The Study
Ideas, field notes and useful reading for hospitality operators.
Editorial position
The Study records the parts of hospitality work that survive contact with the operation. Each read should help someone inspect a booking journey, run a commercial meeting, launch a restaurant, choose a system or ask a better question.
The work starts with the commercial or operating problem, not the tactic.
A reader should leave with a check, a framework or a clearer next decision.
No borrowed certainty, disguised concept work or advice padded to fill a grid.
First edition
14 practical reads. Each begins with a business problem that an operator can actually inspect.
A hotel distribution strategy should decide what each channel is for, what it costs, which demand it adds and how inventory, content and restrictions are controlled.
Read the field note
Hotels should buy commodity capability, integrate where practical and build only when the workflow, economics or strategic control genuinely justify permanent ownership.
Read the field noteBefore scaling hotel metasearch, make sure live prices are accurate, the direct offer is competitive, tracking works and the landing page can convert the demand you paid to recover.
Read the field noteHoliday-home operators should use OTAs for demand while building the trust, guest data, repeat logic, website and operations that make direct bookings viable over time.
Read the field noteChannel-manager selection gets clearer when you test mapping, restrictions, failures, modifications, multi-property control and support instead of comparing logo counts.
Read the field notePre-opening commercial work should connect positioning, systems, rates, content, distribution and test bookings into one critical path long before opening day.
Read the field noteA hotel website redesign is expensive theatre if the real problem is weak positioning, poor room merchandising, broken mobile journeys or a disconnected booking engine.
Read the field notePMS, CRS, RMS, channel manager, booking engine, CRM and analytics are easier to choose when you map the decisions and data that must move between them first.
Read the field noteA hotel CRM decision should start with identity, consent, data quality, guest recognition and the operating use case. Email design comes much later.
Read the field noteWhen an OTA appears cheaper than the hotel website, changing the direct rate may hide the symptom. The real cause can sit in tax display, occupancy, mobile rates, mapping, promotions or cached inventory.
Read the field noteA hotel booking engine can be technically correct and still lose the guest. Audit the handover, room choice, total price, policies, mobile flow and recovery before blaming demand.
Read the field noteMost direct-booking problems are not acquisition problems. They are small commercial failures between the campaign, website, booking engine and follow-up.
Read the field noteOpening-week demand is not a media trick. It comes from the offer, local demand map, booking path, content pipeline and the reason guests return.
Read the field noteHospitality teams rarely suffer from a shortage of reports. The real problem is deciding what changed, who owns the response and what happens next.
Read the field note