I thought these items might be of interest:
Super Bowl Week/Hotel Burden
1) As we begin Super Bowl week in Dallas, many hotels will be at full room capacity for the first time in years. That’ll put a crunch on hotel services. A common complaint, even at 70% occupancy, poor WIFI bandwidth. Super Bowl week will burden hotel networks like no other time, likely leading to complaints from guests paying premium room rates. Guest services calls also will be at a high, taxing the concierge, front desk and room service. Companies like Avaya provide communications systems that shift overflow calls to offsite, underutilized call centers, which handle routine requests and questions — and ship the calls back through the hotel’s network seamlessly. Avaya also supports WIFI data switches.
2) ADP, the large payroll services provider, will release its January 2011 National Employment Report on Wed., Feb. 2. The report measures changes in private sector employment. If you’d like the call-in coordinates for the media call to be held on Wed. at 8:30 a.m. ET, just let me know.
3) Many U.S. hospitals have not implemented hospital-acquired infection (HAI) reporting systems, even though they became mandatory this month. Some 1.7 million patients annually acquire infections while being hospitalized. Carrot and stick approaches are seeping into the marketplace to improve patient safety. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is implementing pay-for-performance standards, which include a preventable hospital-acquired conditions provision. This year, some hospitals also are starting to tie management incentive pay to progress against HAIs.
4) U.S. investors are starting to take on more risk and ramp up their activity, according to an AlixPartners poll.