It’s been quite a busy month for Sheila C. Johnson and her hospitality company.

Yesterday Salamander Hotels & Resorts announced that it has taken over management of Reunion Wyndham Grand Resort near Orlando in Kissimmee and Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, and with its recently renovated Innisbrook Resort near Tampa in Palm Harbor, has united the three properties to form Grand Golf Resorts of Florida.

The new group of resorts offers 162 holes of golf designed by Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Larry Packard. Grand Golf Resorts of Florida also features the only resort-based ANNIKA Academy, an innovative teaching facility designed and developed by Annika Sorenstam, who attended the announcement event.

Salamander also unveiled what it has dubbed the Legends of Golf Trail, which essentially is the route between the resorts and across Florida, and plans to introduce a new Grand Membership program that includes club benefits for all three properties, beginning with the 2012 season.

In early October, the Virginia-based Salamander was selected to manage Sanctuary Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic. The $110 million, 176-suite property is in the process of being converted from an all-inclusive, couples-only resort to a traditional a la carte property, with plans to begin welcoming new guests and families in December. All current reservations are being honored during the transition.

The Sanctuary joins two other resorts in Salamander’s newly formed Grand Resorts at Cap Cana collection, which includes the Fishing Lodge Cap Cana, a 298-villa property currently scheduled to open on Nov. 3, and the Ocean Club Cap Cana, a 113-room boutique hotel, due to open in 2012. Managing Director Hendrick Santos, who spent 19 years with Hyatt Hotels Corporation, is overseeing the collection.

Salamander was launched in 2005 by Johnson, who was a founding partner of BET and who currently has ownership in three professional sports teams: the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals. Additional properties in the company’s portfolio include the five-star Woodlands Inn near Charleston, S.C., and the Salamander Resort & Spa, a 340-acre equestrian-themed resort that will have 168 guest rooms and suites and a cooking school. The property is currently under construction and due to open in 2013 near Washington, D.C., in Middleburg, Virginia.

Photo: Fishing Lodge at Cap Cana/Salamander

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After initially balking, most hotel companies have come to embrace TripAdvisor and the user-generated content (UGC) model—well, maybe they don’t all embrace it, but most at least tolerate it. One major hotel company has gone a step further.

On Monday, Starwood Hotels & Resorts announced the launch of its own UGC system, where guests can post free-form reviews about properties as well as provide ratings on various individual elements, including overall stay, room comfort and cleanliness, facility expectations and whether staff met their needs.

The company claims to be the first major global hotel brand to establish online consumer reviews, and the move follows findings from a recent survey where nearly 85 percent of members of Starwood’s loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), said they find value in consumer ratings and reviews on travel sites.

To find the new reviews, go to the home page of any of Starwood’s individual brands—Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, W, Four Points, Le Meridien, The Luxury Collection, Aloft and Element—then click on the “Guest Reviews” link toward the bottom of the page, near the social media links. You’ll be taken to a landing page where you select a region, country and city, which then generates a list of Starwood hotels in that destination that you can choose from.

Viewers of the new Starwood reviews also can filter content to see the information that is most relevant to them, such as overall star rating, a reviewer’s purpose and frequency of travel, and their SPG level.

To write a review, SPG members can sign in; other guests need to provide the confirmation numbers of their stays, which had to have taken place within the 18 months prior to posting their write-ups. Reviews also can be shared through social media channels, including both personal and property Facebook pages and Twitter.

As noted in USA Today, Starwood will first check reviews for profanity before publishing and confirm the reviewer’s stay, but once a review has been confirmed, Starwood will publish it, whether it’s positive or negative.

A property has to receive at least five reviews before the ratings will be published. Of course, being that the program is brand new, there aren’t many reviews available yet. One of the first to reach the five-review threshold is the Sheraton Hua Hin Resort in Thailand. (Only three are viewable from the U.S. website as the other two are written in German.)

Reviews will remain on the sites indefinitely, and should someone wish to alter their review, they can’t change the original text, but they can comment on their original post, said Jennifer Leemann, a Starwood spokesperson.

I’m optimistic about the quality of the reviews that eventually will be generated on the Starwood properties, mainly because of the checks in place to ensure the postings are from actual guests and not competitors out to skew the ratings, which has been an issue for TripAdvisor, and that a reviewer has to have stayed at the property relatively recently.

SPG members will begin receiving notification of the new service this week, and those guests are the ones most likely to write the bulk of the first reviews.

Photo: Starwood

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It’s been a tough couple of years for websites dedicated to travel planning, save for TripIt, which was snapped up earlier this year for a cool $120 million. But lately there seem to be encouraging signs in the arena, particularly from two similar companies: Wanderfly and TravelMuse.

Wanderfly actually is celebrating its first anniversary today, and has released a one-minute video showcasing 500 travelers going to 500 places from photos uploaded to the company’s website by users during the past year. The company also shared some impressive statistics.

According to Christy Liu, one of Wanderfly’s founders, and a handy “Year of Inspiration” graphic, the site has:

• inspired four million trips with users from 217 countries;
• earned a Webby nomination, was named a Top 10 NYC Startup by Time Inc., and made the Top 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur magazine;
• launched its “Also Recommended” widget on 1,000 New York Times travel pages; and
• seen traffic increase 40 percent the past month.

The site aims to help visitors find inspiring destinations with information culled from 19 different travel partners and a tool where users plug in variables, such as budget, location, length of stay and desired activities, and receive destination recommendations that match the entered parameters.

TravelMuse, which launched in 2008 and helps travelers share itineraries and find destination ideas with a nearly identical inspiration tool as Wanderfly—yes, there are some differences, but this post isn’t a comparison of the sites—has shown signs of resurrection lately. After being purchased by the Travel Ad Network last November, then lying low the past 12 months, the company started Tweeting regularly again and adding posts to its Facebook page and its blog, TravelMusings, about three weeks ago.

Since then, traffic appears to be on the rise for the company, with a 23 percent jump logged for September on Compete.com. (Admittedly, Compete gives an estimate that isn’t always up-to-date for non-pro users, but it’s nice to see a rebound, nonetheless.) In addition, MakeUseOf.com, which writes about “cool websites, computer tips and downloads that make you more productive,” recommended TravelMuse today as a site that makes trip planning easier.

Sure, anniversaries are fun to celebrate, and revived content and traffic increases are positive signs, but whether these indicators of growth will be ongoing remains to be seen. Wanderfly announced it is working on a 2.0 version of the site, due out the first quarter of 2012. No news yet on what new features TravelMuse may have in store for the near future, but here’s hoping both companies (along with other related sites) continue to grow in the coming year. An increasing number of users interested in online travel planning is a good bet for the travel industry overall.

Photo: Wanderfly

(Editor’s Note: For full disclosure, as mentioned in previous posts where I have written about TravelMuse, I am a former employee of the company but have not had a direct relationship with the site since 2009.)

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The first IMEX America, held Oct. 11 to 13 at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, has been deemed a success, with more than 2,000 hosted buyers, 1,700 non-hosted attendees and 2,000 exhibitors from 140 destinations attending the trade show for the global meetings, events and incentive travel industry.

What’s more, the popularity of the event and leads generated during the show demonstrated that the meetings and incentive travel industry is continuing its comeback after the dismal years following the 2008 financial crisis and recession. According to IMEX, 53 percent of hosted buyers attending had budgets in excess of $1 million, and more than 30,000 total appointments were made before and during the show.

“We have successfully delivered a new, collaborative business model,” said Ray Bloom, IMEX Group chairman. “IMEX America has succeeded in producing lasting achievements in three main areas this week: volume and quality of business, professional education, and networking and new global and U.S. business contacts.”

Michelle Saran, executive director of the Canadian Tourism Commission, said, “We’ve had many one-on-one appointments—I haven’t seen a booth this busy in North America for years. Our team pre-planned appointments, but we also had a lot of people walking in to the stand for ad-hoc meetings.”

Another recipient of that strong “walk-up” business was the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC), whose team received a booking for a 12,000 delegate event from a buyer who arrived without an appointment but was looking to place the event outside of the United States for the first time.

“I don’t think I’m overstating it in saying IMEX is now the preeminent group travel trade show in North America,” said Patrick T. Smith, senior director of group sales, North America, for Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), which just created its group sales division one year ago. “I thought the show was excellent, but as it was the first year, we learned a lot and will be improving the experience for both our clients and our hoteliers. The appointment-driven format and the high quality of the clients in attendance, along with the excellent networking opportunities, dovetailed well with the business goals of our portfolio of hotels. In general, I can attest to the fact that group travel and incentives business at LHW, especially overseas, is definitely continuing to improve.”

The education sessions at the show were filled to capacity as well. “Having packed-out sessions at our own education conference is one thing. Having packed-out sessions at a trade show is unheard of,” said Bruce MacMillan, CEO and president of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), an IMEX America partner. “That’s the big difference. MPI and IMEX America have changed the value proposition.”

In terms of buzz during the event, BizBash Media, which covers the events side of the industry, noted that the top five topics being discussed at the show were:

1. Hybrid and virtual meetings
2. Sustainability in meetings and events
3. Budgets and how to do more with less
4. ROI and justifying meetings’ value
5. The future of meetings

According to research released by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and commissioned by the Convention Industry Council, the U.S. meetings industry directly supports 1.7 million jobs, generates $106 billion in GDP, $60 billion in labor, $25.6 billion in state and federal taxes, and $263 billion in direct spend.

The original IMEX continues to be held annually in Frankfurt, Germany. The next IMEX America is scheduled for Oct. 9 to 11, 2012, and IMEX Group plans to keep the show at the Sands Expo through 2014. IMEX also has an exclusive partnership with the U.S. Travel Association, the national, non-profit organization representing all components of the $704 billion U.S. travel industry.

Photo: IMEX America

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