Greetings and Happy New "Sales, Marketing & PR" Year! This newsletter is now reaching out to over 250 subscribers. Thanks to those you having e-mailed me with your kind responses and continued wishes on the success of this project. We're now read by most Hospitality news services, along with committed participation from major national hotel and restaurant chains. Strong readership comes from overseas, with the U.K. and Australia standing out among "foreign" subscribers. As always, for the newest subscribers, the Hotel Hospitality Newsletter is archived at; https://www.hospitality-1st.com/  this site will bring you up-to-date on past issues and will load in most browsers in just under 6 seconds so it won't waste your valuable time.

The past issue(#7) included my question to you about including "Positions Available" in the newsletter. Your responses were more than favorable and I'll start including them with the February 2nd issue. Between now and then I'll set a prescribed format, along with some rules to keep the advertising hype to a minimum, which I'll e-mail separately as a group message. You'll simply provide a "fill-in-the-box" response form and I'll take care of including them in subsequent issues.

Many of you have said, "Lou, where are you"? Well - I'm based in Memphis, Tennessee which is considered by many to be the center of the Hotel Hospitality industry. There is an incredible amount of growth here, just as I've seen most everywhere else. Recent trips to Chicago, Atlanta and Orlando keeps me skeptical of a truly central location claiming to be the "hotbed" of activity but we do have our fair share of consultants, brokers and holding companies. Even some "smaller" large-scale cities like Charlotte NC, St. Louis MO or Pittsburgh PA, has a tremendous amount of hotel/restaurant hospitality professionals calling these areas home. Now you know where I'm writing from and I never intended to be a "ghost" like Elvis.

I'd like to relate three experiences to you from the past month and you'll notice that each relates to customer service. I mention this (and often) since no amount of Selling, Marketing and PR is immune. For simplicities sake let's call them the Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
1. Had the occasion to eat at a "proclaimed" No.1 steak house. Mentioned to the waiter that my shrimp portion of the "surf & turf" seemed quite small in size as compared to the jumbo shrimp advertised (16-20 ct./lb.) - within a minute the manager descended on our table and offered an additional portion WITHOUT hesitation and WITHOUT excuses. 100% complete
satisfaction and a SMILE!
2. Traveled to FL this holiday past and was "greeted" by a check-in that took almost 12 minutes. Mind you this was with no lines, 5PM and confirmation number in hand. Who is training your front line staff? No apologies and I lost track of the number of excuses. Your sales efforts go completely to waste when something like this occurs. Imagine if I'd been with a group tour. This was with a nationally known hotelier.
3. Returned an item from the holiday shopping season at the mega "we put everyone out of business" superstore. Not one Hello, not one Smile, absolutely nothing but a scurrilous look. This was WITH a receipt, paid with cash and the item was obviously broken. Where are the GM's and what are they looking at (besides numbers)? Sad but true...

No one claims to be perfect but the last two examples have become the norm. We, as an industry, need to strive like the first example. It didn't take much and the smile and prompt attention added much to the overall class these folks exhibited. Remember too that many a restaurant are an added feature of the upper scale hotels and contribute greatly to the guests overall satisfaction (or lack of).

In conclusion for this week, feel free to jot me your ideas and suggestions. If you tell me "where to go", please keep it civil. I truly enjoy producing this newsletter and think that from the notes you've sent so far that we're on the right track. As always - you're welcomed to pass along the subscription information to your colleagues. Any submissions for the newsletter MUST be mailed as an "ASCII Text" attachment. Some of you have submitted to me within your e-mail program but you have turned on "html" or other formatting which makes it extremely difficult to properly convert the text.

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