Austin Hospitality Blog

It’s a fact – companies with the most loyal customers (we call them Brand Advocates) are the most profitable by a wide margin. So the recent research on travel industry loyalty marketing programs conducted by Colloquy research spells bad news for larger hotel brands and good news for smaller luxury properties.

According to Colloquy, travel programs have seen a 31.2% decline in active participation since 2007! So large hotel companies are scouring data bases in an effort to consolidate best customers and prospects in their programs.

The Small Luxury Hotel Advantage
As the research shows, these “loyalty programs” aren’t loyalty programs at all. They are points based programs that primarily reward frequent travelers and are better adept at reading behavioral patterns, but not necessarily creating real loyalty. They focus on transactions while smaller hotels focus on the guest experience.

They are a far cry from the service and attention consumers can receive before, during and after a stay at a small luxury property. While the hotel manages the actual stay experience it does need a well planned customer relationship management program (CRM) in place to manage the experience before and after the stay.

Instead of expensive points-based programs smaller hotels need to be focusing on surprise & delight – offering a guest an unexpected upgrade, late check out, special amenity on the fifth stay or personal invitation to a repeater’s cocktail party. A personal thank you letter or call to ensure the guest made it home safely while getting feedback on their stay are the personal touches guests see as genuine.

This genuine and personal touch from the GM and staff allows smaller properties to offer a truly unique personalized experience that builds loyalty. And the hotel’s CRM program should be designed to efficiently keep the memory of a great vacation alive for years if necessary. It is the key to long-term profitability through multiple repeat visits and referrals to friends and relatives – a hotel’s most effective marketing tool

The fact that transaction based loyalty programs are waning should be good news for progressive hospitality marketing professionals with a well thought out CRM strategy in place.

How you attract, hire, train, develop and treat your front-line employees is commonly known as the one true strategy to provide great guest service. In lieu of managers doing all of the work themselves, a specific culture must be created and fostered to secure commitment from the employees to stick around and deliver the desired service. This takes time and a lot of work. This interactive session was designed to highlight best practices to create and maintain a strong internal employee culture. Knowing that Generation Y and the Millenials are the talent pool with which our industry is made, there are some key strategies that can be used to tap into and develop that workforce.

Because of its successes – publicly and internally – the visceral backdrop of Hard Rock International is used as a platform to discuss ways to create, maintain or revive a desired employee environment, regardless of the current state of the state.

Some of Hard Rock’s practices may seem a bit too irreverent and unpredictable for your particular company, but the fundamentals – both theoretical and practical – are instructionally sound.

What is Employee branding?

I define this as the process by which employees internalize the desired brand image and are motivated to project that image to the guests. It is the organization’s responsibility to create buy-in by internally marketing the brand. Great brands get everyone to sing off the same song sheet. It gets people to do what you want them to do, that they might not have done on their own. You’ve got to teach people and story tell to them in such a way that they feel like they are committed to the brand. It’s all about internally marketing the brand to the employee first. But a lot of things have to occur for the experience to go right.

We are all pretty good at marketing to the consumer, but you need to do the same thing for the internal brand as well. I think that employee branding is becoming more important, especially in today’s climate where looking for low cost initiatives is important. You have to look at things internally, and branding is where you can start. Employee branding put me on the map, both in my own company and in hospitality.

These days, every business has a traffic problem. You have to convince people to walk in the door. The only way to do that is to give them a positive guest experience. And the positive guest experiences come from the employees. You have to always ask yourself the question: Did we hire the right person?

But to some degree, if I’m trying to train and develop a wrong hire, all the training in the world isn’t going to help that person. I’m not in favor of taking jobs from people, but if I get the weak link in my experience as a guest, that ruins the brand, particularly if it’s the first time they’ve ever been to a Hard Rock.

I believe people fall into three categories: the don’t know people, the can’t do people and the don’t care people. If they’re a ‘don’t know’, that’s great because that person is easy to educate. But if they’re a can’t do, boy that’s really tough. If the can’t do person is a good employee, we need to put them in a role where they can be successful. They that don’t care, unfortunately, those are people I don’t care about. They drag down the brand.

Here’s a quote I got from a fellow CHART member this week.

‘It’s not about mimicking the exact steps shown here, rather it’s the ‘ah ha’ moments for each of you to apply to your specific culture.’ Kate Shehan

Hopefully, there will be something I offer you that you can use in your own companies.

The Employee Life Cycle

There are several stages in the employee life cycle: Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, Training, Developing, Incenting, Retaining and Separating. Things have changed over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, employees showed up, did the job, went home and were happy to have a job. They tolerated old school attitudes. Ten years ago they started keeping an eye open for a better job, started standing up for their rights and responded well to those who just said, ‘thank you.’

Today, they want it all. They bail at the drop of a hat, usually because of weak leadership. Their attorney’s phone number is on speed dial, because they are standing up for their rights. Today’s employees are loyal only to those who inspire and develop with compassion.

Here’s the makeup of today’s new generation of employees:

· Individuality is a priority

· They are visual learners (75% of everything we learn is visual)

· They have short attention spans

· They are technologically savvy

· They are socially conscious

This is one reason we use visual storytelling to train our new hires. I tell them first about the dudes who started Hard Rock. They were different sorts. Isaac Tigrett had a long beard, wore all black, sported silver chains and long hair. Peter Morton, the son of well-known restaurateur Arnie Morton, was the other partner and he had the restaurant technical knowledge. They opened in a posh part of London where there was a strict division of classes. Yet, they ignored the class division, making it accessible to everyone.

Their mission: ‘To spread the spirit of Rock ‘n Roll by creating authentic experiences that rock.’ Many thought it wasn’t going to last. But there’s something about the spirit of how it came to be that makes it successful to this day.

The first quarter brought declines for the Austin hotel industry; although the city has outperformed U.S. hotel industry averages, according to data from Smith Travel Research.

Austin’s hotel industry posted 8 percent decline in occupancy, a drop in average daily rate of 1 percent and a drop in revenue per room (RevPAR) of 9 percent for the first quarter, compared with the same time last year.

Nationally, the industry saw a steeper drop in those three metrics for the first quarter: occupancy for the quarter was down 11 percent, average daily rate was down 7 percent and RevPAR decreased 17 percent for the quarter.

The industry’s occupancy in the month of March fell 11 percent, compared with March 2008, to end at 55 percent. The average daily rate industry-wide fell 9 percent to finish the month at $99.42, compared with the same month last year. And RevPAR decreased 20 percent compared with last March to finish at $54.93.

“Performance results for March continue to show sharp drops in the key measures of occupancy and ADR,” said Mark Lomanno, president of STR. “However, we have begun to believe that the industry may have bottomed out from a demand perspective. Over the past two months, the number of rooms sold has remained fairly consistent after the accelerating drops experienced beginning in September 2008 though January 2009. Knowing that the trough in the cycle has been reached gives hope that the beginnings of a modest recovery may not be far away.”

According to STR, none of the nation’s top 25 markets reported increases in occupancy, average daily rate or RevPAR, considered the three key performance measurements, although six markets did end the month with single-digit increases in occupancy.

The largest decreases in occupancy came from Orlando, Detroit, New Orleans and San Diego.

The largest drops in average daily rate came from New York, Miami and Phoenix. And six markets reported RevPAR drops of more than 25 percent: New York, Miami, Orlando, Detroit, San Diego and Chicago.

The U.S. hotel industry also saw declines in those three performance metrics for the first quarter 2009, compared with the same time period last year.

As I look back at my hotel career, this article makes me think of the old saying “If I only knew then what I know now” This is a great article…..just possibly one to bookmark! Never know when you might have to pass it on to someone who hasn’t learned the art of communicating just yet.

If someone were to ask me the most important quality of an effective hotel manager, it would be the ability to communicate clearly with hotel staff, superiors, peers, and guests. I believe that being a good communicator is an under-rated quality that needs to be emphasized in this new age of electronic communication.

Most people would agree that communicating, in a meaningful way, is a learned art and not necessarily a natural skill. The true leaders, in our industry, are those individuals who consider the art of clear communication as an essential part of their job responsibilities and constantly work to improve their skills.

Effective hotel managers understand that good communication requires the ability to develop a commonality of purpose with their audience. The best communicators are those who have developed an ability to direct their message to the level and interests of their audience. I believe that it’s a matter of developing interest and encouraging response versus simply presenting information.

The utilization of new communication tools has exploded during the last ten years with hotel websites, email, texting, mobile phones, and the use of social media featuring user-generated content. Any hotel would be hard-pressed to operate effectively without any one of these tools, yet they have complicated the communication process for hotel managers.

Communicating Within the Hotel Operation-Obviously, the first point of contact for hotel managers lies within communication with superiors, peers, and subordinates. Most people want to do the best job possible, but the biggest reason for failure is a lack of understanding the goals and expectations as set by ownership. A good way to communicate goals is to involve people in the actual development of those goals; allowing individual ownership to drive their motivation and success.

A longtime mentor once said “knowing how to do something is good, but someone, who also knows why something is done, will always be successful”. Effective hotel managers have developed the ability to communicate “how” and, more importantly, “why” things are done. People, who know “why”, have the ability to improve “how” to improve the way things are done. This encourages innovation and constant improvement from the bottom-up and not simply presenting information and procedures from the top-down.

Soon, hotel management will be deeply involved in developing revenue and expense budgets for 2010; perhaps the most difficult year we have ever faced. Whatever procedure is used to develop these necessary numbers, effective managers will make certain that everyone in the operation understands the ultimate goals for 2010 and beyond. Unfortunately, historic numbers may not be a reliable predictor as they have in the past. Innovation will be high on the list of operational improvements in 2010. Get your webmaster involved in the development of your marketing plan.

Public Communication Tools-You may not have thought about it in these terms, but the most significant form of public communication for hotels is the Internet. What your website says, and how it says it, is critical to its successful delivery of your message. There are still far too many hotel websites which are little more than “online brochures”. To make your site a true sales piece, at least 20% of your website’s content should feature activities and attractions in your area.

The most impactful element of hotel selection is still the hotel’s location, not simply its address. People choose their destination first, hotel second. This fact is undisputed. It is a simple principle, but one that appears to be lost among many hotel website designers. Communicating why the hotel’s location benefits the visitor is essential. Whatever happened to the age-old discussion of features and benefits to support the reasons why and how your hotel’s location, facilities, amenities, and services will benefit guests?

Web 2.0, Social Media-I guess I am pretty-well known as a social media cynic, with the significant exception of travel oriented social media like TripAdvisor and a few others. I do believe that general social media, like Facebook and MySpace, can benefit hotel franchises with their branding efforts, but these sites do little good for individual hotels. In simple terms, it’s often a matter of allocating time and resources to those things which can actually increase business.

Today, more than any other time in our history, hotel managers have more required operational and marketing tasks than ever before. To manage a hotel today, prioritizing these tasks is essential, yet I see too many hotels working social media but not the many other tasks which will produce much more business. If you have time to do it all, you have probably missed something.

Highly effective hotel managers will continue to prioritize issues and tasks to move their hotels forward.  As we emerge from this recession, good communicators will be steps ahead in the marketplace.

In the current state of the economy both business and leisure travel seems to have taken a back seat to the idea of the “stay-cation”. With owners’ ever increasing budgets, hoteliers are having difficulties trying to attempt what seems to be impossible. Labor Day has typically been one of the country’s largest travel weekends. This year it seems the ripple effect can be felt industry wide. Check out this article predicting what airlines and hotels can expect in the upcoming holiday.

An industry trade group for U.S. airlines forecast Monday that travel over the typically busy Labor Day holiday period will fall 3.5 percent this year compared with the same period in 2008.

The Air Transport Association of America predicts that 16 million passengers will travel across the globe on U.S. carriers during the eight day period from September 2 to September 9. This is a decline from the 17 million passengers estimated to have traveled on U.S. airlines during the same period last year.

Despite lower fares, consumers are still keeping their wallets tight because of the recession and high energy prices.

As airlines scale back to account for lower demand, the ATA said that service cuts will be very evident this fall.

The most current schedule filings for October through December show 22 percent fewer domestic departures than in the same period of 2000 — a reduction of about 6,660 flights per day. All 67 airports in the U.S. that are defined as large or medium hub have shown a reduction in the number of scheduled flights over the last two years.

I know hotel loyalty reward programs have been around for eternity, but in the event you choose to book with a Wyndham property here is a great article to let you know exactly what you can expect in return. Wyndham, like numerous loyalty clubs before them such as Hilton Hhonors, Marriott Rewards, Priority Club, Hyatt Gold Passport etc. is now offering frequent traveler & meeting points. It’s a really great way to earn free vacations, airfare and even jewelry! These programs are especially rewarding for corporate meeting planners where the company is picking up the tab. The hotels will offer points simply for choosing their brand over the comp set. (Just a little tidbit of info…..be sure to mention your rewards number so we can be sure they have it stated in the contract otherwise you will never see a single point added to your account!)  It’s about time that Wyndham jumped on the bandwagon. After all, it is nice to have a few options

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts announced that it will offer up to one million Wyndham Rewards frequent traveler points to meeting professionals who book events at any of its properties.

With the expansion of the Wyndham Event Rewards program to include all Wyndham hotels and resorts worldwide, meeting planners and travel agents can earn 10 Wyndham Rewards points per dollar spent, from a minimum of $2,500 to a maximum of $100,000, on master-billed guest rooms as well as group food and beverage functions and meeting room rentals.

Points can be redeemed for compelling rewards, including free-night stays at Wyndham resorts; airline miles and tickets; meeting credits; Dooney & Bourke handbags; and jewelry and entertainment merchandise including notebook computers and Bose music systems.

Event attendees who belong to the Wyndham Rewards featuring By Request guest recognition program are entitled to complimentary benefits including free high-speed Internet access, a choice of welcome snack and beverage, preferred pillow type, express check-in, guaranteed late check-out, local and long-distance calls, best available room upon arrival, photocopies, faxes and online receipts.

“Planning an event with Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, known for its attentive Count on Me! service culture, innovative cuisine and personalized amenities, has always been a win-win for meeting professionals and attendees alike,” said Jeff Wagoner, Wyndham president and a newly appointed member of the MPI Foundation Global Board of Trustees. “Now, with the addition of points and extra incentives to book meetings across all Wyndham hotels, we’ve added more ways to reward our valued customers with one of the richest programs in the industry.”

The Wyndham Rewards loyalty program is the largest in the lodging industry based on the number of participating hotels. Points can be redeemed at www.wyndhamrewards.com for hotel night stays at participating Wyndham Hotel Group properties in North America, Europe, China, Latin America and the Caribbean. Points can also be redeemed for other rewards including airline tickets, resort vacations, name-brand merchandise, rental cars, rail points or services at many popular restaurants and stores.

Guest-room charges must be included on a master bill to qualify toward the total event purchase. Points will be awarded based on actual group room nights consumed during the event, regardless of the contracted amount. Multiday events on a single contract will constitute a single event for rewards purposes. Blackout dates and some restrictions may apply. For Wyndham Rewards Marketplace redemption options, powered by Sky Mallsm, visit www.wyndhamrewards.com/redeem.

It’s always great to see a hotel chain attempting something new and fresh.  (after all, it’s the only way to stay afloat in this industry!)  Hotel accommodations have increasingly become a very important part of the wedding planning process.  And it looks like one hotel chain has finally discovered this…..Hilton has officially launched “guestiquette” a website targeted specifically for weddings.  I found this article on one of my favorite hotelier pages and couldn’t help but pass along a really great article (be sure to click on the link to Hilton’s website after you read the entire post on all the perks offered!)   The site provides tools for guests’ hotel accommodations, an easy-to-use budget tracker, a straightforward, manageable timeline & that’s just what I noticed from the homepage!  The wedding market has been neglected recently and it is so refreshing to see a family of hotels answering wedding questions that I didn’t even know I had!  And to top it all off, the website is completely run by celebrity wedding planner Samantha Goldberg!  Free celebrity planner at your fingertips?  Can we say Thank You Hilton!

Hilton Family of Hotels has teamed up with Samantha Goldberg, celebrity wedding planner and star of the Style Network’s ‘Whose Wedding is it Anyway,’ to create a new wedding planning Website, ‘Guestiquette’. The online wedding resource will shed light on tricky wedding guest etiquette topics, provide guidance on working with a hotel, offer tips on making out of town guests feel welcome, and offer access to the Hilton Family’s signature online group booking tool at HiltonFamily.com/guestiquette for brides to book and manage their guest hotel accommodations online.  Samantha Goldberg, wedding planning expert, is the voice of Guestiquette. The website covers topics such as:

* ‘I’m Engaged, Now What’ – Help in getting started planning a wedding including tools for guests’ hotel accommodations, an easy-to-use budget tracker, tools for guest hotel accommodations, a straightforward, manageable timeline and more.

* ‘How to Speak Guestiquette’ – Answers to common guest etiquette questions that trip up many couples while planning their wedding.

* ‘Making Guests Feel Welcome’ – Simple ways to help guests feel appreciated for being present on the big day, including tips from real brides and advice on what should go into welcome letters and baskets.

‘Tough questions about modern-day guest etiquette threaten to trip up every bride and groom: Who gets to invite guests and who doesn’t? What do I pay for and what do my guests pay for?’ says Samantha Goldberg, celebrity wedding planner and television personality. ‘The language of ‘Guestiquette’ is tricky, so I teamed up with the Hilton Family of Hotels to provide brides and grooms with this much-needed, helpful advice for planning their weddings.’

Brides also will have access to the Hilton Family of Hotels’ online group booking tool, which allows today’s busy but tech-savvy brides and grooms to plan, book and manage their wedding blocks (five to 25 rooms) online with real-time inventory across the Hilton Family of Hotels, with 24/7 booking access. After brides or grooms book their wedding block online, they receive a call from the catering or sales team of the hotel offering additional assistance and support. The couple also receives immediate access to a tool that allows them to review which guests have booked rooms and which guests need a gentle reminder, as well as a tool that lets them create a personalized Webpage for their wedding and include a direct link to allow guests to book their room in the couple’s hotel block.

‘At Hilton Family of Hotels, we’ve seen an increase of 211 percent in brides who plan, book and manage their wedding room block online through Hilton’s group booking tool,’ said Bob Brooks, vice president – eSales Strategy and Performance, Hilton Hotels Corporation. ‘In addition to providing couples with easy online tools to book and manage their wedding blocks, our new Web site, Guestiquette, provides them with guidance on the ins and outs of working with a hotel and making out-of-town guests feel not only welcome, but right at home.’

Currently, the Online Group Booking Tool is available at all North American Hilton Family of Hotels and will soon be extending its online planning and booking tools to Hilton Family hotels in the U.K. Online group booking is available only at participating locations and is subject to availability at participating hotels. Other terms and conditions apply.

I just read a fantastic article published in the NY Times and wanted to share it with everyone.  In today’s society we have become so impersonal with every aspect of life as we know it!  Sometimes we just have to pick up the phone…. 

If you dreaded sitting down at your computer the last time you made travel arrangements or felt frustrated by all the time and effort it took to sort through pages of results for flights and hotels, join the crowd.

A new report, to be released Tuesday by Forrester Research, found that far from embracing the do-it-yourself era, many consumers were fed up with the complicated process of planning and booking travel.

“What we’ve seen is growing frustration,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a Forrester travel analyst. “Consumers see other Web sites becoming easier to use — retail Web sites, banking Web sites, media Web sites. But travel is treading water as a category. There are very few travel companies that are really looking to improve the planning and booking process.”

Instead, customers are forced to figure out extra fees, wade through fine print and understand industry terms like the difference between a deluxe and a standard room, in addition to educating themselves about destinations, flights and hotels, Mr. Harteveldt said.

“Travel companies expect the consumer to behave like a travel agent,” he explained. “The question I always ask these guys is, ‘Could your mother-in-law use your Web site without having to call you for help?’ The answer is always no.”

In fact, Mr. Harteveldt said a growing number of consumers appeared to be interested in using an offline travel agency, if they could find one.

“The fact that there are more people now who would consider using a good offline travel agent is telling me people are saying, ‘Enough already,’ ” he said.

Frustrations with various aspects of the travel experience are showing up in other research as well.

In late June, J. D. Power & Associates released its annual airline survey, which found that customer satisfaction had declined for the third consecutive year. Based on responses from 12,900 passengers, the airline industry scored 658 points on a 1,000-point scale this year, down from a peak of 692 in 2006.

The Power survey asks travelers about issues like the courtesy of gate agents and flight crew, aircraft cleanliness, frequency of in-flight updates, ticket prices and fees. Recent fare cuts have not yet improved the airlines’ image.

“Actually, passenger satisfaction with costs and fees is down from last year,” said Dale Haines, senior director for the travel practice at J. D. Power, pointing out that fees for checked bags or services like booking by phone can wipe out any savings on the ticket price.

The latest figures from the Department of Transportation show that the average domestic fare was $315 in the first quarter of 2009, a drop of 12.5 percent from its peak of $360 last fall.

“The fact that airfares have gone down from their peak frankly may not be resonating,” Mr. Haines said.

By contrast, the latest J. D. Power hotel survey, released last week, rated the industry 756 out of 1,000. That number captures a wider variety of products than in the airline industry (ranging from economy to luxury hotels), and has been “fairly constant over time,” said Michael Drago, director of the hospitality and travel practice at J. D. Power.

Another widely followed survey, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, has been tracking airlines and hotels annually since 1996, most recently gave the airlines a 64 on a 100-point scale (a slight improvement from 2008) and the hotel industry a 75 (the same as last year).

“The airline score has gone up a little, but it’s still not very good,” said Claes Fornell, a business professor at the University of Michigan and creator of the index. “Compared to most industries, the airlines continue to underperform.”

The airlines that consistently score at the top of these types of customer satisfaction surveys are Southwest, JetBlue and Alaska Airlines — all three are among the airlines that reported a profit in the second quarter.

As the industry faces what may be a prolonged passenger decline, analysts say companies are under greater pressure to address travelers’ concerns.

“Do you really want to run a business where you’re annoying one out of three of your customers?” Mr. Harteveldt said. “My concern is that this frustration could continue to grow.”

Even the industry’s main trade group, the U.S. Travel Association, has been recognizing the financial impact of what could be called the “frustration factor.” Its survey in May 2008 found that more than a quarter of travelers had avoided at least one trip in the previous year because of the air travel system.

“Before the recession hit, you couldn’t turn on the nightly news without more discussion about flight delays and other air travel hassles people were having,” said Geoff Freeman, senior vice president for public affairs at the association.

The trade group says the root of the problem is an outdated air traffic infrastructure, and has been pushing Congress to finance projects to update air traffic control technology to reduce delays. Some of these initiatives, which could take years to develop, are included in Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bills under consideration.

In the meantime, despite some improvements in airline performance because of a decline in the number of people traveling, Mr. Freeman acknowledged that frustrations remain — especially among the customers the industry counts on for its survival.

“Those who travel the most frequently are those who are most frustrated with the inefficiencies in the process,” he said. “As a society, we need to be thinking, what is the cost when someone says it’s not worth it to travel?”

Long recognized as one of the world’s leading addresses for business, Hilton Hotels tops another survey of business travelers. Executive Travel readers voted Hilton 2009 Best Hotel for Meetings and Best Hotel for Business Service in the magazine’s annual Leading Edge Awards recognizing the best and most innovative companies within the travel industry. Hilton also earned second place honors in the Best Hotel Chain category and its guest loyalty program, Hilton HHonors, was named one of the top three frequent guest programs.

“These honors are unique because Executive Travel readers, many of whom are professionals conducting business around the world, voted Hilton Hotels number one in both meetings and business service. We are proud to be the top choice of these frequent travelers,” said Dave Horton, Global Head – Hilton Hotels. “With innovative offerings such as our e-Events online booking portal and Hilton Meetings, we continue to raise the industry standard and enable our guests around the world to be at their best 24/7.”

Executive Travel wrote that many travel companies are “getting it right” when it comes to business travel. To help business travelers host smarter and more personal small meetings, Hilton introduced Hilton Meetings at its properties throughout North America last year following a successful international launch. Hilton Meetings revolutionized the small meetings segment of the hospitality industry by creating an environment specifically tailored for productive, hassle-free meetings for groups of 50 guests or less. The service provides individual meeting specialists and features technologically advanced room designs that help meeting planners minimize environmental impact.

In 2007, Hilton provided an industry first with the introduction of its enhanced e-Events online group booking portal that alleviates the time and energy spent organizing small business and social functions. Business travelers can reserve guest rooms, meeting spaces, food and beverage and audio/visual equipment at hundreds of hotels around the world within minutes and without a request for proposal or a waiting period through this small group booking solution.

Readers selected Hilton Hotels as the Best Hotel for Meetings and Best Hotel for Business Service. With more than 500 hotels in 76 countries and plans to serve 78 countries around the world by the end of 2009, the Hilton brand also finished second in the Best Hotel Chain category. Hilton HHonors, the only guest loyalty program to offer Points & Miles and No Blackout dates, was voted the third best frequent guest program.

A new trend of “do-it-yourself” hotels is being embraced by independent boutiques and major chains alike.

Picture this:

You arrive at your hotel and go directly to your room, where you punch in a code at the door and let yourself in.

At happy hour, you pour a glass of wine from bottles set out in the common area.

When you want advice on local attractions, you turn to a virtual concierge.

“The whole theme is low-maintenance guests who don’t like to have staff in their face when they’re coming and going,” said Michael Farrar, assistant manager of the Inn at St. Botolph in Boston. The inn offers an “abbreviated services model” that includes online booking, virtual check-in, keyless entry and elective housekeeping. “We will let you be.”

The motivation behind the trend, which frequently targets business and budget travelers, appears to be two-fold: It gives independent-minded travelers autonomy and allows hotels to run with a bare-bones staff, translating to fewer expenses for owners and, in theory, lower rates for guests.

“Hotels are the last holdout in the travel industry when it comes to do-it-yourself,” hotel consultant and author Daniel Edward Craig said in an e-mail. “Like the airline industry, which responded to demands for low fares from travelers by cutting services to reduce costs, the hotel industry is following suit by automating certain services. As long as travelers continue to demand low rates and greater efficiency, this segment will continue to grow.”

That’s not to say that budget hotels are the only ones embracing this trend.

The Kimber Modern, a sleek boutique hotel in the heart of Austin’s trendy SoCo district, was one of the first to incorporate what it calls an “invisible service” model when it opened late last year. Its rates start at $225.

From keyless entry and self-service breakfast and happy hour to amenities such as umbrellas, extra pillows, razors and toothpaste in every room, the hotel aims to attract the “independent urban traveler,” co-owner Kimber Cavendish said.

“The concept is all about providing every need for our guests so they don’t need us,” said Cavendish, adding that staff is available either on-site or by phone around the clock should a guest encounter a problem. “We’re not trying to be an Omni or a Four Seasons where there’s all the services you could ever need with people there to give them to you. Our goal is to have everything our guests need so they can make themselves at home.”

Major hotel chains such as Hyatt and Starwood are also launching brands based on a self-service mentality.

At more than 100 Hyatt Place hotels nationwide, guests check in at kiosks (but may also check in with a “gallery host”) and order room service through a cashless touch-screen menu. Starwood’s Aloft, which opened in June 2008 and now has about 30 locations, swaps room service for grab-and-go options and allows guests to check in — and even select their rooms — at a kiosk.

“Guests like control,” said Brian McGuinness, senior vice president of Starwood Specialty Select brands. “It’s really about giving the customers choice.”

Craig said the main goal for hotels incorporating a self-service model should be to maintain their quality of service.

“Regardless of the state of the economy, the hospitality business is all about providing travelers with comfort, value and convenience,” he said. “As long as do-it-yourself trends advance rather than reduce these objectives, they will grow in popularity.”