Most mornings when I open my email inbox, I have at least one “note to self” message that I sent in the wee hours as I cruised social media, or from my early-morning online newspaper reading.
In case you can't tell, I don't sleep well.
At any rate, it’s fun in the morning to check out these little virtual Post-It notes I scribbled/sent myself for potential story ideas, interesting factoids surrounding the industry and other fun facts.
Sometimes they make sense when I’m reading them from my office during normal working hours and sometimes they don’t, but they’re always interesting.
Here’s what crossed my desk this week.
Lyft Employees Latest Recalled to the Office
I follow return-to-office stories keenly as I know many of you do, because we’ve seen over the past few years how hotel performance ties in to employees being in the office. It’s a complex relationship, and there are pros and cons for hoteliers on either side of the work-from-home-or-return-to-office debate. In this piece by our CoStar News colleagues, we see Lyft now will require its San Francisco employees to come back to the office three days a week.
Return to Work and Special Accommodations for Corporate Employees
American Airlines’ Skyview 6 hotel for employees opened in January, and this piece from the Wall Street Journal shares some reasoning behind the $250 million project funded by American Airlines: It’s for the thousands of employees — flight attendants, pilots, other corporate workers — who fly in to the company’s corporate campus for training every year.
And somewhat along those lines, Nemacolin next month will open what the company is billing as a “first-of-its-kind” residential community for its employees, called Wisteria. This new development has two-bedroom homes laid out like a townhouse community, with amenities like a grocery store, a rec center and more. Nemacolin has long provided different types of associate housing, but this is really more like a planned community, almost resort-ish, if you will.
The Ritz-Carlton’s Blueberry Muffins
I love when hotels claim provenance over beloved recipes. Usually it’s cocktails, but of course this week I had to click on this New York Times Cooking recipe sharing the history of the muffins served at the Ritz-Carlton Boston, along with the recipe. Where there is a recipe, there’s always a great backstory.
Never Forget My Love for LeBron James
Yes, I still have a Google News alert set up for LeBron James — you can imagine how it’s blowing up around this time of year. A few weeks ago I dipped into this story from The Athletic about a new Starbucks in Akron, Ohio — James’ hometown — that’s part of a hospitality training initiative from the LeBron James Family Foundation. I was interested to read that the actual training will be done by Graduate Hotels and Saira Hospitality. Our Dana Miller reported the story for Hotel News Now and it’s just fascinating. Wonder if Akron will get a Graduate Hotel one of these days?
Finally, if you followed along on my previous blog's LinkedIn poll asking readers to choose which hotel brand best described their personality, the results are in, and you might be surprised.
Got any fun and interesting news tips for me? Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.