Steve Van

The current consolidation mania of third-party management companies is producing important monetary benefits to owners.

For an industry that has borne the brunt of the economic impact from the COVID crisis, the hotel business should view recent pandemic developments as extremely favorable news. New cases are dropping ...

A century ago, America enjoyed a decade-long period of flourishing social and economic prosperity so significant that the era became forever immortalized as the “Roaring 20s.” In the wake of the ...

I promised myself after the Americas Lodging Investment Summit back in January that I would never attend another hotel conference.

In the hotel business, the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic has been profound—and almost universally devastating. Personnel, properties and profit margins have been altered in ways that might ...

In 1971, LANSA Flight 508 was struck by lightning and broke up two miles above the Amazon rainforest in Peru. Tragically, 91 people were killed.

The hotel business isn’t the only industry where buzzwords can make it all too easy to focus on the latest and greatest trends at the expense of what really matters.

Hotel owners come in two distinct varieties: the lucky ones who inherited their hotels and entrepreneurs who worked a lifetime focused on making enough money to buy one. And from my personal ...

I’ve written in this space before about how much the details matter in the hospitality business.

Anyone who has been in the hotel business for more than five minutes understands that this industry is all about the guest experience. And that experience isn’t a monolith; instead, it’s made up of ...

There’s an awful lot of discussion about the importance of corporate culture on profit these days—and not just in the hotel business. But if you ask me, those conversations are missing something ...

Like the historic canary in the coal mine as an early warning of danger, hotel owners have been looking for an indicator of when the next recession will cut into their profitability. Recently, a ...

If you’re in the hotel business, you’re probably feeling pretty good about things lately.

Too many owners and operators in the hotel business tend to dismiss company culture as “warm and fuzzy” stuff. A lot of the men and women who believe this are incredibly smart, talented, motivated ...

In the hotel business, there’s always plenty to worry about.

Read on if you are over 37 … and are looking for great sales managers in your hotels: Consider millennials—that much maligned, misunderstood and misrepresented cohort. And, oh by the way, they ...

My current lifetime Million Miler balance on my AAdvantage account is 13,912,658. So I bet I have eaten in more hotel restaurants than almost anyone reading this column. What did I learn? Generally, ...

To say that today’s hotel GM has had to evolve is an understatement. In part, the change in the GM can be attributed to technology, but it is also due to the growing needs and expectations of ...

Are you thinking about how to attract more guests to your hotel? You can fill your hotel by stealing rooms from your competition with one word: individualization. Trying to identify what today’s ...

The difference between a rapid hotel turnaround and business as usual is only one thing—money. A six-month turnaround versus a twelve-month cycle will save half a year's increased income, which ...