In sunny Tucson, it's easier to count the luxury hotels that are " toes up " than the ones that are doing good business at all.
Let's talk about the much vaunted Doubletree Hotel on south Alvernon Way in the geometric center of Tucson. Yesterday's news reports in the Arizona Daily Star say that hotel will now to into bankruptcy to avoid an auction sale which was due in two months, July 2011.
We are talking about what was once the premiere convention hotel in town less than 30 years ago. Today it missed over 20 million in loan payments. Now in bankruptcy, a hint to folks who are thinking of a job in a hotel in bankruptcy: ANY hotel in bankruptcy.
Do not do it. I have personal experience here. If you are in sales - leave. If you are desperate for a job, and this presents an opening for you - go to Circle K. Having a hotel on your resume that was in bankruptcy is poison for downline interviews, especially if your responsibility is in sales.
First question; ' tell me, how did you influence the financial outcome of your hotel, since they eventually went bankrupt?" PS you don't want to work for the GM who asks you that question, anyway, he loves to pin the tail on YOU, donkey, so stay away.
Most of the hotel sales people who are in place during the bankruptcy will stay there, probably, but, getting money for promotions, outside sales activities, travel, and other such normal duties will be cut, or eliminated all together. Sales calls, locally, look to hanging leaflets in parking lots, local blitzes, 1960's stuff, phones, phones, phones.
Boring, boring. Warm up your resumes, no matter what the GM says, which during this period if you're still there, your newest best friend will be the GM, warm, friendly and fuzzy. It's not a bad idea to play best-friend, too, for as long as it lasts.
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Saturday, May 28, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Hotels and Resorts (high end) in Tucson, Arizona
For those Hospitality Professionals desiring to get-away-from-it-all and flee to the desert in southern Arizona, fughettabout it as they say in north Jersey.
Here in "the old Pueblo," Tucson, it is easier to count the hotels and high end resorts that are NOT in receivership or actually up for auction as I write, than are in good working financial order.
If you get a head-hunter call waxing on about a 'tremendous' opportunity, check it out. Do "your homework" now more than ever. Especially for the super-resorts here in the north end of Tucson, high up in the hills overlooking the city.
I don't care what they say, and neither should you. Most, at this writing are missing their mortgage payments. Most have a shadow of their former sales departments. The old trick of Director of Marketing and a Director of Sales are now doing double duty at the same salary levels. Look for 14 hour days. Ask the usual questions: last years quotas, % increases for this years. You know what to do. Productions for 2011 are bottoming out, not climbing out. In forclosure? Who wants to work in a shop being run by a bank? I've done that and it was one of the worst experiences I've had. You have to go to a bank "clerk" to voucher a petty cash check to buy envelopes, let alone advertising for a dinner promotion. Ask for $50 and they have a heart attack.
Trust me, that is not sales, let alone marketing. Here, you will develop a first class drinking problem with the bean counters.
If you do come here on an interview, ask to see the resumes of the troops already in house, ask for complete control of hire/fire. Bet you don't get it. IF you get full move money, you know they are serious, but remember the salary promises: $ xx,xxx per year times 9 months = what? as an old girlfriend of mine used to say. A long wait in the unemployment line.
Most hotel companys are hiring outfits that try to bust unemployment claims these days.
In all liklihood, if you're out, it will be on a "for cause" claim. Ah, the good old days when everybody was good hearted and honest, eh?
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Here in "the old Pueblo," Tucson, it is easier to count the hotels and high end resorts that are NOT in receivership or actually up for auction as I write, than are in good working financial order.
If you get a head-hunter call waxing on about a 'tremendous' opportunity, check it out. Do "your homework" now more than ever. Especially for the super-resorts here in the north end of Tucson, high up in the hills overlooking the city.
I don't care what they say, and neither should you. Most, at this writing are missing their mortgage payments. Most have a shadow of their former sales departments. The old trick of Director of Marketing and a Director of Sales are now doing double duty at the same salary levels. Look for 14 hour days. Ask the usual questions: last years quotas, % increases for this years. You know what to do. Productions for 2011 are bottoming out, not climbing out. In forclosure? Who wants to work in a shop being run by a bank? I've done that and it was one of the worst experiences I've had. You have to go to a bank "clerk" to voucher a petty cash check to buy envelopes, let alone advertising for a dinner promotion. Ask for $50 and they have a heart attack.
Trust me, that is not sales, let alone marketing. Here, you will develop a first class drinking problem with the bean counters.
If you do come here on an interview, ask to see the resumes of the troops already in house, ask for complete control of hire/fire. Bet you don't get it. IF you get full move money, you know they are serious, but remember the salary promises: $ xx,xxx per year times 9 months = what? as an old girlfriend of mine used to say. A long wait in the unemployment line.
Most hotel companys are hiring outfits that try to bust unemployment claims these days.
In all liklihood, if you're out, it will be on a "for cause" claim. Ah, the good old days when everybody was good hearted and honest, eh?
###
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Hotels, Hotel Sales, Arizona "Boycott," SB 1070, Tedium Ad Naseum
Now it is Arizona's turn, so says our Whacko local newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star. Sunday, May 1st headlines our state is in the crosshairs of the country's liberal agenda, "boycott" Arizona because of SB 1070, the state's law making it an option for the state's law officers to question traffic violators as to their 'potential' immigration status.
Enter Babs Streisand, Jane Fonda and a whole host of far-left loonies (somebody wake up Meryl, the overweight lout on the Capitol One commercials) so they can fine-tune the indignation and get their face-time revved up.
I, myownself, have not thrown my card in the pot on this one yet, let me tell you why. During the Colorado Amendment II imbroglio (the Christian Right, Colorado Springs Amendment that made it to the ballot denying gays the right to everything including walking and chewing gum in public), that threw the same black eye on Colorado for a couple of years.
Convention business went into the round file as I struggled to command a small battalion of hotel sales people in the largest hotel west of the Mississippi in Denver. Now, get this: everyone I spoke to, as well as the troops I councilled with said the same thing - everyone picked on Colorado. "Meeting Professionals in New York City threw dinner rolls at the ONE association head that promised to go to Denver," (closed quotes.)
One gay association executive in south Carolina spoke to me about his own group who declared their abstinence from Denver. I brought his attention to his own state's declaration against gay marriage and anti-civil rights, and he retorts thusly, " you don't have to remind ME that I live in south Carolina, but, they tell me we are not going, and THAT'S THAT."
So, rationality in these heady times plays NO part in dizzy, swirling, emotionally charged issues of the day, I guess. And that includes a state filled with illegal aliens, companies that employ them, "ethnic studies" with secret curriculae that the public cannot read, and comes now, a national boycott of Arizona whose only sin is to try to protect it's own border in light of the Federal Governments failure to do so.
Am I right, or not? Maybe I'm just swinging at shadows. As the comedian Dennis Miller used to say, "that's my opinion, I could be wrong."
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Enter Babs Streisand, Jane Fonda and a whole host of far-left loonies (somebody wake up Meryl, the overweight lout on the Capitol One commercials) so they can fine-tune the indignation and get their face-time revved up.
I, myownself, have not thrown my card in the pot on this one yet, let me tell you why. During the Colorado Amendment II imbroglio (the Christian Right, Colorado Springs Amendment that made it to the ballot denying gays the right to everything including walking and chewing gum in public), that threw the same black eye on Colorado for a couple of years.
Convention business went into the round file as I struggled to command a small battalion of hotel sales people in the largest hotel west of the Mississippi in Denver. Now, get this: everyone I spoke to, as well as the troops I councilled with said the same thing - everyone picked on Colorado. "Meeting Professionals in New York City threw dinner rolls at the ONE association head that promised to go to Denver," (closed quotes.)
One gay association executive in south Carolina spoke to me about his own group who declared their abstinence from Denver. I brought his attention to his own state's declaration against gay marriage and anti-civil rights, and he retorts thusly, " you don't have to remind ME that I live in south Carolina, but, they tell me we are not going, and THAT'S THAT."
So, rationality in these heady times plays NO part in dizzy, swirling, emotionally charged issues of the day, I guess. And that includes a state filled with illegal aliens, companies that employ them, "ethnic studies" with secret curriculae that the public cannot read, and comes now, a national boycott of Arizona whose only sin is to try to protect it's own border in light of the Federal Governments failure to do so.
Am I right, or not? Maybe I'm just swinging at shadows. As the comedian Dennis Miller used to say, "that's my opinion, I could be wrong."
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