Lodging Daily News

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case brought the issue of employee safety at hotels into the spotlight. The case against the former head of the International Monetary Fund, who was accused by a New York City hotel room attendant of sexual assault, has been full of twists and turns. Regardless of the outcome, the case this summer had hoteliers contemplating security measures to protect workers. Anthony C. Roman, founder and CEO of Roman & Associates,

During this year’s Hotel Data Conference at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Conference Center in our hometown Nashville, Tenn., STR presented the adjusted forecast for the remainder of this year and for 2012. As always, new economic data and our observations of current hotel market behavior are the source for the adjustments. For 2011 we are not seeing any real uptick in construction. We forecast 0.7 percent supply growth, which based on a current inventory

If you receive a letter in the mail containing that sentence, you will have been added to what will soon be a long list of hotels investigated by the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor. WHD is the federal agency responsible for enforcement of, among other laws, the minimum wage and overtime requirements.   Over the past few years, WHD has received substantial increases in funding, which have been used

After suffering through record-breaking declines in revenues and profits during 2009, it is not surprising that U.S. hoteliers were a bit conservative when preparing their operating budgets for 2010. In the fall of 2009 (when the 2010 budgets were being prepared), hotel owners and operators were anticipating some degree of a turnaround in 2010. How could conditions possibly get worse? In hindsight, U.S. hoteliers were correct. According to Smith Travel Research (STR), revenue for the

It was 20 years ago when Michael Palmer became a hotel owner, purchasing a Hilton hotel in Ventura County, Calif. It was his first foray into the hotel business. He’d gone through college planning on a different type of career, graduating and becoming a CPA. But then his career began to take a different path. “We got into real estate, and from there into the hospitality industry,” he explains of his career’s beginnings. Palmer made