News & Stories
Redundancies will be unavoidable: Premier Inn UK will convert 112 branded restaurants into rooms over the next two years and gradually sell 126 other loss-making restaurants. The F&B crisis has also hit the hotel giant.
Sustainability, staff challenges and ongoing digitalisation and automation of the hotel industry were the driving forces behind this routine process to revise the criteria for hotel classification. The new criteria come into force as of January 2025.
It's well known that hotel Food & Beverage operations are by and large low-margin activities. Since the pandemic, the situation has gotten worse, due to the rising cost of labour, in particular. Ultra-luxury remains as a class of its own. How can margins be improved? By a top guest experience or a "dark kitchen"?
"Welcome to the futures" was the theme of the AI kick-off lecture at HRS's "Corporate Lodging Forum" beginning of march in Berlin. For HRS, the future lies purely in business travel - and more than ever as a travel management service provider as opposed to a pure OTA. Hotels are to become stronger partners with the help of more intensive data transfer.
In Austria, a broad debate about customer reviews in tourism has started. This stir was caused by the Italian government, which demands the ban of anonymous reviews in hotel portals. However, the EU has a different view on this. Hoteliers are only looking at the scores and less at the exact words of reviews. And this for a good reason.
In a groundbreaking development, CoStar Group, a household name in commercial real estate data and parent company of STR, as well as several luxury hotel operators, including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and others, might be embroiled in a significant legal battle. Accusing hoteliers of using common data to keep room rental prices artificially high in at least 15 major US cities, this lawsuit could reshape hotel pricing, revenue management and competition in the US, and beyond.
It's unavoidable: AI and digitalization will help to overcome the shortage of skilled workers in the hospitality industry. Nevertheless, this will require a radical rethink. This is revealed by a new study in Germany. Only one in four people there are satisfied with the current models.
The many EU sustainability directives, forms, certificates and deadlines make managers almost desperate. They lack direction and orientation. Investors and operators alike would like to implement ESG, but somehow everyone is talking past each other. The Energy & Environment Alliance (EEA) and its partner King's College from London asked 200 hospitality executives about their ESG priorities for the first time.
In a surprising move that has sent shockwaves through the hospitality sector, French hospitality unions vehemently oppose the tripling of the tourist tax in Paris and the Ile-de-France region.
The insolvency in self-administration of the small arcona Hotels & Resorts group made many headlines this week. The management remains optimistic, as apparently do the owners. An update.