Not only do hoteliers deal with rapidly changing business environments and a dispersed workforce, but also they continue to deal with increasing costs, such as utilities, property taxes, and insurance. We all heard the concerns of the U.S. economy and many predict a slowdown. One thing is for sure, the hospitality industry is about to feel their share of the decline.

"Because of the extended slowdown of the U.S. economy, compounded by the negative consequences stemming from airline capacity cutbacks, we are now forecasting a 0.2 percent decline in lodging demand in 2008, followed by another loss of 1.1 percent in 2009."

- Mark Woodworth, president of PKF Hospitality Research

More and more hoteliers are turning to web-based training in a large effort to cut training costs and save money. Web-based training is a great means by which to educate the hotel staff and do it effectively. However, web-based training is only one ["part"] of ["a"] two prong strategy. Rather than simply developing training modules and hoping the staff has taken them, web-based training modules should be hosted on a Learning Management System (LMS) which allows for team collaboration, tracking of site usage, and ROI report generation. In this combined manner, hoteliers are hoping to offset the decline in profits by an increase in web-based training.