Center for Hospitality Research Publications
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The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) is the leading source for quality research on and for the hospitality industry. It creates new knowledge—and shares that knowledge to power hospitality forward. The CHR works with business leaders to develop new ideas, theories, and models that improve strategic, managerial, and operating practices. These insights are captured in research reports and industry tools that are available online at no cost. Thousands of academic and business leaders worldwide tap into this research stream. An active knowledge-sharing program further distributes the center’s work around the globe.
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Item Annual Report FY 2023-2024Center for Hospitality Research (2024-10-30)2023-2024 Annual Report published by the staff of the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at Cornell University's Nolan School of Hotel Administration.Item Global Hospitality Leadership: Insights from Asia PacificDev, Chekitan S. (2024-10-30)Following a merger with Starwood Hotels (and with its own growth), Marriott Asia Pacific has become one of the largest hotel operators in the Asia Pacific region. While managing hotels in Asia has much in common with operations around the world, the region also has its own particular aspects, as explored in this discussion. In a conversation with Cornell University Professor Chekitan Dev, Marriott Asia Pacific president Rajeev (Raj) Menon explains his leadership strategy. As a start, he explained his firm’s approach of applying a balanced score card to the firm’s three primary stakeholders—namely, owners, associates, and customers. Menon also underscored the remarkable growth prospects for the Asia Pacific region, and the approach Marriott will take to be part of that growth. The conversation took place at Global Hospitality Conclave 2024, held at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi.Item The State of Gender Equality in the Travel and Hospitality IndustryCornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration’s Center for Hospitality Research (2024-10-02)Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an area of intense focus and scrutiny across the travel and hospital industry. Gender diversity, especially, is capturing attention because women represent a significant share of industry employees. A key industry theme is the challenges women face in obtaining promotions, earning the same salaries as men, and ascending into corporate leadership positions. Additional research capturing a broader base of the industry’s voice on gender equality and diversity in the workplace is needed to advance future progress. This report offers said research as well as potential solutions to the travel and hospitality industry’s gender equality and diversity challenges. Women Leading Travel & Hospitality4, NAPCO Research5, and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration’s Center for Hospitality Research6 teamed up to conduct a workplace gender diversity study based on a wide sample of industry participants, across job levels. The survey-based study focused on the status of DEI efforts in the travel and hospitality industry to uncover the ways organizations are addressing gender equality, while providing a reference point to measure for future progress.Item Distortionary Effects of PPP Loans on Business Competition: Evidence From the Hotel IndustrySteiner, Eva; Tchistyi, Alexei (2024-09-13)The Covid-19 pandemic that emerged in 2020 caused a deep, global economic crisis that was especially difficult for the hotel industry. The U.S. government responded to this crisis with an emergency set of economic relief measures on a near-unprecedented scale. The Small Business Administration’s $953-billion Payroll Protection Program (PPP) was a key part of that response. In an effort to reduce layoffs, the PPP offered temporary payroll subsidies in the form of forgivable loans for small businesses. Given the significant cost involved, it is important to evaluate the economic impact of the PPP initiative. While the program was clearly beneficial for businesses that received PPP funds, we found a potential unintended consequence of the PPP—namely, the distortion of business competition. Our study assesses how equilibrium market outcomes change when firms benefiting from government subsidies compete against non-subsidized firms.Item Renegotiating Commercial Loans: Getting a Discounted Payoff is Possible But ComplicatedFlynn, Sean; Ghent, Andra; Tchistyi, Alexei (2024-09-10)In times of crisis, some hotel owners find themselves overwhelmed by debt and face a difficult dilemma—either keep putting more of their money into their troubled assets or stop paying their mortgages and lose their hotels to foreclosure. This is an undesirable outcome for both borrowers and lenders. Borrowers lose their investments in the foreclosed property as well as their reputation. On the other hand, lenders recover substantially less than the property’s market value due to various costs and expenses associated with foreclosure.Item Sustainability in Focus: 2022 and 2023 Cornell Sustainability RoundtablesAdalja, Aaron; Varney, Jeanne (2024-07-23)The Center for Hospitality Research at The Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration in the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University hosted annual Sustainability Roundtables in fall 2022 and 2023. In many ways, the two sessions were part of an essential conversation. For the 2022 roundtable, participants were back on campus and in person for the first time since 2019. With the most severe public health concerns of the Covid-19 pandemic in the rear view, participants were excited to return to Ithaca and embrace the core element of hospitality—gathering together. In contrast, the 2023 roundtable represented the other side of the communications coin—namely, to remove barriers to give people voice through virtual participation.Item Hotel Brands’ Competitive Performance Mapping: A New Way to Identify Strong, Troubled and Weak BrandsDev, Chekitan S.; Bird, Ashley Ellsworth (2024-07-23)Developing tools with which to assess brand performance is key to gaining an understanding of how a hospitality brand is performing in comparison with its competitive set. This article introduces a new method of competitive performance mapping, which ranks hotel brands’ performance based on the following four measures: revenue per available room, cumulative average growth rate, guest satisfaction, and franchise-fee data. Based on these measures, brands are mapped as leaders or laggards in their brand tier and classified brands as Strong Brands, Troubled Brands, or Weak Brands. This analysis covers a complex period during which the U.S. hotel industry continued its recovery from the Covid-19 interruptions of 2019–2020. It also documents a steep decline in post-Covid guest-satisfaction scores for every brand analyzed in this report, without exception. We suggest that the first step in successfully managing an existing is mapping the brand against its competitive set, using key metrics in order to responsibly steward the brand’s future. Beyond the highly valuable results reported here, the study’s chief value lies in the methodology developed to facilitate comparative analysis of hotel brand performance that could benefit brand managers, owners, asset managers, lenders, and consultants.Item Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index 2024Ricaurte, Eric; Jagarajan, Rehmaashini (2024-05-07)For the first time in the ten annual cycles of the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking cycle, we find a general increase from 2021 to 2022 in energy and water consumption among participating hotels. This increase is largely associated with the global recovery from the anomaly of 2021, where occupancy levels were lower than usual and most hotels were not operational for the full year due to the pandemic. The increase in hotel occupancy rates between 2021 and 2022 and recovery to pre-pandemic operating levels contributed to the increase in energy consumption levels in 2022. Comparison between 2019 and 2022 consumption levels show a general decrease in energy and water consumption per square meter, but an increase in energy and water consumption per occupied room. This observation is largely attributed to the lag time between the resumption of hotel operations and the return of travelers.Item Large Hotels Reach a New Statistical LowLiu, Crocker H.; Nowak, Adam D.; White, Robert M. Jr. (2024-04-12)Only the Midwest, South Atlantic, and West South-Central regions posted moderate single-digit hotel-price gains in the first quarter 2024 (Midwest, 3.2%; South Atlantic, 3.8%; and West South-Central, 1.6%). Hotels in gateway cities experienced a reversal, exhibiting better performance than hotels in non-gateway cities this quarter. Transaction volume fell year over year and quarter over quarter for both large and small hotels in gateway and non-gateway cities. Standardized prices of large hotels continue to soften while those of smaller hotels remain relatively stationary. The cost of hotel debt financing and the delinquency rate for hotels rose in the recent quarter, even though credit spreads continued to tighten and relative risk narrowed. As in prior periods, borrowing costs still exceed the return on hotels. Expect to see a rise in the price of large hotels and a decline in prices for small hotels next quarter based on our leading indicators of hotel price performance.Item Successful Service Branding: Lessons for Hospitality ManagersDev, Chekitan S.; Huang, Ming-Hui (2024-04-12)Hospitality brands today face a brutally competitive environment characterized by a “sea of sameness” that threatens to drive all brands in a race to the bottom.1 However, little empirical information exists on how to best manage service brands in general and hospitality brands in particular. We have long understood successful goods branding, but we have not studied how successful services branding differs from that of goods branding. This article attempts to fill that void by analyzing 11 years of data in an empirical study of goods and service brands to determine how service brands succeed. Analyzing three factors—namely, service quality, service personalization, and service relationships—we found that service brand success can be achieved through relationship-based personalization accompanied by a level of quality that is consistent and meets customer expectations. Consistency in quality is a key to successful brand and firm outcomes. We conclude that either falling short of or exceeding customer quality expectations can have deleterious consequences for brands and firms. Moreover, we found that quality improvements should be achieved gradually.