This paper examines meeting planners’ rating of seven US convention cities not only as overall destinations but also on specific city attributes that are important in site selection. Regression analysis showed that promotional appeal of the city had a significant effect in the overall ratings of destinations. In addition, results suggested that different attributes are significant for different cities in explaining their convention, exposition and meeting-site attractiveness.

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As hospitality customers become more seasoned, well‐travelled and quality conscious, a hotel’s organizational structure must facilitate the implementation of strategies designed to provide higher levels of service quality. This article discusses the weaknesses of the current organizational structure of hotels and presents a framework for the development of a seamless hotel organization. This modified structure is more favorable to the creation of an environment where customer service quality is the organizational driver, allowing hotels to develop service quality as a true competitive advantage.

The increasing sophistication of well-traveled customers and the burgeoning young demographic known as Generation Y constitute major environmental forces that are beyond the lodging industry's immediate control. Generation Y will form the bulk of new hires who, by the nature of their drastic differences in work values and lifestyles, will not be attracted to hotels as they are currently operated. The purpose of the authors in this article is to examine these environmental forces and propose a conceptual framework for an organizational structure at the unit level in the hotel industry that will create an attractive work environment for Generation Y.