Hotel Operations

🍴 Over past decades, the Maître d'hôtel's role in restaurants has diminished, with focus shifting to celebrity chefs. Historic figures like Jeremy King, Jean-Claude Breton, and Silvano Giraldin exemplified the importance of hospitality in enhancing dining experiences. Modern service often feels robotic, affecting guest loyalty and emotional connections. Personalized, guest-driven service by a Maître d’ can increase spending and return visits, creating lasting memories beyond the food itself. Reinstating the Maître d’ is argued to be essential for the soul of restaurants.

🍴 Dining in Plain Sight offers four seasonal pop-up dinner events with resident chef James Whetlor. Spring event starts on April 23 in Wiltshire at Quarry Wood, Fonthill Estate; summer in Hampshire at Featherstone Flowers. Autumn and Winter events locations TBA. Menu cooked over fire with hyper-seasonal ingredients. Tickets £220 per person, available via email.

🏩 Sara Masterson, President of Olympia Hospitality, discusses the benefits of staying with one company for career acceleration in the hospitality industry. The podcast was released on March 20, 2025. The source of the content is the "Hospitality Daily Podcast" and the episode can be found at https://podcast.hospitalitydaily.com/sara-masterson-tenure/. The website features various meta tags for SEO and sharing, as well as links to CSS and font resources. Additionally, icons for the site are provided in multiple sizes and formats.

📌 TPG Hotels & Resorts added Hilton Garden Inn Dallas Market Center to its portfolio, an eight-story, 240-room hotel with facilities like a fitness center, outdoor pool, a dining option, and over 8,000 square feet of meeting space. The hotel, located a mile from Dallas Market Center and Market Hall, is in close proximity to downtown Dallas, American Airlines Center, and UT Southwestern Medical Center, with Dallas Love Field Airport just four miles away.

📱 Choose destinations based on activities, not locations. Utilize mobile phones sparingly while traveling to enhance the experience. Embrace getting lost and looking up at city architecture. Engage with fellow travelers. Be flexible with time, navigation, and open to unexpected conversations, especially in local transportation and food experiences. Travel light and mix up accommodations. Experience both extreme cold and heat. Avoid over-planning and over-packing. Opt for walking shoes and interact with locals for genuine experiences. Take overnight trains and change accommodations mid-stay. Utilize Google Translate and local riverboats. Travel during Ramadan for a unique experience. Always have local cash and attend festivals. Young travelers should consider budget travel for its educational value. Time is more valuable than money in travel. Explore local destinations like Edinburgh.

🏨 Successful hotels sell compelling stories, not just rooms, by tapping into emotions and crafting narratives. Examples include The Ozarker Lodge embodying Branson, Missouri's outdoor lifestyle and The Parker Palm Springs offering a playful, design-driven fantasy. Key strategies include creating a unique sense of place, having a distinct point of view, engineering signature moments, leveraging storytelling in marketing, and building communities. These elements foster guest loyalty and encourage sharing experiences, transcending mere accommodations.

👨 Mimi Oliver's hospitality roots trace back to her grandfather, Jack DeBoer, creator of the Residence Inn brand and four other extended-stay brands. After a stint in finance and commercial real estate in New York, Oliver joined DeBoer in Wichita launching WaterWalk, his fifth extended-stay brand. Nearly a decade later, Oliver remains in the hospitality industry, cherishing her grandfather's lessons like "keeping it simple" and "control the controllables." She optimistically views diversity and inclusion as essential for hospitality innovation and guest experience enhancement, not just trends. Oliver acknowledges progress in elevating women to leadership within the industry and advocates for continued focus on mentorship, leadership training, and networking for women to further this advancement.

📢 Eva Klausner, Director of Guest Experience at Numa, discusses overcoming challenges in hospitality leadership in a podcast episode released on March 13, 2025. Danica Smith, founder of MorningStar GX, hosts the episode, focusing on resilience in tough times. Resources and music are provided by Clay Bassford of Bespoke Sound. The episode encourages sharing insights within teams to benefit businesses and client service.

🏨 Jenna Fishel started in hospitality as a front desk agent, drawn by fast-paced environments and operational efficiencies. Mentored by her father and inspired by the Castell Leadership program, she learned about women's career tendencies and aspired to higher leadership roles. Fishel is optimistic about diversity in hospitality, noting 55% of First Hospitality's general managers are diverse and over 50% of their Future Leaders program candidates are women. Progress for women in leadership is noted, with more moving into top roles at major hotel management companies.

🔍 81% of travelers read reviews before booking a hotel. High ratings increase direct bookings and revenue. TripAdvisor, Google, OTAs are key for decisions. Strategies to boost reviews include automated emails/SMS, QR codes, Wi-Fi prompts, staff requests, lucky draws, social shoutouts, and gamification. Responding to reviews should be within 24-48 hours. Focus on areas like cleanliness, service, comfort, F&B, and check-in/out efficiency. Social media can amplify reviews. Training staff enhances guest experiences. ReviewMinder consolidates feedback and offers analytics.