The International Trade Administration’s Tourism Industries office reports that 26 million foreigners come to the United States each year on tourist visas. The average foreign guest spends $1,647 per person of which $318 is spent on gifts and souvenirs. Gross revenue from these tourists total an estimated $91 billion a year.
On the Horizon
American Express Travel Forecast for 2006
American Express is predicting a 5-8% increase in in short-haul domestic airfares for U.S. and Canada’s for 2006.
Smart Hotel Rooms
A conversation from the old forum:
New computer systems at the ultra-luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York are now connecting individual rooms to network servers that track guests’ preferences.
Online Reservation Systems Are Increasingly Profitable
Do your bed and breakfast have a website? Do you belong to an online reservation system?
Hotels Adopt Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing is a concept that has been recently adopted by several hotel chains including Hilton, Marriot, and InterContinental. Instead of having fixed and inflexible room rates, hotels that use dynamic pricing systems change their daily rates according to anticipated demand.
2005 Occupancy Rates in 6 Cities
According to hotelsmag.com, http://www.hotelsmag.com, 2005 hotel performance data for six popular destinations in the United States was as follows:
Why We Should Offer Complimentary Food and Beverages
The growing popularity of limited service and all suite hotels that offer complimentary breakfasts is changing the hotel industry. According to the 2005 edition of Trends in the Hotel Industry by PFK Consulting, hotels in the United States increased spending on complimentary food items 13.1% from 2003 to 2004.
B&B Statistics Highlight Growing Trends
According to statistics about U.S. B&Bs compiled by the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) :
“In 1980, there were one thousand B&Bs/country inns serving one million guests. In 2001, there were 19,000 professionally-run, fully licensed bed and breakfasts/country inns, plus 10,000 home-stay B&Bs, collectively serving a total of 55 million guests annually.”
Beware of Con Artists
Do con artists ever defraud B&B’s? Absolutely.
A man named Ali Patrick Pahlavi arrived at an upscale Denver B&B on September 29, 2000. He told the innkeeper/owner that his luggage and traveling money had been stolen. Would it be possible to borrow money and have the innkeeper’s finest room on credit? His family had been notified and as the billionaire nephew of the late Shah of Iran, he was certainly “good for it.”