STR reports on hotel performances for Asia Pacific, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Stephen Vaughan finds out more about the business plans behind the planning, development and operation of airport hotels.

By Robin Kawakami: Global jet-setting and hotel branding help to define office style at the Starwood Hotels Design Center, the creative headquarters for the Luxury Collection, St. Regis, Le Méridien and W Hotels.

By Clinton Farley: Thinking back just over a decade, prior to social media channels, if an experience failed to meet expectations the opportunity to rectify was generally given, allowing an opportunity to regain trust of the consumer in the service offering. Having said this, in the age of social media, more and more the opportunity is simply not presented to rectify a deficiency which is a shame as this impacts on the consumer who accepts the deficiency and shares it online.

By Alan Campbell: I have read and been told that in the hospitality service industry, invisibility of staff is what one strives for, for if you do your job efficiently and correctly, without notice, then the guests will be happy. I am not convinced this is totally true.

By Rajul: Last year we published our top 10 London hotel openings in 2012 in what was a truly massive year for the city’s hotel scene.  Now we reveal our 2013 hotlist and can promise you an equally exciting year ahead.

By the JMBM Global Hospitality Group®: You have worked all your life to get top Zagat ratings for your restaurant. After years of hard work, you've made it! And because of that, food lovers from around the world will beat a path to your door. But, so too will the Department of Justice (DOJ), as the owners and operators of Manhattan's top 50 Zagat-rated restaurants found out in September of 2011.

By Barbara DeLollis: Who'd expect to see a hot dog cart inside the Four Seasons, the exclusive hotel where some inauguration revelers have been ordering $2,000 bottles of wine? Well, on Sunday, the hotel rolled out the real thing — an authentic hot dog pushcart — for its special inauguration weekend brunch.

By Simon Hobbs & Paul Toscano: The U.S. hotel industry is booming, more so than anywhere else in the world, and many in the industry say they expect the good times to keep rolling for a few more years until supply catches up with demand.

By Jenny Barchfield: Like about a third of the city's 180 hotels that rent rooms by the hour, mostly for amorous rendezvous, the Shalimar is trading its oversized round beds and bondage-ready chairs for proper couches, functional desks and other business-like furnishings. The goal is reinvention as a standard pay-by-the-day tourist hotel.