Things Corporate Hotel Auditors Tell me About Sales

While in town doing an audit on their southwest installation of one of the best resorts, once classified as in the "best ten in the world" we chatted under the wing of a B-17.
     "Things are awful, everywhere," he told me. Like I didn't already know. The local newspaper satisfies itself writing stories about rat-poop in  restaurants and picking nose-hairs out of the county supervisors lunch boxes for "high-profile news stories and on occasion, prints declining tax receipts from area hotels proving they are drowning in debt.
      Anyone who has ever been in the business or close to it knows when the water circles the drain. Management ALWAYS lies when confronted. Even the newsprint guys are smart enough to know that.
      Anywho, said auditor opines that when the water level in the lifeboat rises, the survivors watch the captain cut the notch on the inside of the boat. " Sales is always the first to go," he says.
      No kidding, I retort. Hotel Management has always been rooted in the 13th Century, the dungeons of the chain mail dark ages. Any monkey can sit on their wallet, it's quite easy to train them to do that. So the water finally hits the notch on the inside of the boat, and if the Sales Department has the smarts to have already warmed up their collective resumes, the captain "invites them to get wet.
      If not, that's what the knife is for. If he is any kind of human being, the surgery is done quietly, in his office$. Usually not, though.
      Remember Esquire Magazine's "Stanley Bing"? Everything he ever wrote was true, on point, and I can verify. I was there. The bloodletting (an expression usually coined by mass firings) was done at this point in the hotel biz: Sales first, throat cuts, over board.
     Then Marketing followed by advertising - a General Manager I once knew said, " I guess a sales person is like a billboard, you never really know what value they give you." He started as a cook, then a bell boy, front desk clerk, and so on.
     Another general manager I once knew told me the biggest mistake he ever made was telling the head of the sales department, Yes! He was a chef.
     The Chief Executive Officer (the 'big guy') of a major hotel management company headquartered in the Dallas Fort Worth area never ran a hotel.
      There are creative ways to remedy the disastrous slump in hospitality: don't treat hotels and resorts as investment vehicles. In Europe, they were once known as careers, institutions of learning, creations of a hospitality experience. Their goal was NOT just profit.
      Lastly, sales is the generator of traffic, these are the people who should be kept on to the last. If they are utilized , new and more creative measures can bring in to add to the revenue base.
      But, then again, Management has got to have the creativity to try it. The 7 unholy words need to be scuttled.
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