Blog

If you’ve been following along in the Notebook here, you’ve seen that I’ve become a little obsessed with visiting national parks and forests. Since Jason and I moved to the west coast a couple years ago, we’ve gotten six parks under our belts including Olympic...

OTAs... As a hotel marketer, I love to loathe them. They claim to be partners to hotels, but I claim they steal potential guests from hotels and they make a hotel’s marketing budget less efficient, among other things. As if hotels aren’t giving up enough by...

Jason and I took the day off yesterday to celebrate his birthday with a hike in nearby Willamette National Forest in the Cascade Mountains. It’s about an hour or so east of Eugene and an easy – and pretty – drive. So we packed a lunch, put on our hiking shoes, and...

Postings have been sparse lately, and that’s because I’ve been a busy little bee with work and a little writing here and there. Weekdays are full of conference calls and task lists, and the weekends have quickly become monopolized with hunting for the perfect plot of...

Life’s little happiness comes in all types of packages. This week I received a sweet surprise – a thank you gift from a client. I’m considering it my very first Valentine of the season. I’ve been working for Lansdowne Resort for about five months now while they find...

Earlier this week, I had the honor of attending a Destination Hotels sales and marketing conference at Terranea Resort, one of the 45 hotels and resorts Destination manages across the US. The property is celebrating its 5th anniversary, and what a difference five...

Hospitality marketing has been my bailiwick for the last decade or so, but when the team at the Oregon Social Learning Center approached me last spring to help them build a new web site, I jumped at the opportunity. OSLC is a non-profit agency dedicated to conducting...

The good folks at Bluebuzzard, a provider of hotel sales proposal solutions, recently asked me to help them increase sales of their Premium Media package. This package is an add-on to their current sales proposal solution and gives sales teams the ability to easily...

It’s been a few days since my last post, and we’ve packed a lot into that time. We’d officially arrived in the Pacific Northwest when we crossed the state line at Spokane. We stayed one night in civilization at the Davenport Hotel before heading into the forest of...

Here’s the decision I’ve made: If this Oregon thing doesn’t work out, I’m headed to Montana. Jason can come if he wants. I love this place. We arrived Friday night after a later start than we wanted. We had a 7+ hour drive to our stop in Montana. We’d go through some...

The last few days have been jam-packed, and I'm a little behind in my posts. Going through all the photos from South Dakota (Thursday – Saturday) was a pretty daunting task. I took a decent stab at it, though, trying hard along the way to make sure I wasn’t going to...

Night-before-last we stopped in Bennington, Nebraska - just over the state line. The town is about 20 miles northwest of Omaha, and I’d booked us in a BnB there.  We pulled up at the house around 7pm and were welcomed by Gordon and Linda Oft – proprietors all around...

We’ve loved driving through Iowa. We stopped overnight in Iowa City – home of the University of Iowa - and got to take in some of the sites. It’s definitely a college town, which in this case amounted to good food and shopping. Photos from the last couple of days......

I announce the start of this great venture west then there’s radio silence from my end for a few days, but for good reason. We’ve been spending the last few days getting in quality time with family. We drove from Charleston to Easley, SC, to stay with Jason’s parents...

We’ve driven 3.5 hours on a 3,000 mile journey. Progress. Jason and I have unpacked our suitcases here in Easley, SC, where we’re visiting family for a few days before we strike out for Ohio then Iowa. In the meantime, here are a couple shots from moving day....

Tomorrow marks the end of a ten year run of life in Charleston, SC. The hubby and I are setting out on a new adventure in the Pacific Northwest. Charleston will always be our first love. We moved here from Philadelphia when Jason finished grad school. It’s close to...

Destination Hotels & Resorts recently picked up Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in San Diego, and I’m thrilled to be helping transition the property into the collection. Boasting nearly 1,000 guestrooms and over 200,000 square feet of meeting and...

Let’s play “Would You Rather” for a moment. Say you want to take your sweetie for a weekend getaway to a new destination. You see two ads in a magazine for two separate hotels that just opened in that destination. Hotel A showcases its guestroom in its ad. Maybe the...

Summer is here! School is letting out, and the next few months mean sun, splashing, backyard BBQs, and of course, the summer vacation. In honor of that annual car trip to the beach, the lake, or wherever you might be headed, I’ve put together a little playlist of my...

I’m at the end of a three day digital travel conference in Vegas, and I’ve been schooled.   Travel companies of all sizes are doing some pretty cool new things to increase online conversion using both experience personalization and best practices from the retail...

When I think about the changes in hospitality marketing over the last ten years or so, the first thing that comes to mind is the need for immediacy and the way marketers have had to adapt to this need. I should tell you now, I don’t typically sit around thinking about...

Charleston is oozing with creativity and marketing talent. And why not? The city is buzzing with growth. With new restaurants popping up everywhere, the growth of the digital corridor and the boon of economic development in general, everyone wants to live and work...