Top Ten to Consider for Meeting Space Design
D1SBEditor | Jan 29, 2013 | Comments 0

One potent offshoot of the exponentially swelling internet is choice. Choice in hotels, choice in dining, choice in meeting venues. In this buyers’ market, customers demand nothing but the best in everything they purchase. Hotels are no longer the only entrants in the octagon for conference revenues, but the cage has been opened to restaurants, universities, museums, churches and unused office space.

What’s more, the very essence of business meetings and conferences is itself in a volatile state. Laptops, video chats, webinars, smartphones – people can work from everywhere nowadays, and they are. Many don’t even have an office away from home to call their own.

This is nothing new and reassuringly, at least in the near foreseeable future, nothing will replace quality face-to-face time. It’s still the best means for effective teamwork. However, the combination of technological requirements and increasing choice has changed consumer expectations, particularly when discussing the physical attributes of the meeting space.

Six Marketing Lessons from Red Bull Stratos
C2SBEditor | Jan 27, 2013 | Comments 0

It was a greater feat than any 30-second spot has ever achieved: skydiver Felix Baumgartner dropped from near-space (23 miles high) back to the Earth’s surface.

It was an astonishing display of the value of human endurance, of adventure, investment and commitment. The fact that this mission to the edge of space was, in fact, funded and created by a brand is, quite simply, remarkable.

Having achieved 8m concurrent views of the spectacle on YouTube, there is no arguing that Red Bull’s Stratos project was an astonishing leap forward in marketing, but it also delivered something far bigger than eyeballs.

The fact is, a brand both created and funded a mission to the edge of space that will create data and insight that could benefit NASA. As one viewer tweeted: ‘That awkward moment when you realise an energy drink has a better space programme than your nation.’

Seventeen Food and Beverage Trends in Restaurants and Hotels
C2SBEditor | Jan 19, 2013 | Comments 0

Consultants Baum+Whiteman say that a flavor a day keeps recession at bay. Restaurant chains, hotels and smart independents are ramping up their flavor profiles… chucking artificial stuff, exploring whole new worlds of real ingredients… especially at bars. Big snackification of America in hotel lobbies and fast feeders. Old fogey chains doing fast-casual disco dancing. Dumbelling at fast feeders. Plus: A big bunch of buzzwords for the year ahead.

Baum+Whiteman International Food+ Restaurant Consultants creates high-profile restaurants around the world for hotels, restaurant companies, museums and other consumer destinations. Based in New York, their projects include the late Windows on the World and the magical Rainbow Room, Equinox in Singapore, and the world’s first food court. Their annual hospitality predictions follow …

1. BARS ARE WHERE THE FLAVOR ACTION IS

Hotels Gird Against Flu Pandemic
This year’s flu is taking down a lot of people and causing panic in some areas. Here’s how to battle the bug at your hotel.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Caryn Eve Murray
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For Ken Cusson, the best safeguard this season against influenza’s potentially devastating effect on his staff at the Newport Harbor Group has been an inoculation called preparedness.

With 15 restaurant properties in Rhode Island and Massachusetts – one of them hotel-based - flu season has alchemized the company’s daily operational practices into the kind of strong medicine that Cusson hopes will be a preventive dose more than anything else.