ShareBy Christopher Durso, Vice President of Content Development, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
We’re less than two months out from our next Curate event — Sept. 5–6 at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor — and couldn’t be more excited about the program we’re putting together. So that’s where we’ll start with our latest Curate Update, which spotlights everything we’re doing to serve the community of HSMAI Organizational Members: 
Curate: The goal for this next Curate is to create something that builds off the success of our debut event in April while still offering something new. That first part means basing some of this program around the three priority issues that our Curate 1 attendees identified: being innovative, mastering data analytics, and talent acquisition and retention. We’re presenting two keynote speakers in Baltimore — someone from hometown disrupter Under Armour, who will talk about innovation, and someone from Amazon to discuss talent development. We’ll also have the intimate, small-group conversations that made the first Curate such a success.
As for offering something new, we’re taking full advantage of our unique location in Baltimore, with a welcome reception at Sagamore Spirit distillery and a classic venue overlooking the stunning Inner Harbor. And we’ll be leading discussions of new and different priority issues — once again chosen by our attendees.
Content: Curate isn’t just an event, it’s an ongoing process to develop resources that will help hospitality sales, marketing, and revenue-optimization professionals do their jobs better. To that end, we’ve also been working to create content for our Organizational Members and the entire industry. This issue of Executive Insights includes our latest Innovation Book Club and Executive Briefing features — again hitting our innovation and talent pillars.
We’re also introducing a new series of HSMAI Best Practices Guides, based on insights and case studies gathered from other HSMAI programs. Our first two guides will present best practices for innovative hospitality public relations, advertising, and digital marketing efforts based on HSMAI’s 2017 Adrian Awards program, and for sales analytics based on our recent Analytics Think Tank at the 2018 Revenue Optimization Conference.
That’s a lot of what we’ve been up to as we work to serve our Organizational Members, but not everything. Keep watching this space — and make sure your company’s delegates have been assigned and are registered for Curate!