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.
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The End of an Era?

Several Decades ago, in the airline sales era, when de-regulation hit, it became evident to all those with a half gallon of intelligence that the future held doom for the legions of airline sales people employed everywhere in the schedule business.
    I remember those, in the battle of wits who were lightly armed, saying, " they will always need someone to deliver brochures," who later disappeared into the smoke, along with the front line sales troops, the myriad of sales offices, the inept District Sales Managers - all of it went away.
   Call it, "right sizing." Call it, Bored of Directors cutting expenses so that their own pay-back in stock returns stayed high so polo pony feed could still be afordable. Oh well, such was the day.
   Digress not, flash forward, now to the hotel business. It was only a decade ago, that the big companies: Omni, Radisson, Holiday Inn, tedium ad naseum and their various franchises that traded Director of Sales (DOS) like toilet paper, under wear or what ever example comfortable to you, but for some time now, the titular head of the long-gone sales department has vanished.
   Also, has the well paid sales staffers. Hotel management has never really been what you might call, "sharp," when it comes to promotion, sales or marketing, most owners confuse the last term with Saturday's activities at the local Albertsons.
   Scratch the average General Manager and you'll find a DOS trying  to get out. They know they want to be one, but just can't quite figure out how to smile and make the troops happy at the same time without drawing blood.
   Tough for them to do.
   Anywho, if the current financial disaster continues, and Washington's politicies seem to push us that was, in my opinion, the flock of medium hostelries and high end pricey resorts in big trouble (hiding from bankruptcy at this writing) will continue and their owners will shy away from hiring any superman (women) to save them.
   So, fugghheeddaaabbouuttiiittt. Been there, done that. Save yourself the grief. Or, as an ex-wife once said, $80,000 a year x 3 months= ?
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Salary Negotiations - FOR THE NEW SALES HIRE

No matter what anyone tells you, the General Manager sets the salary. You hear differently, they lie.
    If anyone in the hiring process every says, during the intial talk - " this is what the job pays, " $ X dollars a month! That's it, no more." You, then, have three choices:

• If you're starving, accept the inevitable, go through with the interview, tell the jerk what he needs to hear to get your next job, and keep looking while you work for him, or,
• Nrgotiate with him by saying, "Ok, then this is the highest goal I will aceept based on your highest salary offered, - $ X, thousands of dollars of room revenue per year, no more." Or,
• Get up, smile nicely, shake the dummy's hand and tell him as you exit professionally that the interview's is over that the low salary indicates a lack of commitment on the part of hotel, and, when the GM decides that someday, if he does, - call YOU.
• Then leave. If he's smart, you won't make the door.
• If you make it to the street, you shouldn't work there anyway.

My experience: I made it all the way to the rear door of the cab, followed by the Vice President who offered me the job. I accepted it in the back seat. He told me to start the moment my planed arrived back in my home city. I got what I wanted in salary.

Years later, in that same hotel, as General Manager, I won an award from the chain's VP as the third most improved in the entire chain for revenue improvement - in the entire US, and the franchise net profit champ.

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Breaking into Sales in Hotels - Watch out for "Traps"

Here are the trap-doors, hidden cameras, the leaks, spies, ears that you'll never see. Beware, there are no friends.
    I am your "Rabbi" trust no other. The common mistake you make first entering a "professional" sales career in the Hotel Biz is - it isn't. Spies are everywhere. Gossip rules the day in the sales department. Trust no one. Sneeze at your desk and the bellman one hundred feet away will know to rush you a box of kleenex.
   Everyone will pump you for personal information, swear to God to keep it confidential, and spread it around to everyone on the pipeline within an hour. Trust me.
   Use this knowledge to your advantage. Don't think so? Tell your trusted "leak" a falsehood. Not a big one, a small one: your sister has crossed eyes and they are purple. Check out the feed back. I'll bet you hear about it by the end of the second day. I did.
   Trust me, I am the only one you can.
   The General Manager of a hotel is fuedal ruler of the hotel, his/her secretary, no matter how friendly, actually runs the place, and will feed all info you tell her immediately to the GM, no matter what she says or swears to you. Confidentiality be damned. Remember, there is NO such thing inside a hotel executive office.
   Human Resources, (personnel office) is not now, or ever will be your friend. My advice is to avoid them at all costs until you have a personnel matter where a lawsuit may raise it's ugly head with another employee.
   If you are considering a lawsuit, say NOTHING to HR. They are NOT your friends, consult your own personal attorney and say zero, nada, zip to ANYONE inside the hotel every at any time.
   Remember, you are playing poker with HR, and you never want to show HR your own hand.
   More later.
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In the Hotel Sales Business, Everybody needs a "Rabbi"

So...you think you want to be in "Hotel Sales" do you? There is an old expression in the biz world, everybody needs a Rabbi. Some call it a mentor, some a big brother, back in " the day," we used to call it a go-to guy or girl who knew us inside out. Knew us..everything about us, better than our wives, husbands (almost), the problems in the office, personalities, politics, ugh!
    I'm telling you, IF you want to get into hotel sales, you had better gear-up.
Because in the hotel sales office, no matter how big and small politics is there,
get used to it.
    This column, blog, scandal sheet, whatever you want to call it, consider it, rely on it - is from me - I've been there, suffered the slings and arrows, got the experience, know the dark alleys, carried the guns and knives, fought my way through it.
    Why now, you ask?
    The average hotel is the only modern day existant of the fuedal system I can think of - The General Manager (mangler, I used to call him/her) that I can think of: his rule is law. Forget fair. What he says is law. You work his farm and do his bidding. Few if anyone ever get away with anything.
    The economic crush we just came through crippled hotel sales to a degree worse than I have ever seen since I entered it in the 1960's.
    Now, for the first time, hotel GM's fired Director of Sales. Just canned them wholesale. Many hotels have just dismissed sales staffs and shut entire offices just to save money.
    Make sense? Of course not. Just recently, in the last few weeks, they have now begun to hire them back. BEWARE, the cycle has begun all over again, same tactics, same approach at drawing YOU into a no win game.
   YOU are not a winner, and will never be.
    This blog is designed to forewarn you against all the tricks, problems and pitfalls you will face, many headed your way as you begin your NEW career in the "glamorous" new adventure in HOTEL SALES.
    Be afraid. Be cautious. And...check in with me every couple of days for a new slant on what to watch out for.
    Your favorite Rabbi
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