Hotel Marketing Quotes

I used to walk in here and have to fight for my life as the place fell down around me,” Jace mused. “Now it’s all velvet cushions and insistent offers of immortal beauty.

I'm a terrible person,' Pierrot said to her. 'I'm quite wicked too', Rose said, and she smiled at him. Pierrot knew that Rose was punished every time she spoke to him. All her words were contraband, treasured items from the black market. A sentence from her was like a pot of jam during wartime.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

In war, demonization of the enemy is a central parameter in the behavior of a combatant. Likewise, in hotel marketing, demonization of OTAs is a central parameter in the behavior of an entrepreneur

What city doesn’t like to brag about itself? The gargoyle fauns leaned off the front of the buildings, whispering about their sex lives. The fat catfish in the greenhouse swore they had stock market tips. The horses on the carousel reared their heads, ready for a battle against the mermaid statues in the pond. An electric train rode around and around a tiny mountain in the toy-shop window, while its Lilliputian passengers dreamed in tiny berths.

Every day, on the roads of Delhi, some chauffeur is driving an empty car with a black suitcase sitting on the backseat. Inside that suitcase is a million, two million rupees; more money than that chauffeur will see in his lifetime. If he took the money he could go to America, Australia, anywhere, and start a new life. He could go inside the five-star hotels he has dreamed about all his life and only seen from the outside. He could take his family to Goa, to England. Yet he takes that black suitcase where his master wants. He puts it down where he is meant to, and never touches a rupee. Why? "Because Indians are the world's most honest people, like the prime minister's booklet will inform you? No. It's because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market.

We no longer live in a world where nations and nationalism are of key significance, but in a globalised market where we are, ostensibly, free to choose – but, if the Frankfurt School’s diagnosis is right, free only to choose what is always the same, free only to choose what spiritually diminishes us, keeps us obligingly submissive to an oppressive system.

The meaning behind your passion, whether it be for hospitality, law, or hot sauce, now translates into value. In the Age of Ideas this is what the market demands, and you have the power to give it to them by unlocking your unique creative potential.

Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically, hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game. The propaganda goes all the other way, but only because it is the tortoise who is in need of consolation. Like the meek who are going to inherit the earth.

Your USP is never what you think it is. It is what your customer think it is.

but the problem now was that sometimes the heroin wasn’t heroin anymore, sometimes now it was fentanyl, seeping into the market by mail and by ship, fifty times more potent than heroin and cheaper to produce.

I heard came from a potbellied Bhutanese hotel owner named Sanjay Penjor. GNH, Penjor told me, “means knowing your limitations; knowing how much is enough.” Free-market economics has brought much good to the world, but it goes mute when the concept of “enough” is raised. As the renegade economist E. F. Schumacher put it: “There are poor societies which have too little. But where is the rich society that says ‘Halt! We have enough!’ There is none.

You witch!" he yelled as he realized that he was trapped, harnessed to the most powerful rotary iron on the market. (Or it had been when the hotel had first bought it, anyway.) "I'll kill you!" "Not if the mangle kills you first," I said.

The BDS on campus operation is organized by, among others, a group in Chicago, Illinois, called American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP. For years, AMP, through its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has been sending strategists, digital and communications experts, graphic designers, video editors, and legal advisors to colleges all over America and running flashy events in expensive hotels for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel, minimizing pro-Israel voices on campus, and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students in order to deter them from supporting Israel. The embodiment of Cancel Culture. Managing such a sophisticated network of political operatives, extensive marketing, and (pre-COVID) ritzy gatherings at nice hotels is extremely expensive.11 So where is the money coming from? I

Lion was the one who pointed out that naming hotels after Millennial values -- the Truth, the Purpose, the Community -- now that his generation had reached the age where the luxury of billboard ethics had been derailed by the verities of life, might be lucrative. "Aspirational nostalgia," he dubbed it.

I know that might seem self-justifying but the numbers are the numbers and if you look at investments vs. returns, most of those people/entities took out far more than they put in and made far more money than if they’d just invested in the stock market and therefore I would suggest that it is inaccurate to refer to them as ‘victims.’ 

This is always always always what she wished a bazaar to be. Demre, proudly claiming to be the birthplace of Santa Claus, was direly lacking in workshops of wonder. Small corner stores, an understocked chain supermarket on the permanent edge of bankruptcy and a huge cash and carry that serviced the farms and the hotels squeezed between the plastic sky and the shingle shore. Russians flew there by the charter load to sun themselves and get wrecked on drink. Drip irrigation equipment and imported vodka, a typical Demre combination. But Istanbul; Istanbul was the magic. Away from home, free from the humid claustrophobia of the greenhouses, hectare after hectare after hectare; a speck of dust in the biggest city in Europe, anonymous yet freed by that anonymity to be foolish, to be frivolous and fabulous, to live fantasies. The Grand Bazaar! This was a name of wonder. This was hectare upon hectare of Cathay silk and Tashkent carpets, bolts of damask and muslin, brass and silver and gold and rare spices that would send the air heady. It was merchants and traders and caravan masters; the cornucopia where the Silk Road finally set down its cargoes. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was shit and sharks. Overpriced stuff for tourists, shoddy and glittery. Buy buy buy. The Egyptian Market was no different. In that season she went to every old bazaar in Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu. The magic wasn’t there.

The generic concept of capital without which economists cannot do their work has no measurable counterpart among material objects; it reflects the entrepreneurial appraisal of such objects. Beer barrels and blast furnaces, harbour installations and hotel-room furniture are capital not by virtue of their physical properties but by virtue of their economic functions. Something is capital because the market, the consensus of entrepreneurial minds, regards it as capable of yielding an income. This does not mean that the phenomena of capital cannot be comprehended by clear and unambiguous concepts. The stock of capital used by society does not present a picture of chaos. Its arrangement is not arbitrary. There is some order in it.

Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier.

Soon competitors did the same, such as Samuel Reynolds, who came to Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1831 and placed an ad in the Easton Republican Star. It proclaimed that he wouldn’t leave the Easton Hotel until he bought “100 NEGROES,” “from the age of twelve to twenty-five years, for which he will give higher prices than any real purchaser that is now in the market.” Young Frederick Douglass, who was sent back from Baltimore (where he had secretly learned to read)

Life at the Chelsea was an open market, everyone with something of himself to sell. (..) the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if nobody in the outside world (…) The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

Life at the Chelsea was an open market, everyone with something of himself to sell.” (p.107) (..)the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard [gerente do hotel] in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if nobody in the outside world.” (p.91). (…) The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

When I woke up, sunlight was streaming through the windows in my suite. There was a lipstick-smeared drool stain on the Frette linens. And someone was . . . shouting. Wait, what? I turned my heavy head. The Vice President of Marketing was in my room—yelling at me! “AHHHHH!” I was nearly naked! I fumbled for the duvet. “You missed breakfast!” The Vice President of Marketing was bugging. Behind her was a male hotel employee with a key card. “We’ve been calling and calling!” “I overslept!” I cried. “Why are you in my room? Can you give me some fucking privacy? You can’t just bust in on people!” I knew I shouldn’t talk to one of Lucky’s biggest advertisers this way, but I was pissed. I may have been a drug addict, but I had my dignity! You know?

When I first started hearing about the places that give people joy, I realized that many of them evoke this giddy feeling of abundance: carnivals and circuses, dollar stores and flea markets, and giant old hotels like the Grand Budapest of director Wes Anderson’s imagining. The same feeling also exists on a smaller scale. An ice-cream cone covered in rainbow sprinkles is like a candy store held in your hand. A shower of confetti, a multicolored quilt, a simple game of pick-up sticks, have this irresistible allure. Even the language of joy is rife with excess. We say we’re overjoyed or that we’re brimming with happiness. We say, “My cup runneth over.” And this is very much how it feels to be in a moment of joy, when our delight is so abundant it feels like it can’t be contained by the boundaries of our bodies.

I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face/ I felt giddy all the way back to the hotel. I giggled. I was happy. Sage leaned back in his seat and studied me, an amused smile on his face. “What?” I asked. He shook his head. “You’re making fun of me,” I said. “I’m not,” Sage assured me. I knew he was telling the truth. His eyes were affectionate. I was his, not just in the past but today and forever, and nothing had ever made me feel more secure. I was about to pull into the hotel when Sage reminded me of the snacks-the whole reason we’d supposedly gone out. I swung a wild U-turn that slammed Sage against his door. “Taking up stunt driving?” he asked. “Can you imagine walking in without the snacks? Rayna would be all over me.” “You don’t think she will be anyway? It’s been a long snack run.” “It hasn’t been that long,” I said. “Has it?” He scrunched his brows. “What are you trying to say?” I giggled again, and we pulled into a gas station market. Sage wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned against his chest as we walked in step into the store; he held my hand as I cruised the tiny aisles; he stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders as we paid. I felt normal. I imagined how things would be after everything was over: after we met the dark lady, after we got the Elixir, after we found my dad. Sage and I could travel the world together: me taking pictures, him painting, always coming back together at the end of the day to share what we’d done and lie in each other’s arms.

So, in summary: The market for Negro writers is very limited. Jobs as professional writers, editorial assistants, publisher's readers, etc., are almost non-existent. Hollywood insofar as Negroes are concerned, might just as well be controlled by Hitler. The common courtesies of decent travel, hotel and restaurant accommodations, politeness from doormen, elevatormen, and hired attendants in public places is practically everywhere in America denied Negroes, whether they be writers or not. Black authors, too, must ride in Jim Crow cars. These are some of our problems. What can you who are writers do to help us solve them? What can you, our public, do to help us solve them? My problem, your problem. No, I'm wrong! It is not a matter of mine and yours. It is a matter of ours. We are all Americans. We want to create the American dream, a finer and more democratic America. I cannot do it without you. You cannot do it omitting me. Can we march together then? But perhaps the word march is the wrong word—suggesting soldiers and armies. Can we not put our heads together and think and plan—not merely dream—the future America? And then create it with our hands? A land where even a Negro writer can make a living, if he is a good writer. And where, being a Negro, he need not be a secondary American. We do not want any secondary Americans. We do not want a weak and imperfect democracy. We do not want poverty and hunger and prejudice and fear on the part of any portion of our population. We want America to really be America for everybody. Let us make it so!

By this time (in mid-2012) the country had been without a functioning government for more than twenty years, and the city was a byword for chaos, lawlessness, corruption, and violence. But this wasn’t the Mogadishu we saw. Far from it: on the surface, the city was a picture of prosperity. Many shops and houses were freshly painted, and signs on many street corners advertised auto parts, courses in business and English, banks, money changers and remittance services, cellphones, processed food, powdered milk, cigarettes, drinks, clothes, and shoes. The Bakara market in the center of town had a monetary exchange, where the Somali shilling—a currency that has survived without a state or a central bank for more than twenty years—floated freely on market rates that were set and updated twice daily. There were restaurants, hotels, and a gelato shop, and many intersections had busy produce markets. The coffee shops were crowded with men watching soccer on satellite television and good-naturedly arguing about scores and penalties. Traffic flowed freely, with occasional blue-uniformed, unarmed Somali National Police officers (male and female) controlling intersections. Besides motorcycles, scooters, and cars, there were horse-drawn carts sharing the roads with trucks loaded above the gunwales with bananas, charcoal, or firewood. Offshore, fishing boats and coastal freighters moved about the harbor, and near the docks several flocks of goats and sheep were awaiting export to cities around the Red Sea and farther afield. Power lines festooned telegraph poles along the roads, many with complex nests of telephone wires connecting them to surrounding buildings. Most Somalis on the street seemed to prefer cellphones, though, and many traders kept up a constant chatter on their mobiles. Mogadishu was a fully functioning city.

REIT ETFs can cover a broad market (like all equity REITs) or a narrow slice (like hotel REITs). Examples of real estate ETFs include: • Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), which follows the MSCI US Investable Market Real Estate 25/50 Index (a broad REIT index) • iShares Global REIT (REET), which tracks the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global REIT Index and holds a combination of US and overseas property REITs • Pacer Benchmark Industrial Real Estate Sector ETF (INDS), a targeted fund that follows the Benchmark Industrial Real Estate SCTR Index with an emphasis on industrial (such as cell towers and data centers) and self-storage properties • Schwab US REIT ETF (SCHH), which tracks the Dow Jones US Select REIT Index, holding a broad mix of residential and commercial REITs

The company she worked for catered to the luxury end of the market (people with more money than sense, the owner was fond of saying) and it always surprised her that those people seemed never to have mastered the basic art of clearing up after themselves.

So much of what Zed had said to the Scotland Yard detective was bluster, and he knew it. After he dropped her off at her hotel, he didn’t return to Windermere. Instead, he went across the main road through Milnthorpe and made his way to the street that ran east to west along the market square. There was a Spar shop at a junction where another street led off to a grim-looking housing estate of unremittingly grey roughcast, and he parked nearby and went inside. It was cluttered and hot and it suited both his mood and his thoughts

Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes

Page 3: My family is part of the Philippines’ tiny but entrepreneurial, economically powerful Chinese minority. Just 1 percent of the population, Chinese Filipinos control as much as 60 percent of the private economy, including the country’s four major airlines and almost all of the country’s banks, hotels, shopping malls, and major conglomerates. ... Since my aunt’s murder, one childhood memory keeps haunting me. I was eight, staying at my family’s splendid hacienda-style house in Manila. It was before dawn, still dark. Wide awake, I decided to get a drink from the kitchen. I must have gone down an extra flight of stairs, because I literally stumbled onto six male bodies. I had found the male servants’ quarters. My family’s houseboys, gardeners, and chauffeurs—I sometimes imagine that Nilo Abique [the chauffeur that murdered her aunt] was among those men—were sleeping on mats on a dirt floor. The place stank of sweat and urine. I was horrified. Later that day I mentioned the incident to my Aunt Leona, who laughed affectionately and explained that the servants—there were perhaps twenty living on the premises, all ethnic Filipinos—were fortunate to be working for our family. If not for their positions, they would be living among rats and open sewers without even a roof over their heads. A Filipino maid then walked in; I remember that she had a bowl of food for my aunt’s Pekingese. My aunt took the bowl but kept talking as if the maid were not there. The Filipinos, she continued—in Chinese, but plainly not caring whether the maid understood or not—were lazy and unintelligent and didn’t really want to do much else. If they didn’t like working for us, they were free to leave any time. After all, my aunt said, they were employees, not slaves.

States are under Patel ownership. Having fully cornered the motel market, the Patels have begun buying higher-end hotels and have delved into a number of businesses where they can apply their lowest-cost operator model for unassailable competitive advantage—gas stations, Dunkin’ Donuts franchises, convenience stores (7-Elevens), and the like. Some have even branched out into developing high-end time-share condominiums. The snowball continues to roll down this very long hill—becoming bigger over

We have increased our population to the level of 7 billion and beyond. We are well on our way toward 9 billion before our growth trend is likely to flatten. We live at high densities in many cities. We have penetrated, and we continue to penetrate, the last great forests and other wild ecosystems of the planet, disrupting the physical structures and the ecological communities of such places. We cut our way through the Congo. We cut our way through the Amazon. We cut our way through Borneo. We cut our way through Madagascar. We cut our way through New Guinea and northeastern Australia. We shake the trees, figuratively and literally, and things fall out. We kill and butcher and eat many of the wild animals found there. We settle in those places, creating villages, work camps, towns, extractive industries, new cities. We bring in our domesticated animals, replacing the wild herbivores with livestock. We multiply our livestock as we've multiplied ourselves, operating huge factory-scale operations involving thousands of cattle, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, and goats, not to mention hundreds of bamboo rats and palm civets, all confined en masse within pens and corrals, under conditions that allow those domestics and semidomestics to acquire infectious pathogens from external sources (such as bats roosting over the pig pens), to share those infections with one another, and to provide abundant opportunities for the pathogens to evolve new forms, some of which are capable of infecting a human as well as a cow or a duck. We treat many of those stock animals with prophylactic doses of antibiotics and other drugs, intended not to cure them but to foster their weight gain and maintain their health just sufficiently for profitable sale and slaughter, and in doing that we encourage the evolution of resistant bacteria. We export and import livestock across great distances and at high speeds. We export and import other live animals, especially primates, for medical research. We export and import wild animals as exotic pets. We export and import animal skins, contraband bushmeat, and plants, some of which carry secret microbial passengers. We travel, moving between cities and continents even more quickly than our transported livestock. We stay in hotels where strangers sneeze and vomit. We eat in restaurants where the cook may have butchered a porcupine before working on our scallops. We visit monkey temples in Asia, live markets in India, picturesque villages in South America, dusty archeological sites in New Mexico, dairy towns in the Netherlands, bat caves in East Africa, racetracks in Australia – breathing the air, feeding the animals, touching things, shaking hands with the friendly locals – and then we jump on our planes and fly home. We get bitten by mosquitoes and ticks. We alter the global climate with our carbon emissions, which may in turn alter the latitudinal ranges within which those mosquitoes and ticks live. We provide an irresistible opportunity for enterprising microbes by the ubiquity and abundance of our human bodies. Everything I’ve just mentioned is encompassed within this rubric: the ecology and evolutionary biology of zoonotic diseases. Ecological circumstance provides opportunity for spillover. Evolution seizes opportunity, explores possibilities, and helps convert spillovers to pandemics.

Al contrario degli impiegati non biologici, i quali possono essere “aggiornati” semplicemente tramite un update di sistema, quelli umani vanno incontro a una pericolosa obsolescenza, spesso ancor prima di entrare nel mondo del lavoro.

Un hotel che puntasse molto sugli automatismi potrebbe essere percepito allo stesso tempo come innovativo e all’avanguardia o come spietatamente orientato al profitto a scapito del personale umano.

Un ospite che fa self check-in a un chiosco non è solo il consumatore del servizio, ma ne è anche l’erogante. Se, e quando l’auto check-in diventerà la regola in hotel, la responsabilità del servizio si trasferirà in toto dall’operatore al front office all’ospite stesso (e, per proprietà transitiva, alla tecnologia utilizzata).

Se l’ospite fa check-in in maniera autonoma, allora il receptionist non dovrà conoscere il software gestionale necessario. Questo significa che si può aumentare il numero di esseri umani impiegabili a un costo minore, in quanto il loro lavoro diventa via via meno qualificato e che l’esperienza dell’ospite, in futuro, non sarà più soltanto il risultato del rapporto tra ospite e staff, ma tra ospite, staff e tecnologia presente in struttura.

A quei servizi che oggi comunemente accostiamo al segmento luxury si andrà ad aggiungere un nuovo plus: la certezza di essere accolti e accompagnati per tutta la durata del soggiorno da persone reali. L’ospite luxury del futuro potrebbe essere disposto a pagare un extra per questo servizio umano-centrico, esattamente come oggi sono disposti a pagarlo per oggetti fatti a mano, rispetto a quelli creati su larga scala.

Il solo fatto che una tecnologia sia adottabile non coincide necessariamente con il bisogno di adottarla.

Nel travel, e soprattutto nell’hospitality, ci troviamo in un limbo di tecno-analfabetismo: il cambiamento è a portata di mano, ma non abbiamo (ancora) i mezzi intellettuali per accettarlo e adottarlo.

Un mutamento d’opinione è iniziato dopo la pandemia di COVID-19. Anche i più tecnofobici, durante quegli interminabili mesi di quarantena del 2020, hanno dovuto scendere a patti con la tecnologia, fino alle scelte (prima di allora impensabili) di imprenditori storicamente tradizionalisti che hanno deciso abbandonare in toto gli uffici fisici per lo smart working, finalmente convinti dalle evidenze dei fatti della liceità del modello.

Se esiste un effetto positivo della pandemia del 2020, esso è sicuramente l’accelerazione nell’adozione della tecnologia in ogni campo. Il coronavirus ha creato un vero e proprio salto quantico in avanti di almeno dieci anni, se non in termini di qualità della tecnologia, almeno nell’ambito della sua accettazione e adozione da parte di luddisti, tecno-scettici e tecno-pessimisti.

Quando pensiamo al riscaldamento globale e all’impatto (drammaticamente alto) che il travel ha su di esso, la prima associazione mentale è quella dell’inquinamento aereo, ferroviario e automobilistico, non certo qualcosa di così “immateriale” come il cloud o la blockchain. Tuttavia i numeri relativi al consumo energetico sono allarmanti.

Caricando la propria coscienza nel cloud, non si avrebbe più bisogno di un corpo fisico e l’impatto ambientale degli esseri umani “uploadati” sarebbe esponenzialmente minore.

La domanda attorno alla superintelligenza non è più “se”, ma “quando”.

C’è da pensare che se mettessimo nella stessa stanza le menti (umane) più brillanti del pianeta arriverebbero alle medesime conclusioni di una superintelligenza, sebbene in tempi estremamente più lunghi.

Una cura universale per il cancro, il Santo Graal della medicina moderna, potrebbe essere raggiunta da una Super Intelligenza Artificiale mentre i suoi “competitor” biologici sono in pausa caffè.

Immaginiamo un’AI sviluppata per trovare una soluzione alla fame del mondo: essa, essendo goal-oriented e non condividendo la morale umana, potrebbe semplicemente decidere che il modo più facile, efficace e veloce per metter fine al problema sia quello di sterminare due miliardi di terrestri, piuttosto che inventare nuovi metodi di agricoltura.

Il raggiungimento di un AI superintelligente è una questione di “quando” non di “se”.

Siamo talmente abituati alla complessità distributiva che ormai l’accettiamo quasi come normale o come segno di un salutare “distribution mix” e, sebbene la situazione sia lievemente migliorata negli ultimi anni, grazie al consolidamento di Expedia Group, Booking Holdings e HotelBeds e al fallimento di vecchi dinosauri come Thomas Cook, i player in gioco rimangono ancora troppi.

Lungi dall’essere verticalizzata, la distribuzione alberghiera è ancora estremamente frammentata. Tuttavia, esiste un player che potrebbe cambiare le carte in tavola. Sto parlando, ovviamente, di Google.

Il vantaggio di Google su aziende come TripAdvisor, Trivago, Booking Holdings e Expedia Group è ovvio: la possibilità di intercettare il viaggiatore in tutti i micro momenti del viaggio.

Rispetto a qualunque altro formato, la realtà virtuale offre una ricchezza di significato (semantica) e di segni (semiotica) imparagonabile a qualsiasi altro mezzo comunicativo.

Grazie all’immersività della realtà virtuale, è possibile azzerare la distanza tra il punto di vista di chi voglio raggiungere e il punto di vista che gli voglio far conoscere.

Cos’è, esattamente, il metaverso? Può essere definito come una nuova realtà digitale che combina elementi di AR, VR, realtà mista, social networking, gioco online, shopping e lavoro. Alcuni potrebbero etichettarlo come realtà estesa (XR), ma è difficile affibbiare una label comunemente accettata al concetto perché – chiariamolo il prima possibile – il metaverso non esiste. Almeno, non ancora.

Il metaverso non è solo VR e AR, ma anche mixed reality. In pochi anni, potremmo essere in grado di unirci ai nostri amici a un concerto sotto forma olografica e goderci l’esperienza seduti sul nostro divano mentre i nostri compagni sono fisicamente all'evento.

Non mi sembra troppo inverosimile che, tra cinque anni, i Marriott e gli Hilton del mondo inizieranno a costruire meta-versioni dei loro hotel in Horizon, consentendo agli avatar/ospiti di incontrarsi con i loro amici nella hall, o fare brainstorming nelle sale riunioni virtuali, ovviamente a pagamento.

L’Estonia ha recentemente deciso di sperimentare (con successo) dei giudici-robot per risolvere tutte quelle controversie civili di minore entità (fino a 7.000 euro).

Quando accumuliamo compulsivamente miglia e punti, siamo principalmente guidati dalla chimica del nostro corpo: quando riceviamo una ricompensa, rilasciamo dopamina, una sostanza che svolge un ruolo importante nel comportamento umano.

Uno studio di J. D. Power ha dimostrato come gli ospiti che comprendono appieno come riscattare i propri punti hanno una soddisfazione complessivamente più elevata. La cattiva notizia è che, secondo lo stesso studio, solo la metà dei membri comprende come funziona effettivamente il processo.

Più i membri sono vicini alla ricompensa, più spesso acquistano per raggiungerla. In psicologia questo fenomeno è noto come “ipotesi dell’obiettivo gradiente” ed è stato studiato sin dagli anni Trenta. Pertanto dare ai membri obiettivi realistici e un modo trasparente per monitorare i loro progressi li farà acquistare sempre più spesso.

Potrei volare da Barcellona a Londra con Ryanair e poi soggiornare in un hotel a cinque stelle. Ryanair pensa che io sia il loro tipo di cliente, mentre l’hotel pensa che io sia un tipo di cliente a cinque stelle. In realtà potrei essere un viaggiatore più interessato al cuscino su cui dormo rispetto che al sedile su cui mi siedo per due ore. In questo modo, nessuno dei due brand comprenderà le mie reali preferenze di stile di vita finché non inizieranno a collaborare.

Gli albergatori devono essere abbastanza coraggiosi da iniziare a prepararsi per un futuro che non possono evitare.

È la nostra umanità che ci lega e il tocco umano è la più grande leva che abbiamo per migliorare il valore e l’esperienza che offriamo agli ospiti. Per raggiungere questo obiettivo, tuttavia, dobbiamo imparare a usare gli automatismi e a liberare il personale umano da compiti noiosi e ripetitivi.

La chiusura mentale, la mancanza di immaginazione e questa fiducia incrollabile nello status quo mal convivono con la realtà in cui viviamo, nella quale la velocità di innovazione tende a essere esponenziale, piuttosto che lineare.

Per comprendere la realtà, bisogna tornare alla maieutica socratica. Il sapere di non sapere come unico sapere possibile. Solo quando ci si libera dall’arroganza delle sovrastrutture mentali (il sé, l’ego) allora ci si riallinea con il divenire e si accetta, senza temerlo, il cambiamento.

La tecnologia è cambiamento, il cambiamento fa paura, ergo la tecnologia fa paura. Tuttavia essa fa paura perché non la si comprende, in quanto si cerca di interpretarla con schemi mentali pregiudiziali o, ancora peggio, la si subisce acriticamente.

Il nostro atteggiamento nei confronti della tecnologia dovrebbe essere questo: un misto di pragmatismo zen e curiosità intellettuale.

Kitanai, kiken, kitsui” è un modo di dire Giapponese, traducibile in “sporchi, pericolosi e umilianti” e si riferisce a quei lavori non qualificati e sottopagati che pochi sono disposti a fare. Fino a poco tempo fa, l’utilizzo di lavoratori non biologici era riservato quasi esclusivamente a queste 3K; tuttavia, negli ultimi anni, si è consolidata una nuova tendenza che vede il fenomeno dei robot, intelligenza artificiale e service automation sempre più in concorrenza con i lavoratori umani per impieghi più specializzati e meglio pagati.

Non è difficile immaginare un futuro, anche piuttosto prossimo, in cui milioni di persone perderanno qualsiasi tipo di valore economico e saranno difficilmente o per nulla impiegabili. Non è un caso che si cominci a parlare con insistenza di reddito minimo universale proprio ora: quando (e, si badi bene, non se) la forza-lavoro umana non specializzata sarà diventata superflua, queste persone non avranno più nessuna forma di sostentamento.

Sebbene uno scenario monopolista potrebbe non essere augurabile, è innegabile che il traveler’s journey, a oggi, sia quantomeno frammentario e dispersivo. Poter iniziare la ricerca, usufruire dei contenuti, finalizzare la prenotazione aerea e alberghiera e ricevere assistenza sulla destinazione senza mai uscire dall’ecosistema Google sarebbe un miglioramento esponenziale in termini di user experience.

Come il termine “googlare” è diventato ormai sinonimo di “cercare su un motore di ricerca”, in futuro lo stesso termine potrebbe essere sinonimo con “prenotare un hotel”.

Spesso gli albergatori (soprattutto quelli di piccole e medie dimensioni) spendono per una prenotazione diretta addirittura più di quello che versano in commissioni alle OTA. Credo sia un problema di percezione: quando un hotel firma un contratto con Booking.com sa che una prenotazione intermediata ha un costo dell’X%, mentre calcolare esattamente quanto “pesa” una prenotazione diretta è sicuramente un processo più difficile (e spesso subdolo).

C’è sicuramente una componente narcisistica nel ricevere molte prenotazioni dirette, ma se queste hanno un valore minore di quelle intermediate, allora la strategia complessiva va rivista.

Essere transumanista significa modificare il nostro approccio nei confronti di temi quali la vita, l’evoluzione e, in ultima analisi, la morte. Significa (ri)prendere il controllo su un’esistenza che, per milioni di anni, è sempre stata dettata da fattori esterni – come i limiti biologici, fisici e cognitivi intrinseci nella nostra specie e modellare la nostra vita in funzione delle nostre preferenze.

Il transumanista, come tutti gli uomini, riconosce i suoi limiti; ma, a differenza degli altri uomini, si ribella contro di essi.

Giustifichiamo le operazioni lasik per i forti miopi ma, se potessimo raggiungere una supervista a raggi X con un intervento simile, anche in assenza di miopia, dovremmo farlo? Sarebbe eticamente corretto? Il doppio standard è qui: se l’enhancement è curativo allora parliamo di progressi della medicina, senza grossi dubbi etici. Ma se è migliorativo, allora le cose si fanno più complicate.

Con la velocità alla quale si muove la tecnologia oggi, potremmo trovarci a scegliere tra il general manager aumentato e quello totalmente biologico molto prima di quello che pensiamo.

Argomenti come etnia, sessualità e orientamento politico potrebbero diventare variabili tutto sommato frivole, in confronto alla differenza di performance tra un individuo aumentato e uno completamente biologico.

Molto del lavoro che va nella creazione di un sito è tutt’altro che creativo e può essere tranquillamente appaltato a macchine, lasciando all’essere umano il compito unico della supervisione del progetto. In un futuro neanche troppo lontano, un sito web potrebbe essere creato non rivolgendosi a una web agency, ma semplicemente rispondendo a un questionario. L’AI, poi, si occuperebbe del resto.

A ben scrutare il mito, Prometeo non crea il fuoco dal nulla (esso, infatti, pre-esiste nel mondo naturale), semplicemente lo ruba agli dèi e insegna agli uomini come accenderlo. Ergo, l’uomo è al tempo stesso naturale e soprannaturale: naturale perché opera all’interno del mondo esistente e soprannaturale perché può utilizzare quel mondo per i suoi scopi.

L’oltreuomo non avrà capelli biondi e occhi azzurri, piuttosto chip di silicio e massima potenza computazionale.

L’uomo è semplicemente un mezzo, piuttosto che il fine evolutivo.

Alcune delle previsioni che azzardo in questo libro si riveleranno sicuramente errate, ma è il prezzo da pagare quando si scrive di ciò che ancora non esiste o esiste solo in forma embrionale.

Pensare di poter continuare a operare in ambito turistico senza un minimo di automazione significa, quantomeno, soffrire di miopia imprenditoriale.

La dis-adozione, esattamente come l’adozione, di una tecnologia a favore di un’altra è un processo complicato e doloroso, soprattutto in un settore altamente operativo e tecnologicamente inflazionato come quello dell’hospitality.

Purtroppo, ancora oggi, negli hotel vige una sorta di inerzia tecnologica nei confronti della quale siamo tutti correi: fornitori, consulenti e albergatori. È arrivato il momento di correggere il tiro.

Le basi culturali dell’intelligenza artificiale possono essere fatte risalire addirittura al sillogismo Aristotelico, premessa fondamentale sulla quale si basano tutte le macchine in grado di eseguire operazioni logiche.

Con buona pace di Cartesio, creare una copia funzionante di un cervello sarebbe solamente una questione di scalabilità computazionale e di tempo.

Il vantaggio delle architetture cloud è evidente: uno fra tutti la mancanza di investimenti hardware iniziali, in quanto i servizi cloud sono “esternalizzati” e lo spazio server necessario viene “noleggiato” con un modello pay-per-use, ovvero di pagamento a consumo.

Il passaggio al computer quantico, grazie al quale ogni calcolo potrebbe essere trilioni di volte più veloce, aprirà le porte a scenari fino a pochi anni fa fantascientifici, come la cura definitiva per il cancro o la prova che non siamo soli nell’universo.

Non condividendo pregiudizi e parzialità tipiche degli umani, le macchine potrebbero prendere decisioni più eque e giuste rispetto a noi.

Non solo le macchine sono migliori di noi nel ragionamento probabilistico o nello scovare pattern troppo sottili per essere individuati dagli umani, ma esse non hanno pregiudizi.

Alcuni futuristi (me compreso) sostengono che sia necessario una specie di giuramento ippocratico per gli ingegneri informatici, non dissimile da quello che onorano i medici ogni giorno.

Utopia o distopia, l’AI è il nostro futuro.

Sembra un po’ presuntuoso pensare che il nostro cervello sia arrivato al capolinea della propria evoluzione, sia essa naturale o artificiale.

A oggi, pochissime aziende sono in grado di offrire un’esperienza conversazionale veramente senza attriti e buona parte degli assistenti virtuali in circolazione sono, a ben vedere, lungi dall’essere veramente intelligenti.

Prerequisito necessario di un chatbot dalle buone performance non è soltanto la sua capacità di apprendimento ma, in primis, la quantità dei dati ai quali è in grado di attingere.

Il più delle volte, i provider di chatbot falliscono nei propri intenti non tanto per limiti tecnologici, ma a causa dell’incapacità del management di combinare armonicamente le diverse competenze dei propri dipendenti.

Un buon chatbot deve essere, prima di tutto, capace di svolgere quei compiti aziendali dove il tocco umano non apporta nessun vero valore aggiunto, anziché provare a sostituirsi agli esseri umani.

Gli esseri umani non utilizzano uno schema binario, ma relativo; puntare alla sostituzione tout court del dipendente biologico a favore di quello non biologico è allettante dal punto di vista tecnologico e dell’abbattimento dei costi, ma poco fattibile a livello pratico.

Rimuovendo l’elemento biologico grazie ai veicoli autonomi, il costo di una corsa in Uber diventerebbe talmente contenuto che il concetto stesso di possedere un’automobile potrebbe ambire a diventare obsoleto.

Non è detto che non sia il nostro destino evoluzionistico quello di divenire ridondanti, quantomeno in ambito lavorativo.

È innegabile un certo trend verso la sostituzione degli esseri umani, soprattutto nel customer care, con impiegati non biologici.

Proprio in quanto un bot non può sostituire un umano, ma affiancarlo, prerequisito essenziale per il successo dell’implementazione è la piena collaborazione tra gli sviluppatori e lo staff dell’albergo.

Il concetto chiave è che un chatbot deve essere trattato come un receptionist biologico: deve essere seguito, stimolato, utilizzato, esposto a nuove esperienze, anche “sgridato” e reimpostato quando serve.

Una volta formato, un assistente conversazionale non biologico (a differenza di receptionist o concierge umani) non ti lascerà mai, quindi ha il potenziale di apprendere all’infinito.

Oggi Oracle e SAP (i due grandi player del settore) sono in lotta contro startup dall’approccio decisamente più agile per la supremazia in un settore che hanno duopolisticamente dominato per decenni.

L’hospitality non è più solo una people-industry, ma una data-industry.

Gli albergatori dovrebbero essere in grado di scegliere e testare liberamente il proprio stack tecnologico, anziché essere vincolati dalle loro tecnologie esistenti.

Gli hotel che utilizzano un PMS installato sono, sebbene non consapevolmente, parte del problema, non della soluzione.

Foreseeing the need for a postcolonial world order, the Allied nations sent delegates to a meeting at a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to figure out a new global monetary system. The U.S. was in a position to leverage its authority as Europe’s military savior and the only surviving industrial economy to promote its own fiscal agenda: free markets and monetary leadership. Everyone else’s currencies would be pegged to the dollar, and the world would enjoy open markets, which benefited the U.S., as the economy poised to grow the most.

Named for the place of their first gathering, the Hotel de Bilderberg near Arnheim, the annual Bilderberg meetings gathered top elites of Europe and America for secret deliberations and policy discussion. Consensus was then ‘shaped’ in subsequent press comments and media coverage, but never with reference to the secret Bilderberg talks themselves. This Bilderberg process has been one of the most effective vehicles of postwar Anglo-American policy-shaping. What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May, was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests, and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon–control of the world’s oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil trade had by international custom been priced in dollars as American oil companies dominated the postwar market. A sharp sudden increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for U.S. dollars to pay for that necessary oil.

As Rosa rolled the hard boiled egg across my forehead I wasn’t as disturbed as you might think, even though I was sitting on a plastic table in a five star hotel bathroom in my underwear, being chattered at in Spanish by a lady I’d met only the day before in the herb and flower market. The truth is, I’ve probably done stranger things in hotel bathrooms.

what differentiates a good anything from a great anything you care to think about (business, movie, hotel, product, blog, book, packaging, design, app, talk, school, song, art… keep going) is that the great stuff, the things we give a damn about, have the heart left in them.

In 1863, as Havana continued to grow, the need for expansion prompted the removal of the city walls. The Ten Years’ War ended with a cease fire from Spain. However, it was followed by the Cuban War of Independence, which lasted from 1895 until 1898 and prompted intervention by the United States. The American occupation of Cuba lasted until 1902. After Cuban Independence came into being, another period of expansion in Havana followed, leading to the construction of beautiful apartment buildings for the new middle class and mansions for the wealthy. During the 1920’s, Cuba developed the largest middle class per total population in all of Latin America, necessitating additional accommodations and amenities in the capital city. As ships and airplanes provided reliable transportation, visitors saw Havana as a refuge from the colder cities in the North. To accommodate the tourists, luxury hotels, including the Hotel Nacional and the Habana Riviera, were built. In the 1950’s gambling and prostitution became widespread and the city became the new playground of the Americas, bringing in more income than Las Vegas. Now that Cuba senses an end to the embargo and hopes to cultivate a new relationship with the United States, construction in Havana has taken on a new sense of urgency. Expecting that Havana will once again become a tourist destination, the French construction group “Bouygues” is busy building Havana's newest luxury hotel. This past June Starwood’s mid-market Four Points Havana, became the first U.S. hotel, owned by Marriott, to open in Cuba. The historic Manzana de Gómez building which was once Cuba's first European-style shopping arcade has now been transformed into the Swiss based Manzana Kempinski, Gran Hotel, La Habana. It has now become Cuba's first new 5-Star Hotel! Spanish resort hotels dot the beaches east of Havana and China is expected to build 108,000 new hotel rooms for the largest tourist facility in the Caribbean. On the other end of the spectrum is the 14 room Hotel Terral whch has a prime spot on the Malecón.

That night, they sat around the hotel room with a bottle of tequila and some salt and limes and talked about names for the new real estate company. A few ideas sprang up right away but got rejected just as fast. A half bottle of tequila later, the name "Real Estate Maximums Incorporated" was tossed around as a possibility. Nobody spoke for a moment because everyone liked it. Maximums meant that everyone would get the most out of the relationship-real estate agents and customers alike. The name did a good job of communicating the everybody wins principle at the heart of the endeavor. But after a few more minutes, they realized it didn't quite work. It wasn't snappy enough for a good brand name, and it was too long to fit on a real estate sign. More tequila got poured. No one could come up with another name that felt as on-target as Real Estate Maximums. Someone suggested shortening it to R. E. Max. That made it snappier and appealing in a brand name sense; but when you wrote it out, it looked too much like a real person's name. You could imagine junk mail arriving at the office in care of Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Max. Collins pointed out that Exxon had formed only a few years before, and the X with a slash through it looked very smart. So Liniger took out the dots and tried a slash through the middle of the word and then capitalized all the letters. They looked at the pad of paper and saw: RE/MAX. A silence came over them, followed by a few backslaps and cheers. Everything about the word looked exactly right, as though they were talking about an established global company. Now, what about colors? They were on a roll. Now was no time to stop. A few more shots of tequila went around while they debated the right look for the new RE/MAX. It didn't take long to figure it out: Everyone in the room was a Vietnam vet and patriotic to the core. The colors, of course, had to be red, white, and blue. When they considered the whole package, they knew they had it. And that's how the idea for the distinctive RE/MAX brand was hatched. Considering the time and resources that get poured into brand development today, their methods might seem unorthodox if admirably effective. No money was spent on advertising agencies, market research, or trademark protection. The only investment was a decent bottle of tequila; the only focus group, a bunch of guys sitting around a room having a good laugh.

It was late one night at the hotel bar in Johannesburg when Bill told me his daughter is “a very unusual person.” That she was. A couple of nights later, over a South African chardonnay at the Serena Hotel in Kampala, I suggested to Chelsea that we check out the market in the morning. “It’s supposed to be the biggest market in East Africa,” I said. “Actually, in terms of square footage, Nairobi would dispute that,” Chelsea replied.

Apple may not do customer research to decide what products to make, but it absolutely pays attention to how customers use its products. So the marketing team working on the iMovie HD release scheduled for Macworld, on January 11, 2005, decided to shoot a wedding. The ceremony it filmed was gorgeous: a sophisticated, candlelit affair at the Officers’ Club of San Francisco’s Presidio. The bride was an Apple employee, and the wedding was real. There was one problem with the footage, however. Steve Jobs didn’t like it. He watched it the week before Christmas, recalled Alessandra Ghini, the marketing executive managing the launch of iLife. Jobs declared that the San Francisco wedding didn’t capture the right atmosphere to demonstrate what amateurs could do with iMovie. “He told us he wanted a wedding on the beach, in Hawaii, or some tropical location,” said Ghini. “We had a few weeks to find a wedding on a beach and to get it shot, edited, and approved by Steve. The tight time frame allowed for no margin for error.” With time short and money effectively no object, the team went into action. It contacted Los Angeles talent agencies as well as hotels in Hawaii to learn if they knew of any weddings planned—preferably featuring an attractive bride and groom—over the New Year’s holiday. They hit pay dirt in Hollywood: A gorgeous agency client and her attractive fiancé were in fact planning to wed on Maui during the holiday. Apple offered to pay for the bride’s flowers, to film the wedding, and to provide the couple with a video. In return, Apple wanted rights for up to a minute’s worth of footage of its choosing.

From the Bridge” Celebrating “La Navidad Cubana” Before the fall of Batista, Cuba was considered to be a staunch Catholic Nation. As in other Christian countries, Christmas was considered a religious holiday. In 1962, a few years after the revolution, Cuba became an atheist country by government decree. Then In 1969, Fidel Castro thinking that Christmas was interfering with the production of sugar cane, totally removed the holiday from the official calendar. Of course Christmas was still celebrated by Cubans in exile, many of whom live in South Florida and Union City, NJ. However it was still was celebrated clandestinely in a subdued way on the island. It was said, if it is to believed, that part of the reason for this was due to the fact that Christmas trees do not grow in Cuba. Now that Christianity and Christmas have both been reestablished by the government, primarily due to the Pope’s visits to Cuba, Christmas as a holiday has been reinstated. Many Christmas traditions have been lost over the past five decades and are still not observed in Cuba, although the Cuban Christmas feast is highlighted by a festive “Pig Roast,” called the “Cena de Navidad” or Christmas dinner. Where possible, the dinner includes Roast Pork done on a spit, beans, plantains, rice and “mojo” which is a type of marinade with onions, garlic, and sour orange. Being a special event, some Cubans delight in serving the roasted pork, in fancier ways than others. Desserts like sweet potatos, “turrones” or nougats, “buñuelos” or fritters, as well as readily available tropical fruits and nuts hazelnuts, guava and coconuts, are very common at most Christmas dinners. Beverages such as the “Mojito” a drink made of rum, sugar cane juice, lime, carbonated water and mint, is the main alcoholic drink for the evening, although traditionally the Christmas dinner should be concluded by drinking wine. This grand Christmas dinner is considered a special annual occasion, for families and friends to join together. Following this glorious meal, many Cubans will attend Misa de Gallo or mass of the rooster, which is held in most Catholic churches at midnight. The real reason for Christmas in Cuba, as elsewhere, is to celebrate the birth of Christ. Churches and some Cuban families once again, display manger scenes. Traditionally, children receive presents from the Three Wise Men and not from Santa Claus or the parents. Epiphany or “Three King’s Day,” falls on January 6th. Christmas in Cuba has become more festive but is not yet the same as it used to be. Although Christmas day is again considered a legal holiday in Cuba, children still have to attend school on this holiday and stores, restaurants and markets stay open for regular business. Christmas trees and decorations are usually only displayed at upscale hotels and resorts.

Sometimes you stay in a budget motel/cabin/hotel to save money, sometimes they’re the only thing available. If you find yourself in a room with questionable bedding and towels with nowhere else to go, fear not! Whether I pack my camping gear or not, I always travel with a bamboo sleeping sack (sometimes called a “sleeping bag liner”). It packs up to the size of a Chipotle burrito and protects you from scratchy sheets (among other hazards). Bamboo is one of the most comfortable fibers on the market, and is hypoallergenic, antimicrobial and antibacterial.

The implicit assumption in traditional business strategy that competition is a zero-sum game is far less applicable in the world of platforms. Rather than re-dividing a pie of more-or-less static size, platform businesses often grow the pie (as, for example, Amazon has done by innovating new models, such as self-publishing and publishing on demand, within the traditional book industry) or create an alternative pie that taps new markets and sources of supply (as Airbnb and Uber have done alongside the traditional hotel and taxi industries). Actively managing network effects changes the shape of markets rather than taking them as fixed.

But as Airbnb became huge, with lots of hosts and travelers, it became increasingly common to have to make multiple attempts to nail down a reservation. Meanwhile, Airbnb’s main competitors were no longer other small Internet businesses, but giant hotel corporations such as Hilton, Marriott, and Best Western. And one huge advantage these huge hotel chains offer to travelers is speedy confirmation. Their transactions are fast: by phone or on the Web, you can quickly find out whether rooms are still available and book one for the night you want. That’s because all the rooms in, say, a Hilton are managed by a central computer system, so one call lets you check all the rooms at the same time. Imagine instead if you had to call Hilton to inquire about each room individually. On any given call, the only thing the reservation clerk could tell you was whether, say, room 1226 at the San Francisco Hilton was available for the night you wanted. If not, you had to make another call to find out about room 1227, then another for room 1228. Booking a room with an Airbnb host was a little like that. So Airbnb had to figure out how a market with many hosts offering one room at a time could compete more effectively with hotels. Price was obviously important. But it was the spread of smartphones that helped Airbnb close the speed gap, and that may have mattered even more than price. Today, as hosts manage their reservations on their smartphones, they don’t have to wait until they return home to confirm a booking—they just check their phones. They can also, as soon as the room is booked, immediately update their Airbnb listing to remove its availability. That in turn makes it easier for a traveler searching for a room to find one that’s available, even though he or she still has to query one room at a time. Thus smartphones make the home hosting market work better not just because hosts can respond faster but also because they can update their bookings, which makes them more informative. This, too, reduces congestion (fewer rooms appear to be available, and a room that looks available is more likely to actually be so), and as a result helps travelers search more efficiently, with fewer time-wasting false leads.

Experimentation also proved serendipitous for Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, when they were putting together the Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido, California, north of San Diego. It was destined to become one of the most successful brewing startups of the 1990s. In The Craft of Stone Brewing Co. Koch and Wagner confess that the home-brewed ale that became Arrogant Bastard Ale and propelled Stone to fame in the craft brewing world, started with a mistake. Greg Koch recalls that Wagner exclaimed “Aw, hell!” as he brewed an ale on his brand spanking new home-brewing system. “I miscalculated and added the ingredients in the wrong percentages,” he told Koch. “And not just a little. There’s a lot of extra malt and hops in there.” Koch recalls suggesting they dump it, but Wagner decided to let it ferment and see what it tasted like. Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, founders of Stone Brewery. Photograph © Stone Brewing Co. They both loved the resulting hops bomb, but they didn’t know what to do with it. Koch was sure that nobody was “going to be able to handle it. I mean, we both loved it, but it was unlike anything else that was out there. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with it, but we knew we had to do something with it somewhere down the road.”20 Koch said the beer literally introduced itself as Arrogant Bastard Ale. It seemed ironic to me that a beer from southern California, the world of laid back surfers, should produce an ale with a name that many would identify with New York City. But such are the ironies of the craft brewing revolution. Arrogant Bastard was relegated to the closet for the first year of Stone Brewing Co.’s existence. The founders figured their more commercial brew would be Stone Pale Ale, but its first-year sales figures were not strong, and the company’s board of directors decided to release Arrogant Bastard. “They thought it would help us have more of a billboard effect; with more Stone bottles next to each other on a retail shelf, they become that much more visible, and it sends a message that we’re a respected, established brewery with a diverse range of beers,” Wagner writes. Once they decided to release the Arrogant Bastard, they decided to go all out. The copy on the back label of Arrogant Bastard has become famous in the beer world: Arrogant Bastard Ale Ar-ro-gance (ar’ogans) n. The act or quality of being arrogant; haughty; Undue assumption; overbearing conceit. This is an aggressive ale. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory—maybe something with a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it’s made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beverage will give you more sex appeal. The label continues along these lines for a couple of hundred words. Some call it a brilliant piece of reverse psychology. But Koch insists he was just listening to the beer that had emerged from a mistake in Wagner’s kitchen. In addition to innovative beers and marketing, Koch and Wagner have also made their San Diego brewery a tourist destination, with the Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens, with plans to add a hotel to the Stone empire.

The Chinese renminbi was fixed against the dollar from July of 2005 until June 2009. With a fixed exchange rate, a currency’s value is matched to the value of another single currency or to a basket of other currencies. So when a country pegs its currency to the dollar, the value of the currency rises and falls with the dollar. This action helped China survive the global financial crisis. But China removed the dollar peg after the global financial crisis ended last year. Meanwhile, Japan has also seen the value of the yen grow stronger. With the U.S. economy continuing to lag and growing fiscal uncertainty in European countries, the yen has continued to gain strength because it was the only currency that was stable. So countries like China expanded their purchases of the yen, resulting in the yen’s appreciation. As the yen continued to rise against the dollar, the Japanese government intervened in the currency market in September for the first time since March 2004. This is not the first global currency war the world has seen. In 1985, the finance ministers of West Germany, France, the U.S., Japan and the UK gathered at the Plaza Hotel in New York to sign the Plaza Accord. Under the deal, the countries agreed to bring down the U.S. dollar exchange rate in relation to the Japanese yen and German mark. As the recent currency war continues to spread around the globe, some countries are now saying that there is a need for a new Plaza Accord to stabilize the world economy and the global financial market.

Now, years later, he had been commissioned to fashion pictures with sugar water and dyes, a holiday mural. He had risen into something he could do, he had been recognized, and those years spent enduring his father's impatience seemed far away. He would do it for number 98,761,580, his love whose hand he held, cold as it was, who had lain beside him in the tunnels, in the filth. What had haunted him was the thought of her lovely body wasting away. It had torn at his eyes, his throat. It had taken away his faith. He painted a band of sugar on the walls of the hotel, the mural reflecting the city back to itself - the deep green park, the holiday windows, lovers under golden angels, flowers spilling out of markets in December, a resurrected skyscraper, a choir of variegated faces singing in front of a red door of a dark church, the homeless - not swept away, not forgotten - their realities on their faces, hands, hair. It was not a Rockwell. There were a few artists, subcontractors, who kept trying to abscond with the project, to make it what it wasn't for the sake of something they likened to a good make-believe before bed. -- 'A Potter's Field

It’s freezing outside and imagine you are relaxing in the water of your swimming pool. Is it possible? Will you not freeze in the cold water? Absolutely not! Pool Enclosures can make it a possible. They not only protect the pool from rain and snow but also enhance the inside air temperature and help you enjoy your most relaxing activity in the winters. The most popular enclosures are the Telescopic Swimming Pool Enclosures. These are the most suitable enclosures for long outdoor swimming pools. They enhance the overall appearance of the pool. These are quick and easy to assemble. These are among the best-selling enclosures in the markets. As the name suggests telescopic enclosures are long and slender just like the telescope. These enclosures are also used by resorts and hotel owners to cover their swimming pools. The pool enclosures for outdoor pools offer an extended living space when connected to the home. You can opt for an arc shaped pool enclosure that could be opened or closed. An enclosure with traditional design can improve the aesthetics of the area. Other styles and designs are offered by a large number of companies to turn your pool side into a beautiful and relaxing space. As it becomes very difficult to put and remove the pool covers manually, automatic pool enclosures that can be applied with a push on a button have been introduced in the market. These pool enclosures are easy to install and can be opened or closed whenever required in just a few seconds. As the pool is protected from rain, dust and snow, you will require very less time in cleaning the pool. With enclosures on you can enjoy an extended pool season all year round. In majority of the houses with swimming pool, you can find Retractable Enclosures over the swimming pool. They make the pool useful even in rain and improve the overall look of the pool. These are also easy to assemble and provide a hassle free experience. Hence if you have a pool in your house and you want to make it even more beautiful, then it is highly recommended to make use of retractable enclosures. If you want to enjoy at the pool side throughout the year, then it is high time you get a pool enclosure installed. The benefits of pool covers and enclosures are plenty and the cost is worth the pleasure. You can look for the companies that offer affordable and easy to assemble enclosure kits on the internet and take advantage of their products and services. These companies can even custom design an enclosure to match the architecture of your house. Enjoy swimming in an enclosed beautiful pool around the year!

I’d like to have a life where people don’t monitor my movements, even accidentally. I’d like to have my own pots and pans. I’d like a table to place a bowl of fruit on. I have an idea of myself walking around markets where butchers and grocers shout prices over the crowds, and where I’ll carefully and slowly choose vegetables and meat, and come home to cook myself meals. I’d like to have breakfast without having to get dressed. I’d like to wander in and out of rooms and take a bath with the door open. And I don’t want to look out the window of a little room and wonder where, in the city, I’ll end up. The most essential quality of hotel life is the thing I want least: a presumption of departure.

Any successful hospitality operation—be it a hotel or restaurant, chain or independent, low-cost provider or luxury establishment—requires an effectively performing individual operation. You have to attract the right customers, have the service product, set the right price for your product, and provide the right level of service—all the while managing your employees the right way to achieve your goals. This requires a combination of knowledge from a variety of disciplines, and thus this section includes contributions from our faculty in human resources, management, marketing, operations, and strategy.

Yes, most people do network marketing every day, but they fail to get paid for their recommending and promoting efforts. Here are a few more examples: - Recommending a playground for the children. - Recommending a hotel with a great view. - Recommending an upcoming concert. - Recommending a fun activity for the weekend. - Recommending a brand of clothes. - Recommending your beautician. - Recommending an airline. - Recommending a lawyer. - Recommending a dentist. - Recommending your favorite evening television show. - Recommending a fat-free dessert. - Recommending a great view. - Recommending a music teacher. - Recommending some exciting night clubs.

When you think about the whole idea behind Monopoly—to take a little green house and cash it in for a much larger red hotel with more cash flow—you realize that Milton Bradley had it right!

Sherman Cohen, a tough negotiator in the Manhattan properties market, expressed interest and Ifshin set up a meeting in Trump’s office. Before taking a seat at Trump’s conference table, Cohen lit up a cigarette. But when he reached for the ashtray in the middle of the table, it would not budge. Donald, Cohen said, do you have this thing screwed down? This conference table comes from my hotel, the Barbizon, Trump said, and we screwed down all the ashtrays because people were stealing them as souvenirs. Trump’s self-satisfied grin suggested he was just protecting his investment.

Why I was successful In 2014, I was 29 years old. I was selling against companies that had been in the QuickBooks integration business for five years or more. Some competitors had millions of dollars in venture capital. Their websites were the equivalent of a five-star hotel. These competitors had large sales and marketing teams that could easily show the value of their solution. The companies had a team of programmers. I had my pajamas, a corded phone, a cookie-cutter website, and a laptop computer. I signed up about three hundred new accounts because I was the first person to pick up the phone and I spoke English. I could answer questions on what my software can automate. If there was a problem, I called the customer and we did a screenshare. You need to talk to customers on the phone and you cannot email customers to death. Many customers later told me they reached out to competitors and received no response to sales or support inquiries. These customers said they chose my company because I was responsive. Potential customers want to speak to someone in their area who understands their language. You need to connect with them. Many people signed up for Connex because they liked me over the phone. We attract many small business owners. I had similar interests and I owned a business, just like them.

Most frustrating and important, Wilson said, assisted living isn’t really built for the sake of older people so much as for the sake of their children. The children usually make the decision about where the elderly live, and you can see it in the way that places sell themselves. They try to create what the marketers call “the visuals”—the beautiful, hotel-like entryway, for instance, that caught Shelley’s eye. They tout their computer lab, their exercise center, and their trips to concerts and museums—features that speak much more to what a middle-aged person desires for a parent than to what the parent does. Above all, they sell themselves as safe places. They almost never sell themselves as places that put a person’s choices about how he or she wants to live first and foremost. Because it’s often precisely the parents’ cantankerousness and obstinacy about the choices they make that drive children to bring them on the tour to begin with. Assisted living has become no different in this respect than nursing homes.

The story wasn’t at heart only about economic devastation. It wasn’t just about those at the bottom. Not just hotel maids or supermarket cashiers or single moms. It was all of us. This made more sense as I read what neuroscience can now tell us: that every human brain has capacity for addiction. Isolation is part of why some people get addicted and some do not. So was trauma. Abuse, rape, neglect, PTSD, a parent’s drug use were as unspoken in America as addiction and as prevalent. The epidemic was revealing this. I also connected the epidemic to consumer marketing of legal addictive stuffs: sugar, video games, social media, gambling.

Arthur’s ties to the powerful New York State Republican machine won him nomination as candidate for vice president. To near-universal dismay, he had entered the White House when President James A. Garfield died from an assassin’s bullet. A good storyteller and man about town, fond of whiskey, cigars, and expensive clothes, the dapper, sideburned Arthur is perhaps best remembered for saying, “I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business.” On this trip to Florida, however, his private life fitted very nicely into someone else’s business. The owner of the Belair orange plantation was General Henry Shelton Sanford, the man who had helped Leopold recruit Stanley. Sanford did not bother to leave his home in Belgium to be in Florida for the president’s visit. With the self-assurance of the very rich, he played host in absentia. He made sure that the president and his party were greeted by his personal agent, and that they got the best rooms at the Sanford House hotel, which stood on a lakeshore fringed with palm trees in the town of Sanford. When the president and his guests were not out catching bass, trout, and catfish, or shooting alligators, or exploring the area by steamboat, the Sanford House was where they stayed for the better part of a week. There is no record of who paid the hotel bill, but most likely, as with the rail journey south, it was not the president. Ironically, the huge Sanford orange plantation the Washington visitors admired was proving as disastrous a venture as Sanford’s other investments. Some Swedish contract laborers found the working conditions too harsh and tried to leave as stowaways on a steamboat. A slaughterhouse Sanford invested in had a capacity fifty times larger than what the local market could consume and went bankrupt. A 540-foot wharf with a warehouse at the end of it that he ordered built was washed away by a flood. The manager of one of the hotels in Sanford absconded while owing him money. Foremen failed to put up fences, and wandering cattle nibbled at the orange trees. But if everything Sanford touched as a businessman turned to dust, as an accomplice of Leopold he was a grand success. Sanford was a long-time supporter of President Arthur’s Republican Party. For two years, he had been corresponding with Arthur and other high United States officials about Leopold’s plans for the Congo. Now, after the president’s trip to Florida, confident that Arthur would pay attention, he pressed his case with more letters. Seven months later, Leopold sent Sanford across the Atlantic to make use of his convenient connection to the White House. The man who had once been American minister to Belgium was now the Belgian king’s personal envoy to Washington. Sanford carried with him to Washington a special code for telegraphing news to Brussels: Constance meant “negotiations proceeding satisfactorily; success expected”; Achille referred to Stanley, Eugénie to France, Alice to the United States, Joseph to “sovereign rights,” and Émile to the key target, the president.

The winter started and it got extremely cold very quickly. There was very little to buy on the market or to eat at the Intourist hotel restaurant. When Luc was in town, we had a little bet going every day. Would we get chicken at lunch or at dinner, or both? Greasy Chicken Kiev. Fat would splatter onto your clothes when you stuck your fork into it. We couldn’t complain. We were negotiating a mobile license while the USSR was disintegrating and we saw the country, which had been an essential part of the centralized plan economy, falling apart quickly

Grazie al mind-uploading o all’immortalità digitale, un ospite defunto potrebbe continuare a scrivere recensioni, oppure a postare foto dei suoi soggiorni mentre era in vita. L’hotel dovrebbe rispondere a questi commenti? Oppure inviargli gli auguri di compleanno o le condoglianze ogni volta che ricorre la data della morte? È un bel mal di testa per i CRM e per la marketing automation: quanto loyal può essere un ospite trapassato? Può ancora essere un brand ambassador? Se in vita ha parlato molto del tuo hotel sui suoi social, allora potrebbe continuare a farlo da morto.

Mealtime options can include dishes like bean burritos; chili; pasta e fagioli; red beans and rice; minestrone; Tuscan white bean stew; and black bean, lentil, or split pea soup. My mom turned me on to dehydrated precooked pea soup mixes. (The lowest sodium brand I’ve been able to find is from Dr. John McDougall’s food line.) You simply add the mix to boiling water with some frozen greens and stir. (Whole Foods Market sells inexpensive one-pound frozen bags of a prechopped blend of kale, collard, and mustard greens. Couldn’t be easier!) I pack pea soup mix when I travel. It’s lightweight, and I can prepare it in the hotel room coffeemaker.

L’industria post-umana può mantenere gli stessi volumi di produzione, ma con una frazione della manodopera necessaria. Un robot, inoltre, non ha bisogno di ferie, non si ammala, non è sindacalizzato e, soprattutto, non esistono regolamentazioni sugli stipendi minimi da versargli – considerazione forse cinica, ma decisamente realistica.

Il passato è spesso semplicemente un meccanismo di difesa nei confronti di un futuro che percepiamo come sempre più incerto.

I Paesi con il più alto numero di impiegati robot (come Giappone e Corea) sono quelli con il minore tasso di disoccupazione.

La vita del nomade digitale è stata mitizzata, probabilmente a causa dei social network. Non troverete molti operai di fabbrica nomadi digitali, ma copywriter, esperti SEO, startupper, e anche imprenditori e CEO di aziende online.

Il nostro problema non sono i robot che pensano come gli umani, ma gli umani che pensano come i robot.

Una volta avvenuto il passaggio all’automazione, alla maggior parte delle persone non mancheranno gli addetti alla reception degli hotel e gli agenti di check-in delle compagnie aeree. Forse sarà persino difficile immaginare com’era interagire con gli umani per ricevere tali servizi di base.

Mi sorprende, nel 2022, parlare ancora con esperti di SEO, arroccati sulle loro convinzioni anni Novanta. La ricerca è ormai stata soppiantata dalla predizione: si pensi ai nuovi artisti che scopriamo su Spotify oppure al modo in cui guardiamo le serie su Netflix, Amazon Prime o Hulu: non scartabelliamo l’intero catalogo, ma lasciamo che siano gli algoritmi a “suggerire” qualcosa di adatto a noi.

Il nostro pregiudizio antropocentrico ci fa credere, a torto, che una macchina superintelligente ragioni come noi e sia in grado di provare empatia verso la nostra specie o verso altre AI, ma questa è una strada pericolosa: un’intelligenza del genere sarà, in gran parte, imperscrutabile, come imperscrutabili saranno i suoi metodi e le strategie che essa porrà in atto per raggiungere i propri obiettivi. Forse, più che empatica, potrebbe essere psico-patica.

Una singola ricerca su Google, oggi, necessita di più potere computazionale di tutta la spedizione Apollo 11, ma una frazione infinitesimale della forza lavoro umana.

Nell’accezione moderna, un PMS ha via via perso il suo significato originale di – letteralmente – “sistema di gestione della proprietà” e ha cominciato a identificarsi più come un hub, un “connettore” tra altre tecnologie, al punto che inizia a sorgere il dubbio, tra gli addetti ai lavori, che l’acronimo PMS debba essere finalmente mandato in pensione.

Il futuro è irreversibile e considerarlo come utopico o distopico dipende totalmente da noi.

Fare l’albergatore significa prendersi cura dei propri ospiti, non dei propri software.

Il problema non è l’intelligenza artificiale, ma la stupidità umana.

Paradossalmente (ma solo a prima vista), più tecnologia realmente utile si aggiunge in hotel, più umana diventa l’esperienza dell’ospite, perché si libera il personale da tutti questi compiti ripetitivi, riposizionandolo dove risiede realmente il valore aggiunto: ovvero nel prendersi cura degli ospiti.

L’high-tech è percepita esattamente come l’opposto dell’high-touch ed è associata a un servizio inferiore. In realtà, Google offre spesso traduzioni molto più accurate della maggior parte dei camerieri stagionali sottopagati nei ristoranti e consigli sulla destinazione migliori rispetto a tanti volontari nei centri di informazione per i turisti.

Se una macchina può ricoprire la posizione di un impiegato in carne e ossa senza che il cliente percepisca la sua esperienza come diminuita a causa di questo rimpiazzo, allora la macchina è preferibile all’uomo per quella determinata posizione.

Elon Musk ha predetto che entro 5-10 anni potremo comunicare telepaticamente per il tramite di impianti cerebrali – quindi cadrebbe anche la necessità di coordinarsi con il proprio staff durante le interminabili riunioni del lunedì mattina.

Registrare manualmente i dati anagrafici su un PMS non è artigianato. Non c’è nessun valore aggiunto nel fatto che sia un essere umano a farlo, piuttosto che una macchina.

Insegno in varie università e MBA ormai da anni e noto sempre con sconforto che stiamo preparando questi studenti per professioni che non esisteranno più quando si affacceranno al mondo del lavoro.

Se poteste scegliere tra un general manager ateo e un amish, dubito che scegliereste il secondo. E non per una questione di discriminazione religiosa, ma perché non potrebbe (pena violare il suo credo) utilizzare un computer. Il general manager ateo avrebbe un vantaggio sleale nei confronti dell’amish, un vantaggio tecnologico, così come un individuo “tecnologicamente aumentato” avrebbe un vantaggio (sleale o meno, poco importa nell’economia del nostro discorso) rispetto a un suo collega biologico.

Buy local” non è necessariamente la scelta migliore quando si tratta di tecnologia. Non c’è nessun vantaggio nell’acquistare software “a chilometri zero

In Europa, soprattutto, schiacciati da una legge (il GDPR) apertissima alle interpretazioni, gli albergatori devono affrontare un ulteriore livello di complessità nell’acquisire i dati dei propri ospiti nel rispetto di una normativa talmente vaga, a livello tecnologico, da rasentare il nichilismo procedurale.

Già nel 2017, oltre un terzo degli utenti preferiva comunicare con un bot piuttosto che con un umano durante i suoi acquisti.

Il problema centrale, con la quasi totalità delle strategie di revenue management, è che il prezzo finale non è quasi mai la somma scientifica del valore intrinseco degli attributi unici della camera, ma – nella migliore delle ipotesi – un’approssimazione arbitraria influenzata da metriche volatili, se non addirittura da pregiudizi, stati emotivi e bias cognitivi.

Una nuova industria post-umana (e attenzione a chi afferma altrimenti: niente affatto dis-umana) grazie ai quali gli albergatori, finalmente liberati da compiti complessi e non scalabili, potranno tornare all’essenza della loro professione: prendersi cura dei propri ospiti.

Comprendere che, almeno per ora, intelligenza biologica e artificiale non sono in competizione, ma in cooperazione, ci permette di liberarci dall’archetipico sospetto che abbiamo nei confronti delle macchine e valutare con chiarezza mentale i progressi tecnologici.

Non è tecno-snobismo: semplicemente le sono superiori all’uomo quando si tratta di operazioni logiche, quindi continuare a creare strategie tariffarie su un foglio di calcolo Excel è un modus operandi non solo arcaico, ma anche pericoloso.

Non esiste UN web, ne esistono 7,8 miliardi, uno per ogni abitante del pianeta. Forse di più, se si considera che lo stesso utente ha un ciclo vitale che lo porta a modificare nel tempo le proprie abitudini d’acquisto.

La tecnologia che ci ha regalato Tinder è la stessa a causa della quale, nel 2011, un terzo di tutte le domande di divorzio negli Stati Uniti conteneva la parola “Facebook”.

Un’intelligenza artificiale che ragiona in tutto e per tutto come noi, sarà capace di provare sofferenza? E, se così fosse, come dovremmo trattare l’AI? Come un nostro schiavo? Come un eguale? Come uno schiavista?

Invece di inseguire questa chimera dell’all-in one a tutti i costi (per ragioni a me ignote ancora cara a molti imprenditori, forse abbagliati dal miraggio di avere un unico interlocutore), dovremmo lasciare che diversi fornitori si concentrino sulle loro rispettive nicchie, piuttosto che essere presi in ostaggio da un unico provider.

Mentre i principali RMS AI-based sul mercato oggi possono prendere milioni di decisioni al giorno,16 il nostro cervello supera a fatica le 35.000.Ciò significa che, per avere la stessa accuratezza di un RMS, un singolo albergo dovrebbe assumere una squadra di 3.000 revenue manager, per un costo di oltre 200 milioni di euro l’anno.

Non c’è prova che i ricordi (la “coscienza”) di un essere umano possano essere estrapolati da tessuto cerebrale morto; tuttavia, come asserisce Ken Hayworth, presidente della Brain Preservation Foundation, non è dimostrabile neanche il contrario.

Aziende come Nectome e Neuralink stanno dimostrando, perlomeno in via embrionale e teorica, che la tecnologia necessaria per combattere il più grande tabù della nostra specie – la morte – potrebbe essere a poche decine di anni di distanza. L’impatto nel nostro settore non sarebbe da meno: potremmo riportare in vita la coscienza di Conrad Hilton e farci raccontare come era l’hospitality nei primi del Novecento o mantenere in busta paga lo stesso general manager per centinaia di anni.

In un mondo transumano, avrebbe ancora senso credere in una divinità? O si diventerebbe noi stessi delle divinità? La blasfemia percepita nel movimento transumanista, a mio avviso, risiede tutta in questo interrogativo centrale: se potessimo uccidere la morte, dovremmo farlo?

Un ospite defunto potrebbe continuare a scrivere recensioni, oppure a postare foto dei suoi soggiorni mentre era in vita. L’hotel dovrebbe rispondere a questi commenti? Oppure inviargli gli auguri di compleanno o le condoglianze ogni volta che ricorre la data della morte? È un bel mal di testa per i CRM e per la marketing automation: quanto loyal può essere un ospite trapassato? Può ancora essere un brand ambassador? Se in vita ha parlato molto del tuo hotel sui suoi social, allora potrebbe continuare a farlo da morto.

L’applicazione della robotica in hotel rimane quantomeno sporadica e gli ospiti tendono a percepirla più come un’attrazione, al pari di un avatar Disney nei parchi a tema, che un vero problem solver.

Continuare con l’assioma “tecnologia = robot” è una pericolosa, tendenziosa e fallace reductio ad absurdum, tipica di chi non comprende appieno la tecnologia – o, in maniera dolosa, la strumentalizza per fini luddisti.

Nel 2020 il settore alberghiero ha dovuto affrontare un calo improvviso e senza precedenti della domanda a causa della pandemia di coronavirus. Da un lato è una grande perdita, dall’altro è una grande opportunità per ripensare se stiamo gestendo l’attività alberghiera in modo razionale o se qualcosa può essere migliorato.

Il coronavirus ha trasformato lo smart working da movimento marginale, spesso ostracizzato dalle aziende, a “nuova normalità” e molti imprenditori si stanno rendendo conto, con loro sorpresa, che la produttività non è diminuita con il lavoro in remoto, anzi.

Un nomade digitale potrebbe voler scegliere un albergo più economico o un appartamento per il suo soggiorno, ma avere comunque bisogno di spazi più professionali di coworking (o camere dedicate) per incontrare clienti o effettuare call importanti. In quest’accezione, il fenomeno del nomadismo digitale è democratizzante: possono trarne vantaggio sia le piccole e piccolissime realtà che gli alberghi di livello superiore.

Man mano che ci si libera dalle infrastrutture legacy ci si riappropria della libertà di integrare quanta (e quale) tecnologia si vuole, senza essere “tenuti ostaggio” dalle infrastrutture tecnologiche sottostanti.

Più investi in tecnologia, più umana diventa quella tecnologia, in quanto si riposiziona il lavoratore umano dove esse apporta un vero valore aggiunto, ovvero nell’interazione con gli ospiti.

Credo che tutte le cose, dall’arte alla vita, anche aspetti tutto sommato più triviali, come il marketing, debbano essere sempre osservate con occhi vergini, come se fosse la prima volta, non importa quante volte ci si è imbattuti nelle stesse problematiche. Questo può significare anche sforzarsi di dimenticare quello che si sa. Significa sottoporsi a una forzatura intellettuale, ma una forzatura che apre le porte della conoscenza.

Potremmo affermare che il Futuro (con la F maiuscola) non esista affatto ma che, al contrario, (co)esistano tanti futuri (con le f minuscole) possibili e ugualmente probabili. Quale di questi diventerà il "nostro" Futuro non è in nostro potere prevedere, ma -a conti fatti- è proprio questo l'aspetto più eccitante della scrittura speculativa.

Tramite un punteggio poligenico, si potrebbero fare previsioni sul rendimento scolastico del bambino ancor prima che sia concepito. La selezione pre-nascita potrebbe, in futuro, diventare molto più importante per l’accesso ad alcuni posti di lavoro rispetto a quanto oggi non lo sia l’università frequentata o la media accademica. Un MBA alla Cornell avrebbe un valore estremamente minore rispetto a un patrimonio genetico selettivamente bioingegnerizzato. I “30 e lode” saranno scritti nei nostri geni ancor prima di nascere.

Non è fantascientifico prevedere che, nei prossimi decenni, i governi e le compagnie assicurative promuoveranno il gene editing per abbattere le spese sul sistema sanitario, in quanto si andrebbero a cancellare tutte quelle malattie geneticamente prevedibili sul nascere. Nel futuro, vedremo l’Homo sapiens, nato casualmente dalla “lotteria genetica” come oggi guardiamo al Neanderthal.

Le implicazioni degli impianti nel nostro settore sono enormi: se e quando gli impianti diventeranno mainstream, non è difficile prevedere che gli ospiti vorranno poter entrare in camera solo con il tocco della mano, pagare con un gesto e così via. Stesso discorso per chi in hotel ci lavora: potremo dire addio a passe-partout persi e rimpiazzarli con un semplice tocco, finalizzare check-in e check-out con un semplice movimento. Le applicazioni sono davvero infinite.

Non è difficile pensare come, nel giro di 10-15 anni, potremmo accedere a una specie di App Store direttamente dal nostro cervello. Immaginate di trovarvi per la prima volta a Parigi: non avete familiarità con le strade, il sistema metropolitano è confusionario e avete anche fame. Non servirà una guida: basterà scaricare direttamente sul vostro BMI i ricordi di un parigino e, immediatamente, saprete muovervi per la città e conoscerete i migliori ristoranti.

Il general manager uscente potrebbe semplicemente trasferire i propri ricordi in cloud e il nuovo direttore avrebbe chiara la situazione senza neanche bisogno di report o meeting. Potremmo anche dire addio ai training ogni volta che si cambia un software: il prossimo PMS potrebbe essere installato con i ricordi degli sviluppatori, creando dei power user istantaneamente.

Il solo fatto che una tecnologia sia adottabile non coincide necessariamente con il bisogno di adottarla

L’hospitality non è più solo una people-industry, ma anche una tech-industry

Non condividendo pregiudizi e parzialità tipiche degli umani, le macchine potrebbero prendere decisioni più eque e giuste rispetto a noi. Non solo le macchine sono migliori di noi nel ragionamento probabilistico o nello scovare pattern troppo sottili per essere individuati dagli umani, ma esse non hanno pregiudizi.

L’Estonia ha recentemente deciso di sperimentare (con successo) dei giudici-robot per risolvere tutte quelle controversie civili di minore entità (fino a 7.000 euro). Quali potrebbero essere le applicazioni AI nel travel?

As a highly skilled real estate investor and hotel operator, Paul Boschetti has the vision and strategic thinking required to navigate and succeed in the San Francisco market.

Do you invest? Does the hotel? The stock market, I mean.” Nika’s eyebrows knit together. “We have a man who manages the finances. Marco usually speaks to him, but I do, too. That’s how I know we need Adam.” “This is going to sound crazy,” I tell her. “But just trust me, all right? Can you do that?” She nods. “Invest in Apple. Starbucks, too. But next year, around the summertime.” “Starbucks?” “I’m going to write it down, okay?” I take out a pen and paper. I make the notes. “Promise me.” She nods. “I will.

When uploading a photo of your hotel online, you are the eyes (and the wallet) of your future guests, so don’t take it lightly

In any modern hotel, having a centralized system is critical in order to increase efficiency, avoid time waste and reduce human error, therefore PMS must eventually connect to nearly all the software the hotel is using.

The extreme competitiveness in travel is slowly bringing search engines, OTAs and metasearch engines to converge towards an increasingly homogeneous model. The reason is simple, almost Darwinian: the model that will prove to be the most efficient in terms of scalability and efficiency for the end user is going to prevail.