By Nancy Trejos: Businesses that continued to send employees on the road during the recession were more profitable than those that cut back on business travel, a new study out today has found.

By Ron Shaich: Think of the entrepreneur's most valuable asset. It certainly isn't money. After all, capital is a renewable resource. What's far more valuable is the entrepreneur's ability to discover an untapped market, unsullied by cutthroat competition, where outsize profits await. Successful entrepreneurs aren't capitalists. They're opportunists. They see the white spaces in the market that others don't and exploit those opportunities.

Hotels handle information on internal servers and record customer visits through booking and in house data systems. Migration to the ‘Cloud’ is rapidly changing this. Cloud systems decrease the cost of entry to hotels and provide an extended arm of computer power which makes the service unilaterally accessible and can be summarised through these primary benefits.

A new survey from NewYorkHotels.org has revealed this finding after comparing the hotel rates of all luxury hotels in NYC over the past 12 months.

By Teo Kermeliotis: Major international hotel chains are increasingly rolling out thousands of new rooms in Africa's business hotspots, keen to expand their footprint on the continent's burgeoning economies. From Lagos and Kigali to Nairobi and Johannesburg, the world's best known hoteliers are targeting Africa's growing urban centers to benefit from a rising number of business travelers and a huge undersupply in available rooms.

By Tara Imperatore: Just because Earth Month is officially over doesn't mean you should run right out and fuel up your private jet without a care in the world. But if you must, you can take solace in knowing that your luxury hotel of choice may have already adopted some pretty unassuming ways to care for both you and the environment during your stay. You might not even be aware it's happening, which is great because you have tan lines and dinner reservations to worry about on vacation. In case you were curious though, here are some green hotels that are looking out for our planet while you sit back, relax and get pampered.

By Chris Owen: What if we could travel back in time 17 million years to when the Grand Canyon was just forming? Would we have believed that the national monument, now nearly a mile deep in places, would some day be a major tourist attraction? Probably not. But time and the forces of nature that come with it, along with the effect of humans on the planet, have a way of changing what we see – sometimes dramatically.

The European Travel Commission (ETC) is delighted to announce that the first quarterly report on European Tourism in 2013 — Trends & Prospects has just been published. International arrivals and nights to Europe for the first months of 2013 point to a slower, but continued growth for most of the reporting destinations. As 2012 was a strong year for tourism, Europe’s modest upward trend confirms the health of its tourism sector against overall economic turmoil.

Three editors of Conde Nast Traveler — Klara Glowczewska, Lisa Gill, and Wendy Perrin — decided to get firsthand experience of what goes on behind the scenes at hotels by stepping into the shoes of a housekeeper, a front desk clerk and a booking agent. They talk about their experiences.

By feature writer Jim Hartigan: The “Yes, and” principle requires listening very carefully to what someone else says, accepting what they say, and then building upon it and creating more of the story.  Here’s how it works.