For Canadians, Fairmont is not just a hotel brand but a fixture of our nation’s history. In the decades following the country’s confederation in 1867, towns that connected the Eastern hubs of Montreal, Toronto, Quebec and Ottawa with the still-budding Western ports of Vancouver and Victoria were few and far between. It fell up Canadian Pacific – the company that would eventually sell its hotel division to Fairmont Raffles Hotels International then to Accor in 2016 – to not only build a transcontinental railway but to erect a series of what we now deem iconic hotels along the route. The Fairmo ..read more

We define a Mille Club property as one that prices its guestrooms at or above the one thousand dollars per night level (mille being a thousand in Italian). While there are now numerous hotels around the world that are successfully achieving these rates year-round, all Mille members provide incredible lessons for any hotel or brand looking to grow its ADR, whether or not that includes reflagging and a renovation to move up half or a full star rating. While there is a ton that must happen operationally to justify rates at $1,000+ or even $500+, in this short column we’re focusing on the experie ..read more

For those who are unfamiliar, the Halekulani is (pardon the alliteration) a hallmark of Hawaiian hospitality, with the property acting as the keystone for the densely populated beach tourism area of Waikiki in Honolulu. At 453 rooms and suites, the luxury hotel has a time-honored history, first established in 1917 and now comprising five buildings and three signature restaurants, all with an unparalleled onsite experience. Further to this article, the property closed completely for an 18-month renovation at the outset of the pandemic in 2020. Being regulars at the Halekulani, and true hotel a ..read more

The idea of an urban hotel embedding itself into the surrounding community is nothing new, but for many properties it remains just that: an idea that’s talked about in press releases and on the website yet seldom woven into every aspect of the operations and amenities. When a hotel does in fact go through the meticulous process of creating a strong sense of community, the results are nothing short of magical, and this is reflected through a positive impact on guest satisfaction, demand and the ability to grow rate. Celebrating its one-year anniversary this past January, the newly opened, the ..read more

As background for those not from Canada, Tremblant is a picture-perfect ski village under two hours northwest of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains. With numerous small hotels, chalets, lodges and short-term rentals to choose from, Tremblant is perhaps the closest thing that North America has to a charming French of Swiss alpine town, wherein the 312-key Fairmont Tremblant has always stood at the luxury resort pillar of the destination since its opening in 1996. Yet even with this lofty status, renovations are an inevitable and compulsory part of keeping pace with global hospitality trends ..read more

As consultants, our niche is, per the title, upscale, premium, luxury and ultraluxury hotels and resorts, helping owners solve ‘strategic’ issues. We put this word in quotations because it means connecting the dots whichever way that is and taking an outsider’s perspective on how all operations or distinct data sets integrate for the greater whole, most often anchored around the goal of maximizing profitability. One counterintuitive observation of recent is that, even in a world of flashy websites and intelligent booking engines, the voice channel is still a very important part of the prebook ..read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of hospitality technology heading into 2024, and in looking at specific tasks where it can be deployed, a very lucrative application is in attribute-based shopping (ABS). Alongside other pursuits like dynamic pricing and adept channel management, the ability for hotel guests to select individual rooms, configurations, services, add-ons and ancillaries in an a la carte manner has long been sought after as a way to bolster net revenues (some postulate by as much as 10% for the average property) without any significant upleveling of the physical p ..read more

Hotel luxury is a moving target. Of course, the visibility of design trends makes decade-over-decade changes in décor and furnishing relatively easy to call attention to as the engine of this continuous evolution. But let us not forget the underlying ‘invisibility’ that powerful technologies play in reinforcing the five-star hotel experience. Frictionless, properly integrated, highly personalized and fully supportive of the well-oiled on-site teams, there’s now a complex web of hardware and software that’s integral to 21st century luxury, all in order to meet guests’ diverse needs via whichev ..read more

Las Vegas is a city that lives on reinvention to keep drawing ever-larger crowds to this oasis in the desert that, for full transparency, wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the entertainment industry. While the world's entertainment capital started out with gaming, shows and conventions, in recent decades it has also become a culinary mecca and now a world-class sports destination. Right now in the post-pandemic era, more hotels across the globe are looking to expand upon their core rooms ledgers with leisure and entertainment (L&E) components. This is a natural progression of the push ..read more

What’s it cost? Can you measure its direct effect on net contribution? While the two of us are tremendous fans of helping a hotel evolve into a more data-driven organization, there is nevertheless an art to creating a successful hospitality operation. And nowhere puts this more in focus than the luxury segment where the grandeur, opulence and excess are largely irrational yet wholly necessary to support thousand-dollar rates. At this point, we could lecture on about Veblen goods, Giffen goods, the rise of the leisure class and other elements of behavioral economics that contribute to a hotel ..read more