HOTEL SALES - GOOD PLACE TO EARN A LIVING

I'm retired, so, consider the source. A buddy of mine once told me, that sitting on a log, retired for a few years, he began pondering his live after a few years and he viewed everything from the long end of a prism and saw things differently: what was worth it, what wasn't.
     I'm at that stage.
     Off and on, I bounced in and out of hotel sales as I married, has some children, moved about the country, made mistakes, suffered the ills of the economy, bad choices in jobs....you know what I mean - life!
     When it is good, it is very good. When it is bad, your ship rocks a lot, you hold on, protect what you've got, keep food on the table. Hotel sales for me was like having an extra loaded gun in the house - just in case. When the cyclical economy dumped, ( " we're RIGHTSIZING") and you're a casualty, one of the places you can grab onto is some hungry hotel sales department hungry for someone to lead them out of a hole.
     That was me. I spent a lot of my career 'fixing' hotel sales and marketing departments, that by the time I got into my fifties, I had the reputation as the " mechanic," or The Fixer." I even hired on one job as a consultant for a year to straighten out a 400 room full service downtown convention hotel whose occupancy was in the "teens."
     In between, I've done a bunch of other things, been able meet my obligations as father, husband, provider, kept everybody fed, clothed, happy, somewhat entertained. To the point, I wasn't. Working in hotel sales and marketing, largely wasn't a challenge. It was just a job. If I had it all to do over again, I would avoid it like swallowing ground glass.
    Some guys just get their jollies off wearing a kitchen white coat fooling around with pastries and pushing around high school drop outs and silver ware. More power to them. It was not meaningful. I personally watched a kitchen manager die of a heart attack while medics feverishly tried to save him as the General Manager and Director of Marketing stood six feet away, watching, discussing their occupancy figures for the week.
    Working in a hotel is nothing more than a job. It is not the light of the world, you do not walk on water, shed light unto the masses. You serve chicken to 600 people. Get all the money you can, go home early and look out for yourself.
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WHY I LEFT RADISSON

Once I was the ass't DOS/M at the Radisson Hotel Denver, now changed hands a half dozen times. It sits on Court Street, downtown. At the time, it was the largest hotel in 12 states. There was 10 people  in the sales department.
      First year there they gave me $27k a year!! Imagine that? I made my goals by August. Second year, I sold 45% of the entire house business 1100 rooms. All association contract business. Raise?
$32k.
     I never left the house on trips, never filed an expense report. All the other sales people did. I asked for a salary raise review. My boss said, " Nah, they don't want to pay a sales person that kind of money."
     Early the third year I met one of Rad's VP and I asked him a question: " do you know the top 10 sales people in Radisson nationwide?"  NO, he says.
     " I'm #5, " I tell him.
     " Oh, congratulations," he says. And leaves my office.
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