Seth Godin, Linchpin and the Hospitality Industry

I just finished reading a book by Seth Godin called Linchpin. Godin is a superhero in the world internet marketing and new business in general. While his new book, Linchpin, is not directly related to the hospitality industry, it taps into the core of what makes our industry really work – passion.

Godin argues that we are all born artists and that society re-trains us to be factory workers. When the world really needed factories this might have been OK, but today we don’t need factory workers.  Nevertheless, society cranks out factory workers like crazy.

Think about your hospitality business – some front-line employees treat their job like it a factory job, following a checklist and never straying from their job description.  Others, however, are pure artists, going far above and beyond the call of duty.

I highly recommend the book, but not unless you are willing to rethink everything you do, and the reasons behind your actions.  Check out the book at Amazon:

TheHospitalityGeek Recommends Linchpin

The Secret to Social Media Success

Let me start off by apologizing for the title of this blog post – the things that I am about to write are painfully obvious and simply require a shift in your thought process.

My first job in the hospitality industry was with a leading extended-stay hotel chain, and the lessons I learned there have stuck with me over the past fifteen years.  This particular brand was very well managed, and brand managers communicated the mission and vision throughout the brand extremely well.  In fact, hotel managers for this brand Continue reading

Affiliate marketing and why you should care

OK hospitality managers, I think it’s important that anyone doing any business on the internet understand affiliate marketing and how it affects your hotel or restaurant (or any other business for that matter).  The web contains all sorts of information ranging from helpful to just plain garbage and everything in between.  Affiliate marketing on the internet can be helpful, but is often misunderstood and often abused.

So what is affiliate marketing? Continue reading