June 01, 2010
Publisher's Letter
Richard Siegel
Those of you who visited our
www.hospitalityupgrade.com Website and clicked on HUTube and watched my 60 seconds of fame at this year’s Kentucky Derby pretty much all reacted to the woman who hosted the segment who described me as being “different.” I think I need to accept that I am different and not fight it anymore. Is being different bad? I will give myself credit for one thing, I would never have thrived for 18 years in this business without surrounding myself with great people and I have successfully done that. I think they keep me in line when my wacky way of looking at business and life gets the best of me. Last issue I let them override my veto when we put the couple in bed on the cover of the magazine, and as I look back, they were absolutely right. We received thousands upon thousands of comments regarding what we did. The consensus was simply that it was different. Wow, am I influencing people? So now that we are into creative covers for our magazine, what do you think of this issue’s attempt at being different? Yes, something was missing, but those who have been following the big change in our industry know exactly what the message is. Those who don’t will open it up to find out, and the more that open the magazine, talk about it, reference it and share it both in print and digitally, then everybody benefits including our writers, our advertisers and those that we embarrassed in the four pages of Siegel Sez pictures we have in this issue.
We expect this issue to be read and passed around more than usual. If you look at the editorial, which is very timely with all the changes going on in the industry, from Jon Inge’s feature on virtualization and cloud computing to Jeremy Rock’s very complete and important look at what to do if your property has been breached. It is scary how vulnerable our industry is today though much progress has been made. I strongly suggest you read Jeremy’s article and share it with those responsible for protecting your data. I also suggest you check out the Table of Contents on page 6, which lists everything in this issue including some of our offbeat features, as well as Geneva’s synopsis on page 8 summarizing what our great writers shared in this issue. We are proud of the quality editorial we deliver every issue—we think it is simply the best.
Are you reading this before HITEC? At HITEC? If you are attending, please come by our booth No. 823. We are so thankful to be the official technology magazine at HITEC, we get so many new readers because of our exposure in the attendee registration bags. There are many great events in the industry, but there is only one HITEC. As I look at those registered this year, the quality of the attendees never ceases to amaze me. I will be doing two sessions this year, but what I am most excited about is Geneva who has been working with me for 15 years is finally getting a chance to speak at one of the sessions titled "Driving Revenue through Online Marketing." She will be balancing out the other panelists when it comes to creating or redesigning your Website. She led our charge when we did our overhaul this year; the accolades have been wonderful and the growth of the site is unbelievable. Amazing how many start their day checking out the industry news we update daily.
Thanks to all the CEOs who joined us in Houston this year for our Sixth Annual Executive Vendor Summit. Kris did a fantastic job with the review of this very different event (page 60). We also have the video of the event on our Website thanks to our friends at Realview TV. They will also be at our Ninth Annual CIO Summit in San Francisco, Sept. 8-10. Early indications are that we will easily surpass our record crowd last year, which was absolutely amazing considering what the industry was going through. How nice will it be that during the golf tournament instead of hitting my ball into a lake I can now hit one into the Pacific. I can’t wait.
We are now halfway through 2010 and the recovery continues. Optimism is running rampant; the projects that were put on hold last year are now being implemented. Though we are not where we were two years ago, we are getting there. Someone once said the health of the industry is directly related to the size of each issue of Hospitality Upgrade. I wish it was that simple, but our support is nothing short of wonderful. Thank you all for your confidence in us and for reading and using our magazine and Website as a great reference for those who develop solutions for the industry. I think this is my 27th HITEC, but I am sure it is my 18th year since I published my little newsletter in 1992. Our next venture will be announced very soon so I am going to hold off sharing it with you. But I can promise you one thing, it will be different.
Rich
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