Welcome to the hertelier email! 

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Here's what happened this week--

• Starting with good news, lodging experts in a virtual panel by the Cornell Hotel School say we are already in recovery mode and economic signs bode well for the industry.  One interesting trend that emerged from the pandemic: the long weekend! Since people have been working from home, data shows Thursdays and Mondays are doing as well as Saturdays and Sundays in some markets.  A recent Harris Poll revealed that 74% of Americans working from home said they’d consider taking a “workcation” — going somewhere else but working while there. Does your hotel offer "workcation packages"?  Would you take a "workcation"?
   
• As hiring in hotels intensifies, we dissect the 5 Most Annoying Interview Questions and How to Nail Them, with career coach Kathy Hubler. Lots of comments on this in Facebook and LinkedIn groups, so give it a read and let us know what you think!
   
• With Earth Day coming up eco-minded Isabel Goldsmith-Patino, who developed Las Alamadas resort in Mexico, offers tips on running your own eco-friendly resort. 
   
• This week, columnist Nancy Mendelson unpacks the etiquette around thank you notes with a reader who was upset about not being thanked.  What's your opinion on the best way to thank someone who has helped you? 

hertelier round-up of the week’s interesting articles on the hotel industry and women in business:

•  A thoughtful essay in the New York Times, What is Hospitality? The Current Answer Doesn't Work., author Tejal Rao muses "Hospitality is both invisible and formidable — it surrounds you. You can find it at a rest stop on the highway, and miss it at the host stand of a fine-dining restaurant. You feel its presence, or you don’t." This article shines a light on the difficulties of this year for restaurants, including challenging customer attitudes and unreliable compensation models. 
   
• The Wall Street Journal ran an article this week, Working Mothers Derailed by Pandemic Face a Tough Road (unfortunately there is a paywall) which talks about how nearly 1.1 million women between the ages of 25-54, our prime earning years, have left the workforce during the pandemic compared with 830,000 men in the same age group.  Data shows women have had to take lower-paying jobs to accommodate for child care, losing momentum in their careers. 
   
• Even as most companies profess their commitment to advancing women into leadership roles, systemic barriers and biases continue to hold us back, according to the article How to Close the Gender Gap, in the Harvard Business Review, which explores ways the gender gap can be narrowed, or even closed in corporate America.
   
• The good news is when women do make it to the C-suite, companies become more open to change and less open to risk, and focus more on internal investment. In other words, when women join the C-suite, they don’t just bring new perspectives — they actually shift how the C-suite thinks about innovation, ultimately enabling companies to consider a wider variety of strategies for creating value, claims the Harvard Business Review. 

We welcome your feedback, concerns, and especially your questions.  If you have any questions about your job (or life) send them to Nancy (nancy@nemglobal.com).  Benefit from her years of experience and therapy!

Thank you for your support--reading, liking, and sharing our stories of women rocking the hotel industry!  If you have a friend or colleague that you think would enjoy hertelier please forward this email, anyone can sign up by clicking here or the button below.

Have a great week,

Emily