Member Articles

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors Overseas Chinese student Helen Zhou, from Chengdu, during an interview on campus at Linfield Christian School in Temecula, California on March 23, 2016. Known as 'Parachute Kids', Zhou, who hopes to...

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors Readers of this blog, or who work in the travel and tourism industry, already know that global tourism today is driven by the outbound Chinese travel market. At more than 130 million strong and...

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images I’ve just returned from a 15-day sales mission to China. Conducted annually by the Orange County Visitors Association, we visited Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou...

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

A report issued earlier this year by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) shows that travel and tourism remains resilient as people continue traveling despite the threats to the world and calls on governments to work on four areas to prepare for these crises to mitigate against the inevitable disruption.

By: Edwin Fuller

Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Most of you reading this blog probably have never heard of Brand USA, the public-private tourism marketing organization created in 2010 under the Travel Promotion Act. You might wonder why you should care whether or not the organization is eliminated as President Trump’s budget proposes to do. But you should care – and care a lot. Not one penny of taxpayer money supports Brand USA, but its return to America’s economy is simply phenomenal.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Travel marketers around the country are going all out to welcome the more than 77 million international visitors who are expected to arrive in the US this year. And with good reason: international visitors are big business. Foreign visitors spend about 4 times per day more than what US resident travelers do when they travel domestically.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Now, as United works to put its public relations misstep into the past, it, along with American and Delta (the three US legacy carriers), have once again petitioned our federal government to intervene in the aviation market and thereby undermine our Open Skies policy by reopening “consultations” with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar – home to Emirates, Etihad and Qatar airlines.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

I like to think it all began more than 2,000 years ago when the Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra, enticed first Julius Caesar, then Marc Antony, on a lavish cruise along the fertile agricultural banks of the Nile River to show off the royal splendors of Luxor’s Valley of the Kings. She wanted both of these Roman luminaries to understand the relevance and strength of Egypt in its own right and not to view the country as a conquered part of the Roman Empire.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

2016 was a banner year for Chinese outbound hotel investment as market participants invested a record-high $9.4 billion in North America, Europe and other global lodging markets, nearly doubling the $4.9 billion they spent during the previous year. There’s every reason to believe their appetite for hotel real estate is as strong as ever despite a less certain global political and economic outlook this year and recently-tightened capital outflow restrictions at home.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

I first visited India in 1990. At the time, the tourism marketplace was constrained and travel was primarily limited to the very wealthy. Over the next two decades, the hotel development opportunities I pursued on Marriott International’s behalf were slow and arduous with numerous fits and starts.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the U.S. presents an unprecedented opportunity to enhance the U.S. travel experience for residents and visitors alike. Here are some suggestions on how the new administration can be a valuable and effective ally in advancing some of the industry’s key priorities.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Transitioning to a fulfilling, successful retirement can be daunting. Here are some life lessons to help you navigate your personal journey to Life’s “Second Act”.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

As China’s outbound travelers continue to set new records the world over, its corporations and private investors are buying up overseas hotel companies in an effort to diversify their investments and to capture and serve this market.

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors I have just returned from a two week business trip to Asia where I visited China, Singapore and Malaysia. One of the things that struck me most on this trip was the degree to which Asia has leapt into...

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Driven by the need to control costs and attract and retain customers in a highly competitive environment, the travel & hospitality world has undergone a mind-boggling transformation that has been brought about by innovations in technology with no end in sight.

Time was when planning a holiday or business trip entailed a call to one’s travel agent, relying on the trusted words of friends and a perusal of a good guidebook to ensure positive buying choices. No more!

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

For many of my generation, Vietnam remains a complex enigma, depending on our personal experiences and memories of the country.

I arrived in Vietnam in 1970 as a U.S. Army captain and was immediately overwhelmed by the country’s natural beauty and the genuine warmth and hospitality of the local Vietnamese. I was a member of MACV, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, and had many opportunities to work with the Vietnamese military and other Allied countries.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The Chinese are on a U.S. buying spree like no other. Since the beginning of the year, Chinese investors have announced interest in, or closed on, several multi-billion-dollar deals on a variety of American enterprises, including GE’s appliance division, Strategic Hotels & Resorts (owner of numerous luxury properties here and abroad), a construction manufacturer, the Chicago Stock Exchange…

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Anyone who thinks the wave of Chinese tourism now inundating the world will slow down any time soon needs to think again. I recently participated in a two-week sales mission to China on behalf of Visit California and the Orange County Visitors Association, and have come away more bullish than ever about China’s long-term tourism potential for California, the US and the world.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

In early April, I posted a blog sharing some thoughts about the wave of Nationalism now gaining momentum throughout the world. Since then, a hard-line extreme right party has won seats in the Cyprus parliament; Austria’s Freedom Party presidential candidate, although narrowly defeated, gained 49.7% of the vote; France’s National Front is newly energized and is promoting a principle of “national priority;” Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star movement candidate, Virginia Raggi, has become Rome’s mayor with 2/3 of the vote in a run-off contest; and just this past weekend, the UK has voted to exit the European Union (EU), thus roiling global financial markets and causing everyone to wonder what’s next for the economy and will other European nations follow suit.

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors Corruption has been with us since the first Pelican swooped into the ocean to bag his first fish dinner about 30 million or more years ago.  In other words, since the beginning of time. You’ll find...

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

There’s a lot of chatter these days about what to do about our national debt that is quickly approaching $20 trillion, about the pros and cons of our international trade policies, and about our blossoming balance of trade deficit that grows larger with each passing day as the US continues to import more goods and services than we export. In all this talk, however, we rarely hear about the positive “sliver of silver” that’s buried in much of the negative commentary about these concerns.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

More than a century ago, philosopher George Santayana reminded us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

His words ring true today. As I’ve traveled the world for the past three decades, the growing rise of Nationalism on virtually every continent has given me cause for concern. Following World War II, the global goal was to create political and economic structures and forge alliances like the UN, EU, IMF, WTO, NAFTA and the recently signed Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

More than a century ago, philosopher George Santayana reminded us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

His words ring true today. As I’ve traveled the world for the past three decades, the growing rise of Nationalism on virtually every continent has given me cause for concern. Following World War II, the global goal was to create political and economic structures and forge alliances like the UN, EU, IMF, WTO, NAFTA and the recently signed Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Roughly two years ago, I blogged about the Big 3 US Airlines’ (American, Delta and United) highly-publicized campaign directed at the Obama Administration to block Etihad Airways, Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airways from expanding their US route network (May, 2014). Since I posted that blog, the US carriers have not only continued their campaign against the 3 Gulf carriers but also blocked Norwegian Air International’s application to begin serving the US.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Chances are if you’re like about half of American workers this year, you won’t use all the paid time off you’ve earned. But, you’ll be making a big mistake—a mistake that hurts you, your company and our national economy, according to a recent study by Oxford Economics.

Just look at the numbers. Each year, American workers throw away about $52.4bn of earned benefits simply because they fail to use all their vacation time despite all the obvious personal benefits of taking time off to regenerate and reconnect. Today’s American workers as a whole take fewer vacation days than they did in 2000, although those who work for a company with a “use it or lose it” vacation policy are more likely to use all their vacation time than those who do not.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

As many long-time readers of my blog know, my colleagues at the Orange County Visitors Association and I have worked diligently for the past few years to entice visitors to our many local, world-class attractions, both from our sister US states and from abroad. Our efforts are paying off. In the past year alone, we welcomed a record 46 million visitors to Orange County – 4 million, or almost 10%, of them came from abroad. With John Wayne International Airport being the closest international airport to the nearby Disneyland Resort and other famous California attractions, our community is positioned to reap the benefits of this increase in visitors.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Each year, more than 15 million people in the US take the title of this blog to heart and file a civil law suit. Their suits involve everything from perceived negligence to neighborhood disputes and the frivolous suits among them are estimated to cost the US economy more than $200 billion annually. At the same time, nearly 90% of all US corporations are engaged in some sort of litigation as the average company juggles a docket of 37 suits each year.

Why is this so? While in most of the world’s legal systems, the loser in the suit must pay for a large part of the winner’s legal fees, in the US each party pays their own—so in the US a litigant has nothing to lose by going to court, especially since more than half of all US tort trials are won by the plaintiff.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Make no mistake about it: India is on the move. After his landslide election victory in May 2014, Prime Minister Narenda Modi told his nation that he needed just 10 years to modernize the country and promised that by 2022, India’s 75th anniversary of independence, the world would recognize that the 21st century is India’s.

Over the 15 months since taking office, Modi has become a rock star for India’s enormous cohort of optimistic millennials and business community as well as for the Indian diaspora. His appearance at Madison Square Garden in New York last September drew a record crowd of more than 18,500.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

All last week, the world’s financial markets were roiled by China’s 4.4% devaluation of its currency, the yuan, also known as the renminbi (RMB). It was the currency’s largest devaluation in decades and, not surprisingly, almost everyone even remotely interested in China was concerned. The biggest concern revolved around the state of the Chinese economy that now ranks as the world’s second largest after the US. Seeking to ease the uncertainty, the People’s Bank of China called the move a one-off depreciation, saying it was aimed at boosting its private sector exports by cutting their costs, increasing their competitiveness and enhancing performance.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

I recently returned from a tour of 6 European countries during which I had time to think about the cultural nuances of each. While English was widely spoken and all the countries I visited boasted a patina of international sophistication and used a common currency (the euro), each also had its own language not to mention its own local architectural style and regional mealtime favorites. Even their local music was unique to itself.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Any reader of my blog knows I travel a lot. It’s part and parcel of the travel and hospitality business. When it’s efficient, and the customer comes first, travel is a joy. When it’s not efficient and the customer isn’t a priority, I can’t help but wonder what keeps this hotel, this restaurant, this train station, this airport from being its very best.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Earlier this year, I blogged about the excitement in China generated by the news that its Dalian Wanda Group planned to invest $1.09 billion to build and operate a luxury hotel in London. At the time of their announcement (made in the summer of 2013), it was the first luxury hotel venture announced by a Chinese firm outside of China. Since then, Dalian Wanda has added a luxury hotel project in Madrid and, just this past summer, they advised Chicagoans they will open a $900 million skyscraper, the city’s 3rd-tallest building, on Lakeshore Drive East housing a 240-room luxury, 5-star hotel, luxury apartments and retail space in 2018.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

I’ve been blogging about our world over the past two years and have been impressed as I travel around the US and in my own community served by John Wayne Airport. A lot has changed! I have encountered more travelers, more visitors from overseas and noticed that more people are traveling for leisure than solely on business as was the case in the past. Clearly, this is a sign that our economy is back.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

From time to time, I like to tout the strengths of the world’s Travel and Tourism industry. I think most people know Travel and Tourism ranks among the most exciting and dynamic economic sectors on the planet. But, by any measure, 2014 was outstanding. The industry accounted for $7.6 trillion in revenues or 9.8% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and was responsible for providing 105 million jobs, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana – First and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher, writer and cultural critic

Let’s talk about History and why we all need to make knowing about our global collective past a priority.

The New York Times noted recently that since the recent recession, students on US campuses now view a college education as a vocational training ground and that spending time studying history and the other humanities offers no immediate pay-off.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Recently, I attended a US-China Travel and Tourism Cooperative Event in Chicago hosted by the US Travel Association (USTA) and Brand USA. It was an exceptional conference that attracted such significant industry and government luminaries as US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, US Ambassador to China Max Baucus, USTA CEO Roger Dow, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang, Chinese Minister of Tourism Li Jinzao, senior travel officials representing major Chinese travel companies, the Mayors of Wuhan and Qingdao and a host of US travel industry executives.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Think about this: Last year, China’s Dalian Wanda Group got the attention of the global hotel community with its plans to build and operate in London the first Chinese-built and operated luxury hotel outside of China. Dalian Wanda soon followed up with another project in Madrid; and just this past summer, they told Chicagoans they will open the city’s third tallest building, housing a 5-star luxury hotel, apartments and retail space in 2018 on Lakeshore Drive East.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The announcement last month about the reset of US-Cuba relations was big news here in the US. Many agree with President Obama that, after 50 years, the US trade embargo against Cuba was not working and that it is time for a change. Others opine that we should have pressed Cuba harder to democratize its political system and address its human rights concerns before agreeing to loosen trade restrictions between our two countries.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Recently, I came across a study of frequent international business travelers in which about a third of the respondents indicated that their personal security ranks among their primary concerns while traveling. So, to help address this concern, I asked my former colleague Alan Orlob at Marriott International, Inc. to share his thoughts on this subject.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Earlier this year, I blogged about the excitement in China generated by the news that its Dalian Wanda Group planned to invest $1.09bn to build and operate a luxury hotel in London. At the time of their announcement (made in the summer of 2013), it was the first luxury hotel venture announced by a Chinese firm outside of China.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The facts tell the story. Since 2000 the rise of the world’s emerging markets has been one of the defining, but relatively little reported, features of the global economy.

Consider this: In the next ten years McKinsey & Co. predicts that the annual buying power of people living in just the world’s emerging markets will reach $30 trillion a year. Twenty years ago less than 20% of the world’s population earned enough money to afford little more than the basic necessities of life.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

I spent the last half of my 40-year career with Marriott International traveling the globe as president and managing director of the company’s offshore lodging division. During those years, I visited China at least 5 times a year. I was impressed, at the time, to find the nature of the Chinese people was always welcoming and hospitable. I also learned that their culture and value system was vastly different from ours.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Everywhere we look these days, it seems, everything appears to be falling apart. New, politically explosive global trouble spots emerge daily while lingering ones become more demanding and complex. Barbaric atrocities have become a staple on the evening news while many of our global leaders seem feckless and perplexed about how to respond to the challenges before them.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Later this month, on September 27, people around the world will mark World Tourism Day as they have every year since 1980. That’s the day the United Nations designated as the one on which we recognize the positive contributions that global tourism makes each day to the world’s economic, cultural, political and social life.

Tourism today is a trillion-dollar industry involving the movement of more than one billion tourists across borders and another five to six billion travelers domestically every year.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

When I joined Marriott Corporation in 1972, the company’s portfolio consisted of 22 properties—three franchises, one managed property and 18 company-owned hotels. As a business model, Ownership was easily understood. The Marriott corporate culture and values applied. Capital decisions and development were in Bill Marriott’s hands. We were growing, so considerable focus was placed on developing our associates. The company had clear objectives and direction.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The world has become increasingly global and interconnected in the past 10-15 years. And while people have been on the move since time began, welcomed immigration has tended to move in step with economic conditions—rising when the local economy is strong enough to accommodate the influx of new people and dropping when it is weaker.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

For more than three centuries now, noted philosophers, historians and politicos of the day from Edmund Burke to George Santayana to Jesse Ventura have all told us to know the history of a place or a people or “be doomed to repeat it.” Seems like simple enough advice. Yet a quick look through recent global headlines, particularly those related to events now unfolding in the Middle East, and it makes one wonder if anyone is paying attention.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

You’d be hard pressed to identify a culture that isn’t proud of its cuisine or doesn’t make a big deal out of dining. But nowhere is this pride more evident than in the Chinese culture where dining is an art form that extends well beyond the food being consumed, and is the garden in which most relationships, both business and personal, can take root and flourish.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

So, what do sea turtles and China’s economic prowess have to do with the rest of us anyway? … Plenty! It’s time that we take notice and welcome the sea turtle presence among us. Since 1978, more than 2.6 million Chinese students have gone abroad to study and America’s elite universities and colleges have ranked among their top choices. Last year alone, these institutions claimed more than half of the 400,000 Chinese students who went abroad – positioning China as the top sender of international students to this country for the fourth consecutive year, beating out Japan, India and South Korea. China’s Ministry of Education reports that about half of these students return and, over the years, have made a huge difference in the country and to its people.

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors There’s no way around it: if you live and work in Orange County today, or do business here, one way or another, your life will be touched in some way by the more than 1 million visitors from China...

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

The numbers are mind-boggling. Social networking reportedly now eats up more than three hours of the average American’s day. Google logs more than one billion searches each day. On YouTube, 60 hours of content gets uploaded every minute, and over at Facebook, more than 800 million updates are recorded daily. We are becoming so wired technologically 24/7 that before we know it we’ve lost track of time and, sadly for many of us, we learn we’ve lost touch with some of our most important relationships both personally and professionally.

By: Edwin Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

Today’s educational community is often accused by the industry of not keeping up with the changing needs of the workplace and of churning out graduates who are ill prepared. The fact is, however, that today’s academic community holds the key to developing our future leaders–whatever the industry.

By: Ed Fuller
Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors

In a previous article I discussed how having good personal business relationships can often save the day when something goes awry. But, successful relationships don’t just happen over night; they are two-way affairs. Partners and associates must believe in the honesty and good faith of their leaders, and vice versa. When and how trust develops between business partners or between leaders and the people they lead depends on previous experiences, the personalities involved and the specific situation.

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors Over the next decade, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) predicts Asia’s travel and tourism industry will grow by more than 6% each year—the fastest expansion rate of any region in the...

By: Edwin Fuller Founder and President of Laguna Strategic Advisors The day has long past when travel and tourism could simply be relegated to a series of images of folks living the “high life” on fat expense accounts, romantic couples celebrating their first weeks of...