The country’s largest commercial real estate organizations credit commercial mortgage backed securities (“CMBS”) with leading the United States out of the nationwide real estate depression caused by the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. These organizations, the Building Owners and Management Association (“BOMA”), the International Council of Shopping Centers (“ICSC”), […]

The hotel industry is finally getting some long-awaited good news. Business and leisure demand are rising, and occupancy is increasing. Group pace is picking up, rate cutting has leveled off and hotel financing is starting to become available again. Groups and Funds have raised billions to acquire distressed commercial real estate, including hotels, and many […]

Dramatic changes in availability and cost of financing and the economic slowdown brought about by the financial market crisis have extended the holding period, and postponed exit plans, for most hotel owners who have staying power. Analysts are forecasting RevPAR declines through 2009 and no growth at all in 2010. These conditions make essential the […]

Promoted by zealous fanatics as the replacement for all other forms of marketing, Social Media has also been characterized by Luddite skeptics as nothing more than a narcissistic waste of time. For Business to Business marketers, truth falls somewhere between these two extremes. The stark reality is that business, society and technology are all experiencing […]

The hospitality industry is under increasing pressure from a dramatic shift in US government strategy to enforce existing illegal immigration law. While a new federal immigration policy remains elusive, what practical options are available to hospitality employers who seek to build a strong, tenured — and legal — workforce? One promising alternative: transformative HR practices. […]

Earlier articles in this series have reported on precedential judicial decisions affecting those involved in commercial real estate: a court decision that a lender’s absolute assignment of leases and rents was not applicable to hotel revenues (http://www.cayugahospitality.com /articlearchives/silverlining.htm); and the “springing” of a “bad-boy” guaranty arising out of the insolvency of a retail shopping center, […]

The SEC recently released a proposal that could lead to required use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by U.S. publicly traded companies in 2014. According to experts, the question is not if the U.S. will require the hospitality industry to change to IFRS but when. As a result, major accounting firms are advising their […]

Most hoteliers intrinsically understand the concept of a sense of arrival. Broadly defined, this is that glorious moment (or what’s intended to be glorious) when a guest arrives at the threshold of your establishment. The goal of this is to quite literally wow your arriving guest from the get-go to reaffirm their hotel selection. I […]

As a long-time hospitality executive I did not even know what ‘task force’ was until I was in the job! It sounded a bit like the title of a Chuck Norris movie, not the genteel world of the hospitality professional. Task Force operations have come into their own in the last few years to provide […]

Terrorist attacks and threats against the hospitality industry, whether large international chains or individual properties, have grown alarmingly since 9/11. It is my conviction that this trend will continue to grow in terms of numbers and level of sophistication. Modern day terrorism, which until the second half of the 20th century was mainly focused on […]