10 New Books About Hospitality You Need to Read Now
How people travel and what they seek in entertainment have had a major evolution in the past five years. The pandemic alone catapulted industry outliers into new processes and institutions.
In this post-pandemic world, hospitality professionals can gain inspiration and insight from other experts in the industry by reading some of the many cutting edge books that have come out in the last five years.
From how to improve revenue management to how to provide a better guest experience, here are 11 books about hospitality for hotel owners, general managers of hotel properties, and other hospitality industry professionals.
Table of Contents
1. The Heart of Hospitality: Great Hotel and Restaurant Leaders Share Their Secrets by Micah Solomon
2. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (8th Edition) by Philip T. Kotler, John T. Bowen and Seyhmus Baloglu
3. A Wealth of Insight: The World’s Best Luxury Hoteliers on Leadership, Management, and the Future of 5-Star Hospitality by Rahim B. Kanani
4. Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara
5. Making Welcome: Enriching Life and Business with
Hospitality by Eddie Heintz
6. Hospitality 2.0: Digital Revolution in the Hotel Industry by Ira Vouk
7. Hospitality From Within by Sarah Dandashy
8. Designing Experiences by Dr. J. Robert Rossman and Dr. Matthew D. Duerden
9. How a Global Pandemic Changed the Way We Travel by Dr. Jacqueline Jeynes
10. Spin the Bottle Service: Hospitality in the Age of AI by Kirsten and Paul Moxness
1. The Heart of Hospitality: Great Hotel and Restaurant Leaders Share Their Secrets by Micah Solomon
This handbook on hospitality management is full of practical advice and insights from world-renowned pros in the hospitality business.
Contributors include Isadore Sharp of the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Restaurateur Traci Des Jardins and Chef Tom Colicchio. It also includes a forward written by Herve Humler, the President of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
Together with these important voices, Micah Solomon takes readers on a journey with a common theme: that perfecting the art of customer service is a process. With that in mind The Heart of Hospitality teaches how to provide the best level of service to all audiences, from millennials to boomers and beyond.
Related: Importance of the STR Report for Your Hotel
2. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (8th Edition) by Philip T. Kotler, John T. Bowen and Seyhmus Baloglu
Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism focuses on hotel marketing and includes real-world case studies to help hotel brands and hotel managers understand and address current industry trends.
In its recently released 8th edition, Kotler and associates cover what the industry is facing today, including how social media coverage and destination tourism have changed the game.
Kotler, Bowen, and Baloglu are hospitality professors at Kellogg, Cornell, and UNLV, respectively.
Need immediate tips? Read How to Get More Traffic to Your Hotel
3. A Wealth of Insight: The World’s Best Luxury Hoteliers on Leadership, Management, and the Future of 5-Star Hospitality by Rahim B. Kanani
In A Wealth of Insight, Rahim B. Kanani covers everything a hospitality pro needs to know about leadership and management, including:
- How to recruit top-quality employees
- How to market and brand a hotel
- How to create the right company culture
- How to make use of the right room technology in your hotel
Kanani spoke to 35 of the world’s best luxury hoteliers to compile A Wealth of Insight. It’s full of practical lessons and insights on how to manage a hotel to provide top-quality hospitality and customer service.
4. Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara
In Unreasonable Hospitality, restaurateur Will Guidara (of Eleven Madison Park fame) talks about how to go above and beyond to create an exceptional customer experience — an art that he has perfected throughout his own career.
Guidara discusses his “hospitality-first” approach to business and how every decision should be made with the needs of both customers and internal teams in mind. He covers why it’s important to set the bar high and have lofty goals for an establishment, as well as how to boost and elevate the careers of those around you to build an even better team of employees.
5. Making Welcome: Enriching Life and Business with Hospitality by Eddie Heintz
In Making Welcome, Eddie Heintz dives into how the universal principles of hospitality can be beneficial to any individual or business in a post-pandemic world.
The book explores how the best hospitality practices ease people’s fears and encourage them to live in the moment.
Heintz shares what he’s learned in his three decades in the restaurant industry and time as a Hospitality Instructor to help those that are both new to and experienced in the business become top-tier experts in their field.
6. Hospitality 2.0: Digital Revolution in the Hotel Industry by Ira Vouk
Hospitality 2.0: Digital Revolution in the Hotel Industry includes interviews with hotel industry experts and technology companies to help hotel managers, owners, and entrepreneurs run more successful hotels and make better use of technology in the future.
Ira Vouk, an expert in hospitality technology and revenue, dives into how technology continues to change the hotel business and how hoteliers and hotel brands can better prepare for — and deal with — future disruptions in the industry.
Get involved by attending one of the 15 Best Hospitality Trade Shows and Events.
7. Hospitality From Within by Sarah Dandashy
In Hospitality From Within, hospitality pro Sarah Dandashy uses her experience in service to explain how to forge better connections with guests and with colleagues within the industry.
This book is designed to help improve how professionals in the business can provide better service with authenticity. To do so, Dandashy includes tips on how to better work with guests, quotes from various industry experts, and stories from concierges that can be applied to real-life scenarios in any hotel. Plus, you’ll pick up some hotel terms.
8. Designing Experiences by Dr. J. Robert Rossman and Dr. Matthew D. Duerden
From Columbia Business School Publishing comes Designing Experiences, a guide on how to design an excellent user experience.
While not strictly a book for hospitality professionals, this book delves into fundamental theories on experience design and how to determine when a guest or customer perceives the experience to be superior. It’s a useful guide not just for hospitality industry professionals, but for pros in a wide range of industries.
Design experiences that attract the SMERF market as well. Read Reach the SMERF Market and Book more Recurring Groups.
9. How a Global Pandemic Changed the Way We Travel by Dr. Jacqueline Jeynes
Dr. Jacqueline Jeynes’ How a Global Pandemic Changed the Way We Travel is one of the best books on the hospitality and tourism industry in a (mostly) post-COVID world.
Dr. Jeynes shares insight into how COVID-19 affected both leisure travel and business travel and explores how (and if) the travel changes that started in 2020 will permanently affect travel in the future. It helps to define what the “new normal” is so that hospitality professionals can be prepared going forward.
10. Spin the Bottle Service: Hospitality in the Age of AI by Kirsten and Paul Moxness
Kirsten and Paul Moxness provide valuable industry information in Spin the Bottle Service, including how digital interactions and AI technology cannot replace human interactions.
Together, the authors posit that creating meaningful customer experiences is at the crux of hospitality. So this book explores how to centralize it, by making gratitude a habit, being compassionate when resolving problems and empowering employees to desire (and therefore create) better experiences for guests.
Conclusion
Hotel managers, hotel owners and all customer-facing professionals can learn a wealth of information from these must-read hospitality books.
From resorts that cater to leisure travelers to hotel brands that host business and bleisure travelers, these ten books are reshaping how hospitality professionals think about service for the present day and into the future.
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