CNBC Business Magazine - Hotel Special

I read the last CNBC Magazine special edition about hotels and the future of hotels. Ok, this was very much focus on business travel, but it's still a very good article including interesting figures and facts. For instance Four Seasons CEO Isadore Sharp has said that they're going to double the number of hotels within ten years. They have 83 today. Starwood including brands as St. Regis, Le Meridien and Sheraton are insistent that they'll increase their global portfolio by 40% over the next five years. Marriott, which manages the Ritz Carlton and Rennaissance brands plans to open 130 new hotels in China, India and United Arab Emirates in the next four years. The figures go on including french Accor, Indian Taj Hotels and Resorts and Leela Palaces, Hong Kong based Langham Palace Group and Singapore based Shangri-La Hotels are all expanding rapidly.

So what is the conclusion of the article? Well it all boils down to the fact that people travel more and demand better and better quality and service all the time. It also concludes which four issues are important for business travelers;
1. "rates of interest" i.e. offers of free nights, cutting costs for travelers.

2. "homes from homes" i.e. offers of more of the amenities than we have at home, giving the traveller freedom

3. "connecting with customers" i.e. offering us free wifi at all times. Wifi is our holy grail when traveling, we can iChat with the loved ones at home, answer work e-mail and like me, update my blog

4. "online and on-message" i.e. how we use social-media networking in business sense today. Hotels are hooking up with customers via Twitter and Facebook and can from there use it as very clever marketing.

You can follow me on Bloggy (Twitters swedish cousin) through this address: http://leijagraf.bloggy.se/

See you in cyberspace, please keep me posted about what you want from us when traveling and we will make sure to send a tweet to the hotel.