I love to travel.  It’s surprising since I travel extensively for work, that I also chose it as my hobby for leisure.  However, because I still work, I have limited time to vacation.  This means that when I plan a trip, it is going to be a special one.  In the past 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Patagonia, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, France, Italy again, Peru, Croatia, The Azores, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, and of course Italy again.  I’ve also managed to fit in some great places in the US in between all those international flights!

Topics: Hospitality, Customer Experience, Luxury

So often we think about the don’t haves vs. do haves. I used to say this all the time, “If I had this __________ I could compete so much better in the marketplace.”   Both personally and professionally we’ve all worked hard and sacrificed to get that “I don’t have” thing, just to find out that once you have gotten it, there’s an entire new set of challenges.

Topics: Dave Hamilton, Hospitality, Tips, Employee Development

LinkedIn is the king of social selling for most industries and hospitality is no exception. However, you may be missing some opportunities if you spent all social selling time there.

Topics: Hospitality, Sales, Tips, Social Media, Social Selling

People always ask me for the ROI of training a front desk staff and I am always a little stumped. It’s a logical question. If you are spending money on training, it only seems fair that you would expect some sort of return, but quantifying that return becomes the tricky part.

Topics: Hospitality, Training, Employee Development, Reality Trip

When in Jamaica on holiday, a smiling hotel front desk agent assured me in his local patois that an early check-in would be, “no problem, mon.”

Topics: Hospitality, Customer Service, Customer Experience, Scott Lewis, Luxury

Topics: Hospitality, Tips, Customer Service, Customer Experience, Scott Lewis, Connect

The Pierre, A Taj Hotel, in the heart of New York City, has just earned the distinguished honor of being named a Five-Star Hotel by Forbes. The historic property is situated at the corner of 61^st and Park Avenue and boasts views of the Upper East Side and Central Park. While The Pierre is a new addition to Forbes’ prestigious list, the hotel has been the place to be seen since the early 1920's where the crème de la crème regularly hosted ladies’ luncheons. debutante calls and high-society weddings.

Topics: Hospitality, Customer Service, Good Customer Service, Employee Development

It is certainly no surprise to anyone involved in the hotel business that great customer service is the engine that drives occupancy, room rates and ultimately profitability.  But until the advent of social media the measurement of good customer service, or the determination of bad customer service, was generally vague, determined well after the fact, reactive and singular in its focus.  While everyone seems to understand that social media monitoring can now provide the tools and analytics to truly understand and take advantage of what our guests are telling us, its effective implementation into big organizations has generally been elusive.

Topics: Hospitality, Customer Service, Customer Experience, Social Media, Customer-centric Culture, Organize

Common myths that have been around for decades are…the Cobbler wears the worst shoes and Doctors make the worst patients. What’s not a myth is that trainers and teachers make excellent students.

Topics: Dave Hamilton, Hospitality, Customer Service, Customer Experience, Share

American and world history classes during my high school years seemed like such a waste of time.  As I look back, my teen years were all about living for the moment and on rare occasion I pondered briefly what the future might hold. But never did the past seem to be part of my future.

Topics: Client Centered Sales, Dave Hamilton, Hospitality, Customer Value, Sales