I travel a great deal, for which I am very thankful except when I am jammed in coach on a full flight to Europe. My travel takes me to various industry events where I am occasionally asked to speak, but often I just go to learn. I engage in conversations that can go anywhere from the challenges of dealing with the OTAs to the never-ending issues around security. Discussions often include who has successfully moved to the cloud or what new app is going to take over the industry. Which vendor is on the way up and which isn’t positioned for the future are often animated discussions. Yes, the conversations vary and often are based on where I am at the time. I wish everybody in the hotel industry could attend ITB in Berlin once just for the experience. And I hope everyone reading this has been or is planning on attending HITEC where all the industry technology can be found. I am invited to users’ groups and it is something I absolutely love because I get to talk to those who use all this technology we write about. Hospitality Upgrade puts on two unique events that we consider small but extremely high quality. Our Executive Vendor Summit, now entering its 12th year, is where CEOs from the vendor community come together for two-and-a-half days of networking and opening doors for each other. It continues to amaze me that we are able to pull together this group each year. In its 15th year the week of Labor Day, our CIO Summit is where technology leaders come from around the world to talk about yesterday, today and most importantly the future. Events, big and small, have one thing in common; discussions about technology and many of the challenges the industry is facing. These discussions inspire knowledge sharing – and honestly much of the sharing I do is from what I read in each issue of Hospitality Upgrade. We have partnered with HFTP and HITEC for many years and we are grateful for this partnership as thousands of readers throughout the world are reached through this association. We also have expanded our partnership with HSMAI. We are thankful that we can expand our reach to so many more sales, marketing and revenue managers around the world.
These relationships bring some pressure and forces us to continue to grow and get better. You would think after 24 years this wouldn’t be needed, right? Wrong. We live in a world of what have you done lately and that is what pushes us. Look at page four and the content in this issue. I read every article and trust me, when I am traveling to events and become part of various discussions, the knowledge I have picked up from this magazine helps immensely. We love hearing Larry Hall’s experience with an iPhone, and Kelly McGuire’s Thriving in the Digital Economy is definitely coming up in discussion. Every hotelier should strongly believe in the nine tips she shared. Big Data, security and the death of copper in hotels are also included in this issue. When I was checking into the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in December, believe it or not I used a self-check-in kiosk that not only worked, it worked well. Bill Geoghegan, our Las Vegas-based gaming contributor, did a fantastic job with the not-so-great history of self service check-in kiosks and how they are working today. If you are curious as to who is installing which systems, we have expanded our recent installations section. You don’t have to read every article, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you do. We always smile when we are at HITEC and so many people come up to us to say they read the issue cover to cover. Yes, that makes us proud.
As we enter our 24th year of publishing, we have come a long way from our first 20-page newsletter printed on bright yellow paper. We thank you, our readers and contributors, and because of you, today this publication has subscribers all over the globe, with more than 32,000 in print circulation and more than 15,000 in digital circulation in 110 countries around the world. But truly, we thank the industry vendors who support us with their marketing dollars, and who often tell us they simply have to be in Hospitality Upgrade if they want to be considered a serious player in the industry. We appreciate it. Believe it or not, some have been with us all 24 years, and to me, that is the best endorsement we could get. We have grown along with them. The challenge of dealing with change keeps us all going. Thank you for coming along with us.