Subject of the presentation is ‘Back to the future, back to B.A.S.I.C.S’

Our time is a confusing time. It is almost impossible to keep up with the changing demands from guests, employees, owners and other stakeholders. But is it really going to be all that different? YES it is! In an interactive presentation Sander Allegro will share his view on a series of trends and their effect on tourism and marketing and is looking forward to debate the effects of these changes on the Curacao market with the HSMAI Curacao membership. See you on Friday 15 October!
About Drs. Sander M. Allegro BHa (1968)
Hospitality & Innovation are the two key words for Sander Allegro’s working philosophy. Allegro applies these key values in his part time senior lectureship of strategic hospitality management at Hotelschool The Hague, one of the top Hospitality Universities in the World. Sander combines teaching with a Regional Directorship Europe and Asia for Leading Hotel Schools of the World and with his Amsterdam based consultancy company Allegro INN-ovations, a hospitality consultancy firm specializing in strategic development.

Allegro started his career in the hospitality Industry in France, Bonaire (N.A.) and Belgium. Allegro holds a Master´s degree from the Free University of Amsterdam and acquired a bachelor’s degree in hotel management from Hotelschool The Hague.

The survey aims to identify key trends and opportunities in this growing sector.

We would like your contribution to this, and would be grateful if you could complete the attached survey (which should take about two minutes). As a ‘thank you’, we’ll send you a copy of the results once they’ve been collated.

» take our survey

If you or your staff members are planning to attend Affordable Meetings® Mid-America in Chicago – or are looking for an outstanding educational program targeted specifically to hotel sales and marketing staff – you’ll want to give strong consideration to attending this conference. Top-notch speakers and a collection of impressive sessions make this a must-attend program, and a great way to maximize your time while in Chicago.

Designed specifically for hotel sales professionals, HSMAI’s 2009 Hotel Sales Strategy Conference is a can’t-miss conference that will help you  Find New Business, Stand Out from the Crowd &
Navigate the Road to Recovery.  Industry thought leaders will address essential issues including:
 Optimizing sales deployment, utilizing market share results to drive sales strategy, and learning how to choose between competing sales initiatives
 Improving budgeting accuracy and your competitive sales advantage through an innovative  town hall session with Smith Travel Research  
 Driving online reservations through Internet marketing, whether you’re part of a major brand or an independent property

You’ll also hear directly from customers who will share their strategic thoughts on developments in each of their sectors; learn how to utilize personal branding to make you and your sales team indispensable to your company and clients; and participate in an executive leadership module presented by Henry Givray, chairman and CEO of SmithBucklin Corporation. 
 
The full conference agenda and session overviews can be found at www.hdosm.org, along with information regarding registration and conference sponsorship.

Companies who exhibit at HSMAI’s Affordable Meetings® will receive a special registration rate for the 2009 Hotel Sales Strategy Conference: 25% off of the early member registration rate, a discounted rate of $295 per person.  For non-exhibitors, early registration (through 3/18/09) for the conference is $395 for HSMAI members and $570 for non-members, which includes one year of membership.  All conference registrants will also receive the results of a new survey of best practices for providing added value to customers in order to maintain rates, as well as a complimentary registration to any HSMAI University webinar held in the second quarter of 2009.  For more information, contact HSMAI vice president Juli Jones at jjones@hsmai.org or at (703) 506-3280.

Make the most of your travel time to Affordable Meetings® Mid-America and come in a day early for this impressive program.  Both events are indispensable parts of your future strategic planning.  For information about exhibiting opportunities at Affordable Meetings®, visit www.affordablemeetings.com.

HSMAI’s Hotel Sales Strategy Conference is organized by HSMAI and HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Special Interest Group (HDOSM-SIG) Advisory Board.  Full details at www.hdosm.org.

Opening speaker Mr. Lionel Anthony, managing director LA Consultancy started off with information on how to use time effectively giving tips to the participants touching upon the subject of time management without the use of technology to achieve their goals.
Mrs. Monique Raphaela-Boezen and Mr. Ricardo Lochan of Stimul – IT continued elaborating on the subject using examples of technologies that can support time management. Surprising tips came up that participants were able to note to improve their effective performance as well as have some time to use for quality time in higher priorities.

The main goal of this event was helping the professionals in and outside of our hospitality and tourism industry in Curacao to know how to better use their time in order to get closer to achieving the goals they have sent for themselves in 2009. Presentations of this events are available on www.hsmaicuracao.org/02.html

Mr. Lionel Anthony’s presentation.

LTR: Richardo Lochan (Stimul-IT), Steven Damiana (HSMAI Curacao), Monique Raphaela (Stimul-IT), Lionel Anthony (LAConsult)

More than 170 top industry leaders of the 25 different chapters present were able to accept the different awards in the categories which were all judged by other international chapters. Besides the 2 awards, Curacao won also the special honored prize of chapter with the highest rate of retention in the whole of HSMAI International chapters all over the world. The chapter of the year resulted to be the HSMAI Mid South Chapter ( cities such as Memphis, etc.) 

The Annual Leadership meeting had meetings for the different chapter Managing Directors and conducted several workshops, trainings and presentations on how to work in a team, characteristics of leaders, energy management for hospitality leaders, motivation of volunteers and culminated in a formidable Chinese Auction which funds will go to the HSMAI Foundation. From Curacao, Superclubs Breezes Curacao donated an impressive prize, followed by Floris Suite Hotel and destination management company Explore Curacao.

For information please call 465 1005 or visit www.hsmaicuracao.org or mail to info@hsmaicuracao.org. Come join us!

 I’m blessed; and on many levels. One being, I am truly in love with what I do as an executive sales coach. If I could have any job in the word (other than being a rock star but I’m digressing to the dreams of a child) I would still excitedly and passionately choose being an executive sales coach and consultant. One of the things I love most about what I do is the creative aspect of my work. That is, the creativity that comes into play when working with clients.

Whether we are creating new processes, powerful questions to better qualify and enroll your prospects, new templates, new ways of doing things, collaborating on ideas, co-creating new solutions and innovations to develop and maintain their competitive edge, the creativity in the coaching process is a non-negotiable essential component that drives the value each client receives during every coaching session.

The same holds true when selling. After all, selling is the art of creating new possibilities. The creation of new possibilities; possibilities and solutions that weren’t there before or ones that your clients couldn’t see. That’s what it’s all about, especially when you are working with your clients and prospects.

It is in that same vein as to why I’m saddened by the lack of understanding in some company cultures as to how critical creativity is in their selling process and the role it plays in achieving their year end sales goals as well as the role creativity plays in fostering and developing a positive, flourishing culture; a culture that’s also enjoyable and keeps employees driven, motivated and happy over the long term.

What inspired today’s blog was a coaching call I had the other morning. I was talking with Mindy, the owner of a local business in Ohio which was part of a larger franchise organization. We were discussing her need for recruiting new, talented salespeople and the characteristics to look for when making a hiring decision. It was when we got on the subject of creativity when I heard the disparaging news.

Now, as you may be aware of, creativity place a tremendous role in your selling efforts and results. After all, it’s the discipline of creativity that is at the core of your efforts and fuels your success. Being highly creative is, ultimately, your key responsibility; that is, to create solutions for your clients. Mindy shared with me that her company, at the franchise’s corporate level, has modified their personality profile assessment for all new potential hires.
Corporate plays a role in assisting their franchisees in recruiting top sales talent. So, this assessment is one that all candidates take during the interview process to determine whether or not they would be a fit.

 What caused a negative reaction in me was this. In evaluating their assessment, corporate made the decision to actually pull out the section they had in the assessment which rated someone’s creative abilities and, get this, replaced it with a section on their technical abilities. To me, technical vs. creative is the difference between being an order taker or being a highly skilled sales professional.)
“Where did they get this data that fostered the change?” I asked. “Well,” Mindy responded, “They took the data which they pull from the top new rookies in the company who recently joined the company and finished their training. They look across the country and identify the commonalities amongst the top sellers.”

What I came to understand about this process was, they did not take a sample of ALL the top reps in the company but only the new top rookies in the company that were only recently hired and who finished the new hire orientation program that each new sales person goes through.
So, they look at the top reps from the most recent graduating class and make a determination from that. And from this recent class, corporate made a determination to replace the creative section with the technical section.
Why, because it just so happened that the newer, top selling reps scored high on the technical section and happened to be selling more than the other salespeople companywide.
They replaced the section on creativity based solely on the last few classes of salespeople who were hired and who are currently performing in the top 5%.

Here’s where this process falls apart. Before Mindy started operating her own company, interestingly, she was one of the top salespeople within the franchise. And when Mindy took the profile when she first started her career with the company, ironically, she scored very high on creativity and low on the technical side! More over, the other top salespeople at the time she started also scored in the same manner.
Here’s the kicker, this group was making more sales comparatively and with higher account averages. That is, the sales they made were larger and more profitable than the ones the last class of rookies were bringing in. While this new class or ‘top producers’ may be demonstrating how they are leveraging their technical abilities to bring in more sales (which by the way, wasn’t the sole criteria to making a hire), they are still not selling more than Mindy’s group, a group of salespeople who scored high on creativity.

More companies push product knowledge and process training at a great expense. The cost is destroying the creative process needed to outsell and outwit your competition. Before you start analyzing your process, what are you doing to become a truly unique force in your industry or profession that helps you stand out from the rest of the herd who are all vying for the attention of the same prospects?

Are you killing your creativity? The lesson here? While the linear, technical part of the selling process is absolutely critical, it is what you do that sets you apart from every other salesperson which is going to make you rise to the top of your profession. In other words, the technical part can be duplicated by practically any salesperson which positions you the same as every other droid calling on the same prospects. However, it’s the creative part that separates you from every other salesperson, makes you unique and continually helps maintain your competitive edge. Companies need to start fostering creativity within their sales culture. Consequently, the lack of creativity will create fewer sales.

IT isn’t easy to astonish Kathleen Ameche, who is usually on the road five days a week as a speaker, and who literally wrote the book on women and business travel.

But the result of a recent Web seminar on travel safety that she helped organize among 500 female business travelers did just that.

“Ninety-eight percent of them said they had their personal safety compromised on a business trip within the last 45 days,” said Ms. Ameche, the author of “The Woman Road Warrior: A Woman’s Guide to Business Travel” (Agate, 2005). “Ninety-eight percent! That number is staggering. In 2007 we still have that issue?”

It has been noted, here and elsewhere, that the growing number of female business travelers has had significant effects on the travel experience. Women are a big part of the reason that a typical hotel room, whether midlevel or luxury, has better bedding, lighting, room service, closets, work spaces and overall design.

Unlike men, women tend to notice the details and share them with friends and colleagues. So hotels are going to be hearing more about safety.

“We do take notes and we talk, and we do make most of the buying decisions in business and personal travel,” said Ms. Ameche, who encourages women who travel to network with one another.

“The hotel experience got a lot better over the years,” she said. “They improved the creature comforts of the room, and now we’re talking a lot more about food service and healthy eating. Obviously, they have to go a little further on safety, but they’re listening.”

Among the biggest complaints about safety are hotel clerks who address a female guest by name and announce her room number at check-in. “That drives women crazy,” Ms. Ameche said. “There are issues that need addressing about where you put us on a floor, like next to the elevator. We’re telling them, just be cognizant of us.”

Much of the recent growth in business travel among women comes from small businesses. Women own nearly 10.4 million businesses, employing nearly 13 million people. And many of these women are frequent travelers who approach life on the road differently from men.

“Women and men have different management styles,” according to a report by the Center for Women’s Business Research. “Women emphasize relationship building and are more likely to consult with experts, employees and fellow business owners.”

Hotels took the major initiatives in designing travel marketing specifically for women.In 1995, Wyndham Hotels, with American Airlines as a partner, began a marketing program called Women on Their Way.

Yesterday, American Airlines, encouraged by the Wyndham program’s successes, introduced a Web site for female travelers, www.AA.com/women. It is the first airline to do so.

Besides a booking system, the site offers advice from an advisory panel of seasoned female travelers, and will soon offer tips and experiences from customers. According to American, 48 percent of its passengers are women.

“We think the market is right for it,” said Peggy Sterling, American’s vice president for safety, security and environmental issues. “Women clearly have very strong purchasing power.”

Mary Sanderson, director of corporate communications for American, added, “Ultimately, if American taps that resource and is able to come up with a broader level of women travelers, it goes directly to the bottom line.”

Besides a dedicated Web site, American has upgraded its Admirals Club airport lounges to add children’s playrooms and more commodious bathrooms and private showers. The new lie-flat seats it is installing in business-class cabins of its long-haul 767-300 and 777 fleets allow women more private space and have features that take into account things like where to store a purse in the seat for security and easy access.

The new American Web site includes offers from Wyndham Hotels. There are numerous links to safety tips, advice on combining business and leisure travel and other issues.

American, Ms. Sterling said, has made a special effort to involve its own female executives and workers, including flight attendants, in the Web site and in networking. The response had been enthusiastic, Ms. Sterling said.

That’s encouraging, Ms. Ameche said. Like many other female frequent business travelers, she has noticed “issues” with the way women are treated by some flight attendants on airlines in general.

“We’ve traditionally been treated almost as second-class citizens, which I’ve never been able to figure out,” she said. Opening the network wider can only help, she said.

“It would be nice,” she added, “if we could work together better as we start to become a collaborative voice.”

Email: jsharkey@nytimes.com

NEARLY every morning, over his second cup of coffee, Tom Brady, general manager at the Affinia Chicago, logs onto his computer and surfs over to TripAdvisor.com to see if there are any new postings about his hotel.

“It’s an obsession,” he said. If the review is positive he moves on. If it’s unfavorable — like the complaint posted in March from a guest who had received a $90 parking ticket because of a valet’s error — he’s on it immediately. In that case, he marched straight out to the valet to find out what had happened. After identifying the guest, he made sure that the company issued an apology and a reimbursement for the ticket.

“This is all over the world,” he said, describing his concern about any negative comment on TripAdvisor. “Everyone is looking at this. I’ve got to make sure it’s solved quickly, so God forbid someone else doesn’t have the same problem.”

The individual traveler’s word is weightier than ever. Before the advent of travel review sites like TripAdvisor, IgoUgo.com and MyTravelGuide.com, customer complaints about dirty showers or threadbare sheets typically went to hotels directly and discreetly in the form of comment cards, phone calls or e-mail messages. But as review sites have become more popular, customer feedback that was once viewed only by a hotel’s staff is increasingly being posted online for all to see, enabling guests to share their praise or air their gripes publicly.

“We love it and we hate it,” said Steven Pipes, vice president at the Jack Parker Corporation, which owns the Parker Meridien in New York and the Parker Palm Springs in California. He regularly checks TripAdvisor. “We love it because we really look for feedback and want to know what people are thinking about, and we know they don’t always tell us to our faces,” he said. “We hate it because it’s anonymous.” The anonymity of the comments makes it difficult to respond to guests and find out exactly what happened, he said, or to know if they truly stayed at the hotel.

Nevertheless, the growing influence of such sites is hard for hoteliers to ignore. Three out of 10 American travelers who do travel research online read reviews written by other travelers, according to Forrester Research. Of the people who book hotels online, 30 percent have changed their hotel plans because of comments written by other travelers.

Because of the importance consumers attach to guest reviews, some hotels have gone to great lengths to boost their ratings. Some encourage guests to write flattering reviews; some even submit phony write-ups or hire outside companies that specialize in online reputation management to monitor and respond to comments. Review sites, in turn, work to weed out bogus reviews.

Now, interest in the review sites is taking a new turn. As more travelers post detailed comments on everything from room service to décor, hotels are looking at their postings as market-research tools — sources of new ideas, feedback on new concepts and even promotional material.

“What this does is give you the information you need to improve,” said Tony Fant, president and chief operating officer of the Soho Grand and Tribeca Grand hotels in New York. “You look at it, evaluate it and learn from it.”

For small hotel groups like his, Mr. Fant said that online hotel reviews have helped level the playing field. “I have the same exposure through these Web outlets as Starwood, Marriott or Hilton, and they give me access to millions of customers I didn’t have access to,” he said.

Some hotels have taken to publishing TripAdvisor reviews on their own Web pages. In response, TripAdvisor, which says it has a stockpile over five million reviews and opinions, has started to offer them to hotels and other travel companies in order to expand its reach. Last month it began allowing hotels to publish TripAdvisor reviews directly on their own hotel Web sites through R.S.S., or Really Simple Syndication, which transfers the comments directly, as they appear on TripAdvisor. So far about 200 hotels, including the Barclay House in Vancouver and Chanters Lodge in Zambia, and at least one hotel group, Affinia, have begun posting the reviews through R.S.S. Most of the customer reviews these hotels receive on TripAdvisor are positive, making the new feature an attractive option for them, regardless of the risk that some negative comments are bound to creep in.

TripAdvisor says there is no opportunity for hotels to manipulate reviews because they are automatically fed to the hotels as is, but it does allow hotels to post their own responses to comments.

“The hotels are saying, ‘We have nothing to hide,’ ” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research.

By publishing the TripAdvisor reviews on its site, Affinia Hotels hopes to reinforce the message — to both customers and its own employees — that the guest’s experience is important to the hotel. “It raises the stakes for everyone when we make it that open,” said John Moser, Affinia’s chief marketing officer.

Since the reviews went live on its site, Affinia has begun developing a policy to monitor and respond to negative TripAdvisor comments. In the last month the company has begun asking general managers at its six hotels to monitor TripAdvisor and post responses to negative comments within five days.

Not every hotel is paying so much attention to consumers’ reviews. Neither Marriott nor Hilton has a formal corporate strategy in place for monitoring hotel review sites, though both keep tabs on Flyertalk.com, a frequent-flier Web site where travelers obsess over getting the most out of loyalty programs.

“We’ve got so many hotels it’s impossible to scan everything that’s going on,” said Bala Subramanian, senior vice president for global distribution services for Hilton Hotels. Hilton, he said, “makes a tremendous amount of investment in collecting feedback” through customer surveys. But as more hotels do take careful notice of guest reviews online — and even stake their reputations on them — posting one may be a surefire way for a customer to get a hotel’s attention. “I can tell you that you’re going to get a response,” said Mr. Moser of Affinia. When a complaint is out there on the Web, he said, “there’s no one to sweep it under the rug.”

“TIA is strongly committed to helping travel industry professionals stay on top of e-commerce,” Dow said. “Our collective vision needs to be one where we leverage every practical technology that puts our customers in control of their travel experiences.”

 During this year’s conference, Farecast and ITA Software were named the first-ever winners of TravelCom Res-Expo Innovator Awards. Farecast was given the New Innovator Award for a company less than five years old. ITA Software was given the Established Innovator Award for a company at least five years old.Winners were selected based on criteria that highlighted their innovative contributions to the travel industry.

Other finalists for the New Innovator Award included: DoHop Virtual Online, Altius Par, Open Travel Software RFP Marketplace, and EZ Yield.

 Other finalists for the Established Innovator Award included: TravelClick, Amadeus Flex Pricer, Omniture, and GetThere.

The Travel Industry Association is the national, non-profit organization representing all components of the $703 billion travel industry. TIA’s mission is to promote and facilitate increased travel to and within the

By Rob Lovitt, Travel writer MSNBC contributor

Way back in the Dark Ages (circa 1999), the folks at HotBot ran a very clever ad campaign likening Internet search to a room full of befuddled old men. Regardless of the query at hand, they’d pop up with the most ridiculous results, including, in one memorable case, a bow-tied geezer with a whip who would beckon: “Enter my dungeon of delight.”

“Why is he here?” asks a cohort, to which another replies in exasperation, “He comes up for everything.”

If you’ve ever researched a vacation online, you probably know the feeling. From choosing a destination to finding good deals, the typical search can lead to some wildly inappropriate results. A few weeks ago, I started asking various analysts and entrepreneurs what the explosion of online travel resources means for the rest of us. Can airfares be predicted? Are user reviews trustworthy? And, perhaps most important, is there any way to take the ever-expanding trove of travel-related data and make it less of a catalog and more of a guide?

That last one speaks directly to the future of online travel, and it turns out plenty of people have ideas on that particular subject. Most of it’s theoretical at this point, but there’s no harm in gazing into the crystal ball at what may lay ahead, be it sooner, later or some time in the distant future.

Sooner More features, richer content: TripAdvisor.com now lets users post videos and pursue one-on-one chats with other users, while Travelocity has begun offering airfare alerts via a “gadget” in Microsoft’s Vista operating system. Considering that online travel in the U.S. is expected to grow to $86 billion this year, the pressure to innovate will only increase.

Integrated information: Often the domain of individual taggers and bookmarkers, mashups will become increasingly common, says Cathy Schetzina, travel analyst with PhoCusWright. A Honolulu mashup, for example, might include an interactive map that shows local restaurants along with a selection of user reviews — a very useful tool after that surf lesson or outrigger-canoe ride.

Increased convergence: Last summer, Sheraton began inviting guests to share personal stories and candid photos on the chain’s home page; a few weeks ago, TripAdvisor announced a program that lets hotels receive RSS feeds of current user reviews which can then be posted on site. Part social networking, part self-promotion (for all concerned), it’s all very smart marketing and sure to spread.

Later Door-to-door travel: We book flights between airports, suggests Bob Cowen of Internet Travel Tips, but ultimately, we plan trips between our true point of departure (e.g., home) and a final destination (e.g., a business or resort). The solution? A Web site that combines mapping software, ground transportation choices and airport information. “We do those calculations in our head,” he says. “Why can’t a computer?”

Dynamic data: It may look random, but the fact is, all that user content can be pretty darn useful. Amass enough of it, parse it for patterns and, voilà, you’ve got a catalog of experiences that other users may find, well, useful. It’s not that big a leap, says Jasper Malcomson, director of Yahoo! Travel, “to suggest those experiences to others via alerts, e-mails and the Web pages they visit.”

Someday Meta-matching: In a perfect world, says Malcolmson, “no plane would ever take off with an empty seat, and every hotel room would be filled every night.” To achieve that goal, he envisions a system that would link unused inventory (airplane seats, hotel rooms, etc.) and traveler interest (and availability) via specialized alerts and priced-to-sell discounts. When everything clicks, he says, “you’d grab your bags and run to the airport.”