Category: Hotel

When it comes to planning your vacation, the amount of hotels to choose from can seem overwhelming. Whether you are taking a weekend trip with your spouse, or you are going on a weeklong vacation with your whole family, finding an affordable, suitable place to stay may seem difficult. But if you follow a few simple steps, finding a great place to stay during your getaway can be much easier than you may think. You just have to assess your needs, determine your budget, and do your research.

Before you start actually looking, take some time to think about what matters most to you. Are you more concerned about places that are ideally located, or do you want to find the most affordable place possible? Do you need certain amenities such as a 24/7 gym, or would you rather take an unconventional route like a bed and breakfast? Once you have determined what your top priorities are, you will have a better idea of what it is that you are looking for.

One of the most important factors in looking through hotels is determining your budget. If finding an affordable place is your top priority, you will have to make a few sacrifices. Hotels that are located further away from the action will be less expensive than places located centrally. For example, if you are taking a trip to a big city, finding a place to stay downtown will be more expensive than a resort off the beaten path.

If you are more concerned about having luxury amenities during your stay, then you will typically have to pay more for them. However, many travelers want to focus the majority of their budget on other aspects of their trip and stay in cheaper hotels, allowing them to spend more on activities, dining, and shopping. There are a number of smaller inns and bed and breakfasts that offer the right ambience and local feel you may be looking for. In some cases, these inns may have much lower rates than other traditional options.

Doing your research is the best way to find a place that matches your exact needs and wishes. There are a number of resources on the Internet that can help you to narrow down your choices. You can use these websites to compare prices, read about amenities, and look at user reviews. Taking the time to see what others have said about their stay will give you a sense of what your experience will be like if you choose to stay there.

Movement is life. This principle is true for business as well. Every business must develop otherwise it will fail sooner or later. Loss of competitive advantage results in loss of customers. There is a tough competition in all markets, and customers of free to choose any products they like. If a customer is not buying from you it will most certainly buy from your competitor. This is true for all businesses, including hotel business. This industry is highly competitive as there are hundreds of hotels in every country. When high season comes hotel top managers do everything possible to attract customers and make them stay in their hotels. Of course, they do not only promise high quality services but the actually offer them. Hotel is not just a place where you spend the night. Some people want to feel at home in a hotel. This is possible in case you come to a top quality hotel.

In order to improve hotel services owners and managers of our hotel need to know where to start from. In other words they have to be aware of current performance in order to make plans for the future. Until recently performance evaluation was about measurement of financial indicators for the past periods. Such approach is not perfect since it misses nonfinancial indicators that are extremely important in any industry. It is not enough just to announce implementation of new plans and improvements in hotel. A real work begins when these improvements are implemented and measured.

For example, if a new service, say, WiFi connection in all rooms is introduced the hotel spends a certain amount of money to buy equipment and maintain network. Then, the quality of Wireless Network has to be evaluated. However, what is more important is the attitude of customers towards this new service and the way they use it. If it turns out that only 10% of hotel guests actually use wireless network and only half of them really require high speed Internet there is probably no point in spending huge money for super speedy Internet. If most of hotel guests are business people for whom high speed Internet is necessity than well established wireless connection is a must.

If improvements concern reception service top management of a hotel needs to understand who their guests are and why they come to their hotel. If most of them are tourists than it would be reasonable to introduce new services like offering information on sightseeing tours, contact details of various Entertainment Services, taxi phone numbers etc. As time passes by, efficiency of these improvements needs to be tested in order to introduce amendments if necessary.

Such evaluation of improvements can be performed with the help of Balanced Scorecard which is a very efficient performance evaluation and strategic management system. Balanced Scorecard will coordinate efforts of all services and business units of a hotel and align strategies of different departments, for example restaurants and hairdressers service. This is a flexible system which means changes can be easily introduced.

The Japanese are a practical people. In the past most young adults lived with their parents until they married, and it was not unusual to find three generations living under one roof, separated only by paper thin walls or shoji screens. Needless to say, finding a suitable place to pursue the most private of acts was somewhat difficult to achieve. Emerging from necessity, “Love Hotels” were introduced in the late 1950’s, offering couples who desired time alone an affordable room to rent by the hour. While they might be perceived as bawdy or odd to a foreign visitor, Love Hotels are considered futsuu (normal) in Japan, a fact of life for high school students on up to middle aged lovers and beyond. The Japanese attitude toward sex is often more relaxed and cosmopolitan than that of the west, and these establishments are an accepted segment of a society where space and privacy are at a premium.

Originally modeled after traditional Japanese inns called Ryokan, the hotels in the early 60’s gradually began catering to a more modern, western concept of love and romance, featuring ceiling mirrors and rotating beds with European styled furnishings adorning each room. Eventually these were replaced with high tech amenities, contemporary rooms now offering fully automated services. The television provides a variety of films or karaoke music, while radio and lights are effortlessly controlled from the headboard of the bed. Alcohol, snacks, and sex-toys can be ordered from room service and paid for with a credit card. For those who enjoy multitasking, some hotels even offer “sun beds” that provide a tan while you indulge in other sensual delights. Bordering highways, nightspots, and sometimes even found in suburbia, bright neon lights flashing names like “Hotel Charm”, and “Love Oasis” make these hotels easy to spot for couples with or without a car. For married couples wishing to add variety to their sex life, or “salarymen” and their “office ladies” in search of a clandestine haven after an evening spent drinking, these convenient love nests offer a readily available solution.

Love Hotels are models of discretion, and ensuring that a customer can fully relax while there is a top priority. Clients entering the premise never see the staff or other customers, and anonymity is always assured. Those arriving by car enter underground parking lots hidden from view, and staff often cover license plates to deter any curious onlookers. Upon entering the reception area the customer is greeted by a lit panel displaying photographs of available rooms. Choosing a room is as simple as pressing a button, the extinguished light of the panel confirming the room selected is now occupied. Payment is made discreetly to a staff member who remains hidden behind a partition, and verbal exchange between patron and staff is usually unnecessary.

Depending on the location and exclusivity of the hotel, the amount paid for time spent varies. Room rates are displayed on a sign in front of the hotel, and can range from (2,500-6,000) yen for a “rest” (usually two hours) to as much as 12,000 yen for an overnight stay. Though often cheaper than business hotels or other traditional accommodation, Love Hotels do not provide the same kind of services in regard to mobility. Once you have left the hotel you unfortunately have to pay again to reenter.

KPI management is as important as implementation process of Balanced Scorecard. Sure thing, the choice of the right key performance indicators and development of the right strategy is vital for BSC success. At the same time maintenance of Balanced Scorecard and management of key performance indicators is a critical success factor for efficient use of Balanced Scorecard. By the way, improper management of key performance indicators is one of the most common mistakes in implementation and maintenance of Balanced Scorecard. Just having a set of key performance indicators is not enough. It is necessary to adequately measure them, exchange obtained information between different managerial levels, as well as use evaluation results in decision making and strategy revision. This also concerns hotel Balanced Scorecard. Hotel industry is known as being extremely competitive. Indeed, there is no lack of options when looking for the hotel to spend the night there or the entire vacations. Hotels are eager to use
Balanced Scorecard since this system can certainly help transform strategic plans into real actions. This is only possible if all rules and norms of Balanced Scorecard maintenance and KPIs management are observed.

As known, Balanced Scorecard consists of four categories: financial, customer, internal business processes, learning and growth. What makes Balanced Scorecard unique? Unlike similar performance evaluation systems of Balanced Scorecard evaluates nonfinancial indicators as well. In terms of a hotel industry these indicators refer to customer satisfaction, improvement of hotel personnel professional level, optimization of internal processes, for example laundry, dining services, housekeeping and cleaning, reception services etc.

No less imagine such a situation hotel top managers have developed a strategy and selected a set of key performance indicators that fall into the above mentioned four categories. Now is the time to start using Balanced Scorecard and evaluate the selected KPIs. It needs mentioning that key performance indicators should be measurable and understood. As time passes by the first results are obtained. This is perhaps the most important stage since top managers have to find out whether are not they have made the right choice and assigned the right weights for indicators. For instance, such a key performance indicator as room occupancy may not matter much as visitors tend to stay for more than three days in a hotel and maintenance of vacant rooms requires little expenses. This is just a hypothetical example.

Having obtained the first results, top management needs to analyze them. KPI evaluation results show progress or regress of a hotel on its way to implement strategic goals. Thus, hotel managers and owners locate problematic areas and make decisions as to necessary improvements. For instance, if your kitchen performance prevents hotel from optimize an overall performance, relevant decisions need to be made (e.g. hiring new chef, changing food supplier etc.). Balanced Scorecard will work only in case the information it provides is actually used to initiate changes. Balanced Scorecard will not change the situation by itself but rather offer important and valuable information for top managers and business owners.

Sofitel Luxury Hotels has opened its first Abu Dhabi hotel and its second property in the United Arab Emirates.

The Sofitel Abu Dhabi Corniche is located on the seafront on the eastern tip of Abu Dhabis Corniche and tourists staying at the new property will have access to Saadiyat Island and Yas Island.

The latest addition to the already reputable collection of luxury Abu Dhabi hotels is part of the new Capital Plaza Complex and the building boasts contemporary architecture and design.

The chief executive of Sofitel Worldwide, Robert Gaymer-Jones, commented: I am particularly happy to be welcoming this new flagship hotel to our network.

The Sofitel Abu Dhabi Corniche is a precious asset for the brand both in the Middle East and internationally.

In addition to its strategic location in Abu Dhabi, its design based on contemporary art with some well-known French artists has ensured that this establishment is totally in line with the country strategic positioning.

When guests of the new hotel first arrive to their holidays in Abu Dhabi, they will be greeted in the lobby which features beautiful paintings from Pierre Soulages, a French artist known as the painter of black, as well as lithographs from Jean Cocteau and sculptures inspired by Brancusi.

The luxury hotel has 282 rooms and suites with modern dcor, furnishings and amenities, plus facilities including the Club Millesime Lounge, three gourmet restaurants with a wide choice of international and regional cuisine, three elegant bars, and 2,600-square-metres of meeting space.

During Abu Dhabi holidays at the Sofitel Abu Dhabi Corniche guests can walk across the bridge and head to Saadiyat Island, an up and coming world class leisure, residential, business and tourism hub. The natural island spans 27-square-kilometres of land, and development is being carried out in different stages until 2020.

The island is home to iconic landmarks; marinas with berths for up to 1,000 boats; two championship golf courses; civic and leisure facilities; over three million square-metres of office space; sea-view residential apartments and villas; luxury hotels; and tourist attractions such as the Guggenheim and the Louvre museums, the Zayed National Museum and the Manarat Al Saadiyat visitor centre.

Holidaymakers can also reach Yas Island from the new hotel in Abu Dhabi where they can visit Yas Marina, Yas Marina Circuit, and Ferrari World.