Siegel Sez

Siegel Sez

Snow and Atlanta is definitely not the greatest combination. I was traveling to Amsterdam last Friday night to attend HFTP’s EHTEC Conference. My flight was scheduled to leave at 9:30 p.m., but knowing the airport was a mess all day with delays and cancellations I expected the worst. Believe it or not, at 9:30 p.m. we were pulling away from the gate. The bad news was we stopped 30-feet from the gate and the pilot announced we needed to wait to be de-iced. The news continued to get worse when she announced that the wait to get de-iced was about one hour and forty minutes. As it turned out she missed by a little. The actual wait time was four hours from the time of the announcement to our wheels leaving the ground. Since it was nearly 2 a.m. when we left, the good news was I slept all the way and that made the long flight easier to deal with. Hmmm, might they need a bit more de-icing help in Atlanta? I think so.

I didn’t get to Amsterdam until late Saturday afternoon. I bumped into Terry Price from the Grove Park Inn who is this year’s HFTP president. We had dinner together, but since he also flew overnight on Friday and didn’t sleep on the plane he crashed early. I decided to explore Amsterdam on foot and as I did many years ago. I got lost. I ended up wandering the streets for nearly three hours with occasional stops. If there is one city in the world to have adventures walking the streets and enjoying being lost, this is the city. It was an interesting time to say the least. Sunday was tourist day for me and I was actually trying to get into the Van Gogh Museum, but that wasn’t going to happen.  The exhibit is very popular and there were no tickets to be had. Where are the scalpers when you need one? Sunday night I went to dinner with Luis Segredo and Sam Acheampong from MTech, and Greg Hopkins from Libra OnDemand. As expected we were eventually asked to leave the restaurant. After all, it was Amsterdam, right?

EHTEC started on Monday morning and it was a great crowd, actually its biggest ever with 30 countries in attendance. This is a positive thing as we all look forward to HITEC in Orlando this year. The sessions were great and I spent a lot of time with other attendees throughout the day. I had a great forward-looking conversation with Doug Rice from HTNG (http://www.htng.org) about its upcoming meeting in Orlando. The HTNG ship does seem to be sailing in the right direction.  I also spent time with Carl Weldon the CEO from the British Association of Hospitality Accountants (http://www.baha.co.uk) who invited me to speak at their conference this year along with his agreeing to distribute our digital edition of Hospitality Upgrade to all the BAHA members.  Then I spent time with Carson Booth, the VP, information technology, Europe, Africa, Middle East for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, who enlightened this naive American that you don’t fly to Amsterdam from Brussels, it is like traveling from New Jersey to New York. Next time I will look at a map of Europe before I head over there.

After the sessions ended on Monday I was invited with a few others to tour the citizenM hotel in Amsterdam. The head-honcho Michael Levie gave us the tour and I am simply going to say if you are wondering if there are truly creative people in the hotel industry, he is one of them. How they made such tiny rooms feel so big is absolutely amazing. Currently there are two citizenMs open (both in Amsterdam) and a third opening is scheduled in Glasgow. He shared that New York is on the radar with two scheduled to open there. What very, very cool properties. Be sure to check them out at http://www.citizenm.com.  I brought back some great pictures from the conference, citizenM and Amsterdam in general that will be in our upcoming issue of Hospitality Upgrade. If you don’t receive our magazine in print or digitally, go to http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com. Will there be pictures that are embarrassing to some? Count on it.

To all who wished me a happy birthday yesterday, thanks. I have always been in denial about my birthday but thanks to Plaxo, LinkedIn and Facebook it is hard to hide anymore. Make sure you also wish Jon Inge a happy birthday. Yes, we share the same day (but not the same year).  I used to believe on this day I was another year older and another year wiser. Now I just think I am another year older, but it does beat the alternative.  Thanks again for the well wishes. Here now is the real reason we are here, Jon’s technology review of everything that is going on in our industry. I will see you at the end with this week’s attempt at you-know-what.

Technology NEWSSTAND

TOP O’ THE NEWS

- Keeping an open mind
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A couple of things recently got me thinking about the issue of over-personalization, or more precisely of external forces working to confine us to the limits of what they know about us and making us less complete, less human as a result.  One was the issue of the personal preferences property management and guest information systems keep about us.  On the one hand it’s definitely useful for a resort to keep information on our typical likes and dislikes so that we don’t have to keep on asking for the same things, such as feather pillows, on every visit. 

On the other, just because I’ve been canoeing on every visit so far doesn’t mean that this is all I want to do on future visits, when there are dozens of alternative activities I might prefer instead.  Don’t limit me to just what little you know about me from past behavior.  If I’ve ordered a good cabernet with dinner on the last three occasions, I don’t necessarily want it with every meal in the future; it may just be that I like good wine, and next time will order a similar quality level of wine that goes with whatever I feel like eating that night.  Keep an eye on the forest, not the trees.

Similarly, I’m disturbed by Google’s recent unilateral decision to filter your search results (unless you specifically disable the feature) to give priority to topics you’ve searched before.  This can be useful if it returns more relevant results but it will also suppress information I might not have been specifically looking for but would find useful, interesting or both.  I want my search engine to be completely impartial, not to feed me information it thinks is good for me.  That’s what propaganda machines do.

This same trend is all too easy to fall into in our general lives.  There’s so much information on the Internet and TV tailored to very specific viewpoints that it’s way too easy to restrict your viewing and listening to only those channels that support your singular mindset.  But such an exclusionary approach is dangerously divisive; if I never hear your viewpoint, let alone find even a glimpse of how you came to your conclusions, how am I going to understand and get along with you?  Of such narrow divisions are society’s walls built.  I’m all in favor of unfettered freedom of speech, but I think it would be hugely valuable to introduce a random element somewhere that occasionally slips in an opposing viewpoint, just to get our minds working.

Walt Whitman put it succinctly, as always:
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Let us be the complex, multifaceted beings we really are.  Stimulate our minds and experiences, don’t limit them; it’s the only way we can grow. 

What’s your opinion?  Am I worrying too much about this?  Go to my Web site (http://www.joninge.com) and post your comments.
**

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

RESERVATIONS

MARKETING/MANAGEMENT

REVENUE MANAGEMENT

SALES & CATERING, MEETING PLANNING

F&B/POINT OF SALE

SPA/GOLF/LEISURE ACTIVITIES

GUEST SERVICES

BACK OFFICE

INVENTORY/PURCHASING

ENGINEERING

SECURITY

- The Turnberry Resort implements VingCard’s Signature RFID door locks
- Le Méridien Qingdao installs VingCard VISION lock system with Signature door locks
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The Turnberry Resort, Turnberry, Scotland has implemented VingCard’s Signature RFID door locks with NFC cell phone compatibility and Elsafe’s SENTINEL II in-room safes in all 100+ guestrooms. 

The Le Méridien Qingdao, Qingdao, China has installed a VingCard VISION lock system with Signature by VingCard electronic door locks in all 348 guestrooms. 
http://www.turnberryresort.co.uk, http://www.lemeridien.com/qingdao, http://www.vingcard.com
**

You-Know-What

And now for you-know-what…

A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs.

He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed.  Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands.

With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.  Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. There, spread out on newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies.

Was it heaven?  Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table.  The aged and withered hand, shaking, made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when he was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife.

"Stay out of those," she said. "They're for the funeral."