“30 Under 30” by Zagat

By -
Last month, I shared a Fox News video, in which Tim Zagat, the Co-Founder & CEO of Zagat Survey, discussed why it is not a good time to open a restaurant. Today’s discussion is also inspired by an interview of Tim Zagat. In this ABC News video, Tim once again informed us how difficult it is to run a restaurant business; today’s discussion, however, will focus on the “traits” of the “30 under 30” --- what makes these 30 young entrepreneurs/professionals succeed in restaurant business?

According to Zagat, years of work experience in the restaurant industry contributes the most to their success. They are top because they know what they are doing and they can do things well. Many of them started working in restaurants even when they were teens.

I must agree with Zagat that relevant work experience is crucial to a hospitality career. I conducted a qualitative study and a quantitative study about the important factors affecting a hospitality student’s employability upon graduation. My research findings reveal basically the same results. In addition to relevant work experience, what other skills a successful restaurant entrepreneur must have?

 
Reactions:

Popular posts from this blog

Consumers' path of purchasing a travel product

By -
Image
Hotels have been working hard to win more travelers to "book direct" on their companies' websites, but are consumers listening? In fact, hotels are not alone. All service providers in the hospitality and tourism industry want their customers to make purchases directly on their websites, but consumers want to search and compare various options before making a decision. So, to convince customers to purchase directly on the service providers' websites, companies must understand where their customers "hang out" in the cyber marketplace before they make the purchasing decision, as well as where they end up buying their services. The white paper "Understanding the Travel Consumer's Path to Purchase" by Eye for Travel provides some business intelligence in that regard. The report combined a large panel consumer data of online transactions and surveys into the analysis, revealing the following results: The places where customers purchase a travel produ…
Read more

Put a Stop to Booking Abandonment (by Karen Valeria Sandoval)

By -
Image
"A second chance is all hoteliers need to get back in the game." By saying that, I am referring that the staggering numbers hotel websites get from the horrors of booking abandonment, which can be better understood as "cart abandonment." There could be various reasons why guests decide to leave a hotel website during the booking process. For example, a consumer may feel unnecessary to continue browsing in the hopes for a better price later; or the hotel website lacks the information that the customer is looking for. If your hotel has ever experienced book abandonment by consumers, remember that a second chance does exist! That is, with the help of 'retargeting'.

Why and where is the abandonment?

No business wants to be abandoned, especially when it was over something as small as a payment issue on the website. It has been found that about 81% of guests desert the travel booking with the following reasons: 

39% - Browsing around and wanting a wider variety thro…
Read more

How to shut down bad online reviews

By -
Image
What can managers do to shut down bad online reviews? Here is a real example: 

It started at the Broadway Oyster Bar in St. Louis this February when Mary S., a Yelper, left the business with a one-star rating and a description of the negative experience she received in the restaurant. As a reference, the restaurant is now being monitored by Yelp for any content related to media reports, meaning some reviews have been or would be removed from the business's page on Yelp, but the restaurant has an overall 4.4 star rating from more than 900 Yelpers in March. Mary went there for a birthday dinner. She claimed that she had a reservation for a party of nine people, but the party waited for two hours before they were finally seated. To make it even worse, because there were three additional people joining the party and the manager was unwilling to work with them, they would have to wait for longer to be seated together or be split up. She then took the group of 12 people with her to a nearb…
Read more