By Aoife Dowling: Baccarat, the renowned French crystal company, is moving into another luxury arena with ultra high-end residences, hotels and resorts with spas. The company plans to open six hotel/resorts/residences by 2016 – three of which will be located in Morocco.

By Tricia Carr: The CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts said at the American Express Publishing Luxury Summit 2013 that the world is experiencing an age of change, which is altering the definition of luxury.

By Sue Wiker and Sara O’Brien: There are a number of digital marketing initiatives that generate direct bookings, incremental revenues and high ROIs to the direct online channel such as SEO, SEM, email marketing and online media. Over the past few years several new revenue-generating digital marketing initiatives have emerged that, until recently, were only available to OTAs and major hotel brands. Requiring sophisticated CRS access, advertising middleware technology, and out-of-range minimum monthly spends, these initiatives have traditionally been inaccessible to independent properties, smaller and mid-size hotel and resort brands, and casinos. One such revenue-generating opportunity is the Google Hotel Price Ads (HPA) program.

By Market Metrix: We’ve long known that value for price is routinely a top driver for guest loyalty, but the question always gets asked – how can hotels raise value without lowering prices? We decided to look into it using our MMHI global database, and what we found is rather, well…illuminating.

By Daniel Edward Craig: For hotels, the first priority in online marketing is to make sure travelers find you when planning trips. That’s become increasingly challenging in the realm of paid search, where online travel agencies, big brands and now Google Hotel Finder dominate results, driving costs up and organic results down. Why even try to compete? Instead, shift resources to where you’ll get a bigger bang for your buck: owned and earned media.

By Jeff Haden: It's for your own good. Cut these things out of your day and you'll see gains in productivity – not to mention happiness.

Most museum exhibits were designed long before social media became mainstream. But a new museum now taking shape in Stockholm has found a way to allow visitors to create media clips of their experiences and share them to their social media pages. Andrew Hennigan has been given an early preview.

By HyunJeong Han: A study that identifies certain corporate cultures that are connected to favorable hotel operating results has been named the article of the year for Volume 53 of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ), based on a vote of the CQ's editorial board.

By Anna Silman: Newsflash: living in an expensive fancy area next to an expensive fancy hotel is not all it’s cracked up to be. According to The New York Post, neighbors of Murray Hill’s swanky Gansevoort Hotel are so annoyed with the hotel’s high noise levels that they are are billing the hotel for hours of lost sleep.