August 15, 2007
 
Is Africa Misbranded?
Nation brands are difficult to get right, says brandchannel. When it comes to Africa, the branding of the continent is particularly one-sided. It is easy to mistake one of the world’s most disparate and compelling continents as an impoverished, war-ridded, charity case that is best to avoid.
Never mind that some of its nations have done particularly well in terms of growth and stability –Botswana, for example, was one of the world’s fastest growing economies in the last decade. Yet, the reputation of Africa’s overpowering identity remains more dominant than that of her own nations.
Perhaps it’s because the noisiest and most widespread branding of Africa is currently coming from outside of the continent. Africa’s dominant image has been created by the charity brands: the 1985 Live Aid to provide food for Ethiopia, 2005’s Live 8, “Make Poverty History,” G8 politics, Sir Bono and Sir Bob, celebrity adoptions, and Vanity Fair covers. Such campaigns can play a positive role – a strong public voice can put ground swells of pressure on politicians and instigate change. But, en masse, these campaigns have a tendency to create a perception of Africa as a continent that is beyond hope: too much poverty, too much death, and an overwhelming sense of too many problems with too few coherent solutions.
For all the good intentions of the campaigners, the tragic reality is that even the charity branding is not working. Despite the awareness and the pleas – and the impression that much is being done for “Africa” – overall international aid to Africa has consistently fallen during the last decade; most of the G8 promises to help Africa have not been met; unfair international trade rules remain a key issue; and external funding for manageable diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria is simply not enough. The newspaper columns, the concerts, and the international declarations remain in the realms of rhetoric.
 
Attention To Its Customers Drives Aqua Hotels' Growth
In all 262 rooms and suites at the Aqua Palms & Spa in Waikiki, guests will find the phone number of Mike Paulin, says Pacific Business News. Call it and he'll do his best to answer. "And they do call," said Paulin, chairman and CEO of Aqua Hotels and Resorts. "You need bathroom tissue? I'll get you bathroom tissue."
That dedication to customer service has helped Aqua increase its revenue five-fold since 2004, from $711,000 to $3.8 million in 2006. Paulin said Aqua is on track to pull in $4.5 million this year. Aqua Hotels and Resorts, with 320 employees at 10 properties in Waikiki, is No. 8 on PBN's Fastest 50 list this year.
At the Ocean Tower hotel, another Aqua property, General Manager Terry Dowsett said the personal touch goes a long way in securing repeat business. "We host breakfasts in our lobby and get a chance to sit and talk with our customers," said Dowsett, a veteran of 30 years in the local hospitality industry. "We learn things, like maybe a couple are on their honeymoon or having a reunion. We send champagne or leis to their room. It makes a difference."
Others have noticed. TripAdvisor.com, which attracts more than 24 million monthly visitors, has ranked the Ocean Tower the best hotel on Oahu nearly every week since March, edging out much more expensive and well-known properties.
Of Aqua's 1,350 rooms, 950 are condotel rooms leased to Aqua by their owners. The other 400 are standard hotel rooms, some of which Aqua owns but most of which Aqua manages for developers.
 
Travelers From US Face EU Crackdown
US business travelers and tourists flying to the European Union are facing the threat of the same laborious registration requirements that Washington has demanded of Europeans in the latest US security crackdown reports MSNBC.
In its first reaction to the new US visa law, the European Commission said it was "considering" a so-called electronic traveler authorization scheme – similar to the American plan – that would require foreigners heading to the EU to give notice of their travel plans before departure.
The threat has been conveyed to senior US officials and lawmakers, with one letter sent last month stressing that a European system would "of course operate on a reciprocal basis".
A spokesman for the EU executive said no final decision had been taken, but the idea had received "new impetus" by the adoption of a US counter-terrorism bill last week that requires travelers to give US authorities at least 48 hours' notice of their plans to visit the country.
George W. Bush, US president, signed the law last Friday in spite of repeated appeals by the Commission and European business groups to reconsider the measures. The law will tighten scrutiny of travelers from the 26 developed countries whose citizens do not at present require visas to enter the US, including Britain, France, German and most other western European countries.
Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the US was "comfortable" with the EU having a reciprocal system. "It would lend itself to increasing baseline security for air travel throughout the west," he said.
 
Alaska Air’s New Airport Design Changing The Industry
When the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport was planning a new concourse, prime tenant Alaska Airlines insisted on a counterintuitive design: "The one thing we don't want is a ticket counter," said Ed White, the airline's vice president of corporate real estate.
So the 447,000-square-foot Concourse C, which opened in 2004, has only one small, traditional ticket counter, even though the carrier's 1.2 million Anchorage passengers checked in through that area last year. This unconventional approach – which uses self-service check-in machines and manned "bag drop" stations in a spacious hall that looks nothing like a typical airport – has doubled Alaska's capacity here, halved its staffing needs and cut costs, while speeding travelers through the building in far less time.
            The Wall Street Journal reports that most U.S. airports have shallow, rectangular check-in halls with endless ticket counters against the back wall. In between the counters and terminal doors typically are lines of passengers snaking back and forth, waiting to check bags or speak to agents for assistance. Even with most airlines' introduction of self-service check-in kiosks, fliers needing to check luggage or pets, buy tickets or ask for other assistance still need to stand in line.
            In Anchorage, the lobby is deep instead of shallow. But thanks to multiple windows, it is light and airy and provides a sweeping view of the Chugach Mountains to the east. The spacious hall is dotted with kiosks and roving customer-service agents to help passengers who aren't familiar with the machines. Those without bags can go immediately to the security-screening lines around the corner. Those with luggage proceed to bag-drop stations where the passengers, not the agents, place the bags on conveyor belts while the clerk checks boarding passes and identification, tag the bags and give the fliers the baggage stubs.
            Because the transactions are so swift at these stations – and because the passengers (or, in some cases, porters) do the heavy lifting – one agent can handle two lines of passengers, and the lines are rarely very long. Elite frequent fliers have dedicated bag-drop stations.
Alaska's design in Anchorage has turned heads in the industry, and in 2006 the airline was awarded a U.S. patent for the check-in process, something it calls the two-step flow-through. Mr. White says his company isn't trying to keep competitors from going down the same path, but pursued the patent more to reward the many employees who helped to bring the idea to fruition.
            Other airlines quickly sent scouts up to Anchorage to check out the new concourse, including a team from Delta Air Lines Inc., Mr. White says. A few months ago, Delta completed a $26 million renovation of its check-in hall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the finished product looks remarkably similar to that of Alaska Airlines. Greg Kennedy, Delta's vice president for customer service there, says the new layout has enabled the airline to process passengers checking in during the peak spring break travel period in 20 to 30 minutes at most, compared with two or three hours three years ago – and all in the same amount of square footage but 50% more usable space. Mr. Kennedy says he isn't aware of a visit to Anchorage but doesn't dispute it.
 
Gaylord To Scale Down Future Hotels
Gaylord Entertainment Co., known for its elaborate and expansive hotels, is going smaller scale by launching hotels about one-third the size of its flagship Opryland Resort & Convention Center in some national markets. According to The Tennessean it's part of the Nashville-based hotel operator's strategy to gain more bookings from medium-size business meetings and in markets that cannot support the typical Gaylord megaproperty.
The smaller hotels would have 1,000 or fewer rooms, said David Kloeppel, the company's chief financial officer. The Opryland hotel, by contrast, has 2,881 guest rooms, while the Gaylord Palms near Orlando, Fla., has 1,400 rooms. However, the new properties would still be significantly larger than many other traditional convention hotels  –  more than a third bigger than the Renaissance Nashville Hotel, for instance.
"It really is a very sensible strategy," said Chris Woronka, a lodging analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. "It would allow them to capture a greater share of the market when they wouldn't before with only the big-box prototype."
 
Hello, Europe – Bye-Bye, Bags
It's the summer of lost luggage for anyone traveling in Europe says the Orlando Sentinel. Such is the magnitude of the problem that travelers were advised this week by the Association of European Airlines, which includes the major national carriers, to avoid checking bags altogether if possible and to take carry-on luggage instead.
The association released figures showing that an average of 10 passengers per flight lost bags between April and June. British Airways was cited as the worst among Europe's major airlines and is on track to lose a record 1.3 million bags this year.
Fans of the syndicated TV talk show Live With Regis and Kelly heard co-host Regis Philbin rant in July about how BA lost two of his wife's bags. When he got them back, one of her favorite dresses had been ruined by water damage.
After a luggage "mountain" of about 22,000 lost bags piled up in London, BA was forced to use freighters at least twice in the past eight months to reunite passengers in the United States with their belongings, said Laura Goodes, a spokeswoman.
Compounding the problem is a shortage of baggage handlers at London's Heathrow airport, the world's third-busiest airport, where dozens of workers are being taken off duty each day to be trained on a new baggage system at a terminal set to open next year.
The troubles aren't limited to Britain. Italian travelers faced similar luggage horrors this month at Rome's main Fiumicino airport. And in the United States, reports of lost luggage soared by about 26% in June compared with a year earlier.
Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research in San Francisco, warned that the situation was not likely to improve soon. "The simple fact is that there are more people flying by air," he said. "And the growth of budget airlines, most of which don't transfer bags between airlines, requires passengers to check and re-check bags."
 
10 Most Common Internet Marketing Mistakes Hotels Make
More hotels than ever have decided to start marketing themselves online. There is good reason: everyone wants their piece of the online pie, which is now worth of billions of dollars. Furthermore, the number of travelers using the web to book hotel rooms continues to grow tremendously; hotels must be online if they want to remain competitive.
An article in Hotel Online says though many hotels feel they are making a great leap by beginning to market their websites, they are largely unaware of the pitfalls that await them. After working with many hotels and private equity groups, we know where you are most likely to stumble. We hope this list will be a helpful reference for those of you looking to begin, or improve, an online marketing program.
1. Don’t start a marketing campaign without setting goals. 
2. Don’t use a one-stop shop for search marketing services.
3. Don’t forget to build your brand.
4. Optimize the copy on your website. 
5. Focus on your website’s usability. 
6. Integrate your online and offline marketing strategies.
7. Don’t lose customers at the point of purchase. 
8. Make sure you have adequate tracking capabilities. 
9. Participate with OTAs. 
10. Understand the connection between hotel operations and online bookings. 
 
Marketing Services Enjoy Healthy Growth, Face Rosy Future 
While direct marketing spending remained the lion's share of marketing services spending last year, outsourced custom publishing and branded entertainment showed the highest increases – 21.1% and 15.7%, respectively.
According to Marketing Daily spending on public relations, which rose 13.9%, also contributed to a 7.7% growth in spend on marketing services in 2006, Veronis Suhler Stevenson's (VSS) Communications Industry Forecast finds. The compounded annual growth rate of 6.6% from 2001 to 2006 outpaced GDP growth of 5.5%. The future looks rosy for marketing service providers: VSS forecasts a 7.5% growth rate through 2011.
Custom pubs, branded entertainment and PR are all on target to show the largest increases over the next five years, the study finds, as companies look to capture the attention of increasingly distracted consumers who are bombarded with advertising messages in all forms – but as the same study finds, increasingly on the Internet.
Spend on outsourced custom publishing, which includes brand marketers' use of third-party vendors to produce material, hit $4.47 billion in '06, boosted by the launch of new print and electronic publications and investments in production values to produce glossier titles in order to stand out from non-custom pubs.
Magazines and e-publications were the fastest-growing custom pubs' sub-segments in 2006, with magazine spending up 25.8% and e-pubs up 22.1%. Among the marketing services segments, custom pubs generated an increase of $1.77 billion in 2006. If internal spending on custom publishing were included, overall custom publishing soared 31.5% to $37.37 billion in 2006.
 
Starwood Develops Television Content
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and the Travel Channel have announced a two-year strategic marketing partnership that will make the channel available in all Westin, Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton and W Hotels in the US, reports Internet Travel News.
As part of this joint venture The Travel Channel will help develop content for two in-room networks that will provide guests with programming created specifically for Starwood Hotels & Resorts.
The first channel to debut will be "Travel Channel on the Road" featuring themed content developed exclusively for Starwood guests, sneak peeks and access to special programming from the Travel Channel. Programs will be hosted by notable television personalities like Anthony Bourdain and Samantha Brown. Starwood's existing in-room Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG-TV) channel will also reflect the new collaboration with exciting travel news including insider destination features assembled by the Travel Channel.
"Together with the Travel Channel we will curate exclusive destination and lifestyle content that appeals to our guest's interests and passions," said John Peyton, Senior Vice President, Customer Marketing and Partnerships. "We will simultaneously inform our guests about new, exciting destinations around the world while offering them a unique and robust in-room entertainment experience,"
 
Intercontinental Plans UK £250m Hotel Brand Move
Intercontinental Hotels is planning a £250m investment program to bring two successful US names to the UK to add to its Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn brands. The major push will be for Staybridge, reports The Guardian in the UK, which is designed for contract workers staying in one place for up to six months. Staybridge hotel rooms are more like individual apartments, with storage space and communal kitchens.
The first will open in Liverpool early next year and six other sites have been identified, including at London's Southbank and in Brentford. Each Staybridge hotel will cost about £10m to build. A total of 20-25 could be established across the UK in the next couple of years, giving an overall investment of some £250m in the project. The company is also keen to test the format in the Middle East and China.
So far the only Staybridge hotels are in the US, but the clientele it caters for is believed to be the fastest growing in the market.
Intercontinental - which has been the subject of bid speculation for months - has in the past four years moved from being a property owner to pure hotel management company. It has raised about £3bn by selling most of its hotels but retaining the contracts to manage them and market the brands. It has 21 more hotels to sell but is likely to keep trophy assets such as the Intercontinental Hotel in London.
 
Cambodia Gives Permission For Companies To Build Tourist Resorts On Islands
Cambodia's government has given its permission for six local and foreign companies to develop tourist resorts worth up to US$627 million (€460 million) on islands off the country's coast, the International Herald Tribune has reported.
Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, who is also vice chairman of the Cambodian Investment Board, signed agreements in principle with the companies last Friday, said Long Sakhan, president of one of the companies. She said her real estate firm, Vimean Seila Ltd., received permission to build a hotel and resort on a 420-hectare (1,037-acre) area of an island off Kampot province, 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of the capital Phnom Penh.
She said another Cambodian company and four other foreign firms are planning to develop similar tourist resorts on four islands off the coast of Sihanoukville, a port 185 kilometers (115 miles) southwest of Phnom Penh.
A Cambodian Investment Board official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, confirmed the signing of the agreements, under which the companies will be able to lease areas on the islands for up to 99 years. Tourism is a major hard currency earner for the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
 
Australian Room Rates To Soar
Hotel room rates could increase by up to 45% in major Australian markets during the next three years as the industry enters a golden period of prosperity characterized by high demand and low supply.
Yet, says ehotelier, analysts say the imminent revenue bonanza – sparked by occupancy rates regularly topping 80% – may not be enough to trigger the next hotel development cycle. That is because construction costs are rising just as quickly, thanks to high land prices and increasingly expensive materials, setting the scene for a remarkable era of stability in a historically volatile industry.
One operator told staff: "All economic indicators suggest that the hotel sector will continue its positive performance for the rest of the decade. "The era of oversupply that plagued the industry has now balanced out (and there is) a more realistic attitude towards new supply, with the emphasis more on upgrading existing product than building new hotels."
 
Survey: Business Travelers Open Up
In a summer travel season that has seen nearly a half-billion travelers but also a record number of flight delays , business travelers continue to show interest in ways to get through airports and to their destinations more quickly. And with luggage shipping services now available and designed to make air travel easier, 50% of those surveyed in the July Orbitz for Business corporate traveler poll say they'd pay between $25 and $75 for this type of service.
Other questions and findings of the survey include:
-       0-10% - 58%
-       10-25% - 22%
-       25-50% - 15%
-       50-75% - 4%
-       75-100% - 1%
-       0 – 1 hours - 27%
-       2 hours - 36%
-       3 hours - 23%
-       4 hours - 7%
-       More than 4 hours - 7%
-       Bring a spouse/significant other – 72%
-       Travel alone – 28%
 
Adventure Travel For Families Snowballs
Melanie McQuaig smiles as she watches a dozen children playing amid the wildflowers in the distance. Among them are her two girls, ages 6 and 11, who should be tired after hiking nearly 4 miles up a narrow mountain trail to this glorious lunch spot – a remote subalpine meadow flanked by towering peaks. And yet the girls don't even seem winded.
For millions of American families, says USA Today, summer vacation means little more than a lazy week lounging on a beach. Millions more head for the relative relaxation of a cruise ship or the manufactured fun of a theme park. But like the McQuaigs, who are on an activity-packed, five-night "multisport" camping tour of northwestern Montana organized by active travel company Backroads, a growing number of families are choosing a more adventurous option.
Launched in 1989, Backroads' line of family-focused hiking, biking and multisport adventures, dubbed Backroads Family Trips, has been growing at a rapid pace. Bookings this year alone are up 35%. Similar increases are being reported in family offerings from other leading outdoor tour companies such as Mountain Travel Sobek and Butterfield & Robinson. Luxury tour operator Abercrombie & Kent, with a 30% rise in families booking adventure tours this year, created a website especially for family adventures, akadventurecrew.com.
The companies say the boom is partly the result of the growing family focus among their core baby boomer and post-boomer clientele, who now have kids old enough to bike, hike and raft. Always an outdoorsy crowd, they now want to bring their kids along when they set off on adventures.
 
Guests, Running Late, Wake Up Hotels
Hotels have upgraded their beds, enhanced their technology, added more spa services and become more pet- and child-friendly in recent years. But their wake-up service? That is another story.
Wake-up calls have come at the wrong time, wrong day, not at all or have lingered from the previous guest, while hotel alarm clocks have often been tricky to operate says The New York Times.
But some hotels have begun to make changes in both their wake-up call service and in their clocks. “When wake-up service is requested and not provided, it rates as high a level of concern from guests as showing up to find the hotel has no reservation,” said Bjorn Hanson, who leads the global hospitality practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
According to a survey conducted in 2005 by Kelton Research for Hilton Hotels, 57% of business travelers had worried about sleeping past their alarm, and only 18% trusted a hotel clock to wake them up. Many regarded setting a hotel alarm clock as more complicated than filing taxes or programming a VCR.
Hilton, Marriott International, W Hotels and Wyndham Worldwide are introducing, or have done so, alarm clocks they say are easy to use. Crowne Plaza Hotels, a brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group, guarantees wake-up calls in the lodging industry version of the Domino’s Pizza guarantee – one night free if the call fails to come within five minutes of the requested time.
Global Hyatt permits members of its Gold Passport loyalty program to personalize wake-up calls with a greeting recorded by a family member or friend. The Four Seasons Hotels chain offers iPod docking stations so guests can be awakened by their own favorite music. “Inspirational” calls that awaken guests with a proverb or thought for the day are offered by W Hotels, as well as the Muse, a New York boutique hotel owned by the Kimpton Hotels and Restaurant Group.
And defiantly bucking the trend toward automated wake-up calls, an actual person calls guests in Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental Hotels, and in many independent hotels. The Adolphus, an opulent Old World-style independent hotel in Dallas that was built in 1912, even sends a security person to a guest’s room if three wake-up calls are ignored.
 
More Casinos In Florida Seem A Sure Bet
Floridians defeated casinos in bruising statewide votes in 1978, 1986 and 1994. But that was before poker rooms throughout the state and slot machines at Indian reservations and Broward County parimutuels made Florida what it rejected three times over: a gambling state.
Now the state has casinos – 11 of them, eight run by Indian tribes, with three more possibly on the way in Miami-Dade County – and gaming of one sort or another from Jacksonville to Miami, says The Miami Herald.
That may be just the beginning. In closed-door negotiations with the Seminole Tribe, Gov. Charlie Crist has offered the tribe permission to run Las Vegas-style slot machines at its casinos as well as the exclusive right to run Las Vegas-style card games, like blackjack and baccarat, according to people close to the administration.
In return, the state would get something it has coveted: a piece of the tribe's action from gambling. The tribe pays no state tax because it is a sovereign nation.
Upon legislative ratification of the deal, the state's share could begin at $50 million in the first year and rise to $75 million in the second year and $100 million in the third, the sources said. The tribe, which runs a $1 billion-plus gambling empire that includes the Hard Rock casino near Hollywood, also would pay the state an additional percentage based on the growth of its revenue from gaming.
 
Is Westin Turning Hotel Advertising On Its Head?
Westin Hotels has a new campaign that avoids room shots and fluffy beds but turns traditional advertising on its head by conveying what it feels like to stay at the hotel reports TravelMole
"This summer Westin Hotels & Resorts is transforming some of the country's most hectic transportation hubs into 'places of renewal.' Westin's $30 million campaign uses experiential mediums including 3-D and Bluetooth billboards, image-shifting lenticulars and sub-media (ads that appear to move on the train tunnel walls, much like a giant flip book), that bring to life the brand's ongoing concept of personal renewal," says HotelMarketing.com. The campaign has been rolled out in major cities including Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco.
The campaign's clever use of imagery and environmental messaging turns everyday negatives into positives, transforming the mundane commute into an unexpected oasis. A busy escalator, for example, is transformed into a rushing tropical waterfall, while airport signage creates a mental link between negatives like the frustration of delays and positives like the exhilaration of surfers lined up waiting for the perfect wave.
 
Sounds Like A Bargain For Only $8.4 Million
How's this for a getaway? A Mexican resort is offering a round of golf with Jack Nicklaus, a tailor-made Chanel evening grown, a chauffeured Rolls Royce and a private concert by Carlos Santana. The cost: $8.4 million.
The offer is from the Los Cabos Beach, Golf, Spa & Casitas Resort in Los Cabos. And if you don't like the Rolls, you can have a Jaguar or Bentley says TravelMole.
The "Fabulous Cabo Package" includes accommodations in the Presidential Suite with a private butler, maids and a chef, as well as a Bulgari bathroom set, towels, bathrobes, slippers, and sandals, all personalized with the guests' name.
The package also features a private helicopter for whale watching from January to April or a tour of the village of Todos Santos from May to December; a visit to the best wine valley in Baja California Sur; a premium bar available daily with top quality tequilas and liquors; a box of the best cigars; and a private, in-room, daily display of jewelry, other accessories and shoes from the best Mexican designers. There are other amenities as well.
 
Hoteliers Across Asia See Average Room Rates Soar As World Looks East
Half year results from the HotelBenchmark™ Survey by Deloitte show that the hotel market in Asia Pacific is seeing much stronger growth this year than last. Room revenue per available room (revPAR) across the region is up 14.1% to US$97 – outperforming the 9.4% growth achieved in 2006. Improvements have been driven by double-digit increases in average room rates, which now stand at US$137.
Asia Pacific continues to build on, and benefit from its position as the world’s second most visited region after Europe. For the first time last year, Asia’s volume of international tourism receipts equalized with the Americas. And the region is not stopping there. Latest figures from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) show that it has seen the strongest growth in international tourist arrivals during the first four months of 2007 – clearly great news for hotel industry.
The key winners in 2007 have been Asia’s resort destinations. Bali has continued to recover despite fresh travel warnings and achieved the region’s highest revPAR growth at 58.6% in the first half of 2007. This marks an incredible turnaround for the resort island, which has struggled since the bomb attacks in 2002 and 2005. Improvements have been largely driven by a 37.6% occupancy rise, underlining returning public confidence – with direct foreign arrivals reaching an all time high in the first quarter.
Indonesia wasn’t alone in seeing the fortunes of its island resorts improving; Penang experienced revPAR growth of 18.4%, driven by rising average room rates. Meanwhile further up the coast in Thailand, Phuket is booming. Double-digit rises in both occupancy levels and average room rates have caused revPAR to swell by 39.6% to US$111 – considerably higher than its Indonesian and Malaysian rivals. This is largely due to the increased accessibility of the islands, as low-cost airlines connect these resorts to the region’s gateway cities.
 
Toledo’s Tax Dollars At Work: Mayor Hires Secret Shopper To Visit Hotels
Secret shoppers visited six of Toledo, Ohio’s hotels in recent months and found customer service needs to be improved, especially when it comes to phone inquiries, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner said yesterday, reports Hotel Online.
The mayor held a press conference to criticize the customer service at the Toledo hotels, releasing reports on each that were prepared by IntelliShop, LLC of Perrysburg. The reports were prepared after 24-hour hotel visit evaluations and phone inquiries by professional hotel inspectors in the past three months.
"Most of the complaints, across the board, have to do with the attitude of the lobby personnel and the service provided," Mr. Finkbeiner said. "This means the management of these facilities needs to focus more on training their employees to be professional in their attitude and conduct."
The reports cited incidents that included clerks failing to identify themselves, wearing sloppy clothing, and failing to inquire about the needs of a customer because they were preoccupied with other employees.
The inspections and reports cost about $2,500 out of the city's building inspection budget, said Chris Young, chief building official.
 
Hawaii Hotel Revenue Drops By 2%
More choices for tourists are translating into fewer rooms filled at hotels and the first drop in Hawai'i's hotel revenue in five years reports The Honolulu Advertiser.
For the first half of 2007, statewide hotel room revenue was $1.5 billion, a 2% decrease from the same period last year, according to a report by Hospitality Advisors LLC. Hotels across the state reported declines in occupancy despite increases in visitor arrivals, the report said.
Smith Travel Research compiled the report after surveying 147 properties that represented 46,765 rooms, or about eight of every 10 lodging properties with 20 rooms or more. The survey results confirmed what the hotel industry feared all along – that revenue was falling short this year.
"If you were reading the tea leaves at the start of the year, it's not a surprise," said Mike Paulin, owner of Aqua Hotels & Resorts. "The bloom has gone out of the blossom." Hotel occupancy has fallen every month on a year-over-year basis since April 2006.
A record average daily room rate of $198.68 in the first half of the year, was combined with a 6% drop in occupancy. That resulted in revenue per available room slipping to $148.20, or a 1.1% decline compared to the same period last year.
 
Fliers' Net-Surfing Days Inch Closer
For most of this decade, airlines have held out the prospect of making in-flight Internet connections routinely available. But the 9/11 terrorism stilled the industry's first big push. And last year, slow sales to airlines caused aerospace giant Boeing to end its involvement with a broadband service that had been offered on a handful of foreign carriers.
Now, says USA Today, in another significant push toward onboard Internet service, a half-dozen technology companies are jockeying to offer in-flight broadband to scores of airlines that have asked for bids.
American Airlines said last week that it'll work with Colorado-based AirCell to offer the service in 2008. And German carrier Lufthansa last week chose T-Mobile International as the provider of its in-flight Internet service, scheduled to begin early next year.
Qatar Airways expects to be among the first to provide the broadband service to passengers. CEO Akbar Al Baker said in an interview that the airline plans to offer in-flight Internet on new Boeing 777s it'll receive in November. The airline says it's still finalizing the plans. Qantas Airways and Southwest have also said previously they hope to launch the service next year.
 
'It's A Nightmare' For Air Travel
Air travel is as bad as it's ever been. Passengers suffered through a record number of flight delays during the first half of 2007, federal data show. And Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was certainly no picnic, having posted the worst on-time number in the nation for the first six months of the year.
According to the Chicago Tribune nearly one-quarter of all U.S. flights arrived late to their destinations, the industry's worst on-time performance since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics began tracking such data in 1995. "It's a nightmare," said aviation analyst Darryl Jenkins. "We're stretched. There's no give in the system if anything goes wrong."
The dismal results reflected the record number of commercial airline flights flown from January through June, about 3.7 million, as well as storms that wracked Chicago and other major airline hubs in February and June.
And the outlook for the months ahead is even worse, experts warn.
Anticipating a market slowdown, most major carriers are cutting domestic capacity, shifting larger planes to more lucrative overseas routes. They're turning to regional partners to pick up the slack on routes within the United States. But since they operate smaller planes, these partners will have to increase flights to keep pace with passenger demand. "Less domestic capacity doesn't mean less flights; it often means more flights," said aviation consultant Robert Mann.
While O'Hare posted the worst on-time numbers for the six-month period, the three major airports in the New York area fared far worse in June. About half of the flights out of the area were delayed in June, compared with 31% of flights at O'Hare.
The culprits: air-traffic control constraints along the busy Atlantic seaboard and over-scheduling at airports already operating at full capacity. "I avoid [flying through] New York like the plague. It's just a disaster there," Jenkins said.
 
Historic Hotels Of America Puts Kids To Work
The Los Angeles Times reports that Historic Hotels of America has a program to put pint-size proletarians to work.
At the Fairmont San Francisco, kids can be doormen; at the Peabody in Memphis, they can toil as a duck master's assistant (shepherding ducks to and from the lobby fountain); and at Mohonk Mountain House in New York, they can be junior naturalists.
Eight hotels are offering work programs, some seasonal and some year-round. For additional information visit www.historichotels.org.
 
UK To Provide £1 Million Cash Boost For Rural Tourism
A one million pound cash boost to support rural tourism in England was announced today by Culture Secretary James Purnell. He confirmed the funding at a meeting of tourism chiefs in London says a report on egovmonitor.com.
£750,000 will be given to the national tourism agency, VisitBritain, to promote rural destinations and visitor attractions which are vital to the economic health of local communities. The package, supplemented by £250,000 from VisitBritain's existing budgets, will fund a targeted marketing campaign for the regions of England and businesses such as B&Bs, caravan parks and attractions. The campaign will begin this weekend.
 
Kempinski Hotels Eyeing Kenya Amid Tourism Increase
In what could be a sign of growing confidence in Kenya's booming tourism industry, Kempinski Hotels, a German international chain with a branch in Zanzibar, has announced plans to expand to Kenya and open another branch in Tanzania as part of its wider strategy to open five new hotels in Africa.
According to allAfrica.com the announcement came in the wake of a report by the Kenya Tourist Board that in the first half of 2007, tourism earnings increased by 26% to Ksh34 billion ($507 million), up from Ksh27 billion ($402 million) over a similar period in 2006.
KTB managing director Dr Ong'ong'a Achieng said the aggressive marketing campaign undertaken by the board has finally paid off with increased arrivals, notably from America, which has now edged out Japan to become Kenya's second largest source of visitors – despite continued travel warnings from the US government.
Speaking in Dar es Salaam, Kempinski group president Reto Wittwer said the group was in talks to open the new facility in Kenya as the first in a series that will see it cover five countries in the next two years. "We are talking with hotel investors in Kenya about establishing the first trophy hotel in the country," he said.
Trophy hotels are those that enjoy a prime site in the destination, often impossible to better, enjoy architectural prominence, frequently being regarded as a monument or symbol of the host city and almost always protected by preservation legislation. These hotels have earned a reputation over an extended time period, often decades, of providing guests with the very highest levels of impeccable service in exquisite surroundings.
 
Survey: Teen Talk Is, Like, Totally Branded
Many a parent has tried to penetrate the teen argot to understand what they're talking about. It turns out they're talking about brands. A lot.
Members of Generation Y have 145 conversations a week about brands, which is twice the rate of adults, according to a new study reviewed by Brandweek.
"They are extremely engaged in conversations about brands," said Brad Fay, COO of The Keller Fay Group, a New Brunswick, N.J., word-of-mouth consultancy whose TalkTrack survey canvassed 2,046 teens ages 13-17 during the first five months of the year.
Teens aren't just conversing about brands; they're talking about advertising as well. More than half (57%) said they cite marketing and media in their conversations compared to 48% of adults.
"Teens are highly plugged into pop culture and brands are a big part of that culture," said Fay. Products and their ads "are conversation currency."
So which brands are leading the conversation? Few will be surprised that Apple's perennial favorite, the iPod, led the pack, followed by American Eagle, Dr Pepper, Chevrolet and Nintendo, respectively.
 
Steve Case's Eco-Getaway
Growing up in Hawaii, AOL co-founder Steve Case cringed as manicured cookie-cutter hotels took over the islands, wiping out precious natural spaces and crowding out local culture.
Now, says the Washington Post, Case is proposing his own development in paradise: an $800 million, 650-acre luxury resort in Costa Rica. But he says he is aiming to avoid what developers have done to Waikiki, pledging to make the new resort – which will be called Cacique – an environmentally friendly and culturally sensitive destination.
"This is like being able to press rewind and start fresh," said Case, who is scheduled to announce the venture today at a news conference with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
The announcement also marks the launch of Revolution Places, the new destination resort unit of Revolution, a District holding-and-operating company founded by Case in 2005 with $500 million of his own money after leaving AOL. Other Revolution subsidiaries include Revolution Health, a consumer-oriented health-care company, and Revolution Living, a lifestyle business whose holdings include the Flexcar car-sharing service.
Case says Revolution Places will seek to redefine the luxury resort category by making environmental preservation and cultural authenticity priorities at every property it develops. Cacique, scheduled to open in 2010, is the firm's first resort under that model.
 
American Plan Resorts Fade As Travelers Change
For more than a century, parents and children have dined together, played together and reconnected at Pennellwood Resort in a wooded setting alongside Lake Chapin in Berrien Springs, Mich., about 70 miles east of Chicago.
Pennellwood Resort in Michigan has served lunches and family fun for more than a century. Lunch is always at noon. But Pennellwood, an American Plan resort, is getting ready to raze its 40 rustic cabins at the end of this season. They'll be replaced by 38 cottages that will be sold individually for $325,000 to $475,000.
American Plan resorts traditionally offered accommodations, three meals a day and family-oriented activities for one price says The Dallas Morning News. At their peak, around 1960, more than half of U.S. resorts were American Plan-style, with 120 such resorts near Pennellwood in Berrien County alone.
Now the percentage is probably fewer than one in 10, estimates Joe Goldblatt, who teaches at the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Temple University in Philadelphia.
You can still find American Plan resorts in the United States and Ontario, Canada. But today they are more popular in Asia and Europe. The resorts are fading because American travelers are getting older, they are taking shorter vacations, and the resorts often can't compete with glitzier attractions, according to Mr. Goldblatt.
"In travel, brief, bright and brilliant equals better," he said.
 
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