The latest Market Metrix Hospitality Index for Q4 2005 had one really big irony: Independence Air, which placed as the best airline in terms of customer satisfaction, went under last month after just a year and a half of operation. Being good just ain’t good enough these days. But Kimpton Hotels, the best-ranked hotel chain, has no such worries. From the press release:

Overall satisfaction with hotels was mixed with more segments declining (Luxury -3.8; Upscale -.8; Midscale w/o F&B -1.9; Economy -.5 ) than improving (Upper Upscale +.6; Midscale w/ F&B +.9, Extended Stay +.7). Rental Cars showed improvement (+1.5) but Airlines edged slightly lower (-.3) for the quarter.

Hotel - Overall - Kimpton Hotels
Airline - Independence Air
Car Rental - Enterprise
Luxury Hotels - Four Seasons
Upper Upscale - Kimpton Hotels
Upscale Hotels - Hilton Garden Inn
Midscale w/ F&B - Holiday Inn Select
Midscale w/o F&B - Country Inns & Suites By Carlson
Economy Hotels - Microtel Inns & Suites
Extended-Stay Hotels - Homewood Suites
Vacation Clubs - Hilton Grand Vacation
Upscale Casino - Bellagio
Casino - Borgata Casino
Hotel Reservations Website – Hotel Brand - Walt Disney World Resorts
Hotel Reservations Website – Travel - Hotwire.com

They also asked who had the best room service (Four Seasons Hotels, Intercontinental, and Loews Hotels), restaurants (The Ritz-Carlton), and bars (W Hotels).

The city of Bellingham, Wash., filed a lawsuit against hotels.com, Priceline.com, Travelocity.com, and Orbitz.com, saying that they buy in bulk and pay the low bulk taxes, but the city loses out when customers pay the higher rates after buying the discounted rooms, according to a Knight-Ridder/Tribune article.

If it’s granted class-action status by the court, 176 cities and counties across the state collecting the lodging tax could join as parties to the lawsuit.

Court documents filed on behalf of the city outline how the Web sites offer customers hotel rooms at cheap prices by buying rooms in bulk. The lawsuit contends the companies pay lodging taxes at the bulk rate rather than the high retail rate their customers pay, cheating cities and counties out of money through an “illicit tax evasion scheme.”

The lawsuit mirrors similar cases across the country as other counties and cities try to collect lodging taxes from online brokers.

Of course, they may end up dropping the suit at the request of the State Revenue Department, which would rather handle the matter administratively than in the courts. I can feel the city’s pain over losing those extra lodging tax dollars (and that of other cities feeling the crunch). But there are so many gray areas—when is that room actually considered sold? When the discount site buys it, or when the customer buys it from the site? If they should be taxed at a higher rate, who determines what that rate should be? Etc., etc. When I first heard rumblings about this out of Los Angeles, I had a hard time getting my mind around all the potential implications, and it hasn’t gotten any less convoluted since.

Update: San Diego also is filing a similar suit.

OK, this is really cool, even though probably no one’s using it much. Kim Reist, CMP, events/logistics manager, Office of Conference Management at the Texas Medical Association recently clued me in to Peekko.com, which opens up an irc chat channel on any Web page you visit, so you can chat with others who are reading the same stuff you are. You have to have the latest version of Firefox (works with OSX—yay!), and there have to be other people who also have the latest version of Firefox and have downloaded Peekko’s extension for it to work, unless you really enjoy talking to yourself.

While I couldn’t immediately think of a meetings-related application for this, Kim could. She suggested that a meeting organizer could use it to help people connect when they visit the conference’s Web site. “Meeting staff might park someone online as a guide or online help person for the meeting. Also, brower-based chat clients could really be a nice additional feature for online learning or web-only based conferences–I know that some but not all online platforms offer chat,” she added.

Well, if anyone’s interested in playing with this toy, I’d love to have a chat over here at face2face. Drop me an e-mail or leave a comment below if you have/are going to download this extension and want to play. There are probably so few of us (maybe just Kim and I?) that we’d have to set up a time to chat here because otherwise you’d end up like me, talking to myself again (I just tried it here, and I’m the only person on the chat at the moment).

If you haven’t yet discovered Guy Kawasaki’s Let the Good Times Roll blog, I highly recommend checking it out. Some of my favorites that apply to the meetings world at least a little bit:

The Art of Schmoozing
The Effective E-mailer

I’m stealing this one from Hugh at Gaping Void, who says pet toys are “Passive-aggressive bloggers and blog commenters who spend a disproportionate amount of time making lots of little sqeaky noises, not dissimilar to those chewy rubber things you find in pet stores.” I’d expand his definition to all those attendees who like to whine about how hard their pillows are, or that their lunch was a little too lukewarm. Squeak, squeak.

What can I say, I love listservs. I just joined the two Google Group listservs, MeCo (short for MeetingsCommunity) and MiForum, which currently is replacing the bulletin board community that replaced the venerated MIMlist listserv. From the double-posting I’ve been seeing, a lot of folks are on both. While neither has yet grown to the size of the former MIMList, both are great resources if you want to find a great restaurant in Tampa or recommendations about specific hotels. Both seem to be mostly working on the logistics level at the moment (I’ve only been on for a couple of days now, so this might be just a blip), but some of the conversations are just so, well, meeting planner-y.

Like the one on MeCo about what to do when balloons escape to the rafters short of paying the facility’s fee for recapturing them. While one person said hired hands bought a BB gun to shoot them down (not recommended!!), I thought this was a very cool solution: Send up another balloon, this one on a leash, that’s covered with double-sided tape. Let it float near the loose balloon, bump into it so they stick together, then reel them both back down. The ingeniousness of meeting planners never fails to amaze me.

Anyway, these listservs are great resources for anyone in or around the meetings and hospitality business—I highly recommend them both.

Anyone who’s in charge of motivating employees should check out these hilarious, yet scary podcasts from Despair.com. Then do the exact opposite of what’s shown. Even if you’re not in the motivational business, check them out for sheer entertainment value.

On a marketing note: After watching these videos, I really wanted to buy the book. How can you use video clips and podcasts to promote your event, your speakers, your message? If you keep it funny, educational, and interesting, I bet it’d help get those fence-sitters to sign up.

Update: Ben at Certified Association Executive points to a promotional video ASAE and The Center are using for the Great Ideas Conference coming up later this month in San Diego. What’s weird is that I’m not seeing a link to it on the conference’s Web page, or at the Great Ideas Conference Blog, so I’m not sure how it’s being disseminated.