On the road to Williamsburg, VA  October 4-5, 2006 

                                   

Above Photo:  (Left) Douglas presents at the Virginia Board of Realtor's - Property Management Division annual meeting.  
 

After having nearly a whole week at home and in the office, I hit the road again on October 5 to head to Williamsburg, VA.  What an absolutely perfect fall afternoon it was when I arrived at Newport News for the short drive to Williamsburg.  I was in town to do the opening keynote for the Virginia Board of Realtors – Rental Property Manager’s conference, which to my delight was being held at the newly renovated Williamsburg Lodge in Colonial Williamsburg. 

With the Colonial Williamsburg Hotels having been my client from 1991 to 2001, so many memories came rushing back, although most of the old faces have now changed.  But the good news for me was that in addition to giving my speech, I’d also arranged for a sales call/dinner with Margie Tate, who is the new General Manager of CWF’s reservations call center, and her reservations manager. 

Arriving right at sunset I quickly checked-in to my room and headed over to meet them at the outside patio deck of the Golden Horseshoe clubhouse, overlooking the golf course.  What a great chat we had as the sun slowly drifted down into a spectacular twilight. With a little luck when their final 2007 budge is approved, I’ll be writing another On The Road update from there in just a couple more months.

Next morning I was up early and headed over to the new conference center to give my opening keynote entitled “How To Get Lucky Together in 2007 – Creating Luck For Ourselves and Our Companies.”  I have to admit having had just a little anxiety as to how my speech would be received, since I was “out of my box” a bit speaking to this non-hotel audience.  Yet they were extremely generous and I soon had them all playing along and having fun, while hopefully learning that luck is an ‘I’ll see it when I believe it” equation, not the opposite.  They really liked my “Tuffy the Dog” story about how we create our own mental boundaries in life and don’t even realize it, and that only by expanding our belief systems can we create sustainable, positive change in our lives.

Here's a picture of me with the meeting planner, Carole Umbel, at the Williamsburg Lodge Conference center:

                                  

As usual, right after my speech I headed back to the airport, with the goal of flying to Chicago for my HSMAI Revenue Management Advisory Board meeting.  To my dismay, my flight to connect in Atlanta was delayed due to a mechanical problem, but when we landed I saw that my connecting flight was also delayed.  So I had 21 minutes to run, 2 pieces of luggage en tow, from Terminal A to Terminal D.  As I approached the gate I was amazingly still 11 minutes ahead of the new posted departure time.  You can imagine my disappointment when I got there and the flight had departed.  Fortunately for me Delta offered to put me up in a nice Wingate Inn property and put me on an early AM flight to Chicago.  So there I was back awake, dressed, and boarding the hotel van only 5 hours later for my AM flight.  But when I realized that this Wingate Inn shared its hotel van with two other hotels, and that I was their first stop, I’d once again miss my flight.  I could have gone standby for the 10:30am departure, but the thought of me passing back through this very same airport again at 11pm for my flight home was just to much.  So I decided I had to bail out and was able to sweet talk the Delta agent into sending my straight home to on a non-stop.  It was nice to have the extra day to play catch-up, as the next week’s travel was even more intense.

On The Road to Gulf Shores, AL, Destin, FL, and Panama City, FL.

                              


Photo:  Douglas and the Reservations SAILS Training workshop participants in Gulf Shores, AL

After a nice restive weekend the road was calling me once again on Tuesday.  After picking up the kids from school, helping with their homework, and getting their dinner, I left them with my Cathy their stepmom and headed for FLL airport just in time to catch the last flight to Pensacola, the closet airport to Destin.  After arriving on time and securing a rental car, I headed for the 45 minute drive to Gulf Shores where I was presenting the first of three in a row area-wide seminars for the Reservations SAILS Training 2006 seminar. 

Since Gulf Shores doesn’t have any full service hotels, nor much in the way of mid-scale, I found myself having to stop by Winn-Dixie to pick-up snacks and refreshments for the next day before checking into the La Quinta, which proved to be a great little property. 

Having had such a late arrival, I was very happy the next day to welcome a particularly enthusiastic audience and another sell-out session, which really made it easy.  
 

After a long day of presenting I couldn’t refuse an invitation to have just one beer with my client friend - the lovely Connie Carlisle - from Kaiser rentals, who was very nice to take time out of her busy family life to take me to the Pink Pony beach bar.  Soon one beer turned into two, but then I had to the good sense not to have and third and instead to get back on the road to Destin.  I guess I’d been overly optimistic on the travel times to Destin – not to mention that my next meeting was actually in Miramar Beach - the next town over.  So it was well after 8pm when I arrived.  It was great to be back in a full service hotel and I was able to order room service and a cocktail, and I drifted off to sleep pretty quickly.

The next morning I awoke to do the second reservations seminar of the week to another enthusiastic crowd.  I even got to see my friend Ron Mote, Senior VP of Sterling, who stopped by during the break to say high and give me a chance to thank him for signing up over 30 participants for this week’s seminars.  Here’s a picture of me with that group:

                                 

 Finally, it was time to head on to the next and final stop of the week – Panama City – which thankfully was a much shorter drive.  Again, another terrific group, this time including several GM’s from Sterling Resort’s many condo-resorts in the area.  Here’s our group that day.

                              


On The Road to Dallas, October 20.

After three straight seminars of reservations training it was good to change gears this week and move on to another of my topics.  This week’s travels brought me to present at the first of five regional “Power Meetings” sponsored the Embassy Suites brand for their GM’s and DOS’s.  My client contact this week was Dottie Stowe, who turned out to be one of the sweetest and nicest new clients I’ve had.  She was so easy to work with at every juncture, and this was really appreciated during this busy time. 

It was great to be back in from of an Embassy Suites brand meeting, as this brand had been one of my best clients in the early days of HSA when I used to speak at a lot of such meetings for them as well as do cluster training.  Here’s a picture of me with Dottie Stowe:

                                       

 On The Road to New Orleans, October 27

My last stop of the month brought me back to New Orleans, which was intriguing to say the least after all the news reports we’ve seen coming out of their ever since Hurricane Katrina.  From the moment I landed it seemed a bit eerie and surreal, especially as I drove past the Superdome and the Convention Center, knowing all that had transpired.  But from what I saw, the city on the surface looked exactly the same.  Checking into the Embassy Suites Convention Center, one never would have known there was so much damage only a year before.

I wish I could have ventured out to Bourbon Street with some of the rest of the group, but my better judgment kicked-in after I remembered my past visits when I was in my 30’s and could drink all night and train all day.  So instead I decided to join my friend Shawn McAteer, VP of Sales & Marketing, along with another group of ES corporate folks at dinner along with Rick McCue, Senior VP of Brand.  Okay, well I have to admit that since they were inviting me to Emeril’s original restaurant it made it an easier decision. 

It was good to wake up in New Orleans feeling refreshed and well-rested for a change, unlike many past visits, and I was more than ready for my presentation that day.  Here’s a picture of me with the corporate team from Embassy Suites brand who attended the meeting and dinner.