HSMAI’s mission is to help hotels and their partners grow their revenues through sales, marketing and revenue optimization. As such, the cross communication between these three disciplines and information technology is vital given the changing landscape we live in. Consumer behavior is changing, the intermediation of all types of business has never been greater, ownership expectations are ever rising, and the pace of change in general requires business and market intelligence that we’ve never had before. Information technology professionals are valued partners in this quest to manage information and change.

We think that a number of articles in this issue are of interest to both HSMAI readers and technology professionals at large. The article by Hayley Calhoon reminds all of us about the impact Twitter is having on our businesses. Sarah Andersen and Leora Lanz examine the usefulness of technology from a consumer perspective. The article by Cindy Estis Green about channel mix addresses the hot topic of the attribution modeling of websites, and Max Rayner’s article addresses the importance of using channels for creating incremental demand.

We hope that the clustering of these related articles is helpful to you and that it represents a whole section you can easily share with your sales, marketing and revenue management colleagues.

Robert A. Gilbert
President and CEO
Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International