By feature writer Lou Carbone: Beware: Your guests cannot NOT have an experience. When guests come to your hotel you’re constantly delivering a barrage of clues that effect their emotions, which, in turn, influence their attitudes and ultimately their behaviors. Research has found that 95% of our mental processing takes place unconsciously. How does this impact on your hotel services?

By Kat Lucero: In the past few months, new and revamped bars and restaurants inside the city's top hotels have complemented D.C.'s ever-expanding dining and social scene.

By Anne Edwards, Editor in Chief, ehotelier: When ehotelier spoke to TripAdvisor’s Global Vice President of Sales Julio Bruno last week, his most important piece of advice to hoteliers was to reply to guests’ online reviews, whether positive or negative.  In practice, what are hoteliers’ thoughts on the importance of responding to guest reviews and what are the blocks stopping them from replying?

TripAdvisor® today announced the winners of its Travelers' Choice Attractions awards based on millions of valuable reviews and opinions from TripAdvisor travelers. In its inaugural year, the awards honor 1,263 of the world's top landmarks, parks, museums and amusement and water parks.

By Theodore Koumelis: The new fashion hotel, Palazzo Versace, is one of the numerous new luxury properties by exclusive lifestyle brand, which are currently in the pipeline worldwide.

By feature writer Matt Shiells-Jones: It is almost unreservedly blatant to every business that operates today, that we live in what can only be described as a ‘Compensation Culture’ — where every problem or issue can seemingly be resolved in the form of monetary compensation — but just why is this so and how can you as a business person understand and hopefully counteract this?

By feature writer Carla Caccavale: Imagine a guest walks up to the front desk of your property and says, “I absolutely love your hotel! It has the most comfortable beds ever, your staff could not be any nicer and the meal I had last night in your restaurant was the best I’ve had in ages. Outstanding!” The person behind the front desk just looks at them and says nothing.  Not a word.  Complete silence.  A blank stare.  You would be appalled.  That’s the opposite of hospitality and, in fact, it’s just downright rude.  Right?

By feature writer Doug Kennedy: As President of a hospitality industry sales training company for most of my entire career, I have had the opportunity to conduct reservations sales training for just about every niche of the lodging industry.  I have trained five star hotels and one-star youth hostels; destination hotels and all- inclusive resorts; city center and airport hotels, conferences centers and ski resorts.  But there is one niche of the lodging industry that has by far the biggest need for training such as we at KTN provide: the vacation home rental industry.

By Matt Bitzer: Last week, Google took another step in encouraging site owners to properly optimize their mobile websites. But Google's not one to penalize indiscriminately (ha, almost typed that with a straight face), and has offered to set us wayward webfolk on the right track with their guide to building mobile-optimized websites and their list of common mistakes in smartphone sites.