Hello, Round-Up Readers!

Thank you to readers who reached out, I am totally better from COVID! If you are interested in how I bounced back so fast despite being immune deficient read my (brief) interview with the BBC. 

Big news! We are very close to 2K followers on LinkedIn, are you in?  For scoops and info that I don't post anywhere else, click here!

Starting with travel news this week: 

• Travel is coming back BIG time. Marriott and Hilton posted positive earnings results from Q4 2021 despite Omicron, suggesting a strong recovery in global travel.  Expedia CEO, Peter Kern told Bloomberg the "the summer of 2022 will be the biggest ever," The WSJ offers up a summary of big indicators across events and travel while in the NYT "Travel’s Theme for 2022? ‘Go Big’" used data from WTTC, "that projects that travel and tourism in the United States will reach pre-pandemic levels in 2022, contributing nearly $2 trillion to the U.S. economy." The NYT article cites a few trends to expect:

  • Air Travel: Fewer COVID restrictions, but for now the masks stay on.

  • Lodging: Leisure has kept hotels afloat, hotels going after hybrid and remote workers, using automation to help with the labor shortages.

  • Rental Cars: Still pricey, and hard to get.

  • Destinations: Cities are back––specifically New York, London, and Paris.

  • Resorts: All-inclusives, beyond the beach––travelers are looking for hassle-free options even domestically. Generally, these resort packages include meals and some activities but not alcohol. 

  • Wellness: Sexual healing–– cites a few examples of hotels offering packages with therapists and coaches for intimacy 😉

  • Family Travel: Going on the edu-vacation––offering some teacher-led programs with kids having fallen behind in school during COVID. 

  • Cruises: Smaller boats and luxury destinations––many voyages were canceled with Omicron but demand is strong for the rest of the year. 

• Up in the air: a couple of flying trends on our radar––

  • Behave or suffer the consequences. U.S. agency refers 80 unruly airplane passengers for prosecution and Delta has proposed to create a master "no-fly" list of passengers convicted of on-board disruptions. In a recent example, a flight attendant subdued a disruptive passenger with a coffee pot.  

  • Women pay less for biz flights. New research shows female business travelers pay less for airline tickets than their male colleagues because they tend to book earlier, data also indicated that women are more careful with employers' money.  

  • Star trek. Members of the public can now reserve a spot on an upcoming suborbital spaceflight on Virgin Galactic for $450,000. 

  • Turbulent TV: More than 230,000 people tuned in to watch @BigJetTVLIVE's coverage of airplanes landing at Heathrow during the 112-mile winds of Storm Eunice.  Click for the colorful commentary!

• F&B: WaPo's long-time restaurant critic Tom Sietsema serves up lots of advice for management in "Restaurant service has taken a hit in the pandemic. Here’s how to turn it around."

Workplace trends:

• More Four-Day work weeks? Belgium announced an overhaul of labor laws to allow 4 x 10 hour days. Promised benefits include improved wellbeing, better focus, fairer sharing of childcare between men and women, and even a lighter carbon footprint, but FT cites possible drawbacks including a two-tier workforce and the possibility that improved productivity does not cover increased costs. Trends fuelling workplace innovation are not going away. "Automation, a tight labor market, the quest of younger workers for better jobs: all these will encourage employers to differentiate... these trends may nudge more organizations, and perhaps eventually governments, to take another step down the long path of reducing working hours."
• Buzzword alert––Boomerang Employees:  A recent survey of 5,000 employees across the US and the UK revealed that 75% of respondents expressed an interest in their previous employer after resigning. Anthony Klotz, the business psychologist who coined the ‘Great Resignation' tells Fast Company the next dominant hiring trend is hiring “boomerang employees."  Boomerangs are familiar with company culture and processes, require less training and onboarding, and may bring new skills back.
• Work "with purpose" and flexible schedules are in demand for hotel careers, reports Hotel News Now from a recent visit to Norway, where the reporter spoke with hospitality students and execs from IHG. 

Happier future you: The Atlantic's Arthur Brooks shares 7 habits that lead to happiness in old age. "Your well-being is like a retirement account: The sooner you invest, the greater your returns will be."

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On hertelier this week:

• REAL hotel scams.  Did you watch Inventing Anna?? The new Netflix series is inspired by the true story of Anna Sorokin, a fake heiress that scammed her way through New York. The series offers a glimpse into the challenges hotels face when guests have bad credit cards. We asked the hertelier community if scams ever happened to them, and got this amazing TRUE story––click to read now!  If you have a story to share (anonymous, of course) please get in touch. There is so much learning to be had to deal with scammers, let's help each other out by sharing. 

• 6 Ways to Level Up Your Career: New contributor Rachel Vandenberg, career coach and owner and operator of several properties in Vermont, shared her journey of taking over her family business and growing it and her leadership skills along the way.  She offers great resources for learning. 

• Why you Procrastinate: it's not what you think.  Columnist Nancy Mendelson "unpacks" procrastinating and gives some useful guidance.   

• FREE professional headshots in 5 cities! Everybody loves a freebie––we ❤️ this new promo by the Doyle Collection in celebration of International Women's Day on March 8th.  Click here to learn more and book yours.

If you're a new subscriber, you may not know hertelier was featured by the Cornell University SC Johnson School of Business! Please CLICK HERE to read about the community YOU are helping to build for women in lodging! 

Are you still here? I'd love to hear from you. Why do you read hertelier and what would you like to see covered? Is there someone you'd like to suggest for a profile?  My goal in 2022 is to get to know more of our readers, please reply to this email. I am a real person 😃 

Have a great week,

Em