated in real-time.

Speaking of the partnership Mark Rabe, MD and VP Sales, Yahoo! UK & Ireland, said: “We’re excited to announce our deal with Expedia. Travel is a cornerstone product for our users and Expedia helps us enhance the experience via greater functionality. Ultimately, this supports Yahoo!’s ambition to be the centre of users’ online lives.”

Hotelemarketer.com did an interview with Expedia's Alex Gisbert about this recent partnership - read the Q&A here: Interview – Expedia’s Alex Gisbert on the recent Partnership with Yahoo! in Europe

You've simply got to love this song...and the flash mob received quite an accolade at the Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino (a Sheraton branded property at the time) both when this happened and subsequently on YouTube... the video has clocked nearly 2 million views to-date and shows no signs of slowing down.



The song was so popular that the guys who came up with it actually released the official music video recently...watch it below:

A new iPad application called Flipboard has been making waves recently...so much so that the company is struggling to cope with demand for the app. The app allows users to link to their social networks and pull in related content to create a rich visually appealing "social magazine"... watch the video to learn more:

I came across a piece I’d written about 17-18 months ago on the future of hotel internet marketing. The article talked about 5 broad tech trends that I thought would radically alter the way we approached digital / internet marketing for hotels back at the end of 2008. I thought it’d be fun to take a re-look at the article and see how far we’ve actually come in the last year or more and if those predictions still hold water… here goes:



1. Choice is king.
The clear winners of the online distribution race will be suppliers and 3rd parties that provide the most choice to the customer. “Experience building” will become key to the looking and booking process online. This will mean that successful suppliers (hotels) will have to break down elements of their inventory like rooms, dining, sports, spa and supporting services into individual units that can be booked and packaged both internally and externally. The more elements you provide to what I like to call the “Experience Engine”, the better the choice available to customers to personalize and tailor their experiences. This creation of experience units will also allow tourism industry suppliers to collaborate more effectively online, as well as spur the evolution of 3rd party providers who provide superior experience engines, taking destination marketing to a whole new level.

Read the entire blog post at Hotelemarketer.com - The Hotel Internet Marketing Blog

I want to share two very simple but powerful ideas that could radically transform the way the hotel industry utilizes measures like the hotel guest satisfaction index, web analytics, etc.

1. Taking ‘measurement’ beyond just numbers

We all know that to be truly hospitable, one must go beyond just providing the necessary physical comforts that hotel guests and travellers demand. More often than not, what keeps guests coming back again and again are not the features and amenities…but the relationships and memories (after all, human beings ARE 80% emotion and 20% intellect). So perhaps it is time to step beyond the easily quantifiable attributes of a stay and start measuring actual guest ‘happiness’. When was the last time you asked a hotel guest about what made them really happy? Guest satisfaction scores and indexes often fail to consider the true value that employee-guest relationships bring to the table. Plus, since guest satisfaction depends on your employees being happy…how many hotels do you know that actually go beyond the typical corporate HR mumbo-jumbo and actually understand what makes their people tick? Why do they come to work? What makes them happy? What would they like to achieve…and can we help them get there?

Continue reading this blog post at Hotelemarketer.com - the hotel internet marketing blog

Now that I have your attention with my intriguing post title, allow me to explain just what I mean… and boiling frogs and organ donation do indeed feature in this little blog post!

All the recent furore over Facebook privacy has shown no signs of abating…and for good reason. Privacy, after all, is a sensitive and important issue. Or is it?



There’s no doubt that Facebook has made a startling entrance in the online world and taken over our browsers and mobile screens rather quickly. Official stats from Facebook claim that 400 million users currently use the service and almost half log on every day. Globally it appears that people now spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook…an enviable record for any platform.

Read the entire blog post at Hotelemarketer.com, the Internet Marketing Blog

Just in time for summer Westin Hotels & Resorts is introducing a selection of SuperFoods-inspired Mojito cocktails at more than 70 properties across North America. Created exclusively for Westin Hotels by Francesco Lafranconi, Director of Mixology forSouthern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc., each handcrafted cocktail is made with key SuperFoods ingredients including blueberries, ginger, green tea and honey. The brand's new SuperFoods Mojito offering joins a host of other signature Westin offerings specially designed to help preserve wellness on the road.

Each participating property will feature a classic Cuban Mojito made with fresh mint, rum, and fresh lime alongside additional SuperFoods-inspired Mojito creations such as the Blueberry Mojito, Pineapple and Ginger Mojito, Spicy Apple Mojito, Green Tea and Honey Mojito, Strawberry Kiwi Mojito, and the Brazilian Cure Mojito made with Brazilian rum and VeeV Açai Spirit, a powerful superfood liquor.

Möevenpick Hotels & Resorts, the Swiss-based upscale hotel management company, recently held its annual general managers conference at the Möevenpick Hotel Cairo-Media City. Themed “Africa the New Horizon 2”, the three-day-conference was headed by Jean Gabriel Peres, President & CEO Möevenpick Hotels & Resorts and attended by all Africa region General Managers together with the Regional office for Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts Africa.

The Hilton Garden Inn Big Day survey was designed to provide insight into consumers’ biggest days, patterns and preferences while traveling. Opinion Research Corporation conducted the survey by phone to 1,020 adults between January 29th and February 1st, on behalf of Hilton Garden Inn.

Key Statistics
Did You Know…
· Sixty-seven percent of people admit to taking things from hotels, though most of the items could be considered “complimentary.” However, almost a quarter (19%) admit to taking less conspicuous things like towels, bathrobes, pillows, lamps and alarm clocks
o Shampoo, conditioner or lotion (52%)
o Pens, paper and notepads (34%)
o Towels or bathrobes (8%)
o Liquor from the mini-bar (5%)
o Pillows, comforters, blankets or sheets (3%)
o Iron, alarm clock, lamps or artwork (2%)
o The bible (1%)
o None (33%)