Food & Beverage in the 20th century Cornell Issues Revenue-boosting Tool For Restaurant Managers

Ithaca, NY - Restaurant managers now have a new tool that allows them to match their table mix to their customer mix. Cornell University has just released the Restaurant Table-Mix Optimizer, or RTMO, which is designed to give restaurant managers specific guidance on what mix of tables will provide the best revenue boost for their particular restaurant. The web-based tool, developed by Cornell professor Gary M. Thompson, is available at no charge from TheCenterForHospitalityResearch.org. The RTMO allows users to create, evaluate, and save different table-mix scenarios. This means that restaurant managers can play out “what if” scenarios, as they consider how to boost revenue by changing the table arrangements and sizes on their floor.

Trade-Show Management Budgetting and planning for a succesful event

The primary objectives of this study were to examine how intensively and effectively hospitality exhibitors use trade shows (in which they exhibit for the hospitality industry) and to explore such events value to the exhibiting firms.

How to develop successful hospitality innovation

A survey of 184 German hoteliers identified nine factors that promote successful service innovations. The study found that the nature of the innovation is far less important than the effectiveness of a hotel’s human resources management and employee training, empowerment, and commitment to the service. Ensuring that the innovation is matched to the targeted market is important, of course, but such factors as effective marketing communication and public relations do not seem to support innovations’ success. Also important is the tangible nature of the service, but having innovative technology was not a significant factor in new-service development for these hoteliers.

Marketing Your Hotel to and through Intermediaries An Overlooked Best Practice

Meeting planners and travel agents could become an even more important distribution channel than they already are for hotels, provided that lodging operators understand the factors that create value for those important intermediaries. As part of Cornell's broad-based survey of best practices in the U.S. lodging industry, researchers conducted a survey to discover the hotel attributes and practices that create value for travel agents and meeting planners. The study found that the most important factor in the lodging transaction with intermediaries is a hotel's ability to make the hotel booking process as smooth as possible, including a problem-free stay for the clients. While location is, of course, the key factor in the intermediaries' choice of a hotel for their clients, travel agents indicated that the quality of communications, the hotel's brand name or reputation, and the quality of deals or incentives were also important in creating value in the booking transaction. While a good price is important, meeting planners additionally consider meeting and convention services and food-service quality as essential to creating value in a hotel transaction.

Women in Hotel Management Gradual Progress, Uncertain Prospects

Safeguarding Your Customers The Guest’s View of Hotel Security

A study of 930 hotel guests found relatively high acceptance of certain security measures, along with a willingness to pay extra for some of them. In particular, respondents were favorable to security cameras and requiring photo identification, and they would support having a first-aid kit in every hotel room. Study participants were mixed on more intrusive security efforts, such as metal detectors, visible security guards, and background checks of guests to see whether they have police records. Respondents younger than forty were both more likely to accept stringent security measures and more willing to pay for them. Women were also more supportive of strong security measures than were men, particularly men who are frequent travelers.

Managing for excellence

The objective is to foster further innovation in management thinking and practice with the intention of assisting industry practitioners in managing for excellence in the lodging industry of the future. They offer a synthesis of the insights, implications and conclusions extracted from the best-practices study. The research was done in (all the) hotels of the lodging industry in the United States by interviewing and talking to their managers, guests and employees. The best measurement of the best practices achieved was that the respondents believed that their best practices had achieved the desired results of increased profitability, customer satisfaction, service quality, or other outcome. A number of them expressed regret that they had not installed monitoring procedures at the outset to determine success more accurately. By defining the areas with the best practices and the few best practices this study is also exploratory and explanatory. The areas with few best practices should be given more attention by the managers for the future, think about architecture, design, F&B and information technology. These areas create substantial visible value for the customers. Managers see marketing, operations, human resources and corporate management as the most important innovative areas. By having multiple perspectives the study developed a more complete gauge of which practices were adding to customer value.