On The Road TO Bend, OR, and Charleston, SC
On The Road To Navis Technologies’ Narrowcast User’s Conference,
After enjoying an office week following my return from Snowmass, I soon found myself back on the same Delta outbound flight to Salt Lake, this time connecting on to Redmond, OR and then taking the short drive to my ultimate destination, which as Mt. Bachelor Village Resort in Bend where I was to be the keynote speaker at the Navis Technologies’ first ever Narrowcast User’s conference. This was an exciting engagement for several reasons, one being that I find the Narrowcast product to be the single most exciting technological development in hospitality marketing of this decade. The ability of the system to record and log all inbound calls, and along the way capture mailing addresses of the callers and create lead tracking forms, allows for a whole new layer of insight into marketing campaign effectiveness. Of course from the training perspective the ability to listen-in on real calls from real callers provides a much better tool for not only quality assurance but also agent coaching and training.
But besides all that, the best part of this engagement was that I was certain to see some of my closest and longest-standing client-friends in the resort industry, many of whom have signed-up for Narrowcast on my recommendation. I have to also add that it was very impressive to see the Navis sales and customer service team – “customer advocates” as they so aptly refer to them - in action at this extremely well-run conference. Below are pictures from the conference. On the left you can see me with Betsy LeBarge from Cascade/Mt. Hood Vacations along with Kyle Buehener, President/CEO of Navis. On the right you can see me with my very dear friend,
As is typical for me, despite that it was an incredibly radiant spring day in this mountain resort, and that I’d already done 10 hours work if you count e-mailing and phone calls before my talk, immediately after the conference I was back in my rental car headed for the airport. Since flights back from
Fortunate also for me that when I awoke that morning and saw the huge crowd waiting for the van I was able to find a taxi driver sleeping in his cab in their parking lot and wake him up to take me to the airport, and when I got to LAX I remembered what I should have known, which is how long the lines can be for their early AM departures. When I checked in there was hardly any other passengers, but within probably 7 minutes the line snaked out the door and beyond my view. Through no small miracles of modern day air travel, and after living through a harrowing taxi ride from
On The Road to Gateway Hospitality,
But it was to be a short weekend, and right after we sent the kids back home to mom Cathy was driving me back to the airport. This time only for comparably short trip though, which was a one-day area-wide workshop I was to do for Gateway Hospitality Management’s
How lucky I was once again that day to even make it to my destination, as a pop-up tropical disturbance, which had formed over land the night before causing severe thunderstorms, had disrupted traffic in
Monday AM did come a little too early that day, but whatever cobwebs from the night before were wiped away as I entered the meeting room at the Hawthorne Suites in Charleston that day and met the enthusiastic participants, including and especially a gentleman from night audit who had just come off a shift, which wiped-out any self-pity I had for my short night’s sleep. Knowing how hard it has been historically to staff the audit shift with a reliable “warm body,” let alone find talent in a labor market of low unemployment that is willing and able to work this shift, I was very impressed to find out what shift Groven worked. At first from the comments he made I thought he was a general manager, but when we spoke at the break and he shared stories of how much he enjoys the night shift because so many guests stop by just to talk at odd hours, I knew he truly understood hospitality like a short list of others in our industry.
How nice it was to be working with Gateway, which had been a client since its formation in the mid 1990’s by Sam Agee and Clancy Cipkala. Although I didn’t get a chance to see either that day, I was very impressed that they sent all of their GM’s and guest contact staff to attend my workshop on revenue optimization at the front desk. Here’s a picture of me with some of the participants, including Alfreda from the front office and Groven, who was the night auditor I’d spoken of.
Thankfully, I was back on April 17 I was finally off the road for the better part of two weeks, which was especially timely as I got to spend lots of extra time with the kids. I was especially grateful to have been able to be there for my Julia’s third straight “A Honor Roll” ceremony, which was the only one I was able to make this year, and to attend Adam’s last basketball games of the season. It was also fortunate to have this break in the action, as May was to prove to be my record month ever for the number of days of training conducted.
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