It was a year ago this week the collapse of Lehman Brothers became what many people view as the poster child for the world economy’s trip into the abyss. While it certainly wasn’t the sole culprit, it proved to be the linchpin of a house of cards that came tumbling down after it was removed from the financial landscape.

Also this week a year ago, HotelNewsNow.com was born. Talk about impeccable timing—trying to establish a new Web site during the throes of the worst financial crisis since many of our parents were small children. Yes, good timing, indeed. But with the patience of Randy and Carolyn Smith and Mark Lomanno at our parent company Smith Travel Research, we’ve been able to establish an identity in the crowded space of hotel-industry news.

The respect we have at HotelNewsNow.com for the numerous quality competitors out there is sincere. We honestly wish them success—just not as much success as HotelNewsNow.com hopefully achieves during the next few years.

Our bread-and-butter strategy has been to piggyback on STR and be the first provider of key industry data. In addition, we offer almost all of the presentations STR executives give to companies and at conferences. We’ve also tried to examine issues facing the hotel industry through staff-written articles and columns contributed by smart industry executives who are battling the recession in the trenches. Readers haven’t always agreed with the opinions of our writers, but that’s not a bad thing. Facilitating discussions about key industry issues is another of our cornerstone goals.

I’m confident the sky’s the limit for HotelNewsNow.com. With a year under our belt, we’ve laid a solid foundation with 115 videos, almost 100 columns, 53 STR industry presentations and more than 1,800 articles.

One offshoot of the foundation is our partnership with the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International and STR to bring a series of market-driven webinars. The series begins today, Tuesday, 15 September, with a focus on Los Angeles. On 22 September, the attention shifts to New York. On 6 October, we’ll look at the Orlando market, and on 20 October, we’ll explore the Chicago market. Each webinar will last a little more than an hour. Each will feature three or four experts assessing everything from the latest performance numbers to travel trends to future bookings. There’s still plenty of time to sign up for today’s initial webinar about Los Angeles. Click here to find out more info.

Another exciting addition to our repertoire, which is coming soon, is an interactive, real-estate Web site that will feature hotels for sale. We’re eager to put the final touches on our prototype for this project and tell the world all about it.

We’re pleased so many of you have joined us in our inaugural year. We’re looking forward to developing more wrinkles that will help us deliver hotel-industry news to interested parties throughout the world.

Thank you for your interest.