By Natalie Wearstler: From Manhattan to Maui, luxury hotels and resorts are popping up. Whether you’re an art lover, design maven, outdoor adventurer or simply enjoy soaking up the sun with your toes in the sand, there’s a room waiting for you.

It’s Friday and after a hard week of hospitality, ehotelier would like to invite you to stop for a bit and relax with a coffee and a feature we would like to call Der Schlusspunkt (meaning ‘full stop’ in German). This week we look at the joys of overbooking and give away a copy of the beautiful coffee table book Great, Grand & Famous Hotels.

By feature writer Matt Shiells-Jones: Almost every hotel out there uses Online Travel Agents (OTA's) for selling rooms, but are these OTA's crushing the hotel industry with ever more restrictive and aggressive contracts and terms? In the wake of French Hotel Employers Union planned legal action, let us here at ehotelier know your thoughts on this one and we will publish an industry response.

By feature writer Yoland Perras: So what is it that makes us venture into the so much unknown? What is it that makes us change our life and the lives of those close to us? I believe that the attraction of the new discoveries, the unexpected and multiple changes, the thrill to overcome the many challenges and most importantly, the fun of the unforeseen is what makes us change our livelihood and seek new experiences.

By Asher Fusco: A recent study by online ad network Chitika reaffirmed the importance of SEO efforts, showing just how crucial it is for a site to appear within the first page of search results. Sites appearing on the first page of Google search results receive 91.5% of the traffic that filters through the search page. This staggering number compares to just 4.8% for page two, 1.1% for page three and 1.2% for pages four through ten combined.

By Scott McDowell: When. Not if. There will come a time (probably several times) in your career when you make a huge mistake. It’s wise to learn this skill early: how to say, “I’m sorry.”

By Amy Guttman: France's vaunted culinary culture has been taking it on the chin lately. First came the news that the majority of France's restaurants are now fast-food joints. And now, another blow. In a recent survey of French restaurants, more than a third fessed up that they serve industrially prepared, and often frozen, food.

By Caroline Morse: From terrifying tales about airplane bathrooms to mid-flight door-opening fears, there are a lot of myths about air travel flying around out there. Here are 10 urban legends that just aren't true.

By feature writer John Hendrie: In the last several years, we have had the "Bed Wars"; then we moved into the "Amenities War", ever ramping up our escalation of strategies and tactics to remain competitive or take the lead. Next, we had a “cooling off” period (also called a recession), where we just tried to survive and maintain our scant resources.  Now, quite healthy, we are looking at the "experiential", surely a stealth movement.

By feature writer Steve Curtin: If actions truly speak louder than words, then some management teams give the impression that they value attending meetings over listening to hotel guests.