My Hotel Career - Short Version

First hotel job was at a Hilton franchise. It was run by a foodie who sold catering business to the locals, and get this, all the money was cash. Right, the customers, HAD to pay in cash. The Ass't F&B ditto. I can remember him pocketing piles of cash in his desk drawer. I, fresh from the airlines, and naive as hell, didn't know the difference. The bar waitresses spun in and out of the cocktail lounge, upstairs with the local businessmen in shifts, back onto the floor after a half hour, the cash drawers loaded with checks. Checks! ! Who the heck pays for drinks with checks, large ones. The owner of the hotel, a franchise operation, frequently drunk out of his mind, owned a hotel in Miami, got bombed one night, was found the next morning by a maid, naked, dead, and robbed. Two hookers were arrested a day later.
    This was my first exposure to hotels. Later, in another famous chain, at an airport, I was treated to the "merry bank of 5" local hoods who sat in the bar, flocked with fur. Think a sophisticated Badda-bing. Better English, no Tupperware breastages. As the Director of Sales, one of da' boys asked me to prepare a Suite for a Mr. Capone, arriving that night.
    I quit, moved across the street to a competitors hotel and was threatened by da boys. I went to the DA's office who threatened them, I was there, and was warned to forget ever working there. Happily I complied. I moved to Arizona to protect my wife and children, now grown and gone.
   Since then, I have worked in hotels for Indian owners, drunks, warped and weird megalomaniacs, one Nazi, a five foot high crippled sociopath and several top level management types that would make Hitler seem a gentler sort.
   I have learned that women managers are a different sort, more suspicious, far less trusting than male superiors, far quicker with the blade. In the hotel business, it is all an ego driven business, a modern day serfdom. In my capacity as a medium to top level marketing and sales manager I had made millions for the owners and operators of hotels and resorts for every type of hostelry I could think of - yet, very little for me. Each had a way of carving my class out of the pie.
   One General Manager said, " they don't want to pay sales people that kind of money." Amazing, eh? As an after thought, I regret it all, the hotel business. Statistically, it is the highest employer for non-skilled labor, and as the therapist community has reported, for low-self esteemers. What a waste of time.
   ###

Hotel Careers Today - Buy Boardwalk or Park Place??

So, you want to be a General Manager? Or maybe a "Director of Marketing and/or Sales? Chief Chef, Kitchen Manager or Rooms Manager? Make it your career...for a lifetime?
    Move to Switzerland where you start at the bottom, young and eager, and work your way to the top, white table linens and all, check in guests, carry bags, hand out keys, call on convention clients, sign contracts, manage staff.
    Do it all. Then, at 40, you're in.
    Not here in America, that has now gone by the way of high button shoes. In Tucson, the fanciful Marriott nestled into the Tucson Mountains, thrown up in 2005, indebted to $145 million, crashed a year later in the boom/bust, has now gone up for auction. The big deal money guys can't float any more credit and on the auction block steps March 2, it goes to the highest bidder. I'll be there.
   It looks like Versailles. No kiddin.
   The staff? Oh, I imagine they're well paid and the new owners will say, " no need to panic, we can use you, please stay."
   And the staff, if they are smart, will warm up their resumes, put them on the market and get the hell out as soon as possible. NOT THEIR FAULT. It is the nature of the biz today in the good ole US of A. Staff is fungible, expendable and turned around like laundry cart loads. That's why the quality of new-hires ain't so good any more....they probably won't be around career-wise if you catch my drift.
   There are two other high-powered high-dollar, world-class resorts in the mountains high over the Tucson, Arizona landscape headed in the same direction. And the fate of the staffs all down hilled for the same rock pile as the Quality Inns and Holiday Inns of the past.
   They are just jobs now, Check out the resumes of these folks: no more 5 years, or 8 or 10 years of rich, full experience at any one employer. You will be lucky to find three (3) full years of length at any one hotel or resort for anyone before some hotel "investor" buys or sells their job out of existence to someone who can find a cheaper replacement.
   Welcome to the 21`st century of the Hospitality Industry.
###