With the end of the month involving so much travel, it was nice to have another full week in the office to work on some special projects with the team.  We also got to host Angela from Brett-Robinson, who has just been promoted to trainer and coach for their reservations center.  She was in town to be trained by our reservations coaches on setting up her own in-house program for call monitoring and coaching. 

It was also nice that my next trip was the highlight of our summer, which what has become an annual summer beach vacation with two other families we are friendly with from our kids Elementary school who have children the same ages.  It was really great to have a fully equipped luxury vacation condo, and each family took turns cooking a different night so it was never too stressful to feed such a large gang.  Plus the parents got their own table too!   Here’s a picture of most of the kids from our summer vacation.  (Adam and Julia are on the far right side.)  

                                            

Here’s a picture of our family on the beach:

                                            

In addition to having the wonderful resort and beach to enjoy, we also had a great location.  Cathy and I took the kids one day to visit Kennedy Space Center, and a second day all the families went to historic St. Augustine to visit.  I hadn’t been there for many years and was very impressed by how beautiful this quaint and historic gem was.  Being the oldest city in the USA, we got to see some interesting museums and attractions.  It’s definitely a place I’d return to with just Cathy to visit the museums, pubs and restaurants, or equally as eagerly with the whole family to spend more time at the museums. 

After dropping the kids back to their mom, Cathy and I each had only 24 hours to get ready to depart on business trips.  Hers was to visit the Marriott Headquarters in Bethesda, MD, which was also going to extend into attending a weekend visit for which I would be joining her.  As it was we both headed to the airport together since our flights were only 30 minutes apart.  We were both surprised to note that we were connecting through Atlanta, although on different flights, and would be able to meet for dinner during our layover, which was a very nice bonus.

I continued on to the Florida Panhandle, where I was to conduct pre-conference workshop and then do the opening Keynote for the Florida Vacation Rental Manager’s Association’s annual meeting.  Unbeknownst to me, I was flying right into the path of a just-named tropical depression named Claudette.  It was to hit later that evening.   As I was getting about 30 minutes out in my rental car I noticed how completely calm the weather was which seemed odd. I then turned on the radio and heard the announcement that the storm was to hit between Navarre Beach (which I had just crossed into) and Destin (which was my destination) at 11:30pm.  I looked at my clock and it said 11:25pm.  You can guess the rest of the story, and it did get a bit nasty as I was arriving.  Knowing the winds of this category storm cap out at about 50 MPH, I knew it couldn’t be to bad, but you can imagine it did add some adrenaline to the equation! 

The next day I had a wonderful time conducting the training for the 25 participants who had registered for my pre-conference workshop, and then catching up with many clients and friends at the FVRMA.  It was also great to meet new people, especially some of the interesting new suppliers who were there such as Jeremiah Gall, founder of the new FlipKey guest review site focusing on vacation rental companies, who has since gone into partnership with TripAdvisor.  It was also interesting to hear and meet other presenters such as Robert Kall, Presidentof Bookt, which is electronic distribution and branding specialist.  I have to say that I think this year’s conference planning committee did an excellent job putting together the agenda.   Here’s a picture of me with Paul Hayes, from RentKeyWest, who is this year’s FVRMA President right after my speech:  

                                                 

It was not by accident that my next stop was back home, which is where I needed to be for  the next two days as both Julia and Adam were about to start new schools, with Julia going into Middle School now.  Thankfully it all worked out that I was able to be there for
the Orientation on both days.  Here’s a picture of Julia and Adam in front of their new schools:  

                            

Next up was a quick trip for me to meet up with my wife Cathy in Washington, DC, where her business trip was now over.  Thankfully my flight was on time and we got a decent night’s sleep, because the next day we had a 2 hour drive to a remote area of Eastern Virginia, near where The Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay.  The 2 hours was just to the hotel, and thanks to Cathy we had left extra early, because the traffic and weather would be working against us.  After getting to our Holiday Inn Express room, we had about 4 hours to get ready for the 45 minute drive to the wedding.  Yet with each passing hour the rain intensified.  It was then that I turned on the Weather Channel and saw that for the second time in a week I going to be driving right into a tropical storm!  This time it was the outer bands of the power Hurricane Bill, which thankfully was a couple hundred miles due East, but still close enough to cause torrential rains which we had to drive through.  But then once we were there the storm passed, the wedding was beautiful, and we had a great time catching up with some of Cathy’s closest friends.  Since our flights back weren’t until Monday,  we even had a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon to visit Georgetown and some of the cafes and stores there.    Here’s a picture of Cathy and I before the wedding:  
                                                              

It was good to be back for most of the last week of August, which coincided with the kids first days of school.  Thankfully they are both doing really well at adjusting, which I was especially concerned for our Julia since she is also in the Honors program and has a huge academic load plus band.  But she is making it just fine and doing well. We are very blessed to have them both as our children.

August just wouldn’t give up before calling be back to the road once more, but I can’t complain too much about the travel since the destination was Runaway Bay, Jamaica, where I would be conducting training for the agents and managers of the reservations call center for SuperClubs, a resort hotel company having a diversity of upscale, all-inclusive, resorts throughout Jamaica, the Caribbean, and more recently in Brazil. 

This four night trip began on the last Sunday in August. Since we are now working so closely with this client on many levels, I also brought along Colleen Tuttle, our Managing Director, as she will be overseeing the monitoring-based reservations assessment and coaching reports which KTN will be producing in moving forward.  As soon as Colleen and I met-up with Sonia Hosein and Marjorie Garcia, the two executives from the Superclubs corporate office in Hollywood, FL office who would be traveling with us, we new we were going to have a wonderful time for the upcoming week.  Since their offices are located right here in Hollywood near ours, it was nice to be able to travel together to Breezes Runaway Bay resort, which is only minutes from their call center. 

Colleen and I had a wonderful time conducting the full-day workshops for the agents on Monday and Tuesday, and then also training their managers and supervisors on Wednesday.  What a special group of people they have on their team. They were one of the most enthusiastic, receptive, and interactive groups we’ve had in a long time and they really seemed to buy-into the main concepts of conversational selling from our SAILS program.  Here’s a picture of Colleen and I with our groups those days:

                                                        

                                                        

                                                       
 
                                                       
           
Since we were all staying at the same resort, it nice spending time socializing with Sonia and Marjorie during dinner and into the early evening.  The last two nights we were even joined by some of the managers and supervisors from the Superclubs call centers for dinner at the resort. On the last night, our entire group of about 8 attended the resort’s evening “Showtime” event, which included a trivia contest that Colleen won by a storm!  Although our evening included the group going to the disco followed by the piano bar, Colleen was back in that training room at 8am, as she’d volunteered to do a make-up session for two of the participants who missed the first part of the workshop, 90 minutes before the rest!  After our final workshop for the managers and a quick lunch at the resort’s buffet, Colleen and I had the rest of the afternoon off to visit a few of the sites and shops in Ocho Rios.  After meeting up with our companions for a final dinner back at Breezes Runaway Bay, we were all ready to turn in early for our early morning flight back.  Here’s a picture of Colleen and with with Sonia Hosein, Vice President of Distribution Operations, and Marjorie Garcia, Customer Service Manager: