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Opening Pandora’s Box

As a sequel to the three-part article Thinking for Yourself May Be the Only Regimen for Recovery (1, 2, 3) written at the very beginning of the pandemic, we are publishing this sequel which builds on the original observations and questions concerning the pandemic to take a hard and dissenting look at the elephant in the room that may well trample over the plans of those hoping for a recovery.

Few people in hospitality want to be so politically incorrect and unprofessional as to talk about the proverbial elephant in the room1 of every hospitality venue since Spring 2020, cutting across revenue, the guest experience, and staffing. Being hoteliers who are naturally cheerful and prefer to focus on pleasant subjects, we responded by putting on a bright face and working out eventually how to deal with the new reality: Go digital, do whatever we can to bring in and retain “What’s in it for Me?” staff, assuage guest fears with cleaning theater, hope our government will not shut down travel again at the next supposed variant, juggle mismatched supply and demand, oxymoronically2 improve service by reducing personal contact with guests, and so on.
To continue the elephant analogy, trying to work out what exactly this elephant is in order to deal with it properly has parallels with the ancient Indian parable of a group of blind men who each touched a different part of an elephant and shared their limited observations only to find these differed from their colleagues’ observations and so, instead of combining their observations into a fuller picture, they argued vociferously3 about what this elephant might be.
With the ongoing censorship of any information that contradicts the official narratives on various topics (Homeland Security in the US has just announced that this activity is terrorism and will be investigated by the State apparatus), we have been thrown into the role of blind men, unable to see and consider facts and make informed judgements for ourselves. What follows will be considered a “conspiracy theory”4 by some—to whom I say, “Quit reading if you must—but bear in mind this phrase was created in 1967 by the CIA to discredit anyone challenging the official findings concerning President Kennedy’s assassination—and that narrative, as with any cover-up, turned out to be patently false.”
“Conspiracy theory” is trotted out as the standard response to any information that threatens to shake the firmly held worldview a person has built to fend off the confusions of life. This impulse is understandable, but for anyone aware that only the truth can set them free from lies/misinformation, it might be a good idea to continue reading, because what appears to be on the horizon for hospitality may be a mirage/wishful thinking. In effect, whistling past the graveyard5 may not be the best strategy.
Although Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter may open the information spigots for the thousands of professionals who have been crying foul on the events of the past two years and the future that is planned for us, and thus may be a source of new perspectives for the majority, until now most of these experts have only been able to communicate through newer social media such as Gettr, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal, and via independent web sites. So, anyone relying on the mainstream and social media for news and perspectives may well be surprised by the balance of this article.
Let’s start with the bigger picture: There have been over 300 civilizations in Earth’s recorded history, and where are they now? Given the constant onslaught of dire situations popping up around us over the last few years, amplified by the fear-mongering media, we could well be forgiven for wondering whether this one has many more sunrises and seasons left to enjoy. It may well if we look beyond apparent realities conjured up by the authorities and instead focus on the actual realities we face. And so, here in rapid succession are statements of realities that have been hidden and which could, for the sake of argument, be considered as possibly true—this article does not have space for lengthy footnotes designed to prove facts are facts, so everyone is free to do their own research to dispel any doubt either way.
The number of unscientific mandates, fake statistics (i.e. millions will die from Covid; hundreds of thousands have died from Covid; and in the end, less than 4% of those we were told had died of Covid had actually died of Covid), and faulty management decisions that impacted our industry are legion. When all the dust/virus had settled, though, while the authorities did acknowledge their mistakes after enough experts were brave enough to speak up despite the threats against them personally, we are left with a pandemic that wasn’t one at all, but was used to generate fear worldwide and make it possible to remove every single one of the thirty Human Rights as detailed in the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the individual rights written into the constitutions of many countries around the world; the entire world economy collapsed; hospitals were not actually overflowing, but millions were unable to receive other needed medical treatment; no more people died of Covid than die of the flu each year (which strangely enough, almost nobody died of in 2020/21 according to medical records); the mandated vaccines, which were not actually vaccines but experimental drugs to change the DNA of those injected, have resulted in millions of deaths and injuries with many more to come from delayed deaths due to the jabs knocking out immune systems and introducing diseases—just one statistic to consider: For every child who died of covid, 170 died of the vaccines. The masks, social distancing, PCR testing, and lockdowns proved with hindsight for governments—although they were informed properly up front by enough medical and other experts—to have made not one ounce/28 grams of difference regarding health and safety.
In other words, Much Ado About Nothing, as Shakespeare may have entitled a play he could have written were he alive today—except the original was a comedy and the pain and suffering caused by governmental responses would make such a re-write a tragedy without peer.
Our industry was the first to tank as travel was shut down and lockdowns went into effect, and it has still to recover, with occupancy down and rates up generally. While optimists work hard to bring hospitality back to life, stubbornly hanging onto their humor and sense of fun, as one industry writer opined, the pessimists hang on in general as best they can, and the realists consider how best to deal with the unfolding future.
Which is what?
We have vaccine passports already being implemented on the back of the push for them during the pandemic and planned by the WHO to be made universal requirements for travel and even to operate in society. This will prevent 90% of the world that is not fully vaccinated/boosted, as required, from travelling. As the compromised immune system of the fully vaccinated makes them 3x more likely to contract Covid and 5x more likely to die of it than the unvaxxed, those who are eligible to travel will ultimately be a dwindling demographic while the unvaxxed will be even more determined to avoid the death/clot shots (as they are increasingly coming to be known) from the spike proteins inserted into the experimental DNA drug (ask the hundreds of athletes who have been dropping down and out, including 15 of the fully vaccinated players at the 2022 Miami Tennis Open—and then check back for a final count in five years, which is the length of time myocarditis6 from these clots generally takes to kill 56% of those who have it).
As travel is being discouraged by various policies and campaigns because of claimed global warming, who except those with private airplanes and yachts will be able to travel?
As the vaccine passport is planned to be morphed into a digital passport stored within a chip under the skin and linked to bank accounts, those who question authority or fail to follow the social-engineering rules, monitored by ubiquitous cameras with facial-recognition software as in China already, as well as GPS in the chip, will have their accounts frozen (as happened to those demonstrating peacefully in Canada recently), making it hard to travel, especially once cash is removed from society and only Central Bank Digital Currencies are accepted as legal tender.
And most immediately, how do we keep staff fed and guests serviced when the supply chain continues to be sabotaged, and particularly when there is no food to transport? Most people are oblivious to the actions being taken to wipe out crops, herds, flocks, and food storage and processing centers which can only lead to an untimely end for close to a billion already living on the edge and bring the rest to the inescapable realization that food is so scarce that we need to eat bugs, weeds, and lab-grown meat, drink sewage water, and agree to a one-world government and all its programs. It would be nice if they were joking.
So next question: Who is they?
A number of individuals and groups, but directing the show is the unelected World Economic Forum and its cohorts7 of “elites,” as they regard, and even refer to, themselves. WEF is responsible for the election of most key figures in Western governments that rammed through all the Covid measures in the name of public safety—in the process cancelling the rights, livelihoods, and freedoms of all citizens. Check out the WEF web site for a flavor of their power and where they are taking us. As its leader, Mr. Klaus Schwab, pointed out, “Covid is critical because this is what convinces people to accept total biometric surveillance.” Talking of his grand plan, called The Great Reset that he has been trumpeting as the solution for all that ails humankind, he famously said, “You will own nothing and be happy,” a notion that will not gain much traction from anyone who has emerged from communist or impoverished countries; and while we may own nothing, we can rest assured he and his kind will not be joining us in such a self-abnegating8 sacrifice.
The wish of citizens to trust and comply with an authority believed to be acting in their best interests is slow to erode, but eventually the most blatant of excesses and nonsensical directives being pointed out by those with critical thinking skills and a measure of integrity, embolden the majority to start thinking for themselves, too, with mounting distrust for the motives and actions of those entrusted to look after the public good. At a WEF conference in November 2021, attendees lamented that the “common man” in all countries no longer respects them…one wonders why.

Could it be because they took advantage of the pandemic to increase their wealth by 54% while “common people” lost their jobs and became poorer? Or because—while everyone else was locked down and masked under duress, forbidden to associate with friends and family, say goodbye to loved ones on their death beds, or enjoy social events—the elite partied without masks, flew in CO2-spewing private jets to climate-change conferences at which they complained that the living standards, energy consumption, and CO2-spewing travel-habits of common people were ruining the world. Could it be that the Nuremburg Code demanding informed consent before conducting medical experiments was being ignored in the name of public safety and that hundreds of millions preferring not to be part of a medical experiment were demonized and denied basic freedoms; or that thousands of medical experts questioning the narrative (or the other official narratives such as global warming/climate change or “Russia is bad”) were smeared, silenced, de-platformed, fired, and even murdered where they could not be bribed, blackmailed, or threatened to toe the line.

In an honest world, truthful and accurate information does not need to be enforced or protected by such dictatorial actions. So how come these people felt it appropriate to behave so selfishly and commit such a monstrous series of crimes?
As they themselves have stated openly, their intent is to reduce the world population by 90%, with the elite remaining and enough worker bees to service them and managers and soldier ants to keep the worker bees in line. A solution to saving us all that includes the death of 9 out of every 10 individuals might be considered an extreme solution by all but the barking mad. So, it is not surprising that this kind of solution is one in a long line of unethical solutions that have ended us all up where we are now and ironically provided the elite with the rationale for their actions. Humanity struggles with hunger, water shortages, disease, pollution, constant conflicts and wars, etc., and yet we have seen the same elites suppressing technologies or ideas that could improve things for humankind while enriching themselves from the resulting conflicts over shortages. Limitless free and non-polluting energy has been available for a century thanks to the likes of Nikola Tesla. Technology exists to grow all the food the world needs without pollution; or to tap into huge amounts of clean water. Such ideas are destroyed to protect the status quo and income streams of the elite; the programs they fund may claim to resolve these issues, but the results speak otherwise.
The future these people are engineering, if they succeed, will mean very few hotels, and those mostly 5* for the “lucky few.”
And how lucky are they? Not at all, actually, despite their material possessions and power. If they succeed in their plan, by their nature they trust nobody (Stalin famously said he trusted nobody, not even himself) and so will start to stab each other in the back as they are doing to their fellow citizens right now, and spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop or the Sword of Damocles. They cannot really enjoy themselves because what goes on behind the fake smiles or the sour faces is a continuous chitter chatter internally about how horrible the person(s) they are talking to is and scheming how to undermine them. All the while, they may convince themselves they are doing the right thing, but deep down, they know that what goes around comes around, and they themselves would certainly not like to experience what they want us to experience.
The intent here is not to mirror them by wishing them ill. Some of them we have even serviced as butlers, professional to the core, determined to make their lives as comfortable and happy as possible, but that is generally a losing battle, for you may recognize these characters, whether or not wealthy, as the really unpleasant guests who make you feel small and useless, your best intentions and efforts made nothing of, even wondering whether hospitality is right for you. They have very specific characteristics that you need to know in order not to take a dive when dealing with them.
For our part, in the bigger picture, we have to ask ourselves, if all this is actually to come to pass, as one of the survivors would we want to work in hotels when most people we know had been eliminated, where we have to eat bugs, enjoy no rights, and smiling faces are replaced by sullen ones as experienced in dismal East German hotels during the second half of the 20th Century, where everyone reported on everyone else to the Stasi9? Do we really want to live and work in the kind of technological, economic rat-race, and police state that always results when people who are barking mad plan everyone’s life?
If not, then we all need to do something as a group to change the trajectory. Continuing to ignore the elephant in the room and focusing on how to make the best of the dwindling freedoms open to us will not change anything, no matter how positive we are—the universe only bends to our wishes when some action is applied to it.
These elites lording it over worker bees, enforcers and managers is not a new phenomenon—it almost seems like the natural order of things, but it does not mean it is a game worth preserving even for the elite, as they always go down in flames with each civilization they manage to collapse.
There is nothing wrong with having elites if they are ethical, respecting human rights; where we have gone wrong time and again as a race is not learning to recognize and stand up to individuals who have lost their way, especially those using their positions of power destructively for those they are trusted to manage. They exist across a full spectrum of groups, human activities, and locations, yet in small numbers compared with the rest of us—which is a key weakness for them. They are the ones who drive down individuals and whole societies by creating division and fear and engineering situations that threaten our survival and tie the rest of us up with worry and frantic activity to resolve—because as mentioned earlier, bad situations do not just happen—excepting natural disasters—but are engineered by specific individuals, often working behind the scenes.
To find out more, do your own research using the Brave browser and its search engine, as these have the least censoring of search results so you can move beyond mainstream media, social media and government censorship to educate yourself.
You can also attend free webinars listed on the home pages of Defending Humanity (on human rights) and Joining Forces (on the current agenda, how it violates human rights, and how to spot and deal with evil individuals).
As optimistic realists, we can learn from these trying times and create again the kind of hospitality that is founded on solicitous service and taking joy in helping orchestrate the happiness of others—and beyond that, in helping create a society that is founded on respect for each other, in which technical advances are not used to push down or even replace humankind, but to benefit it—every last one of us, seven billion and counting.

1 Elephant in the room: An obvious and major issue that people avoid acknowledging or discussing
2 Oxymoronic: The combining of words with opposite meanings that create a seeming contradiction but which actually point out something that is quite sharp—deafening silence is an example
3 Vociferously: Spoken in a loud and forceful manner
4 Conspiracy theory: Identifying the secretive coordinated actions of a usually powerful group as the cause of some harmful event, contradicting the official narrative
5 Whistling past the graveyard: Ignoring, or attempting to stay cheerful and hopeful of a good outcome in the face of, an upcoming hazard or dire situation
6 Myocarditis: Inflammation of the heart muscle
7 Cohorts: The individuals who support a particular person, usually a leader
8 Self abnegating: Renouncing one’s own interests
9 Stasi: East German secret police

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Thinking for Yourself May Be the Only Regimen for a Full Recovery, Part III

“Most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.” 

G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State

In the last two weeks, we compared the demands made by governments (to protect us from a vicious and omnipresent viral scourge) to the harmful results (economic, health, individual freedoms) brought about by acquiescing to those demands while no pandemic materialized. We examined the censorship of all information departing from the official narrative and the harmful nature of the enforced vaccinations that lack efficacy and consistently demonstrate harm. This week, we examine who has been pushing this travesty and offer solutions to help put an end to the monkey business so the hospitality industry, and society in general, can regain diversity and its former joie de vivre.

Special Interest Groups with Undisclosed Agendas

There is no doubt that there are as many agendas, both hidden and open, regarding this pandemic as there are companies, associations, and individuals who would benefit in some way—such as from a vaccine being enforced on the worldwide population; or governments of certain countries or even political parties, etc. positioning themselves in pursuit of their own interests (certain Democratic party leaders, for instance, are on record as saying they should take advantage of the pandemic to pass laws favorable to their political goals or to oust a sitting president. Even the WHO has an agenda, including trying to levy a 10% tax on all countries to “fight the virus.”

Vaccines are the cornerstone upon which governments are relying for their Covid-19 strategy, yet as covered earlier in this series, vaccinations for viruses have limited efficacy and plenty of downsides.

One might be curious as to what is driving this fixation for mandatory vaccines as the solution, especially considering the normally lengthy time-to-market for such vaccines and the concomitant financial collapse being visited upon the entire planet.

Curiously enough, key players seem to be the richest individuals in the world and their foundations: Mr. Rockefeller and his foundations and the same Mr. Gates who brought us buggy software programs (disclaimer—the author is a decades-long Macophile).

The stage was set “in the early 1900s, [when] America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural-healing modalities were unscientific quackery. Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic, and toxic drugs. Once people had become dependent on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the Rockefellers. Currently, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US. Rockefeller’s weapon to success was the strategy known as, “problem-reaction-solution.” Create a problem, escalate fear, then offer a pre-planned solution. Sound familiar?”  Plandemic movie literature

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

Lysander Spooner

Using this preferred medicine paradigm, the fledgling pharmaceutical industry, took advantage of the millions of American Army recruits called up for war in 1917 to test up to 25 vaccines designed to cause a mild case of the disease they were supposed to prevent—the problem being that it was impossible to predict whether the case would be mild, severe, or fatal—as some prove to be instantly. Many of the vaccines brought about unrelated diseases, such as the smallpox vaccine causing syphilis, paralysis, leprosy, and cancer. The yellow fever vaccine alone resulted in 63 deaths and 28,585 cases of hepatitis in half a year. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York oversaw the Bacterial Meningitis Vaccination Experiment at Fort Riley Kansas in 1918, wherein thousands of US Army recruits were vaccinated with a horse-cultured vaccine. These soldiers exported the Spanish Flu as it came to be known to the world, killing up to 100 million people with bacterial pneumonia (not a flu or virus)—the largest death-event in recorded history.

Mr. John D. Rockefeller’s debut in the field of medicine left something to be desired. Was he a doctor? No, a rapacious oil tycoon and a businessman interested in accumulating even more money and power. If Mr. Rockefeller really wanted to protect his fellow citizens, he would not have engaged in the strategy outlined above, focusing on the use of chemicals as outlets for his oil empire that are only capable of alleviating symptoms, rather than the preferred (for citizens) focus on preventing or curing diseases. To downplay this contrast, the medical community has lobbied for it to be illegal in the US, at least, to cure, or to state that one can cure anything and has conditioned patient expectations to managing symptoms, not enjoying a cure. Any doctors who cure patients find themselves on a fast track to being shut down, often at gunpoint or simply murdered.

Note: This is not an attack on western medicine, which definitely has its place, as do traditional, alternative, and integrative medicines. A true medical science focused on prevention, alleviating, and curing would be good for patients, but not the pocketbooks of pharmaceutical and other vested interests that profit from managing sickness rather than health.

Mr. Gates Switches from Software to Vaccines

In March 2017, Mr. Gates told the US President, who was concerned about vaccine safety, not to establish a Vaccine Safety Commission headed by Robert Kennedy, Jr. so it was not set up. Just to be clear, Mr. Gates is not a public health expert, a doctor, an epidemiologist nor an infectious disease expert. He is simply one of the richest men in the world, which does not give him expertise in medical matters, but does in making money (and computer programs, specifically, although stealing software and control and “brain rape” of competitor breakthroughs may not reflect software genius so much as a deficient business ethics).

Looking at how Mr. Gates (the Rockefeller Foundation and others) has been steering this whole pandemic response, let’s examine a partial timeline of Covid-19 activities involving Mr. Gates or his Foundation over the last nine months:

  1. October 18, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted Event 201 in New York, a high-level simulation of a coronavirus pandemic that predicted 65 million deaths within 18 months
  2. February 4, 2020 with eleven active cases in the USA, Dr. Fauci (Director of the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID] of the National Institute of Health [NIH] and also on the Board of Directors of the Gates Foundation) quietly pushed through regulations giving coronavirus vaccine makers full immunity from liability, in order to accommodate Mr. Gates, who had been funding multiple vaccine development efforts and owns major stakes in the leading vaccine makers; he had refused to distribute any vaccines until the government agreed to indemnify vaccine producers against lawsuits—he was worried about the dangers of adverse reactions to vaccines, a real concern as reported by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “Scientists first attempted to develop a coronavirus vaccine after China’s 2002 SARS-CoV outbreak. Teams of US & foreign scientists vaccinated animals with the four most promising vaccines. At first, the experiment seemed successful as all the animals developed a robust antibody response to coronavirus. However, when the scientists exposed the vaccinated animals to the wild virus, the results were horrifying. Vaccinated animals suffered hyper-immune responses including inflammation throughout their bodies terminating with fatal lung infections. Researchers had seen this same ‘enhanced immune response’ during human testing of the failed RSV [a respiratory virus]  vaccine tests in the 1960s.”
  3. Mid-February, Microsoft software used by Neil Ferguson, the British epidemiologist at Gates-funded Imperial College in London, predicted the Wuhan virus, in the absence of an extended lockdown, would result in 2.2 million American and 500,000 British deaths. Thus were lockdowns initiated in both countries and elsewhere—whereas the evidence given earlier in this article shows that with or without lockdowns, mortality rates are low and occurring in the old and ill, not the entire population—which would really call for a quarantine of at-risk individuals, not all of society;
  4. March 13, 2020, Mr. Gates resigned from Microsoft, saying he wanted to focus on his “philanthropy;”
  5. March 18, 2020, Mr. Gates says “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” Such a system is being introduced into Bangladesh as part of project ID2020 to create a global digital ID, beginning with immunizations, and “ultimately, supporting access to rights and services throughout one’s life-course.”—all backed by the UN, the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations. Mr. Gates funded an invisible Quantum Dot to be tattooed onto the skin of children to identify those who have been vaccinated (December 2019, MIT).
  6. March 27, 2020, Dr. Fauci, as head of the White House’s coronavirus task force, fast-tracked his own vaccine (partially funded by Mr. Gates) and seven of Mr. Gates’ vaccines, setting aside the vital animal trials normally conducted that would provide early warning of runaway and fatal immune responses (as happened with SARS vaccine trials in 2002). Full testing protocols are especially important for these Covid-19 vaccines as the new technology being introduced includes risky genetically engineered vaccines—mRNA vaccines, for instance, use nanotechnology to transport the RNA of the virus inside liquid droplets into every cell of the body and reprogram them to produce the virus’ spike protein and so confer immunity. April 4, 2020, Mr. Gates announced the investment of billions of dollars to build seven factories to start making various Covid-19 vaccines;
  7. April 5, 2020, Mr. Gates announced on Fox Business News “It is fair to say things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.” This position, and implementing a digital proof of vaccination, was echoed by Dr. Fauci;
  8. Mr. Gates is the #1 funder of the World Health Organization, which withheld information given to them by Taiwan on December 31 about human-to-human transmission of the Wuhan virus, ignored statements from Wuhan doctors to the same effect, and stated on January 22 that the coronavirus did not pose a public health emergency of international concern, thereby justifying continued international travel from Wuhan and China. All the while, the WHO praised China’s response despite their continued obfuscation of the real situation. Then the WHO created an international panic and global depression by overstating the mortality rate of COVID-19. As a side note, the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeus, who mismanaged the Covid-19 crisis, is not a doctor but is a member of two Ethiopian communist parties linked to terrorism. He covered up three cholera outbreaks in the country while Minister of Health and he made it to Director-General of the WHO after a stint as Chair of the Gates-funded Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and as a Board member of the Gates-funded Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI);
  9. May, 4, 2020, the Gates Foundation is exposed greasing the wheels with $10 million in bribes to lawmakers for the smooth passage of a mandatory vaccine law in Nigeria, even though The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control had no input and opposed the bill;
  10. May, 2020, Bill Gates suggests on CNBC that 700,000 could suffer side effects from any new vaccine (0.001%);
  11. May, 23/24, two of the fast-tracked Gates vaccines prove to be a failure, when all the inoculated monkeys fell ill, yet they forged right ahead with the human trials; the second vaccine trial with Moderna was too brief and small to be significant, but resulted in 20% of the high-dose recipients becoming severely ill, which fact was withheld from the public. With such rushed and perfunctory trials, it is hard to see how only 0.001% recipients would suffer side effects, as claimed by Mr. Gates, whereas the trials showed 20%-100%. The media painted the trials as great successes, but when these facts were made known by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., they were removed immediately by Facebook.

Following the Money is Usually Good Therapy for Cases of Fraud

Mr. Gates is not the only player working the vaccine angle behind the scenes—there is also Dr. Fauci.

1984 to present, Dr. Fauci has been serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as such, led the charge in dealing with viral diseases like HIV (to disastrous results), SARS, the 2009 swine flu, MERSEbola and COVID-19. He oversaw labs working on research that mutates and genetically modifies viruses that are already harmful in order to make them even more harmful (gain of function);

2012, Dr. Fauci is appointed to the Leadership Council of the Gates Foundation-created Global Vaccine Action Plan;

October 2014, the US government passed a moratorium on  gain of function research;

2015, under Dr. Fauci’s direction, the North Carolina University lab ignored this moratorium, taking the SHC014 strain of the coronavirus, adding the “backbone” of the SARS virus, and inserting HIV and MERS orthologs (genes shared by different species) to create SARS-CoV-2; another scientific analysis explains why the virus is genetically engineered and not natural;

2019, Dr. Fauci transferred $7.4 million of taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the National Institute of Health to create a more virulent virus;

November 17, the first case of Covid-19 is recorded in Wuhan;

19 January, The first Covid-19 patient to be treated in the US was given Remsdesivir and recovered—even though no trials had been conducted and were only started in the US at the end of February—it being curious why the doctors would have selected Remsdesivir;

Remsdesivir is made by just one company: Gilead Sciences at a reported cost of $9 to manufacture while selling it for $3,000 for a 6 vial treatment. Their Covid-19 trial had no control group so no way of demonstrating that Remdesivir works better than other treatments. The government trial included a randomized control group, but mid-trial, the doctors gave the control group Remsdesivir, too, nullifying any possibility of knowing the effectiveness of the drug. The results? 8% of Remdesivir patients died vs. 11.6% in the control group, and recovery times were reportedly reduced from 15 days on the placebo to 11 days. In other words, miniscule gains, even assuming that the unprofessionally executed tests were valid. A smaller Chinese trial at the same time showed no benefit from Remsdesivir.

Despite these lackluster results, and the fact that Remsdesivir already failed to achieve results with another viral outbreak, Ebola (being too expensive and resulting in a 33% death rate compared with another drug with a 6% death rate) and with significant known side effects, Dr. Fauci asserted Remdesivir would “be the standard of care” for Covid-19 and one million vials of the drug were shipped to US hospitals at the beginning of May.

Dr. Fauci has a long and fraudulent history of medical malpractice with Gilead Sciences, as well as other companies: He developed a false-positive-prone test for AIDS and gained FDA fast-track approval for Burroughs Wellcome’s chemotherapy drug, AZT as a “preventive drug” for HIV-diagnosed patients. According to Roberto A. Giraldo, MD and Etienne de Harven, MD, the scientist who produced the first electron micrograph of a retrovirus, “None of these tests detect the HIV virus itself, nor do they detect HIV particles…more than 70 different documented conditions [including influenza, the common cold, and pregnancy] can cause the antibody tests to react positive without an HIV infection…. The fact that after 25 years of intense research HIV has been neither isolated nor purified in terms of classical virology indicates to us that the infectious view of AIDS as a contagious viral disease is based on an apparently non-existent microbe!”

Dr. Fauci financed clinical trials of the AZT drugs for people who did not have HIV —using toxic HIV drugs on healthy people as a preventative measure to “reduce risk” so they did not get AIDs. Gilead supplied the chemotherapy drug, Truvada for Phase III of these human trials on four groups of 2,000-5,000 test subjects. The CDC then recommended this use of Truvada in 2014 despite two of the four trials being abandoned as unworkable.

Of note is that the same tests are used today to determine SARS-CoV-2-positive.

Concurrently, Dr. Fauci contradicts the April 28 endorsement by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons of hydroxychloroquine (with zinc) for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, which in several countries had demonstrated a 90%+ success rate and very low cost. He also invalidated any other potential cures; it is being made very hard and even illegal for doctors to source and use hydroxychloroquine with zinc for Covid-19 patients; fake studies were conducted without the use of zinc to prove that hydroxychloroquine is ineffective against Covid-19;

China holds the patent on Remsdesivir through an agreement with Gilead’s drug-patent-sharing subsidiary, UNITAID, which has an office near Wuhan;

The main financial investors in UNITAID are George Soros, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the WHO—the latter being funded by the Gates Foundation to the tune of $2.4 billion over the last two decades.

Mr. Gates’ track record is not better than Dr. Fauci’s when it comes to viruses and vaccines. More from Robert F. Kennedy:

“Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Mr. Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) for every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame, and are suing, the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017 [at which point] the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates agents from the NAB, after which polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. The World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.”

“In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile [fever] convulsions for 1,048 of the 5,049 children.”

“In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: Pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.”

“In 2014, a new 5-shot anti-tetanus campaign was launched in Kenya but administered only to 2.3 million girls and women of childbearing age—laboratory analysis showed it had been laced with the pregnancy hormone, HCG, developed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the WHO in 1992, which causes miscarriages three years later. This fertility regulating vaccine requires 5 shots, not the usual 3 for tetanus. Similar programs were discovered in Mexico, the Philippines, and Nicaragua at least, prior to 1995.”

Today, we have genetically engineered nanotech vaccines (that reprogram our cells) being fast-tracked through testing, adverse reactions swept under the table in the rush to claim the mandatory-vaccine bonanza for a virus that has already peaked and never amounted to more in severity than the seasonal flu. The labs, corporations, and their backers must believe they are better than nature at programming cells and improving the human genome, and that this is all worth doing to protect us from viruses when we have a perfectly workable immune system that, unfortunately, does not offer substantial profits to boost compared with the profits proven possible over the last century from a health paradigm based on managing disease with chemicals rather than creating health.

Need one go on, or does one see a pattern when “Dr. Gates” attends to the world’s health?

A core mission for the Gates Foundation when founded in 2000 was reducing population numbers, with the accurate premise that improved health would result in reduced population numbers when parents did not feel they needed lots of children in order to ensure at least one survived to look after them in their dotage. The fact that this correct assessment was followed up not with wholesome food (the UN estimates that a mere $30 billion would solve world hunger), clean water, proper nutrition, hygiene, and sustainable farming initiatives to reduce the need for multiple children, but vaccinating every child on the planet with profitable toxins including, without consent of the patients or parents, covert birth-control elements, betrays some other purpose than honest and unselfish philanthropy.

In 2012, Mr. Gates granted $20 million to MicroCHIPS Biotechnology to create an implantable birth-control device that could be turned on or off remotely, which was produced by 2014.

By 2017, the goal had morphed into providing every child with a digital biometric identity—indicating that population control no longer referred to controlling the numbers of people, but the people themselves. GAVI joined the ID2020 Alliance to spearhead a global digital-biometric-identity standard.

And so we come to 2020, when Mr. Gates answered the question: “What changes are we going to have to make to how businesses operate to maintain our economy while providing social distancing?” with “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.” He did not let on that he had been spearheading the whole idea and invested in it, including enrolling the entire Indian population in a biometric identification database.

The digital ID for health was paralleled by the Better Than Cash Alliance founded by the Gates Foundation in 2012 “to accelerate the transition from cash to digital payments globally” and sold as an opportunity for “financial inclusion” of the world’s poorest in the banking system—not that the Indians felt empowered when 87% of their cash was made illegal in 2016 and most of them operated only with cash. It is equally a system for exclusion of any person or transaction not approved by the authorities—much along the lines of the ongoing censorship of all information by social media and tech giants that does not align with the official narrative for Covid-19 or vaccines.

Most of the players behind the vaccination drive are funded by the Gates Foundation: the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to which the NIH/NIAID has outsourced oversight of the vaccination program, GAVI and  the WHO.

One has to wonder how many billions the Rockefeller and Gates families and interests have made and will make with their philanthropy. Over the past two decades, the Gates Foundation has given $250 million in charitable grants to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds, while receiving tax breaks for these charitable donations. Another example: Mr. Gates’ GAVI hired a company to lobby the Canadian Prime Minister 19 times over the last two years for mass vaccination of Canadian citizens. Canada is now sending nearly $800 million to GAVI to push vaccines globally, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, to advance sexual and reproductive health programs, and introduce new Covid-19 vaccines when available.

It is both illegal and disingenuous to take tax deductions for philanthropic efforts that then funnel far more funds into a corporate entity benefitting the philanthropist‘s pocket book as well as improving their image, thereby opening even more doors and further fattening their pocketbooks. After a decade of philanthropic efforts, Mr. Gate’s fortune has doubled to $100 billion and he admitted that vaccines have provided a 20:1 return, “better than anything else,” which means he has made a nice package on the $10 billion+ he has already invested in vaccines.

The population control grid/DigitalID that Mr. Gates is funding can be understood better knowing the eugenics background of Bill Gates and his father. The roll out of contact tracing with endless and enforced quarantines for a virus that has disappeared already and which never presented as a pandemic, is merely one more node being put into place in the population control grid—immunity passports being another. 1 2 3 4 5

We could go on and on with the things that do not add up about the virus and the various actions being taken with regard to it, and some of the movers and shakers behind it, but let’s examine one last piece of the puzzle that is vital to implementing the programs.

Continuous False Alarms from the Chicken-Little WHO

And so we come to the repeating effort by the WHO to bring about worldwide vaccinations through the machinery set up in 2004 for pandemic declarations:

  1. A precursor was the 1976 Swine Flu: Believing 60 million Americans out of 221 million would be infected and a million would die, (the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare had announced “We will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent”), the CDC  proclaimed 80% of the population would need to be vaccinated—money for which Congress provided immediately, anticipating good press for saving their constituents from a plague. 100-million flu vaccine shots were manufactured and administered to 49-million people, of whom 4,000 claimed damages for injury, including 532 partially paralyzed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological condition, and 32 dying before the government shut down the program after 10 weeks. In the end, despite the panic, only one person died of the Swine Flu while the drug companies made out nicely financially;
  2. 2002-3, the SARS epidemic saw 8,098 sickened from what may have been SARS and potentially 774 dying (in the US, only 8 out of 29 possible cases were confirmed to have died of SARS). The WHO issued a global alert and worked to identify SARS and so find a vaccine. Since then, nobody has caught SARS. Of note is that the symptoms for SARS are similar to flu, which kills 290,000-650,000 each year and never has resulted in a WHO global alert;
  3. 2004, WHO organized a board of experts to create pandemic guidelines; these obliged governments to purchase billions of dollars of hastily manufactured vaccines whenever the WHO declaring a pandemic. Some of these board members had received consulting fees from drug manufacturers Roche and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK);
  4. 2005, the avian flu H5N1 fails to materialize as a pandemic despite the flu czar asserting 150 million deaths would result worldwide and world governments dutifully forking over billions on vaccines that were not used;
  5. 2009, The H1N1 Swine Flu was declared a global pandemic by the WHO: Two billion were expected to catch it and “several hundred thousand could die [in the US] if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration—guided by Dr. Fauci at the NIAID—API, 24 July 2009). This WHO announcement triggered contracts with half-a-dozen major pharmaceutical companies to manufacture a vaccine for which they were paid about $40 billion by the taxpayers.

  6. Most of these vaccines were destroyed because the H1N1 pandemic also failed to materialize (144 deaths worldwide after 11 weeks, way less than the annual flu mortalities), although 60 million (mostly children) received GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix and hundreds of them ended up brain damaged.

    Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman of the health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared it a “false pandemic” and “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” The British  Medical Journal stated that “The WHO’s credibility has been badly damaged”  in its handling of the swine flu pandemic, marred by secrecy and conflict of interest with drug companies—referring to the WHO’s 2004 guidelines and at least one expert on the secret “emergency committee” advising the WHO on declaring the 2009 pandemic having received payment from GSK that year.

    After the pandemic failed to appear, the WHO redefined (and then denied having done so) a pandemic could be declared even if no deaths occurred;

  7. 2020, Covid-19: More of the same, as covered earlier.

The 2012 MERS epidemic (2,494 people confirmed infected and 858 dead in 27 countries) and 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic (28,600 cases and 11,325 deaths in West Africa) did not follow the same pattern, as they did not spark a pandemic declaration.

In each pandemic, the Chicken-Little WHO spearheaded efforts to force vaccinations on fearful governments and populations and pharmaceutical companies repeatedly obliged while fattening their pocketbooks.

WHO pronounced those blowing the whistle on the dishonesties, conflicts of interest, and dangers of vaccines to be a top global threat in January 2019.

In September, the WHO held the Global Vaccination Summit that established a plan, 10 Actions towards Vaccination for All, to manipulate citizens into vaccine compliance. In October, Event 201 was held and in November of 2019 their call to action was issued at the same time that first Covid-19 case appeared in Wuhan.

WHO has tried a PR and grassroots campaign to overcome the misgivings citizens now hold toward vaccines, which is replete with false information—which makes YouTube’s policy of removing any information that contradicts WHO particularly illogical and unjust, but certainly coordinated.

Qui bono (who benefits) from this drive to universal mandatory vaccinations? At the very least, pharmaceutical companies. But as the #1 donor to the WHO, Mr. Gates is not without influence over the organization and certainly benefits.

The pharmaceutical companies take us back to the Rockefeller dynasty, as mentioned above. This whole pandemic was predicted in the 2010 report by the Rockefeller Foundation, Scenarios for the Future, of a virulent pandemic closing down the world economies and citizens gladly agreeing to lockdowns, face masks, temperature checks, lauding the authoritarian Chinese approach, with loss of sovereignty, privacy, and rights in exchange for their own “safety.”

Except, of course, after the initial shock, the citizens were not quite as sheepish in 2020 as expected, especially as after a while, Covid-19 failed to materialize as a pandemic, with reports of it mutating within a month into something much less dangerous, and the number of deaths tanking (daily deaths on the 21st of: April, 2,214; May, 1,296; June, 627).

The amount of effort and finances being expended to bring about mandatory vaccinations shows it to be central to the greater agenda; the level of destruction considered acceptable to forward the agenda shows a deadly serious intent that can only be countered by individuals and organizations thinking for themselves, valuing their liberties and lifestyles, and being brave enough to fight back. If we are to preempt the next onslaught, we need to disempower these special-interest groups and individuals, as they represent only about 7% of the world—and that will take a large number of citizens becoming active.

We may have some hotels and resorts starting to come back to life for now, our lives creeping back incrementally, but if we do not take some action, however small, to improve the management of this civilization, we will return soon to a Dark Age simply because high-tech, materialistic, social-control societies cannot do otherwise than blow themselves up for lack of any humanity or spiritual guiding force. The result of such a techno-society is unwilling participants in a slave culture and nobody left who cares. It is doomed to fail ultimately for one and all.

It is only another decade roughly before we will have human cyborgs (humans with some robotic elements) and artificial intelligence robots that do much of the work. Humans becoming increasingly redundant in such a world.

In actual fact, the goal of artificial general intelligence is not achievable, even though billions are being spent on it, because the software architecture that software companies are addicted to, is too complex to create really intelligent robots—only robotic robots. This is a story for another article, but this barrier to a true techno-society does not detract from the tsunami of robotism and the convergence of humans with robotsthat is coming, and the need for us in hospitality to reassert the humanities in this increasingly materialistic world.

Whatever the who and why behind all this may be, while we may appreciate the constant refrain that our safety is of great importance, socially inclined  individuals do object to having the truth hidden in order to push an agenda which claims to, but does not on further research, actually include the short- and long-term health and well-being of the peoples of Earth.

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” 

Thomas Jefferson

If one were to screw up one’s courage and go deeper down the rabbit hole, one would find that Gates and Rockefeller (Foundation) among quite a few others consider the world to be overpopulated and in need of drastic reduction in numbers. Their actions in the health sphere can be seen to contribute to achieving this goal, as well as the “chemicalization” and alteration of agriculture through GMO crops and seeds that are having negative health and environmental effects the world over, and even the ongoing aerial spraying of toxins around the world for 3-4 decades.

You don’t need to go down this unpleasant rabbit hole in order to roll back this latest attack upon our rights and liberties and so regain the life we used to know. But it would certainly broaden your understanding of the game being played by these influential individuals and groups.

“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even—perhaps even especially—those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals or made choices that they would call ‘hard but necessary steps’ for the good of their nation.” Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

We do not have to accept their solutions of greater control and harmful programs for the simple reason that they are not optimal solutions. If they were the first to say, “We are overpopulated, and I offer myself up for voluntary death,” or if they said, “I am happy for my child to have these 50 vaccinations with toxins in them,” then we might mistake their actions for altruism, at least, even if misguided, but this is not their view.

It is important to maintain our own sense of dignity, even for those who have fallen as far off the track as the Rockefellers and Gates of this world. There is room for them in the world, too, but not their badly-thought-through solutions.

Nobody likes to see family, friends, colleagues, students, clients, and neighbors being forced into situations that do not benefit them. And certainly not when the entire world population is suffering as a result. Just because it is that way right now does not mean that we have to sit back and allow it to continue so: We can do something about it, and just knowing there is a way out of the mess is half the battle won.

What to Do

For those who believe this virus to be a lethal calamity and the end of the world is at hand, remember President Roosevelt’s inaugural address in 1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Silent acquiescence in the face of tyranny is no better than outright agreement.”

C.J. Redwine, Defiance

It is evil people who make life seem hostile. Left to their own devices, the vast majority of us get along just fine, seek the truth that will improve conditions, act with a good dose of common sense—all while enjoying life.

This short video makes a very good point: With all the talk of minorities being unfairly treated, we forget to look at the majority, and most importantly, to define what the majority is. Saying that a minority is based on color, religion, gender, country, sexual orientation or whatever is simply to agree to false divisions created to divide the majority. What is the real majority? People who care about others and want them to do as well as we would like to do ourselves. They respect others and their views; they do not try to tear them down in one way or another or label them as bad or worthless. The majority are the 93% who are straight with you, do not say one thing and mean or act otherwise; they try to be constructive, not destructive or particularly, pretend to help while actually harming.

So how do we end the prospect of continued lockdowns, loss of livelihood, and forced vaccines, as the media and some government bodies keep threatening? As a majority, by launching a tsunami of public indignation and demanding sensible and effective management from our elected officials regarding this pandemic that seems primarily to have been designed to bring about forced vaccinations worldwide and to build on the 9/11 security measures to gain greater control over citizenry.

“No one rules if no one obeys.”  

David Icke

Which is to say, the only real resource any manager has is the willingness of the employees. As soon as they become unwilling because the manager mistreats them, takes them for fools, the manager has nobody to manage.

Four basic steps:

1. Boost your immune system with such as Vitamin D3, etc. as covered earlier, while taking simple hygiene actions like rinsing with mouthwash to neutralize coronaviruses in the mouth and throat.

2. Neutralize the next wave of fear mongering

Tick the boxes below that apply any time the media blasts fear over the airwaves about Covid-19:

The current message is and will continue to be that the number of cases is going through the roof requiring another lockdown—while neglecting to mention:

a) More testing is being done, so of course more people would test positive;     

b) The PCR test is being used even though it is completely unreliable for testing viruses, giving many false positives because it cannot differentiate between Covid-19 or other germs;

c) The positive diagnosis is based only on observation of symptoms (flu-like symptoms, shortness of breath); that could be the result of multiple causes;

d) The vast majority of those “cases” have no symptoms;

e)  The vast majority of those “cases” are not contagious.

The media is simply trying to alarm everyone by calling those who test positive, even when based on an incorrect diagnosis, as “infected,” even if they have no symptoms and are not infectious, and as “cases,” a word that means a person  becomes ill with what is confirmed to be Covid-19. Thus they make it seem a second wave is coming when it is not and panic State authorities, desperate to open up their economies, into another deleterious shutdown.

For instance, the CDC saying antibody information collected shows the number of “confirmed cases” (meaning testing positive) is probably 10x earlier published figures, demonstrates that the media and related government agencies are twisting good news into bad news. Why? Because the more people who test positive, the lower the ultimate death rate and danger presented by Covid-19. In fact, the death rate never went exponential, indicating, as one study shows, that people have a resistance to Covid-19; another study showed that the T-cells of 40-60% of people who had not been exposed to Covid-19 are able to deal with it based on their ability to deal with the common cold.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of Covid-19 deaths was 75% lower in states that did not lock down, but the media ignores deaths and focuses on the only number that can be made to appear bad: The number of positive tests that they pretend are accurate and are increasing as more people are tested, which they then escalate into “infections” and “cases.”

The WSJ article began with a statement that betrays the true nature of the media: “GOP governors have faced enormous media pressure to lock down their states in solidarity with Democrats…” The media are meant to report news, so what is this “pressure” other than propaganda—applying relentless pressure to make people think a certain way for political or other ends? A good reason to disconnect from them and seek responsible reporting that unearths facts because it respects the right and ability of individuals to think for themselves.

More examples of the early-to-open States being targeted by the media for panic generation: 71% of South Carolina hospital beds were reported to be in use already as COVID cases keep increasing, yet normal occupancy is 69%-70%. Comparing Covid cases/deaths in the Bronx (3,346/234) with Houston (567/7) makes it obvious that Houston’s population of 7.1 million is doing a lot better than the Bronx’s 1.5 million.

And to top it off, the new definition of cases includes anyone who has had some contact with anyone who later tests positive. No tests on them even, just quarantine and counted as a case. On May 11, a new definition for “cases” was released that required no testing, just having two or more symptoms that could be caused by any number of conditions. All of which explains the surge in cases at the end of June that is being used to push for a shutdown until a vaccine can be brought to market.

A close up of a map

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Likewise, don’t close your eyes to the illogical contact tracing and enforcement of self-quarantining for 14 days just because a person has been exposed to someone who has tested positive for Covid-19. Apart from the personal injustice and unnecessary imprisonment—as a positive test means little-to-nothing—it will make it impossible for businesses to stay open if every time one person tests positive (usually without symptoms), the entire business has to quarantine for two weeks. Two weeks later, another round of testing shows one person testing positive and the business closes again.

Do not be fooled, either, by the notion of voluntary vaccinations, as life will be made impossible without the freedom to travel even for shopping because one has refused a vaccine. Before this irrational program is implemented is the time to be alert to the irrationalities and to point them out to those who can reverse them and adopt a sensible strategy: Taking precautions for those individuals at risk; and at work, if someone is actually ill, they simply call in sick and stay home until they are better while everyone else is free to continue working. Managing this normal-level outbreak, as with the annual flu, does not require governmental intervention nor enforced medical lockdowns and treatments.

Before this irrational program is implemented is the time to be alert to the irrationalities and to point them out to those who can reverse them and adopt a sensible strategy: Taking precautions for those individuals at risk; and at work, if someone is actually ill, they simply call in sick and stay home until they are better while everyone else is free to continue working. Managing this normal-level outbreak, as with the annual flu, does not require governmental intervention nor enforced medical lockdowns and treatments.

No doubt the threat of wars, riots, destruction, political shouting matches, and Covid-19 alarm will jockey for the lead position on the airwaves until a vaccine finally appears; and when it does, don’t be so knocked about that you forget to dig through the trials to see what they really showed, because the media will only publish the glowing PR and skip over the adverse reactions.

3. Become further educated if you feel the need

Knowledge is power, so educate yourself more if you feel you need more understanding than these three articles (and their over-300 links) provide in order to act.

Use the search engine Duckduckgo.com, as unlike Google, it does not censor search results nor does it covertly track your searches. I wish I could refer you to mainstream media sources that might engender confidence in their information, but they have almost all long since been bought out by advertizers and intelligence agencies and now present propaganda and corporate lines as opposed to honest journalism. Obviously, try to separate opinions and agendas from the facts as you surf traditional and non-traditional sources, as they are not all accurate, by any means.

For relevant videos banned by YouTube and Vimeo and from other social media, and not findable on Google or most search engines:

  • General: 1, 2
  • The pandemic: 1, 2
  • Vaccines: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
  • Dr. Dolores Cahill: 1
  • Dr. Judy Mikovits: 1, 2
  • Dr. Buttar: 1
  • Aerial spraying: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

“A single person who stops lying can bring down a tyranny”.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident and writer

4. Communicate and organize to nudge governments into acting sensibly

Strength comes in numbers, so communicate and organize to build a huge volume of insistent demand for a) solutions based on common sense and b) science based on reality, not some hidden agenda that requires facts be twisted and hidden.

  1. Relay this series of 3 articles or any specific links to people you know and discuss the issues with them;
  2. Ask them to communicate to their friends, family, government employees, owners and managers of your hotel property, other businesses, anyone with influence over the situation, the media, and organize them to do the following:
  3. End the lockdown in your area if it still exists and do whatever you can to restart your hotel and resort, as well as your vendors and surrounding business community. Bear in mind that the WHO stated those without symptoms rarely transmit the virus, so it makes no sense to close businesses when one person tests positive but has no symptoms or for anyone other than a person with symptoms to wear a mask, stand six-feet apart, and not congregate in larger numbers or risk being fined or even arrested;
  4. In the US, use the protection afforded by the Constitution and related legal judgements to protect yourself by printing and signing the various documents listed on this page, and present to anyone trying to force you illegally in some way;
  5. Research and join grass roots efforts to derail the planned vaccinations and any further lockdowns. This is a good example of how one lady addressed the issue of the lockdown and masks in particular.
  6. Join such as the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense, a leading voice exposing the dangers of vaccinations;
  7. Support StopMandatoryVaccination.com;
  8. In the USA, this organization stays on top of vaccination legislation so you can reach out to express your views and help influence the outcome;
  9. Join the US movement to decline mandatory vaccines without informed consent;
  10. This document parallels much of this paper, with some additional data as well as a good action suggestions offered at the end;
  11. In the UK, support such as this group of lawyers who have determined the UK’s Coronavirus Act 2020 to be null and void;
  12. For Mr. Gates, the Italian member of parliament’s call during a session recently for Mr. Gates be referred to the International Criminal Court for Crimes against Humanity would be a good first step. Write to your politician and build the groundswell for more countries to bring his suspect philanthropic actions to an end and put an end to the rule of earth by billionaires with a dim view of mankind and ideas that everyone (except them) should die for the greater good;
  13. The WHO seems to be too corrupt to continue in its current form: Steps to dismantle it are given at the end of this article.

In the final analysis, hundreds of irrationalities have been detailed in this report by many brave souls who stated the truth in the face of a whirlwind of attacks on them professionally and personally from many corners orchestrated by those in authority and power whose hidden economic, social, and political agendas are put at risk by citizens finding out the truth. In the US alone, this has led to the completely insane response of locking down 340 million people and shutting down our $21 trillion economy because…. Why? Because 1 in every 1,000 mostly old and already sick people who actually catch Covid-19 will die of it rather than of something else. The special-interest groups engineering this catastrophe are counting on the citizenry to continue for just a little bit longer, past the point of no return, where they will be cornered in terms of available freedoms and freedom to choose their own destiny.

If we think for ourselves, help spread the word, educate politicians who will listen and are not too corrupted, and insist that we move away from this abyss of a police-state mentality protecting us from a supposedly hostile world, we can look forward to a relatively rapid return of the hospitality industry focused not on sanitizing and social distancing (although improvements in airplane hygiene and basic food safety everywhere would always be welcome, the author having been subjected to multiple serious food poisonings around the world through the years!) but servicing very happy and relieved guests.

If hospitality is to retain its essence, we need to retain an environment where the genuine smiles of free and happy staff are valued, rather than slipping into an East-Germany police-state climate (during the second half of the 20th Century), with its downtrodden, sullen, suspicious, surveilled, and coerced comrades.

The ball is in your court. Published by Hotel Business Review. July 9, 2020

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Newsletter Published Articles

Thinking for Yourself May Be the Only Regimen for a Full Recovery, Part II

“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”

Bruce Coville

Last week, we looked at how the official response to the pandemic morphed from great concern about the danger; to numbness at the economic devastation (the UN World Tourism Organization estimated  earnings down 80% on 2019 and the loss of 120 million jobs); to increasing rejection of the absurd.

In this article, we review how a draconian censorship of the medical community is being enforced not just in China, as one might expect, but also in the Western world; we examine the information that has been hidden so enthusiastically from you, and finally explain why almost every action taken by authorities has been at variance with impartial science and common sense.

Burying Facts and Studies

In viewing the stream of contradictory and ever-changing data about the Wuhan virus (where it came from, its true nature and virulence, what did or did not work to combat it, etc.), the idea that officialdom was being driven by the common good rather than some unknown special interests was laid to rest with the egregious social media/Google censorship of multiple respected medical voices raising persistent and serious doubts concerning many aspects of the virus itself and its treatment— even challenging the notion that Covid-19 was really as dangerous a threat as was being advertized by multiple outlets and parties. Twitter, for instance, is censoring information that does not follow “public health experts’ and WHO guidance.” Google and Facebook’s “third-party” FactChecker program is funded by Gates, Soros, and Clinton donors, hardly neutral politically and certainly heavily invested in the vaccines being touted as the only possible and permitted solution.

Let’s take some treatments that have been and still are being silenced at a time when any valid treatment should be pursued if the actual purpose were to save the lives of those who were succumbing to Covid-19:

  1. Inexpensive Hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin and zinc apparently proves 100% successful, yet the drug is banned by multiple parties and vilified, including by what turns out to be a completely fabricated “scientific” study written by a science fiction writer;
  2. Intravenous vitamin C is reported to have been very effective and used by the Shanghai government, but shut down by the US government and social media;
  3. The Math+ protocol that combines intravenous vitamin C, oxygen therapy, steroids, and zinc/vitamins D and B1 for patients arriving in hospitals but not yet in ICU. The protocol addresses the three ways that Covid-19 kills patients: Triggering hyperinflammation, hypercoagulation, and hypoxia (lack of oxygen reaching the tissues); 98 patients recovered and only 2 died (in their 80s with advanced chronic morbidities);
  4. The importance of building healthy immune systems through diet, exercise, and proper natural supplementation so the vast majority of individuals never catch colds, flus, and coronaviruses in the first place. Vitamins C and D3, zinc, and antiviral herbs such as astragalus, green tea extract, Andrographis, and monolaurin (from coconut) are well-known resources that are thoroughly nixed by the media and government agencies.

Looking for why these and other solutions might be rejected or outright attacked, as in the FDA’s Quack Hack program targeting colloidal silver’s effectiveness against pathogens,  it seems the common denominator behind the suppression of these potential non-pharmacological solutions for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infections is that they are low-cost, unpatentable, and thus unprofitable protocols. It is not because they are not valid and effective protocols worth at least including in an honest search for possible solutions.

What is approved and pushed by the government (in the US) from the FDA to the FTC and including Dr. Fauci, who headed the White House’s coronavirus task force, are patentable and inevitably expensive vaccines that do not even exist yet.

For its part, in addition to removing all social media and Internet mentions and smearing doctors promoting these non-vaccine solutions, the media and social media also take for granted that vaccines are the solution.

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Thomas Jefferson

When perfectly competent voices are silenced and measures continue to be taken that defy common sense (creating the worst financial depression in human history, for instance, and everything that will entail), then it would seem that a special-interest group is at work with a hidden agenda, not a general-interest group applying science and common sense openly to deal with a situation for the good of the citizenry as defined by the citizens, not by special-interest groups.

If the information and handlings being recommended by those in government were characterized by scientific accuracy, truth, and logic, there would be no difficulty in having citizens accept their statements and instructions despite being exposed to different and even contradictory information.

Furthermore, even though Covid-19 is actually a complete non-event health wise for the vast majority of the world, for the few who are impacted heavily, a truly scientific enquiry would look honestly at all possible elements before ruling them out in order to discover optimal treatments. Real science neither needs to hide information nor to be forced upon people—it speaks for itself when it simply works as stated.

For Whom is Covid-19 Actually a Danger and Why?

There is no question that what is called Covid-19, whether or not it is a virus, is dangerous to a very small number of easily identified people. In order to adjudicate what might be the best solution for Covid-19, and whether vaccines indeed might be the only valid solution, let’s explore the nature of SARS-CoV-2 and any other factors that might be behind the various symptoms ascribed to Covid-19.

The first point to grasp is that life-threatening infections of Covid-19 are not necessarily caused simply by the virus SARS-CoV-2, but the combination of two other elements:

1)  The insertion by a lab technician of an element into SARS-CoV-2 that increases its infection rate as part of “gain of function” lab work to create viruses that are more virulent and dangerous;

2) XMRV, another immune suppressant, being received earlier by some individuals (estimated 30-100 million in the US) as a result of vaccines contaminated during the manufacturing process with gamma-retroviruses (which can trigger diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, autism, and certain cancers), or via blood transfusions. It is possible SARS-CoV-2 simply activates these gamma-retroviruses, causing Covid-19 symptoms;

Five additional factors have also been highlighted—and rapidly censored—as possible contributors that boost the Covid-19 virus into severe cases for some:

1) The unrelenting and rapid rollout of military-grade 5G (and its electro-magnetic radiation that causes the same flu-like symptoms and oxygen deficiencies as experienced by Covid-19 patients in hospitals) despite zero safety studies having been done and many complaints by scientists as to the dangers; and moratoriums or outright banning by some countries (Australia, Russia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and tens of states and hundreds of cities, such as Brussels). The first study on this correlation (English version, Spanish original) shows 5G hotspots to be Covid-19 hotspots, too. For instance, the small state of San Marino in Italy was the first European entity to install 5G technology and has a Covid-19 infection rate that is 27 times greater than that of its neighbor, Croatia, which does not have 5G. In Wuhan, 10,000 5G base stations were deployed by the end of 2019;

2) The predisposition by some individuals to viruses resulting from the toxins included in their vaccines (heavy metals, aborted human fetal tissue, animal cells, DNA from pus, carcinogens, MSG, a neurotoxin, and mercury—for which there exists no safe level for humans, and recently discovered, nanoparticles that are not listed as part of the ingredients and are not biodegradable);

Wuhan residents received flu shots in December 2019, in line with an August 2019  law mandating immunization for all citizens; Lombardy (Italy) introduced two rounds of a new vaccine in the Fall of 2019 made not with the normal chicken eggs but cultured animal cells and containing four types of viruses—H1N1, H3N2, and two types of B viruses. In December, this was followed by Hepatitis jabs. 90% of those receiving these were 65 and older, and 75% of them had serious heart issues—not a smart health strategy to apply to immune-compromised individuals.

3) An increase of 1 microgram of fine particulates per cubic meter of air pollution is associated with an 8% increase in COVID–19 deaths, according to a Harvard university study. This is particularly significant because Wuhan is one of the most polluted cities in the world, as is Lombardy, also a hot spot for Covid-19 in Italy.

The drop in Wuhan deaths may well have occurred not because of the social distancing and lockdown, but the pollution dropping below 40 microns per cubic meter of air as factories ceased to operate, thereby removing the cyanide and other toxins from the air.

This factor becomes all the more compelling when we consider the symptoms of those hospitalized with Covid-19: White blood cell count normal, very low oxygen at the tissue level, and looking blue—the same symptoms as cyanide poisoning, which is resolved with three injections. 88% of those put on respiratory machines died, indicating that this is not a respiratory disease.

4) The aerial spraying occurring worldwide for the last three decades, which includes barium salts (which impact the lungs and are 25,000x more toxic than lead) and aluminum, amongst many other toxins;

5) Poor diet and nutritional deficiency generally reducing immune system health — according to one study, 85% of Covid-19 patients were deficient in the crucial Vitamin D that wards off colds and flus.

As was the experience in other countries, 80% of coronavirus deaths in the US have been those who are 65 and up with pre-existing, life-threatening conditions.

We can narrow down the danger further to nursing/long-term care homes: 40.8% to 50% of Covid-19 deaths in multiple countries occurred in nursing homes; for instance, nursing home residents in Virginia represent 0.3% of the State’s population but comprise nearly 60% of Virginia’s Covid-19 deaths. Similarly, Italy saw 40% of their coronavirus deaths (26,384) occurring in nursing homes (the average age of all deaths being 79.5 years and 97% having an average of 2.7 pre-existing morbidities). The heavy toll in several US states was partly due to lack of proper equipment and procedures in these homes, and government officials requiring recovering coronavirus-patients in hospitals to be returned to their nursing homes.

The Head of Forensic Pathology in Hamburg stated that “Not a single person without previous illness has died of the virus in Hamburg. All had cancer, chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers, heavily obese, or had diabetes or a cardiovascular disease.” [English translation]

A real investigation of Covid-19 would have to include determining if any of these above factors played a part: Jabbing a vaccine into someone will not resolve EMF pollution or barium salt toxicity, for instance.

But then again, coronaviruses (i.e. SARS 2002-2003, MERS 2012-2013) move through the population in two years before herd immunity builds enough for the coronavirus to disappear without any workable vaccine ever being found or administered. Summer 2021 would inevitably see the back of Covid-19 if it were managed with the normal herd-immunity approach instead of lockdowns. Contrast this reality with the one being pushed by “experts” predicting a second wave will come in the fall of 2020 and the pandemic will last two years, and calling for more lockdowns to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed—the same reasoning and policies that have already collapsed our lives with nothing to show for it. Yet there is no second wave.

Viruses are Not Villains but Vital to Life

Here is a fresh look at viruses that won’t be found in the general media or in Western allopathic medicine (based on mitigating symptoms in isolation rather than holistic medicine, which finds and resolves the causes of disease). If just the following information about viruses were known, respect for and understanding of viruses and the terrain theory (versus the germ theory) would have replaced the panic and knee-jerk responses to the fear generated so that a more sensible approach could have been adopted by governments.

First of all, this may be a hard pill to swallow given that we have all been raised with the germ model of health and sickness, but it has never been proven that viruses or bacteria cause disease as they have yet to be isolated and purified sufficiently to be sure something else may not be the actual cause. If the germ model were really spot on, then one has to ask why humanity experiences so much sickness and only enjoys an average lifespan of 72 years.

Additionally, humans are thoroughly reliant on a highly diverse and plentiful microbiome and virome—bacterial and viral microorganisms—in our bodies, the soil, air, and water around us. The diversity needed to support life includes viruses (50% of the human genome is made up of 380 trillionviruses such as hepatitis, influenza and herpes, with 10% being retroviruses like HIV), bacteria (30,000 species, with 1.4 quadrillion in our bodies), fungi (5 million), and parasites (300,000 species). This diversity has been under attack from the ubiquitous presence of chemicals and toxins in our bodies, food, water, soil, and air over the last 75 years and the effects are evident in our children: In 1960, 1.8% of children in the US had chronic health conditions that limited their activities; today, that number is 54% suffering from one or more of twenty chronic health-conditions.  

Science cannot match the speed with which nature/these viruses adjust to stressors in order to sustain the biodiversity upon which life, including humans, depends. For instance, industrial agriculture pours 4.5 billion pounds of antibiotics into the soil each year, requiring the microbiome take extraordinary measures to avoid extinction. Seen from this perspective, Covid-19 is working in its own way to reestablish biodiversity—assuming, of course, that this virus was not engineered in a laboratory with some other purpose, making it an unnatural virus that is not necessarily following the laws of nature.  

Rather than dropping everything and declaring the virus to be an enemy that we cannot possibly beat in terms of a) skillsets as well as b) undermining the foundation of life in a self-defeating way that only humans are capable of, it would be smarter in the long-term to address the loss of biodiversity and to move away from polluting industries and products and instead create clean production methods.

This does not mean dropping the standard of living and switching entirely to renewable energy, for instance, that actually causes more pollution in its construction and/or operation and disposal than it saves in its energy generation, but smart solutions such as the Carbon Cowboys who eliminate the need for fertilizer and pesticides, handle soil erosion and run off, and reduce antibiotic use dramatically through entirely natural means that increase beef production and lower costs. There are solutions wherever we state the problem properly and apply human ingenuity to solving it. The barrier to moving forward is powerful industries holding onto their non-optimal solutions and income stream at the expense of all life, and behind that, the truth not being known and understood by every being on this planet.

Vaccines: Promising More than they Can Deliver for Patients but Delivering on the Promise Financially for Pharmaceuticals

Back to the more immediate question of Covid-19 and the push for a vaccine “before life can return to normal,” since 1976, scientists have identified 12,800 coronaviruses that have been travelling the world’s airwaves for eons, constantly mutating, infecting animals and humans and some apparently even jumping species. SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is the seventh known coronavirus to impact humans; others include MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Disease).

In all this time, nobody has ever found a vaccine for these or any other virus that works, simply because by the time they have identified a virus and created a possible vaccine, the virus has already changed. That is why flu vaccines have such poor results each year. Public health officials have to guess at least six months before the flu season starts which Type A or B influenza virus strain might be predominant so that pharmaceutical companies can manufacture the vaccines. However, even if they did score a hit, 80% of all respiratory infections are not Type A or B strains and so no flu vaccines can be effective against them.

“There is no evidence that any influenza (virus) vaccine thus far developed is effective in preventing or mitigating any attack of influenza. The producers of these vaccines know that they are worthless, but they go on selling them anyway.”

Dr. J. Anthony Morris, former Chief Vaccine Officer, FDA & the National Institute of Health

At best, flu vaccines might be said to work on 24% – 50% of those to whom they are administered, and then only in terms of reducing the severity of the flu. The insert for the flu shot itself states, “There have been no controlled trials adequately demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with Flulaval” and “no controlled trials” have been conducted.  

The insert also admits, “Safety and effectiveness of Flulaval have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers or children.” Those safety studies done are flawed. It is no wonder then that 100,000 people experience adverse reactions, hospitalizations, injuries such as autism, and even death from the various toxins in the flu and other vaccines. Autism rates have jumped 30,000% since the early 1980’s.

Not surprising, therefore, to hear that prior receipt of a flu vaccine increases the chances of catching Covid-19 by 36%.

The author’s position is not that vaccines are bad, but that they have a lot of toxins in them today that are bad; they patently do not work as well as the PR and marketing claim; they cannot be considered the only permitted solution in a free society, and they cannot be forced on citizens against their will, if the Nuremburg Code is to mean anything at all, especially when the companies making them today fudge their safety testing, hide and deny adverse reactions, admit they do not work, make the taxpayers pay for inevitable injuries while the companies make huge profits, and require so much PR, marketing, and lobbying to persuade doctors to prescribe them and governments to force them on citizenry.

The drive by pharmaceutical companies to vaccinate (in the US) today is characterized by:

  1. $295 million spent lobbying congress in 2019, the highest of any sector, which was well remunerated as they made 63% of total health-care profits; for the Covid-19 legislation, they had any  government price-controls removed so they could charge whatever they like for any vaccine brought to market;
  2. Continued government subsidies: Since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health has put $900 billion of taxpayer money into research so pharmaceuticals can patent and profit from the drug—such as Gilead earning $44 billion in 3 years from sofosbuvir, used to treat hepatitis C at $1,000 per pill. And then who pays for all those “free” vaccine shots advertized on every street corner in the US?
  3. A lot of advertising (up to 70% of mainstream media advertizing dollars) comes from pharmaceutical companies, which prevents the media from publishing anything about the dangers of vaccines;
  4. $18 billion spent on direct-to-consumer marketing and over $100 billion marketing directly to doctors;
  5. Ineffectiveness: In the recent mumps outbreak, 100% of the mumps cases were vaccinated; 90% of those who died from the 2018/2019 flu had received the flu shot; at best, when vaccines work, they might confer immunity for 10-20 years, whereas when a person catches a disease, they enjoy immunity for life;
  6. The use of highly toxic ingredients that bypass the body’s natural detox and protection systems by being injected directly into the blood; it is not surprising, therefore, that the cure might end up worse than the disease: In the past 15 years, 127 children have died from the measles vaccine while only two died as a result of naturally contracting the disease itself;
  7. Lying to the public about the safety and efficacy of vaccines: The pharmaceutical companies lost a recent US court case as it was proven there had been no quality control over vaccines for at least 32 years, since the US government agreed, with the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, to pay for any vaccine-caused injuries. At that time, chronic diseases like ADHD, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and allergies impacted 12.6%  of children in the US and today affect 54%; in the same time frame, pharmaceutical company profits rose from 1 billion to $44 billion on $60 billion a year in revenue, making vaccines their most profitable revenue source with the highest profit margin;
  • Of note is that pharmaceutical companies knew they would lose $135 billion in revenue from their core prescription-drug business as a result of the expiration of patent protections between 2009 and 2014; increasing the number of mandated childhood vaccines presented the obvious solution;
  1. Vaccines are the only drugs for which pharmaceutical companies have not been held liable for injury or death since 10 August 1976 (reinforced by the 1986 NCVIA), when Congress agreed the taxpayer would cover all damage payments for those harmed or killed by any vaccine in order to encourage vaccine makers to continue production for the ongoing Swine Flu pandemic—which turned out to be a complete non-event (1 death worldwide);
  2. Since 1986, The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in the US has paid $4.1 billion of taxpayer money to thousands of injured individuals or the survivors of those who died. Of note is that a government study concluded that fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries are reported. In the UK, the government agreed to pay $90 million to 800 children with severe brain injury from the 2009 swine flu Pandemrix vaccine; the Norwegian government has so far paid $13 million to 86 victims, including 60 of the 170 reported cases of injured children. In each case, the pharmaceutical companies did not pay damages, the taxpayers did. And in the case of Pandemrix at least, the pharmaceutical industry profited further by selling the injured children the drugs needed to deal with their injuries for as long as they live;
  3. Of relevance is that the CDC is not an independent watchdog for the pharmaceutical industry, but a vaccine company that owns 56 vaccine patents and makes $4.6 billion each year on vaccines; they also mandate children receive increasing numbers of vaccines—currently 29 doses of vaccines by 18 months of age (whereas in the 1950s, they received only 7 by 18 years of age);
    Of the top 34 industrialized nations in the world, the US administers the most childhood vaccines and yet has the highest infant mortality rate. Whether or not the vaccines are killing the children may be difficult to prove, but logically, if vaccines were really so good for child health, the US would be expected to have the lowest child mortality rate;
  4. CDC & FDA committee members who recommend on vaccine policy have financial conflicts of interest with vaccine pharmaceuticals;
  5. The long-term suppression by laws, censorship, and black propaganda of nutritional supplements and alternative healing protocols that have proven to work; in the case of Covid-19,  attacking any communications that “boosting the immune system with natural supplements would be a wise move,” even raiding doctor’s offices who were providing such protocols.

In fact, the history of vaccines is one long river of failed immunizations and major adverse reactions, including deaths—this link covers the years up to 1988 and tellingly, points out that 90% of the decline in mortality for scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles between 1860 and 1965, for instance, occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread vaccination, as a result of improved nutritional levels.

In other words, an immune system in good shape is the best defense against viruses that kill because a compromised immune system simply cannot regulate itself properly.

As can be seen, vaccines have major issues, one of which is that the ongoing push for mandatory worldwide vaccination (the European commission and WHO are working to create a passport for mandatory vaccinations, Argentina is already implementing it, with travel, education, and other rights turned into privileges granted upon immunization) can be seen to be motivated by money, as far as the pharmaceutical companies (and the government agencies and politicians they finance) are concerned, not health as claimed.

It is clear, in the final analysis, that people would not have to be forced to take a vaccine if it were known to be safe and effective.

A River of Irrationalities

Looking at the above, it is obvious that

  1. Many people catch Covid-19, often without knowing it;
  2. Some have mild symptoms and a very small number need hospitalization;
  3. Very few of these serious cases die of Covid-19, these being in their senior years and/or having other conditions, or not being treated properly;
  4. The full range of factors that might cause the symptoms are not being considered when searching for appropriate treatment(s);
  5. Existing successful (and inexpensive) treatments are being ignored and suppressed, including the need to build immune systems via diet, nutritional support, and reduction of toxic loads from chemical pollution in the food, water, and air;
  6. Officialdom has provided contradictory and incorrect information from Day 1—”Wear masks, don’t wear masks,” for instance. Dr. Fauci on May 12: Serious consequences if the country reopens too soon; on May 22: Irreparable damage if the lockdown lasts too long, etc.;
  7. There is a determined drive to enforce ineffective and even dangerous vaccinations on the entire world’s population as the solution to a pandemic that isn’t. 

Evidence keeps popping up day after day that exposes the current government responses to be illogical:

1. Masks and respirators have limited effectiveness, in part because viral aerosol particles are too fine to be blocked by existing masks. Viruses travel everywhere in the wind and create high-density pockets when they bind with particles of air pollution. Reducing air pollution or moving at-risk people to areas without air pollution would be more productive for saving lives;

2. Lockdown is an aberrant concept. While herd immunity, the normal way of dealing with viruses, has been set aside as a policy by most governments, it occurs much quicker than previously thought: After only 7% – 24% of the population catch the virus, the virus essentially is rebuffed in too many bodies to be able to sustain a pandemic.

Additionally, immunity does exist once a person has caught Covid-19 and has the antibodies in their system: Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, stated on May 11, “It is quite certain that immunity does exist…. For all the cases we have had in Sweden, there has not been one single person who had this disease twice.”

If there were no lockdown of everyone and instead the elderly and immune-compromised were protected/quarantined, the virus would run itself out after enough people developed antibodies and then those at risk would be free to interact again

According to the New York Times, South Dakota, as of mid-May, had 20,573 cases (1 per 233 of the population) and just 1 Covid-19 death. They have not enforced any lockdown, as is true of Sweden: Much like the rest of the world that is in lockdown, it has seen lots of people catching the virus but very few seriously ill and even fewer dying.

Even if healthy people staying at home could be justified in some way as a valid new theory for preventing the spread of a virus, it is not borne out in the real world: i.e. 66% of new Covid-19 patients in New York were sheltering at home. Another study from China found that 79.9% of new outbreaks of three or more people were from indoor transmission in private homes.

While staying at home does not appear to reduce infections and deaths in society in the short term, in the long term it invites the continuation of the virus as it prevents antibodies from being developed for herd immunity and so the virus never runs its course; it keeps revisiting society in new waves (as ironically, the authorities keep warning us will happen if we do not stay at home) when it finds enough new bodies to invade that have no defenses.

As predicted by the experts, stay-at-home lockdowns have had dire consequences beyond the Covid-19 mortalities, a few of which so far have proven to be:

  1. The May 2020 report from the Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University predicts that 6.3 million additional people will develop TB between now and 2025, with 1.4 million of them being expected to die because they were not diagnosed and treated during this lockdown;
  2. Another study taken at random by a data analyst consortium in South Africa determined the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29x more people dying from a variety of causes than from the coronavirus itself;
  3. Many people are going hungry (54 million in the US are reliant on food aid as prices rise), and hundreds of millions face hunger or starvation in other parts of the world as a result of economic collapse combined with numerous droughts and floods reducing crop yields; locust invasions in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia; tens of millions of pigs and chickens culled in Asia to combat Asian Swine flu and Avian HPAI/H5N1 bird flu; and in the US, because of Covid-19 outbreaks closing meat-processing plants.

Does all this add up to Covid-19 being a very dangerous virus?

It seems the bigger danger is media generating fear and the resulting unscientific and irrational solutions being enforced by governments resulting in collapsed economies; the disappearance of cultural norms (i.e. socializing, going to sports events or religious services, having shops and restaurants to enjoy, or of interest to the hospitality industry, traveling on vacation or business); quite in addition to avoidable deaths, upset/confused/hungry citizens, silenced voices, and lost civil liberties (including the desired-by-some enforced vaccinations).

So we come to the end of Part II and hopefully you are better prepared to make up your own mind and help steer things in the right direction next time someone panics over something they do not understand or tries to force something harmful on you and society.

In Part III, we will shine a spotlight on those individuals and organizations who mismanaged things in a way that did not collapse a single hotel or chain, or even all those in a single country or continent, but the entire world, and most other industries and professions.

Published by Hotel Business Review. 2 July, 2020

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Thinking for Yourself May Be the Only Regimen for a Full Recovery, Part I

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx

Do you personally accept the “New Normal” for the hospitality industry and society as a whole—which is based on the premise that Covid-19 is a singularly dangerous threat that requires a complete change in our lives, when (as it turns out) it is actually on a par with the common flu and (as it turns out) every other incorrectly declared pandemic? Or do you want to understand what has happened and do whatever is in your power, big or small, to return to the old, fun and life-filled normal that has been snatched from us?

While on a tour of southern Europe in the summer of ’86, my wife, who was walking behind me a couple of paces through Milan railway station, suddenly started yelling angrily. I turned around to see her gesticulating wildly and half-a-dozen girls scattering. “What?” “They all came at me at once, and the one with the piece of cardboard was using it as cover to try to steal from my bag.” I smiled, because the girls had no doubt thought, “Tourists, easy mark (target),” but did not know my wife is aware of her environment and more than willing to fight back. These girls only kept picking pockets because enough people are half asleep, easily distracted, and too trusting to suspect others of ill-intent.

Anyone with a hidden agenda who wants something that others would rather not lose, will smile in the target’s face while stabbing them in the back; a key technique being to cause a confusion that distracts and then striking from a different angle.

In the same vein, we have been given solutions to manage a pandemic-that-isn’t (as this article will prove in no uncertain terms), which solutions nevertheless continue to be enforced and which we would never have agreed to without an apparent pandemic necessitating them.

Throughout recorded history on Earth, man has very rarely demonstrated the capacity to reach rational conclusions and bring about sensible solutions that are maximally beneficial to the maximum areas of life impacted by that solution. Too often, the solutions benefit the few, or none at all, and usually involve ill-thought-through fixes and the use of force to implement them over the backs of those who are not benefitted.

Furthermore, it appears that in the absence of correct information, Man is subject to panic—whether the witch trials of Salem or the 471 times on record over the last 4,800 years that certain groups believed the world would end.

The current panic will probably stand out as the greatest of all panics simply because almost the entirety of mankind trusted the suppositions and assertions they were fed, supported by what transpired later to be spurious statistics and specious simulations.

How come our advanced civilization is making the same mistakes as our more primitive forbears?

There are at least four reasons, maybe more:

1) The disappearance from educational institutions over the last century of information-analysis and critical-thinking-skills instruction, social engineering being the preferred goal;

2) The rapid advance in so many specialized fields that it is difficult for an individual to grasp all subjects, making the easy path, in our crammed-full lives, reliance upon authorities and the media for guidance—instead of taking the harder path of the amateur sleuth;

3) The majority tend to make the mistake of thinking other people are as kind and decent as they themselves are. Yet, patently, there is a minority that has a hidden agenda—they and their purposes are not what they seem and not to be trusted;

4) People tend to be scared of invisible things they believe can harm them: Bacteria, viruses, radiation, and even ghosts!

And so after the dust has settled on the pandemic, what is the reality we are facing?

a. Collapse of economies around the world (in the US alone, $7.9 trillion loss in GDP (mid-May), anticipated by the Federal Reserve in Atlanta to end up at 52% loss, and taking a decade to recover); 40 million out of work in the US alone (38% of these in leisure and hospitality), 50% of small businesses, the backbone of the country, many closing for good as they cannot service their debt; $7 trillion more debt in the US; in the rest of the world (29 April snapshot) half the world’s work force was predicted to be at risk, as well as more than 436 million enterprises facing serious disruption; $9 trillion US injected into economies internationally (April), increasing debt and devaluing currencies;

b. Many more are dead or predicted to die from the lack of normal medical services over the several months of lockdown, from suicides (increase by 10,000 in Europe), etc., than actually died from the pandemic;

c. The hospitality industry was the first to collapse (95% of hospitality staff have been let go, cut off from any income in countries where there is no unemployment coverage) and is predicted to be the last to recover, all of which has industry leaders nervously trying to predict and prepare for an unpredictable future that lacks precedent. Restricted travel worldwide for up to four months has been devastating to many countries relying on tourism for their economies.

This is a serious case of “Oops, we made a little mistake…” and one would expect some effort to rectify the mistake, not to hear “…but we are continuing with the same actions.” So maybe this is the time for us citizens to be more attentive. Should a complete failure dictate a new normal? In years past, we have been lulled by a relatively stable society and generally buoyant markets into thinking that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, to quote Voltaire’s Pangloss—but when everything we know has been turned upside down, one might say it is no longer possible to ignore what changes are being visited upon us, nor any window of opportunity that may present itself to take remedial action.

In plain talk, where something does not make sense, it bears closer inspection. We inevitably will be subject to a repeat unless we recognize that the disruption has been sufficiently momentous to warrant a greater-than-normal inquisitiveness regarding how we reached this point and to take an honest look for ourselves at how we can ensure such a civilization-buster never happens again.

Who wants that? If some government medical authorities are already wising up, then maybe we should, also:

“It’s all bullshit! It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality.… Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know.” Dr. Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information (said privately, believing a recorded May 26 interview to be over)

“The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that Covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate.”

“A global false alarm.” Analysis of the Crisis Management, a leaked 93-page report drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the German Ministry of the Interior.

If you are fed up or dispirited with the whole subject, you owe it to yourself to climb out of the confusion. Grab a coffee, mute the phone, switch off the TV and sit down for half-an-hour to bust through the confusion and events over which you seem to have no choice. We have broken the article into three parts, to run over the next three weeks, in order to make the subject more assimilable.

In this first week, we will examine what has happened over the last four months: What we were told to believe and do, and what actually transpired;

Week two, we will review the censorship of the medical community that allowed the pandemic to be miscalled, its possible causes, actual dangers, and possible cures to be hidden from public view, laying bare some unpleasant truths about the vaccine industry and why this pandemic has been a political event, not a medical one, with almost every action taken by authorities being at variance with science;

Week three, we wrap up by shining a spotlight on the movers and shakers responsible for this mismanagement of the millennia, the timelines of their relevant actions, and what we can still do to bring back the fun-loving world we helped create as hospitality professionals—which means we also need to make it impossible for anyone to repeat the same concatenation of errors and misguided efforts, to which end a simple two-step program is presented.

As a note, the author lives in the US, so quite a few of the statistics and actions relate to the US; do not let this lull you into feeling that this does not apply in your country: Much of what is reported is mirrored in other countries, as we are talking about an international phenomenon driven by the same international players.

What We Were Told

The basic message communicated was that the threat was extreme and called for extreme measures. The statements made seemed to be supported by images of people keeling over in the streets of Wuhan, overflowing hospitals, and other dystopian (imagined state in which everything is bad) motifs—all somehow made worse by the initial suppression of information by Chinese authorities—in the absence of information, it is natural for some to fear the worst. Official statements have included variously:

  1. Covid-19 is 10x or 20x or 44x worse  than the flu; 3.2% of those infected will die (WHO); 2.2 million Americans and 510,000 British will die (the pivotal predictive Imperial College model used by the governments of both countries to institute lockdown); a predicted 15% mortality rate for those who catch the virus. Statistics were further mis-stated and miscalculated by certain experts who did not lack understanding.
    • Of note: The flu averages 60,000 deaths out of 39-56 million cases in the US each year, hitting a peak in 1957 of 125,000 deaths; 1 billion people catch the flu worldwide and 290,000-650,000 die of it.
  2. Lockdown is just for two weeks; we need to lockdown until there are no more cases or until we have the only solution possible, a vaccine, which will take 18 months to develop;
  3. We need the lockdown to avoid hospitals being overrun; we need to set up field hospitals to cover the predicted catastrophic shortage of hospital beds;
  4. We need society to stop and to quarantine everyone, not just those who are ill;
  5. We must track and trace all Covid-19 cases;
  6. Contact tracing requires quarantining those who have come into contact with an infected person;
  7. We need to send home those who test positive;
  8. The virus lasts for weeks on plastic or metal surfaces;
  9. You must wear masks and wash your hands constantly, because the main transmission method is person-to-person via respiratory drops, hence social distancing;
  10. Covid-19 spreads through the eyes;
  11. People are being re-infected after being cured;
  12. People who have no symptoms can infect others;
  13. This virus came from wild animals in a Chinese market;
  14. If we end lockdown too soon, cases will skyrocket;
  15. Testing must be done to return to work or travel; there are no test kits; test kits do not work properly, creating lots of false positives/negatives or being contaminated;
  16. As the weeks of lockdown continued, statistics continued to show an alarming spread—April 7: 1.36 million confirmed cases and 76,000 deaths in 184 countries; May 28, 5.82 million confirmed cases and 358,185 deaths in 213 countries and territories.

With such fearful information emanating from all quarters, it is no wonder citizens panicked, just as they did when they heard George Orwell’s October 1938 radio-broadcast adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel, War of the Worlds, about an ongoing Martian invasion of New England. The dramatization caused utter panic amongst some of the citizenry who were so used to believing everything they heard on the radio. Reportedly, deaths may have occurred and certainly miscarriages and early births as people panicked with various remedial actions against this fictional invasion. The reaction was extreme when the truth became known, including lawsuits; but to those who had been paying attention, they knew the dramatization was a work of fiction.

Fast forward 10 weeks, let’s see how these feared outcomes fared:

What Actually Happened

  1. The percentages of cases and mortalities were roughly the same in the different States and countries, whether or not they locked down; those countries that did not lockdown saw their economies suffer the least;
  2. Lockdown where it occurred was less than two weeks in a handful of countries like Turkey and up to 3 months in most countries; 8 countries and 5 US States did not lock down at all;
  3. Re-openings after lock down showed no surge in cases;
  4. 35% of those who tested positive for Covid-19 had no symptoms or idea they had it as they built up antibodies and contributed to herd immunity; of the 65% with symptoms, many were mild and very few needed hospitalization; per the CDC, the fatality rate of those infected was 0.26% and per other studies, the mortality rate of those infected varied by region from 0.02-0.4%, compared with 0.1-0.2% for seasonal flu;
  5. Some died in part because the wrong treatment was administered (remedying the lack of oxygen by forcing it into their lungs with ventilators as opposed to using hyperbaric oxygen therapy which could have saved their lives);
  6. People without symptoms or during an incubation period did not infect others—the statement in January that it did was based on an incomplete case study of just one patient that was not peer reviewed—which incorrect data the WHO declined to correct when it was made known;
  7. The virus, despite apparently being engineered to spread as broadly and effectively as possible (called “gain of function”) in order to find a vaccinee for such a virus, was not in fact doing so: What it was doing was tipping the balance for those elderly with pre-existing conditions, particularly lung (COPD) conditions and heart patients taking statins to lower their blood pressure;
  8. The CDC admitted mid-May that the virus does not persist for long on surfaces but is airborne and breathed in. As with the trillions of other viruses in existence, Covid-19 blows around the world on the wind as its main form of transmission; the secondary form of transmission—droplets that have a 3-foot range from a person’s mouth—make trying to stop this vector akin to toweling oneself dry in the rain;
  9. Re-infection does not occur, because antibodies, as with all viruses, exist after a person has caught a virus; South Koreans appeared to be re-infected after testing positive, but this was because the (PCR) tests were unable to differentiate between live and dead cells—and in any case, these patients were found not to be contagious;
  10. The number of Covid-19 cases in the US was inflated for a number of reasons: The CDC was double counting, for instance, but primarily because the tests were faulty. The below are some specifics, but for a scientific explanation that is understandable to laymen, Flaws in Coronavirus Pandemic Theory undercuts the idea that one can test for Covid-19 at all by showing tests to be completely inadequate and furthermore on a symptological level, that Covid-19 is not even identifiable as a discrete disease, the symptoms (fever, cough, and difficulty breathing) being very similar to a cold or flu: 

    a. The PCR testing used to determine if a person had SARS-CoV-2 genetic material proved to be inaccurate, resulting in no great certainty on the actual numbers of Covid-19 cases;

    b. Test kits were not available for the first few crucial weeks because the CDC wanted to make its own test kit and declined to use a German one available; the test kits produced eventually by the CDC did not follow their own protocols and so were faulty—as were ones imported from China that were found mid-April to be “wildly inaccurate” (by many countries including the USA);

    c. The PCR tests created false positives as well as false negatives; this is not surprising, given that Dr. Mullis, who won the Nobel Peace prize for Chemistry in 1993 for inventing PCR, stated it should not be used for detecting viruses, as it was unable to determine how much of a virus a person has in their body and whether that would be sufficient to make them sick (“The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.”

  11. i. The FDA authorized 33 different PCR tests to be used for Covid–19 testing but the manufacturers used different standards for confirming positives (between 1 and 3 RNA segments needing to be detected; and the number of cycles engaged by the manufacturers to detect enough genetic material varied between 30 and 45);

    ii. Some patients flipped from testing positive to negative and back again;

    iii. WHO labs reported samples sent to them had tested positive, even though they were actually collected from a goat and the pawpaw fruit (the President of Tanzania had sent these fake samples when he became suspicious of the spike in Covid-19 cases);

    d. Until May 20, the CDC was combining viral test results until May 20 from nose swabs or salvia samples (that determine if an individual is sick in real time) with antibody blood tests (that show whether a person has ever been exposed to SARS-CoV-2), thus making it impossible to know the actual number of infected cases in the US;

    i. The antibody tests are wrong up to 50% of the time, according to the CDC.

  12. No great certainty exists on the number of Covid-19 deaths, either:
  13. a. Dr. Birx of the White House Covid-19 Task Force sent hospitals a seven-page document requiring they label deaths as being presumed to be from Covid-19, without testing for it, and that Covid-19 be given as the cause of death when actually an existing morbidity was the cause—for instance:

    i.Gunshot fatalities were listed as Covid-19 in Washington State;

    ii.Colorado finally lowered their totals by 31% and New Jersey by 21%;

    iii. The County Supervisor of San Diego stated the number of actual Covid-19 deaths by May 13 to be 6, not the reported 194 (out of the 3.3 million citizens of the county);

    b. The US government was giving hospitals $13,000 for every patient admitted with Covid-19 and $39,000 for every patient put on a ventilator, and the CARES Act added a 20% premium for COVID-19 Medicare patients, creating a potential path for administrators (who were struggling with the lack of funds following the loss of elective surgery income because of the pandemic), to make ends meet; this hunger for funds could also be why one hospital charged $18,415 for a Covid-19 test;

  14. $660 million of taxpayer monies was spent setting up field hospitals in various states and these were disbanded late May after 1,095 patients were treated in NYC and 82 patients in two other hospitals. The other hospitals treated zero patients;
  15. The Microsoft software used for the pivotal prediction of millions of mortalities by the Imperial College in London, funded by Mr. Gates, was not duplicatable, a basic requirement for any science; ivory tower academia without real-world experience is not the proper source for modelling when compared with insurers who employ data scientists, modelers, and managers to ensure the model is grounded in reality, and software engineers to test the software.
  16. Even though a 2003 movie included the notion of lockdowns, the idea of social distancing and lockdown was first proposed for dealing with epidemics in 2006, based on a 14-year-old girl’s high-school science experiment using agent-based modelling techniques supported by zero knowledge of life, science, viruses, medicine, or disease mitigation. Despite its unscientific provenance, the proposal was adopted as policy by DC politicians over the objections of expert epidemiologists.
  17. A Big Nothing Burger

    For those doctors and experts and savvy citizens who were looking at the unfolding pandemic, it was obvious early on that the alarming predictions and fudged statistics were contradicted by the closed environments provided by ships on lock down.

    Take the case of the USS Roosevelt: Out of 4,800 sailors in close quarters 1,156 tested positive, 60% of them experiencing no symptoms, 6 ended up in hospital, one in intensive care, and one died.

    On the Diamond Princess, out of 3,711 passengers and crew, 712 became infected, 57.6% with no symptoms, 40 were put in intensive care and 12 (1.7%) died.

    On the French aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, and its strike group, 1,046 out of 1,760 sailors became infected, two required intensive care, and none died.

    Multiple medical professionals also spoke out about the many anomalies regarding the official narrative compared with the reality on the ground. Two ER doctors revealed how their clinics in California were witnessing a large number of Covid-19 cases with no-to-few symptoms, and very few deaths. Their video went viral, 5.46-million views within a few days, and then was removed from YouTube for “violating community guidelines;” in this case, removing anything that contradicts the idea that the virus is dangerous and requires lockdown until a universal vaccination can be implemented.

    Confirming these low mortality rates, the total count of Covid-19 deaths after three months stood at 250,000 compared to 1.5 million deaths during the influenza wave 2017/18.

    Yet despite these obvious results, governments around the world kept on with their policies of shutting down their economies until a vaccine could be produced.

    How does one explain such stubbornness in the face of contradictory facts?

    The Need to Know

    The complete nuking of all hotels, resorts, and airlines around the world, not to mention other sectors, has sadly been a replay of the 1938 radio broadcast—panic created by taking trusted sources on blind faith instead of looking for the facts and thinking with them critically—if not at first, which was admittedly difficult, but certainly later, and even-more certainly as we move forward. This statement being directed at everyone from our political leaders on down—as we kept being told, “we are all in this together,” let’s climb out of it together.

    If we simply try to move forward with what is left after the commotion and chaos dies down without discovering and understanding how we reached this point, we will be rearranging the china in the shop while the bull is still in it—hoping it will leave some china intact before it leaves, if indeed it ever does leave.

    Unless we work out how and why the bull came into the shop, nothing will stop it from remaining in it or from coming back and wreaking the same havoc, or worse.

    When a catastrophe occurs in nature, such as an earthquake, it is not caused by any cognitive agency but is the somewhat predictable result (as our science and understanding improve) of mechanical combinations of particles and forces in motion.

    When some catastrophe occurs in human activity, one or more someones was behind it, deliberately or accidentally bringing about the catastrophe. Just like the family members of a murder victim rarely find any closure unless they discover who did it and why, so does humanity deserve an explanation of how this pandemic train-wreck went so thoroughly off the rails, in order to move on with any degree of confidence that we do not have to experience this agony again. It would be a mistake to forget it all, for there are those in authority still making noises about the pandemic resurfacing (expecting us to keep thinking of this pandemic as a valid medical event rather than the political one it has turned out to be).

    Having spent weeks of lockdown digging through reams of spectacularly contradictory and erroneous statistics and data, any determination that the bull came into the shop because it saw an attractive cash-cow, often the motivation behind bull-like misadventures, would be too simple and neat a conclusion and as it turns out, a valid but not fundamental motivation. The truth and the science are far more exciting and enlightening and make for a great whodunnit—all the more so because we are living this drama every minute, whether or not we stand back and recognize it, and the effects on us personally and on civilization are palpable.

    The Theater of the Absurd

    To highlight the absurdity of the government reactions to the pandemic-that-isn’t, during May, AstraZeneca continued with human trials of its hoped-for Covid-19 vaccine AZD 1222, using 1,000 healthy volunteers in Oxford, England (with another 10,260 adults and children to follow)—despite the complete failure of their animal trials, wherein all the vaccinated monkeys caught Covid-19. While the media was being told the trials were going well, AstraZeneca was actually finding that their human vaccine trials were also proving problematic because they could not prove their vaccine prevented those inoculated from catching Covid-19 because there were so few people with Covid-19 in the UK from whom they could be infected.

    The UK government is hoping the trial will succeed so that they can buy 100 million doses by September and thus release lockdown and allow people to go back to work and revive the economy. The US has contributed and pledged a further $1.2 billion for the development and delivery of 300 million doses, and the Gates Foundation has put in $750 million—so there is plenty of financial incentive to bring the vaccine to market no matter how recalcitrant the safety trials, and ahead of the other 100 vaccine trials in the race to the Covid-19 immunization bonanza.

    A week later, the UK government announced that lockdown makes it illegal for two or more people meeting in a public place or inside a home where they do not live. Seems 1984 has finally arrived in the UK, where phones can pinpoint such a meeting and record them secretly until the knock on the door—the British Police Federation having asked for the power to enter homes forcefully where illegal meetings are suspected.

    On the US side, Judge Michael McHaney summed up the inanity of the government lockdown approach in his ruling against an illegal executive lockdown-order by Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker:

    “Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family-owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

    “A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.

    “These are just a few examples of rules, regulations, and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.

    “State’s attorneys in this state, county sheriffs, mayors, city councils, and county boards have openly and publicly defied these orders, followed by threats to withhold funding and revocation of necessary licenses and certifications unless you obey.

    “Our economy is shut down because of a flu virus with a 99.7% survival rate. Doctors and experts say different things weekly. The defendant cites models in his opposition. The only thing experts will agree on is that all models are wrong and some are useful. The Centers for Disease Control now says the virus is not easily spread on surfaces.

    “The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.

    “When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. 

    “That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, any American courtroom, tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom, and the constitution will always win.”

    There will be some who find acceptable the events described above, as well as a future that includes continued shutdown of one stripe or another, continued fear-mongering in the media, repeated waves of viruses that are blown out of proportion (whether Covid-19 or the next one to appear—nobody shuts down the world, for instance, because the annual flu kills up to 600,000 people), a loss of personal freedoms, and a hospitality industry that is focused on sanitizing and enforcing social distancing that is not only impractical but also antipathetic to the notion of social intercourse
    as well as the hospitality we have lived and breathed for millennia. Those who have no issue with what has happened may be agreeable to guests having to stay in some tawdry government-provided room and board for two weeks of quarantine before finally being able to enjoy their one-week vacation at their resort, and then returning home, presumably, for another two-weeks of quarantine. They may believe hospitality guests will be willing and able to apply for and be granted a passport to prove, using faulty tests, that they have been vaccinated or have antibodies for any number of potential viruses; that they will be willing to experience the Covid-19 gauntlet (as demonstrated in the Abu Dhabi Airport videos showing social distancing, sterilization booths, facial recognition, thermal and mask tracking, and Covid-19 testing) in addition to the airport security gauntlet developed over the last two decades; and they may believe that a 50% jump in airline prices will also encourage tourism.

    If this is their honest point of view and they are happy to sacrifice the world we used to know for reasons that absolutely do not add up, then they are thanked for reading this far and encouraged not to proceed to Part II.

    For those brave and curious souls who prefer to have access to and study information on any particular subject from a variety of knowledgeable sources, then make up their own mind and take action to improve any given situation, Part II provides information they most probably have not been exposed to because the tradition of investigative journalism is sadly almost completely missing from the media in this 21st Century, and any idea of human rights regarding freedom of speech a past indulgence.

    As the saying goes, “The truth shall set you free”, and that begs the question, of course, “What is the truth?”

    If you feel something does not add up about this whole affair—and if you want the perfectly good and relatively worry-free lives we enjoyed before, especially in the hospitality industry, to return one day, then keep an eye out for Parts II and then III of this article, because something can be done about this as long as enough understand and act together constructively.

    Published 25 June, 2020 in Hotel Business Review

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What Happens When Quality Assurance Morphs into PR & Marketing?

Current Trends

By Prof. Steven Ferry

What Happens When Quality Assurance Morphs into PR & Marketing?

If Quality Assurance had not been taken over by such interests, it would be focused on operational audits and follow-up actions that result in improved service and thus influenced guest perception based on real-world intentions and actions.

This hijacking of QA could explain some very real problems that hoteliers are facing today in their operations and even with guest perceptions…

Did you hear about the case of the incredible disappearing hotel manager?

No?

Well, this is not so much a joke or a detective story as the beginnings of an obituary for the old-time general manager who used to have the time to cruise the lobby, building relationships with guests.

Where is he now?

According to a recent article by Hong Kong-based journalist, Vijay Verghese, GMs have left the lobby in order to address more-pressing concerns such as cost-cutting and investor-driven imperatives.

Like the canary in the coal mine, the GM-free lobby most likely has fallen victim to myriad back-office exigencies (urgent needs/demands) and can be seen as an early warning regarding the downsides of the increasing mechanization, social-media-ization, and creeping automation/robotification of the guest experience. Like oxygen for miners, emotional engagement is not an option for hospitality, so how can such a fundamental have been pushed so far off course?

It has been a slow process: Over the decades, the industry has responded to the tempestuous winds of the economy, changing market conditions, and guest perceptions and expectations-the most cogent amongst which are a) generational, b) cultural diversity opened up by globalization, and c) technological advances-all of which have resulted in a number of fundamental changes that may not be in the best interests of the guests and thus the hotels and chains that service them. Some would call such dead canaries “progress,” others might see them for what they are.

What other canaries may be lying inert at the bottom of their cage?

Brand Loyalty without the Benefit of USPs?

One seriously sick canary is undoubtedly the challenge in maintaining brand loyalty and increasing those coveted repeaters.

How come?

As the industry consolidates and consolidates, and then consolidates some more into corporate behemoths, brand identities and differentiators start to bleed like a red shirt in the whitewash, everything turning pink. The 20,000 Five-Star hotels around the world, for instance, are owned by a decreasing number of companies who, with a few notable exceptions, seem to have reached an amorphous plateau where their brand lacks any meaningful-to-the-guest USP. By way of a simple reality check, when a property is de-flagged, the new operator can and often does take over almost seamlessly, thereby calling into question any asserted differentiation.

The illusion of choice is created by having multiple brands from which to choose-much like a car-rental company that offers a choice of different makes of vehicles that have no effective advantage one over the other-the only actual difference being between categories of vehicle, such as saloon, SUV, sport, luxury, and van.

From the guest point of view, there is a loss of the unique, the personal, the home-away-from-home feel, as corporate-think nudges out plain old hospitality-think (Hospitality: The friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, originally from the word Host: “A person who receives or entertains others as guests.”).

Is it any wonder, therefore, that guests lack brand loyalty, preferring online aggregators offering the largest possible selection and the most-competitive pricing to determine where they will stay? You could say that hospitality is falling away from being a desirable experience by guests to a mere commodity as guests lose interest and become less engaged.

The above problem children (decreasing live guest-engagement and the lack of differentiation and thus loyalty) are real challenges faced by hard-working and well-meaning managers and owners. They did not create the environment so much as find themselves operating in it as “The way things are, so adapt and make the most of it!”

Except this whole idea of adapting to the environment is another piece of conventional wisdom that could use some examining. For those who react to life, it is the way to go. For industry drivers who are aware of the environment, able to compute accurately and take action, the actual and successful operating basis is to change the environment proactively to the way one wants it to be. The trick, of course, is to want it to be in a condition where the most entities influenced by the environment benefit from it-not to take action that only benefits self and a few others.

A person who is proactive will be alert for new ideas, think them through, and take action to improve conditions. A person who is reactive will not look at, or will reject, any ideas that require independent thought or bucking the status quo. And so, having great faith in the abilities of hoteliers, almost all of whom that this author has met personally being rather exceptional, it may be of interest to step outside the conventional wisdom and offer a new course for hospitality to chart so as to a) bring it back to its roots or essence and b) help resolve the lack of differentiation in their offerings, guest engagement by the staff, and loyalty of their guests.

What is the new direction?

QA Designed for a Different Purpose

The first step is paring guest complaints down to the basic one: A failure by the facility to deliver what was promised-assuming, of course, that what was promised aligns with what the guests want (as discovered by proper market research and survey).

When something is not being delivered as promised, that is the time for Quality Assurance to step in and push things back onto the right course. And this is where we hit the pivotal problem: QA has itself been blown off course, bit by bit, and has not had the benefit of a QA Overseer to push it back on course!

In what way is QA off course?

While claiming to provide QA, the two main independent QA organizations are really focused on, and of benefit to hoteliers as

  1. a) benchmarkers against the competition and offering membership in a club that guests used to consider of value in selecting properties;

and

  1. b) as an advertising and marketing boost.

There is nothing wrong with these boosts and activities, but if these market leaders, who control almost the entire QA space, present themselves as QA, then everyone assumes that all the QA that needs to be done is being done.

And the truth is that the QA standards being used leave much to be desired. This is perhaps why most hoteliers see hotel inspection scores primarily as a marketing tool and indicator of how they compare to their competition (which in part drives performance assessment and related bonuses), rather than an objective operations analysis that points to the needed operational improvements that will lead to greater guest satisfaction.

QA is at the core of hospitality, for guest perception and satisfaction are based on what the guest actually experiences in the real world. QA audits that dig into what and how the staff are doing are key to maintaining high levels of guest satisfaction. Yet when QA plays second fiddle to other pressing concerns or is relegated to an occasional obligatory assessment, the main purpose of which is to achieve sales and marketing goals, then a real QA that improves staff performance and guest experience may well be a concept and activity that has disappeared from hospitality, just like the oxygen in a mine blow-out.

QA actually started in the 1950s in England, and, as covered in the first article in this series A Report Card on Independent Quality Assurance, standards assessed covered 50% guest engagement and service standards and 50% facility. This provided a pretty accurate assessment of what the guest could expect and what the property needed to focus on in order to improve the guest experience. Over the years, the QA focus switched almost entirely to assessing facilities and service standards, with only a lick and a promise returning recently to the assessment of guest engagement.

To make matters worse, standards in use today were created, and have remained substantially unchanged since, on the preferences of Western Silent Generation and Baby Boomers. Don’t look now, but the generations flooding hotels and resorts today are much younger, and they certainly do not all come from Western countries.

Then there are various other operational subjects that really need to be audited and improved as part of the greater audit in order to address those subjects that interest or impact guests: Efficiency of the staff; environmental impacts; emotional engagement (as distinct from service style-these terms not being distinguished in audits because emotional engagement is not understood as a science); and guest perceptions as expressed in social media. A truly on-target experience for the guests cannot manifest if any one audit element is missing or weak. Achieving that balanced overview and strategizing based on it would be, in and of itself, one fundamental differentiator for a chain or hotel, simply because they would be in tune with their guests and delivering on the promised experience.

Quite a few chains have taken QA in-house, but they walk forward with a blinker on each side of their head that reduces their effectiveness: On one side, they are too closely involved with their own product and on the other, they have the same shortfalls in standards as the independent QA market leaders-all following the same general approach and conventional wisdom.

While and since writing the three earlier articles on QA in 2018, I have contacted hundreds of GMs and corporate people and found most to be very much involved in their operation and set on the conventional wisdom, making it hard for them to step outside the box and look.

And that is what an independent and comprehensive Quality Assurance program would deliver, looking with a fresh pair of eyes at the whole guest and staff experience, highlighting the kind of creeping changes-those suffering canaries-mentioned above that elude those focused on the demands of day-to-day affairs and following current policies/strategies/imperatives/wisdom.

As a note, some chains try to bring about this fresh look at the property level by changing their top managers frequently from property to property. This creates other problems, as such managers never have the opportunity to implement a long-term strategy, such as one indicated by a comprehensive QA operational audit.

A better strategy might be to carry out an objective analysis periodically and allow the GM to keep the resulting business plan on track and not be pushed off it by daily routine and demands.

This article is not suggesting that the market QA leaders, with the benchmarking and marketing benefits they bring, should not continue as they have been-but let’s not be lulled into thinking that such audits are really operational audits focused on improving the guest experience, rather than just the guest perception of the facility.

For in the final analysis, what use is focusing on the perception when the substance that underlies the perception is not delivering on the promise; and what use is benchmarking if the standards used fall short in multiple ways? *

* As covered in Auditing the Auditors, Parts I-III:

  1. A Report Card on Independent Quality Assurance
  2. The Art of Finding the Pulse
  3. A Quality Assurance Program for the 21st Century

First published in Hotel Business Review and thereafter in other outlets.

The Institute is dedicated to raising service standards by broadly disseminating the mindset and superior service expertise of that time-honored, quintessential service provider, the British Butler, updated with modern people skills, and adapted to the needs of modern employers and guests in staffed homes, luxury hotels, resorts, spas, retirement communities, jets, yachts & cruise ships around the world.

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Auditing the Auditors, Part III of III

Steven FerryAuditing the Auditors, part III of III: A Quality Assurance Program for the 21st Century

by Steven Ferry

In the first two articles in this series, we looked at how independent Quality Assurance programs have fallen into a conventional wisdom and modus operandi that is out of touch with their clients’ and their guests’ needs and then examined the challenges and relevance of QA in helping their client’s assess their performance in a world increasingly guided by the megaphone of social-media reviews.

In this third and last article, we look at what an ideal QA program would look like, in the hope that third-party QA companies, and/or internal QA programs are listening and decide to upgrade their assessments and programs.
For hoteliers to understand more accurately their strengths and weaknesses, and work effectively toward achieving their goals of guest comfort, convenience, satisfaction, and enjoyment, while themselves enjoying high occupancy levels and RevPAR, the ideal Quality Assurance service would incorporate at least the following changes:

1) By way of clarification, the author’s background is the superior-service world of the British butler, adapted to modern 5* hotels and resorts. This does not mean that he is implying that QA programs should only be targeted at the 1,500-2,500 luxury hotels around the world (depending on one’s definition), nor that economy hotels should be made into 5* star properties. But solicitous and speedy service should be just as organic in a Motel 6 as in a luxury hotel, and indeed, anywhere where service is provided, whether in a hospitality venue, a corporation, or a government agency— the police, justice system, and tax department included!

In this way, a proper QA program would have fundamental and non-negotiable standards of service, but would recognize that when it comes to facilities, standards need to be tailor made and agreed upon with each property, in order to provide the property with an assessment that will be of use to them, rather than the irrational requirement that they be judged by, and fit themselves into, an average statement of the industry that is based on the preferences and habits of two generations of guests (Silent and Baby Boomer) that are no longer the predominant demographic customer segments.

When setting the ideal for each property, the following would be taken into account, at least: City or resort; the preferences and goals of the guests in the geographical and consumer markets to which the property reaches out: For instance, broadly, Westerners are not so interested in face value, prestige, and status symbols, but for many Asian guests, these considerations are paramount, as are opportunities for photo opportunities and selfies; the purpose of the property (as broadcast through its branding and marketing, and supported by its location, structures, decor, ambiance, facilities, activities for guests to engage in, and service style). This ideal for each property’s facilities would need to be updated as markets inevitably undergo transformation.

2) An effective QA program would provide accurate feedback and analysis, as well as recommendations, on the public perception of the client property in the rapidly changing, inaccurate, and insufficiently monitored-and-controlled social-media landscape. It would not, however, rely solely on the remote and largely anonymous feedback characteristic of social media, encouraging as it does little or large exaggerations from Chicken Littles; but would analyze GSSs and more particularly, survey in-house guests at the time of the audit for that face-to-face experience that is more likely to elicit responsible feedback, as well as an accurate assessment of the emotional level and thus veracity of the person speaking—for a person’s emotional level betrays the accuracy or inaccuracy of their statements.

Having an accurate assessment of the public perception expressed in social media would point to a proper strategy to regain control of the public perception of their property (or chain), and would allow hoteliers to climb down from the treadmill of constant fretting over image management and to focus more on simply delivering a good guest experience that is after all, fundamental to the social media perception. The current set-up with social media is a bit like a hostess who constantly asks her guests for their feedback at a dinner party and introverts into handling any negative comments, and so loses the thread and momentum of the evening.

Criticism can do that to people, especially when unwarranted, but in the end, it violates the key butler modus operandi: the maintaining of one’s dignity and thus presence/standing. Not to discount the social media, and certainly not to recommend doing what some poor souls do: Ignore it to their own detriment. But there is a happy medium and that is intelligent assessment of the actual perception, rather then responding piecemeal to negative reviews, frantically and subserviently much like Uriah Heep in Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield (and no doubt Hollywood movies of the same name).

3) A good QA program would maintain its integrity for the guests by having no affiliation (as tempting a business model as it no doubt is) with a membership organization so that there is no impulse to lower standards in order to increase membership. The focus would be totally on accurate assessment in order to target areas for actual improvement.

4) For a QA service to bring about honest results that are accepted, rather than protested, by hoteliers, the auditors would have to be trained, and the system set up, to reflect accurately the guest experience. This means auditors who are trained to be a) consistent one with the other, and b) fair in the way they present problems and assess how the staff respond: unrealistic and complex scenarios posited that require more time to resolve, for instance, should not be held to the same standard of speed of resolution as everyday scenarios.

5) Similarly, beneficial QA results would provide more than just “Yes,” “No,” and N/A” feedback. This is the equivalent of Aristotle’s three-valued logic and not a very discerning way to assess anything in the days of infinity valued/fuzzy logic, which has been with us for well nigh a century. There has to be a balance between a system that has too much differentiation expressed, requiring the auditor enter opinions into the marks given, as they cannot realistically discern and justify, for instance, between a score of 72% and 75%—and too little differentiation. There is a happy medium that would provide enough information to reflect more accurately the status of each line item, and that would include text boxes to provide statements clarifying what occurred that resulted in a very good or bad judgment.

Giving marks without explanations is endemic in our school systems, and yet it is just as upsetting for a hotelier to receive a bad mark without knowing what happened, as it is for a child to receive an “F” in an exam or grade without knowing why, or being able to correct it. When one agrees to someone sitting in judgment, this kind of behavior is expected; but that does not make it right, and it certainly does not help right any errors noted. In essence, 100% should be a passing standard in any exam, because one loops back with the examinee to fix what they did not answer or execute correctly, and then the purpose of the exercise is achieved: not judgment and grading/pigeon-holing, but improvement.

5a) The standards would include assessment of all departments, including (excuse the brazen plug) the hundreds of butler departments around the world; and then there are other important areas that need assessing, and thus standards set—important because they are important to guests—yet for which there are no or very few standards set and assessed: Environmental standards; staff efficiency; and most vitally, assessing the emotional engagement by staffs with guests as well as with each other. As most managers know, without a finger on the pulse of, and ability to steer, the core issues that ultimately produce guest satisfaction—staff morale and emotional engagement or the caring that brings about solicitous service—they can work themselves ragged improving facilities and yet still fail utterly.

6) To be truly useful, a QA service would not just sit in judgment and then leave the property to its own devices for the next year: It would also provide an analysis with recommendations, and then work long-distance with the property, as a partner rather than an occasional judge, to improve the poor conditions found and to reinforce the strengths—whether facilitating training, consultation, or technical assistance through verified third parties. In order not to fall into the trap covered in #3 above, this full service would be part of the audit package purchased by the property up front, so there would be no question of test results being adjusted to increase revenue for the auditing company or any sister companies. In short, the QA service would help improve the conditions needed to keep guests returning based on their own experience, rather than the megaphoned words of fellow consumers they have never met, but whose words, accurate or not, reach far and wide on social media.

7) GMs generally find audits that include benchmarking against their local competitors to be of value in understanding how they are performing in their own market, but only a third felt benchmarking resulted in improved performance. So a good audit program would provide benchmarking, based on rigorous, tailor-made standards, and would place the emphasis not on besting the competition but on setting and implementing standards that actually improve the guest experience, and thus ultimately, the RevPAR, and their attractiveness to guests when compared with the local competition.

So a useful audit would combine

  1. a) an internal and professionally derived, comprehensive and confidential QA in the real world in order to maintain the standards that are designed to bring about a happy guest experience

with

  1. b) social-media monitoring in the virtual world and public domain, of guest reviews of the actual service received

into an actionable overview of performance and real standing to guide management at the operational, PR, and marketing levels.

For the final word on the ideal QA program, and the need, as expressed by the majority of GMs surveyed around the world, for the industry to up its game, it is probably best coming from the man who helped launch, and then run, LQA, the market leader in QA, for many years; for if anyone understands the challenges, successes, and shortfalls of the industry, it is Welf Ebeling, who has been intimately involved with the workings of the industry and then enjoyed the luxury of standing back far enough to see the big picture.

“There are fundamentals in service and guest handling that are timeless and applicable everywhere in the world. However, over the years, customer needs and expectations have changed. Quality Assurance can no longer be based solely on standards that were set at a time when middle-aged and retired Americans made up the main force of luxury travelers. When I joined the Leading Hotels of the World, some of the requirements at the time were that a hotel include a hamburger and a club sandwich on the menu, and a male guest wear jacket and tie in a fine-dining room. Asia was, by and large, an incoming destination that catered to Western tourists.

“All this has changed, and hotels have to gear up to meet the needs of today’s customer, who in the luxury sector, could very likely be a millennial billionaire arriving in T-shirt and jeans, or a group of affluent Chinese single ladies outspending by far Western travelers on average. A genuine desire to take care of a customer’s needs, even if it is not perfectly executed, is far more important than robotic, drilled standards lacking in warmth and compassion.”

Originally published by Hotel Business Review in November, 2018. Also published in HotelExecutive.com

 

 

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Auditing the Auditors, Part II of III

Steven FerryAuditing the Auditors, part II of III: The Art of Finding the Pulse

by Steven Ferry

Services that fail to change with the times, fall out of use: Robust, third-party QA programs are, surprisingly, one such otherwise valuable service that we may see disappearing as social media are increasingly used by guests and management alike, to determine the state of affairs and rankings of hotels and resorts. The replacement of professionals by amateurs, who are armed with a little knowledge and the full confidence of their own particular experience, is not necessarily an improvement; but it is certainly a reality. Part II of the three-part series on Quality Assurance looks at the pros and cons of each, and the best way to retain the professionalism of QA audits while maintaining the finger on the pulse, via social media, of the guests, who after all, are the subject of the conversation.

Gauging performance of one’s hotel or resort, guest sentiments, and presenting the right image to potential guests, used to be accomplished by professionals: internal audits, PR, and marketing departments, travel agencies as independent marketers; and later on, third-party audits, and for higher-end properties, membership in such as LHW or the Mobil/Forbes list to make a statement about what quality a guest might expect. There was some measure of control, and whether or not the audits and surveys were accurate portrayals of the existing reality, they were generally balanced and comprehensive.

The downside to this paradigm being that the ratings afforded were not transparent to the guests and perhaps tended toward the hyperbolic, losing some meaning for guests. Added to the failure of some hotel companies to maintain brand standards and the tendency for travel guides and PR pieces in magazines and media to paint too-rosy-a-picture, one driven by commerce rather than the quality of the actual guest experience, and consumers were too often led astray in their selection of a hotel or resort.

Enter the 21st Century and the ascendancy of the virtual world over the real one—and more particularly for hospitality, the replacement in the minds of those raised in the digital era, of thorough assessments and statements by hospitality professionals as a means for evaluation of hotels and resorts they were considering visiting, in favor of amateur and usually narrowly focused consumer feedback. Suddenly the guests, empowered by the social media, held sway over the hotels and resorts they frequented.

Where before hotels could be accused of putting their best foot forward at the expense of guest understanding of the true state of affairs, what has replaced it is not necessarily better: while many consumer posts are genuine, the anonymity made possible in the virtual world has opened the door to unreasonable venting, fake identities, bots and the like, generating inaccurate pictures and thus assessments that reach far and wide, forcing the industry to focus on image management over guest servicing.

The most telling example of “fake reviews” is probably The Shed at Dulwich, which was London’s top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor in 2017—until the truth emerged that it was actually a spoof by a freelance writer, who himself blew the whistle. The restaurant did not exist in the real world, but the web page and (burner) phone number (to take calls from frustrated Londoners wanting to book and finding it constantly overbooked) did exist, as did the photographs of the haute cuisine dishes (made from household products such as bleach tablets and shaving cream). The writer’s inspiration came from the writing he had been paid for previously: posting fake reviews for real restaurants in the capital city. So likewise, within five months of being accepted by TripAdvisor, the 104 fake reviews posted by friends and family, who rated their experience as 5* with a few 4*s, catapulted The Shed at Dulwich from dead last in London (18,149th) to #1. Toward the end of its virtual life, 89,000 people from around the world visited the web site for The Shed at Dulwich in just one day.

The upside of this C2C collaboration via social media platforms is that hotels and resorts exist to service their guests, so what could be wrong with keeping a very big finger on the pulse of guest satisfaction? That was how independent audits started in the Sixties in England, with a very big concern, as discussed in Part I of this series for emotional engagement and guest satisfaction. Somewhere along the line, however, the hospitality industry became short sighted and focused its QA standards on the objects of its trade—the buildings, the rooms and their servicing—not even including anything as basic as chatting with guests during an audit, to find out what they were experiencing.

So, is it any wonder that, thanks to the instant C2C communication lines of the many social platforms, the pendulum has swung over to the guests asserting themselves and doing their own assessments? If only they were accurate, focused more on balanced and factual information rather than emotional content and anecdotal accounts. The question is, does an agglomeration of anecdotes relayed by those in possession of a little knowledge, add up to a balanced and accurate account overall upon which guests can decide from the overwhelming amount of choices, which hotel to book? Or GMs can assess their hotel’s performance? Probably not, but consumers are running with it anyway.

Accurate or not, these assessments mean more to the upcoming generations of guests than a hotel’s hard-won membership in an exclusive club or QA ratings: According to one report, half of business travelers and almost as many of leisure travelers are influenced in their decision for hotel stays by user reviews. A second report claims 74% are swayed by peer reviews, and a third, 90%.

It’s no wonder, really, as generally people are swayed by family and friends when they make any purchases: by word of mouth from people they trust, more than by Sales, PR and Marketing people with their enticing images, mellifluous (sweet/musical) words, and trumpeted ratings. Apparently, guests trust social media six times more than traditional advertising, according to one study.

Whatever the numbers, there is no escaping the fact that consumers influence consumers in their hotel and resort choices far more than industry PR and marketing efforts, and so the hospitality game by necessity has turned to cossetting (caring for in an overindulgent way) and coddling (treating in an overprotective way) the consumer directly. Not a bad thing, obviously, as guest satisfaction is ultimately the name of the game, and what the consumers sees and hears when deciding on a purchase is extremely important—perception being a big part of reality.

So why do QA audits pay scant attention to this major shift and dynamic?

It could explain the growing disenchantment by some chains and GMs with current QA assessments, preferring instead to focus on GSSs and social media—often turning to software such as Review Pro, Revinate, or TrustYou to assess the public perception of their property. Yes, perception helps define reality, but reality even more so! Focusing on social media management and ignoring or downplaying QA, whether internal or through third parties, is to focus on the scoreboard rather than the game in progress.

According to Welf Ebeling, one of the original founders of LQA, and long-term COO of the Leading Hotels of the World (before casting off on his own in 2009), “From the perspective of some hotel proprietors and GM’s, QA assessments have become a surreal experience when they are judged by standards that do not necessarily apply to their property but that had been created as common denominators to fit a multitude of hotels regardless of cultural differences, size, and purpose, and were based on the preferences and habits of a generation of guests that is no longer the predominant demographic customer segment. Add to that the public perception created by once-a-year, publications-owned rating systems that only provide judgment without any detailed feedback, and you get that vaguely unsettling feeling of being asked to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as it slides into oblivion. And so we have QA not moving with the times and letting down hoteliers with inadequately conceived audits that fail to focus on the core issues that ultimately produce guest satisfaction.”

It seems the halcyon (idyllic) days are over for hotels and resorts: no longer largely in control of public perception, and thus occupancy and revenue streams, instead grappling with the rapidly changing, inaccurate, and insufficiently monitored-and-controlled social-media landscape, home to something like 2.6 billion users worldwide this year who love to snap, chat, and stream on WeChat, SnapChat, WhatsApp, Vimeo, YouTube, Boomerang, and Hyperlapse, not to mention the giants Facebook and Instagram, and not to forget Twitter—although in this visual and not-so-literate age, videos are the preferred blogging tool. And then there is TripAdvisor, which in 2017 saw 200 million visitors a month on its US and UK sites.

Whether social media is good or bad, the genie is out of the bottle and is here to stay

Not being balanced/fair/accurate, social media puts hoteliers at the mercy of those with a little knowledge and so they propitiate (win favor and avoid pain by doing something to please another), comp’ing unnecessarily in the hope of retaining loyalty; fêting bloggers they hope are real influencers—rather than pretenders or bottom-feeding bots—for the target demographics for their property, and in the hope they will influence their hopefully numerous followers to visit; constantly looking to create photo ops for their guests; and always delivering experiences and services with a view to them growing social-media legs.

Some hoteliers try to win at the social media game by using them for marketing or by having staff post approved content on platforms. They seek to nuance their ads and marketing into stories that reinforce their unique brand. Others use software like HootSuite to monitor guest comments across multiple social-media platforms, performing damage control or seizing opportunities to win brownie points. Some respond by inflating guest reviews to raise their property’s rank: instructing staff to hand out “Trip Advisor” cards and/or encouraging guests to post on social media before leaving the premises, or emailing links after the guests have departed.

This card has been cropped to protect those “guilty” of not much.

And why should they not? Too often, those who post are motivated by ire at some real or perceived shortfall (or are deliberately looking for a freebie by posting before or during their stay), while those who are happy, often do not post at all.

Yet, this influence-the-metrics game does present an inflated picture (most easily spotted by the volume of reviews by first-and-only-time reviewers).

The metrics do validate this pro-active approach to social media: According to Peter O’Connor’s The Four Crucial Steps in Managing Your Hotel’s Online Reviews “Online reputation management system vendor TrustYou claims that a 1% increase in their TrustScore (generated from crawling through user reviews on dozens of relevant user review sites) typically results in an ADR increase of 4.6%, which translates into nearly half a million dollars’ worth of additional revenue for a typical U.S. hotel. Similarly, a recent Harvard Business Review study showed that a one-star difference in rating on user review sites can lead to nearly a 6% difference in revenues, a gap that should act as a significant motivator for managing reputation and improving overall scores.”

So we have these two paths to understanding how a hotel or resort is performing—confidential QA in the real world and public social media monitoring and influencing in the virtual world—one internal and professionally derived to maintain the standards that are designed to bring about a happy guest experience; and the other consumer driven and in the public domain, based on the actual service received.
What would happen if these were combined into a comprehensive overview of performance and standing to guide management at the operational, as well as PR and marketing, levels?

In Part III of this series, scheduled for mid-November, we will look at what QA could be doing to give hotels and resorts the full and accurate story on how they are performing in the 21st Century; and furthermore, to add value to each property by improving the conditions needed to keep guests returning based on their own experience, rather than the megaphoned words of fellow consumers they have generally never met, but whose words, accurate or not, reach far and wide on social media.
First published in
Hotel Business Review in Summer 2018 and reprinted in

https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article101430.html

http://www.people.now.pl/news/Auditing-the-Auditors-Part-II-The-Art-of-Finding-the-Pulse-By-Steven-Ferry,1485158.html

https://www.htrends.com/trends-detail-sid-101430.html

https://www.hsyndicate.org/network/4089784.html

https://www.hotel-online.com/press_releases/release/auditing-the-auditors-part-ii-of-iii-the-art-of-finding-the-pulse

 

 

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Auditing the Auditors, Part I of III

Steven FerryAuditing the Auditors, part I of III: A Report Card on Independent Quality Assurance

by Steven Ferry

Don Quixote tilted his lance at windmills: we tilt ours at service standards that do not meet expectations, which is why I am spending a perfectly beautiful Florida spring Sunday inside, banging away on the keyboard when sensible people are beaching, sailing, golfing, etc.

Why?

We tried unsuccessfully on several occasions over the years to give independent QA providers, standards for the butler service being offered by (463) luxury hotels around the world so they could incorporate those standards into their own and help raise butler-service levels in the hospitality industry in a way that our small organization could not, on its own, achieve.

All to no avail, but we learned as the years rolled on: Many five-star properties asked us to conduct mystery guest assessments of their butlers, and some even of their whole properties. In doing so, we were asked to assess against internal hotel/chain standards, as well as those of other QA providers. Finding they fell short in various aspects, we were compelled to create our own standards:

1) For the two glaring omissions in QA standards: the world of the butler, as mentioned above, and EQ (emotional engagement)—of which more later;

and

2) Adjusting standards to move away from requirements that forced hotels into actions and behaviours that were robotic and inappropriate for the property. Imagine, while rooming a guest, having to point to a hairdryer in plain sight and say, “This is your hairdryer!” Yet that was just one required standard that hotels were being penalized for overlooking.

This quixotic effort to reform QA bumbled along for several years until I met a kindred spirit: Jochen Ehrhardt of TRUE 5 STARS, who single handedly has been engaged in a similar but more fruitful path: assessing the top 3,000 luxury hotels in the world, 1,200 of which he has visited personally, and only 1,500 of which qualify for featuring on his web site.

“TRUE 5 STARS is completely independent and unbiased,” Jochen pointed out once, “Its Quality Assurance Audit standards are the most detailed and demanding in the industry, while reflecting reality better because we constantly adapt to the latest market developments. Hotels typically score 15% lower compared to the feel-good QA audits of the larger QA providers, because standards cannot be raised if they are not set higher, as befits true five-star properties and the expectations of their guests.”

Even though only a small percentage of hotels around the world provide butler service of one stripe or another, Jochen immediately saw the need for standards for butlers, too, and happily incorporated ours into TRUE 5 STARS’. One small victory!

Thereafter, many late nights were spent discussing standards in hospitality and what to do about them. Being German and English, albeit from different generations, we approached the whole subject logically. We assumed as a starting point, that standards were necessary to…maintain standards! Some individuals will say ‘Throw all rules away, be spontaneous and do whatever makes you feel good, etc.,” and we end up with people who cannot do the actions for which they are being trained and paid for, or which are expected by their customers/clients/patients/fellow citizens. Think Concordia, Pizzagate or any number of the real or imagined, large or small departures from what we would consider to be viable behaviours and outcomes. With standards, we know we will not have melamine in our chocolate and baby formula, Roundup in our stomachs, and that when we stay at a hotel or resort, we will enjoy that stay.

So then the question was, were owners and hospitality management companies happy with the standards being set and managed by leading, independent QA companies? The fact that quite a few chains run their own QA programs would indicate that they feel they can do a better job internally in some way. A survey of GMs in luxury hotels around the world told the story where the rubber meets the road, or perhaps more germanely, where the guests meet the beds.

Responses varied on perceived pros and cons, but one GM nailed the issue with, “Independent QA audits are good but a big revamp needs to be done because staff attitude is changing, as well guest expectations.”

And there is the crux of the matter—coming up with standards is no easy feat: As many standards can exist as there are people to dream them, and the difficulty becomes settling, generally via a committee of interested parties, on those standards by which guests will feel well-served. This varies by evolving culture and sub-cultures, generations and gender, so how does one put order into such a confusion or series of moving targets?

The answer is simple, actually: each property has a purpose or mission statement that is trumpeted by its branding and marketing, and supported by its location, structures, décor, ambiance, facilities, activities for guests to engage in, and service style—and key geographical and consumer markets to which it reaches out.

This is not new news.

So why is it such a brain twister to come up with standards that reflect that individual property’s or chain’s manifestation of these elements that should add up to that purpose or goal being achieved—and thus happy guests—and furthermore, to update the standards from time to time?

Herein lies the contradiction with one-size-fits-all standards: the expectation that everyone fit into a 40-inch/100 cm waistband pair of trousers/pants/jeans.

For instance, what the Silent Generation expected from their hotel experience would bore the hind legs off a millennial; and yet many of the standards offered currently suit the mentality and standards of the Silent Generation and perhaps the Baby Boomers, too. As a Baby Boomer myself, who espoused environmental responsibility decades before it was fashionable, for instance, I am disconcerted by the ubiquitous and health-damaging EMF pollution existing in the very best of hotels and resorts worldwide today, even those in pristine locations.

Why?

Our bodies rely on very delicate electrical systems to run properly, and these are blasted to kingdom come by wifi and cell phone reception, much in demand by green-conscious millennials. Not to sidetrack down this road of contention, but it does serve to illustrate that the setting of standards that reflect current needs is more-than tricky: for while a millennial would be happy as an iPad in wifi exploring the virtual world, older codgers like myself would prefer to be in a tranquil setting enjoying the wealth of the moment afforded by the beauty of the real world consciously and proudly created by each hotel and resort.

This lack of customized standards that fit the purpose and markets of each property is the source of the frustration felt by more than a few GMs with the results of QA audits; and any failure to really satisfy or wow guests. It is not all bad, by any means, as the pros obviously outweigh the cons—or QA programs would be a footnote in the history books—but it seems QA could use some QC!

Other issues raised by GMs include concerns about cross purposes or compromised interests: one company providing audits which, when passed, permit hotels and resorts to become paying members of its sister company—the problem being that the incentive exists to lower standards so as to increase membership.

Another issue that comes up is the constant effort to identify the guests who may be auditors—one hotel chain even posting in their staff areas, a rogue’s gallery of known-inspector mug-shots. This “spot the inspector” game is a distraction from the real game of servicing guests, and an effort to paint a false picture for any auditor who has been outed. But who can blame the staff, from the GM on down, when bonuses, accolades, and promotion are pegged to the results of randomly executed and too-brief/not-comprehensive snapshot audits; which sometimes suffer from a lack of consistency between inspectors and a lack of fairness in presenting scenarios; and invariably lack clarifying information where boxes are ticked as either “Satisfy” or “Insufficient” judgments.

The GMs found benchmarking against their (local) competitors to be of most value with outside audits, but only one-in-three felt benchmarking actually resulted in improved performance. Placing the focus on besting the competition and improving the bottom line is like having ones attention riveted on the scoreboard instead of the game in progress—the better approach being to focus on setting and implementing standards that actually improve the guest experience. Otherwise, one risks becoming irrelevant, especially if the standards are off-base to start with; and furthermore, if they are lowered in order to increase membership, or in the case of luxury hotels, if the standards are written as lowest common denominators of service that can encompass three-star-and-up facilities.

Equally important as an issue is the fact that most QA auditors and their organizations simply act as judges (and even jury and executioner, for some GMs); perhaps they provide some follow-on training which is apparently not held in much regard for its focus on hitting audit points and not addressing underlying issues that will actually change conditions. The relationship is not that of partner, therefore, but of judge (and marketer), neither of which quite provide the help that would prove of greatest benefit. Action programs, proper analysis and addressing of basic issues in training, resources, etc., and staying the course to guide improvement are how a partner might deliver value.

EQ—One Big Missed Opportunity

 And finally, we come to the question of EQ, emotional engagement: All those GMs canvassed considered EQ to be the most important element in QA, expecting maybe 50-50 consideration with facilities/hardware. This harks back to the early days of QA, when Egon Roney, who published his first restaurant guide in the 1950’s, subsequently carried on a thriving business rating hotels. His guide was probably the first to recognize that increasing facilities and services offered didn’t necessarily equate to guest satisfaction. Roney’s star rating was color-coded: Red stars for excellent service, black for acceptable, and white for below par service. A 5-star grand hotel in London might have black or even white stars, while a small country hotel with limited facilities was classified as a 2-star hotel, but because of the high level of personal service and consistent guest satisfaction, those two stars were red. Somewhere along the line, that focus on service quality was lost in QA programs—and as one ends up with what one pushes, hotels were nudged into focusing on material elements at the expense of live and solicitous service.

One QA organization recently added a few token EQ standards to their facilities-centric assessment; these EQ standards have the same technical understanding, accuracy, and efficacy in improving EQ application in hospitality, as doctors had of how the body worked until the 17th Century. Following the theories of the ancient Egyptians and espoused by Galen, a Greek surgeon from the 2nd Century, they claimed for centuries that blood was produced by the liver and was one of the four liquids in the body, the balance of which determined an individual’s mood and health. From which they came up with practices such as blood letting to cure pathologies. Dr. Harvey, a doctor in London during the 16th Century, confirmed that blood was pumped around the body by the heart and had nothing to do with one’s “humors.” It took a while for Dr. Harvey’s observations to be viewed and accepted, the cry from the medical community being, “I would rather err (be mistaken) with Galen than proclaim the truth with Harvey.”

There is no reason that understanding and adopting the proper use of emotions should take so long: all it takes is acknowledging that maybe not everything there is to be known about emotions and emotional engagement, is already known! That just maybe, a Harvey-like breakthrough has already been made.

A sadly misnamed “Emotional Quotient” might be better named “Emotional Quality,” but it does little to define what is meant by this all-important skill of emotional engagement. Current more-advanced concepts of EQ include: the demonstration of genuine individual care & recognition; the delivery of “wow” moments and stepping above and beyond the expected to create unique moments that make a lasting impression; smiling; proper verbiage; anticipatory service—all of which only obliquely hint at emotions, and instead only reflecting the style of service for which superior service providers, such as butlers, are famous. As a result, the power of emotional engagement is not being harnessed in hospitality, even though its use is greatly desired.

More advanced hoteliers see that Western-focused QA-concentration on facilities as opposed to solicitous service does not work in the East, but this is more of the same error: that emotional engagement is simply solicitous and genuine service, as opposed to being a whole new subject that puts hospitality into a whole new ball park of service excellence. One should be able to use emotions to make guests happier, a basic goal of hospitality.

In Part II of this series, scheduled for August, we will examine the difficulties faced by hoteliers in evaluating quality/gauging how they are doing and therefore coming up with workable strategies to move forward—including assessing the value to management and guests alike, of report cards generated by QA audits for management versus the report cards being published broadly to potential guests on social media.

First published in Hotel Business Review in February 2018 and reprinted in Hotel News Resource, Hotel On-line, Hospitality NetHSyndicate, and Pineapple Search.

 

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Emotional Engagement—A Mantra in Search of a Technology

Emotional Engagement—A Mantra in Search of a Technology

Credit

Emotional engagement is one of those hot subjects that most have heard of but very few can actually define. What is it exactly? As with any subject, a keen observation of life in action followed by a logical analysis can shine light on the dark corners of our knowledge to bring clarity to our understanding, and, in order to be useful, a workable procedure for action that brings about desirable results. In the case of emotional engagement, it would be guests who are thrilled at the renewal or reinforcement of life and energy they experience when interacting with hotel staff. Of course, that would presuppose and require that the staff be passionate and full-of-life themselves, rather than uninspired and going through the motions.

And this is the challenge.

We seek and cherish the few “good hospitality people” who are full of life and place them on the front lines. And then judge the staff with high-sounding emotional engagement (EQ) audits, without actually defining what is emotional engagement or how to do so. An earlier article,  Love and the New Age of Service discussing the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, makes exactly this point. The Secret is a brilliant analysis of the abilities and characteristics held in common by some successful people and exhorts people to emulate these actions by the expedient of mantras: a slogan repeated often in order to change one’s mind and thus behavior. It works up to a point, but because it fails to ask one key question—how come people fall away from these mantras in the first place—it hits a brick wall. There is a reason people are not successful, and it is not just because they do not believe they can be. They do run into failures and these do accumulate and push people down to the point where they lose their steam—no matter what The Little Engine that Could might say (the beloved 1930’s children’s story of the Little Blue (Steam) Engine who wasn’t afraid to try, saying, “I think I can! I think I can!”).

I saw its 21st Century sequel, The Secret, in the possession of a colleague while training together at a private residence at The Hamptons on Long Island this summer. She was exactly this kind of person, full of life, energy, and enthusiasm, but with no time for, no understanding of, nor ability to interact with and handle, those less driven, less emotionally engaged. In a way, she was suffering from the same issue as they—lack of emotional fluidity—stuck in the fast lane in fourth gear, whizzing past lesser mortals who are similarly stuck, but in lower gears and expectations. I experienced the same frustrating problem for years, until the subject of emotional engagement (and a few other relevant aspects of life) finally came into focus.

Hence my contention that we have a mantra (emotional engagement) in search of a definition and true understanding, and with no technology for achieving it.

Without realizing it, a recent article by another struggles with this issue, reaffirming the spiritual element of service as a counterbalance to the relentless drive to harness electronics, robotics, and technology to reach the Holy Grail of the superior guest experience: for as the author says, “providing genuine hospitality is by nature energetic and based in love and compassion for fellow human beings.” For what is emotional engagement but a reflection of the spiritual side of mankind, a fact most readily seen when we contrast humans with any of the so-called robot butlers being churned out by science and manufacturing to provide superior service—no matter how hard they might try, how sincere they may make their robots sound, their emotions will always be programmed by someone else to sound sincere, but never ever actually be “heartfelt,” never actually be convincing. See the article, Would you like your service Today Live or Programmed, Madam?  In other words, if you were a film director and saw a couple of robots acting in the year 2042, you would yell, “Cut, reshoot,” and wonder where all the really good human actors of old had gone, who could really draw in the audience with their powerful (heartfelt) acting.

Unfortunately, the premise of the article that explored the spiritual side of service leads readers straight off a cliff from the outset, targeting SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] as the bête noir/bad hat/problem: “It is obvious from the proliferation of new brands and the desperation to find new technology to improve the guest experience that there is a growing feeling that the SOP approach to custom satisfaction has become unsatisfactory, and that now the big hotel groups are searching for a solution.”

I understand the principal that SOPs might result in rote learning, and the desire to be free of restrictions, but every road needs edges if it is to be useful and functional. Without SOPs, anything goes, starting with any idea of standards. Just as drugged, insane, and/or criminal people, not guns, kill people—while law-abiding citizens do not—so, too, do uninspired writers of SOPs churn out deathly and rote SOPs that bring about uninspired levels of service in the uninspired— whereas well-written SOPs emerge from the computers of inspired managers and provide the framework for intelligent and passionate service by staff who are alive and alert. The tool, in other words, is not the culprit, and we are back to the actual challenge of how to instill life and passion into people who lack it (and for guns, how to identify and actually help people on drugs, criminals, and the insane to get over their conditions so they do not go through life half-cocked).

“The hotel industry,” continues the same author, “creates a mechanical, largely emotionless experience.” This generalized statement may be truer in the more mechanistic and conservative Western world, but it does not reflect accurately the effort by many hotels and resorts in many regions to connect emotionally with guests.

The author seeks to resolve this mechanistic level of service by recommending high-energy, emotional experiences for guests: “Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions affect our DNA either positively or negatively depending on the nature (vibration or energy) of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.” He looks forward to the day “when the first hotel group emerges from the Rut of Tradition and creates a high-energy frequency guest experience.”

So far, so good, but even this laudable goal is misconceived when considering a “low-frequency” guest’s comfort level at receiving high-frequency waves—how able and willing “slow-laners” might be to keep up with those in the fast lane.

The majority of his article refers to the religious and spiritual as bodies of relevant knowledge, yet looks inexplicably to the field of science to verify the existence of spiritual phenomenon. The operating sphere of science is and always has been the material; its path has given us the means to regrow tissue, swap organs, pollute the planet with tens of thousands of chemicals, spy on each other, and fry every man, woman and child on the planet many times over, not to mention replace the entire workforce (and one might say ultimately, the human race) with robots—but zero understanding of the spirit, who, what, where and why it is, how it functions, and how to increase its abilities; nor of the mind (what it is made of, where it is located, how it works: For instance, the idea extent for the last 137 years that the mind is the brain, is like saying hardware is the same as software).

Traditionally in religions and spirituality, mankind is conceived to have three parts: spirit, mind, and body.

In looking to scientists for the answers, the author of the article has inadvertently bought into their worldview that all is material, explaining the spiritual or mental in terms of the physical body. Psychiatrists have fallen into the same mindset. Despite their subject meaning the “healing of the soul,” they claim there is no such thing, and indeed, there is no mind either, because “the mind is the brain” (which nobody can argue, is part of the physical body). As a result, their technology focuses on cutting out or shocking the brain; and more commonly, introducing chemicals into the brain to resolve perceived mental deficiencies. The results are as one might expect of a “science” at odds with itself, but propelled onward by the twin prospects of profit and power.

And so the article author, following the conclusions of his scientist sources, wants us to believe that DNA and the heart are the sources of our energy and influence over others. Yet, again, DNA and the heart are unequivocally part of the physical body. Talking of left and right brain—again, the physical—is a commonly accepted understanding that is actually highly illogical: why does it have to be one or the other? Surely a logical solution or approach can also be creative? Surely any situation requires both applied in order to bring about an optimal solution?

When one considers the body to be the source of the mind and spirit, one tends to come up with strange ideas and unworkable theories. If one were to develop a workable theory or technology on this question of higher wavelengths, of making people passionate and alive in their service, one would have to ask why people emit low-frequency wavelengths; how they might, en masse, be persuaded to emit higher wavelengths; why people have fallen from their natural affinity for their fellows into the current materialism; why they lack passion and energy in the first place. In a way, the author of the article is blindsided by the same issue as the author of The Secret.

If these questions remain unanswered, then all exhortations for hoteliers to study complex subjects (the energy sciences, quantum science, and heart-energy research); to change hotel training methods and paradigms so as to train staff on esoteric and difficult actions (such as generating a high-frequency vibration at a distance to fill guest rooms and facilities; to teach staff “heart-coherence” exercises, “how to send love energy,” and Tonglen meditation in order to “create an ever-growing, inner desire to show compassion and loving kindness”) will result only in bemusement and a disappointing lack of change.

Such complex theories and solutions arise only because the basic truths on the subject have yet to be isolated. Truth be told, anything that is complex is so only because it has not been viewed fully and so not really understood—all truths are basically simple and obvious, once seen. Predictably, complex solutions implemented do not resolve the problem they were designed to address and instead, become the next problem to solve.

The author of the article that at least addressed the issue of life and emotional engagement is entirely correct to tilt his spiritual lance at the windmill of rote service and formulaic SOPs and I wish there were more voices like his in the wilderness; so the intent of this article is not to criticize his brave start but to move beyond a quixotic (impractical) call-to-arms into an effective crusade that can actually realize the author’s goals.

Workable Technology based on Simple Truths

To bring emotional skills and engagement for hoteliers (or indeed any profession) into the realm of the practical and executable, I would like to offer the following simplicities concerning emotional engagement, because we have found they generate the most interest in our students around the world and greatly improve employee emotional engagement and the guest experience.

Identifying EQ skills as important has been a vital first step for the hospitality industry over the last decade or so. But the current state of understanding of EQ skills is adrift: LQA standards, for instance, ask about the guest’s emotional experience, but offers no definition for emotional engagement, nor path for employee’s to engage emotionally. The assumption seems to be that humans have a de facto ability to emote effectively and so should be able to do so once told to do so. It is similar to education, where the assumption is made that if someone can read, then they can study effectively; whereas collapsing academic standards in the US, at least, show that there is a wide gap that needs to be bridged between reading a text and comprehending it—and further, being able to put it into practice.

EQ or Emotional Quotient is a fledgling subject that explores “emotional intelligence:” Like its cousin IQ, Intelligence Quotient, it is sometimes represented as a score on a standardized test (which is why the word quotient is included in both subject titles). Intelligence refers to a person’s reasoning ability, as in the following example: “When we arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our new car, we found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver’s side door so they could retrieve the keys that had been locked in the car. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. ‘Hey,’ I announced to the technician, ‘It’s open!’ To which he replied, ‘I know—I already got that side.’”

Emotional skills, on the other hand, are not a form of intelligence, but reflect a person’s empathy. Empathy is a quality that people either have or do not. In hiring front lines personnel for hospitality, we seek people who are by nature empathetic; yet if they have no understanding of emotions, they too can fail frustratingly when engaging with others. And where we try to improve emotional engagement in staff, training on the subject turns out to be frustratingly nebulous and short on actual results.

So What ARE Emotions?

Technically, emotions show reaction to, tolerance of, & ability of an individual or group to handle motion. They are the mechanism or path by which our mindset toward a subject is translated into action with the body. Simply put, emotions show how much we like or dislike a subject, how we feel about a subject, and therefore react to it.

Some people think women are emotional while men are rational. No more irrational a statement could be made, for the opposite of rational is irrational, not emotional. This worldview comes from the observation that women tend to cry—but so do men, even if they do not tear up, thanks to the admonishment that “big boys are tough and do not cry.”

The truth is that everyone has different emotions all the time toward different subjects: enthusiasm, anger, boredom, as well as grief, to name a few common ones. Some people have “no emotion” because they have sunk below the ability to express an emotion towards a subject. They tend to be wooden and unresponsive—the most obvious examples being people who are drugged and showing no emotional engagement whatsoever; behaving like robots, one might say.

Emotions are an integral part of communication: every communication comes at a particular emotional tone, and these, in addition to the meaning of the words used in the communication, need to be managed skillfully in order to reach and “touch” the other person.

The big breakthrough on the subject of EQ actually occurred 65 years ago and is woefully unknown in hospitality today: that emotions are not random and dis-related, but can be plotted according to how much or little happiness, success, and survival a person is experiencing. The higher the emotional level, the happier, more logical, responsive to communications, pleasant etc. the person proves to be—and vice versa.

It is vital to know and use this scale in order to

a) communicate effectively with guests, principals, colleagues, vendors, and anyone else breathing;

and

b) always leave them feeling better;

and

c) pick partners and maintain one’s own happiness.

Emotional engagement requires recognizing the energy wavelength of the guest and raising it to a higher level. It is not about the staff always being at a high energy level, but at the right level for each guest at the moment of interaction, and then—and this is where the magic comes in—raising that guest’s level to an even higher wavelength. Or if the guest is already at a high energy level, the service provider at least matching it, and not raining on their parade by unwittingly emitting a lower-energy level/emotion.

One might wonder where these emotional wavelengths come from.

Not from a battery pack and transmitter in one’s pocket or handbag. Not from the heart, nor DNA strands, nor one’s brain. One has to go back to the traditional understanding man has had for millennia: that there are a physical/corporal, a mental, and a spiritual component to his identity. To make a lot of research short, these wavelengths of energy are generated by the spirit—you—in response to a specific subject. When you become angry, for instance, you automatically generate the wavelength of anger. This means that, once understood and mastered, any employee can engage emotionally with any guest, and in so doing, greatly improve the guest experience and, on the way, the bottom line. Mission accomplished!

For instance, with 6% of hospitality profits disappearing into the black hole of comp’ing, it might be edifying to know that most “service recovery” can be accomplished just by communicating effectively—using the usual verbiage to handle upset guests and flanking it with the correct emotion—but this is a subject for another article.

My view is that the next major evolution in hospitality is not finding more exotic and innovative locations, activities, and experiences to attract guests, but is less costly to develop, more fundamental to our persona and mission, and closer to home—breathing new life into the people/emotional skills of staff at a time when robots and pre-programmed service are threatening to deluge us with their mechanical perfections and complete absence of life or emotional wavelengths, high or low—and thus, absence of (human) guest satisfaction.

We will win this battle by being practical in providing definitions and effective techniques for engaging emotionally with guests (and each other).

First published in Hotel Business Review, August 2016, and thereafter in 4Hoteliers, Hotel News Resource, Hotel Online, Hospitality Trends,

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Constant Creativity & Enthusiasm In the Drive to Exceed One’s Own Lofty Expectations

Four- and five-star hotels and resorts around the world number in the hundreds, catering to different markets/publics with different needs and wants. The imperative to make the guest experience so memorable that the guests become repeaters and ambassadors, occupancy runs dizzyingly high and word of mouth sizzles, is one that every new (or existing) General Manager/Managing Director faces; each has a vision, a style of management, a stable of successful actions, and erstwhile colleagues they trust to support their standards and whom they quickly bring in to precipitate success for owners, shareholders, management, staff, and guests alike.

This story is about the dynamic approach of one particular GM who lives the mantra of all service professionals, with a twist: exceeding even one’s own expectations by adopting a mindset that drives a never-ending and highly creative stream of improvements, not just in service quality, but also the guest experience—in a whirlwind of energy that lifts all metrics before it!

At the end of one assignment, Dietmar Koegel (“Didi”) was asked if he wanted to manage Per Aquum’s resort, Niyama, in the Maldives. He was not sure, so he visited the island as a guest for two weeks and discovered a fine resort with issues that were not so much “bads” as a failure to develop potential “goods.” For Didi, the cup is neither half empty nor half full, rather “almost full” all the time; so like an artist assessing a blank canvas, he piled creation upon creation in his mind of how the guest experience and satisfaction could be second to none, as opposed to merely excellent.

Now, 14 months after taking the helm, Niyama’s Trip Advisor ranking has risen from 50th to 12th and their Guest Satisfaction Score as measured by Market Matrix has risen from 88% to 94%. Of Minor Hotel Group’s 136 hotels (at last count), Niyama has risen to #1. Niyama moved from the high 40’s and 4.5-star on TripAdvisor, to #12 and 5*.

How did Didi achieve such results so rapidly in a region where Niyama is one amongst dozens of desirable, high-end island-resorts?

He took immediate action to raise the level of passion in the staff based on his own example, and was not shy of replacing members of senior management who found themselves unable to rise to the occasion.

New hires were sought who had passion: one example was Yoosuf, a butler who was new to hospitality and, following training that inspired him with how many ways there were to wow guests, soon impressed the guests so much that one couple wanted to show their appreciation. When the butler told them he was happy to service them and was not interested in their tip, they had him take them in a speedboat to his local island, where they toured the hospital and school, donated $150,000 on the spot and pledged a further $150,000 for the following year.

As a longer-range target, and to complement the improvements being realized on the people side, Didi immediately pushed through a budget for, and construction of, villas and unique and innovative (for the region) outlets that doubled the former and tripled the latter—by the simple expedient of developing a second adjacent island that, hitherto, had lain fallow.

Didi upgraded from a generic, single island that tried to be all things to all guests, to a two-island concept: Chill for adults and (the new island), Play, for families— with 48 family villas, family restaurants, an ice cream parlor, a cooking school and the largest kid’s club in the country, Explorer, catering to four age groups starting uniquely at just one-year old, designed and run in partnership with Scott Dunn, the top European operator.

Didi then invested in training the staff, with the understanding that Rome was not built in a day, and nor were the skill sets of the staff built with a once-off dog-and-pony show: so he provided daily in-house training for all staff to ensure consistency and polish of all outlets and departments; and backed it up with external training, such as two months of training for the bar staff; monthly wine training; and training and coaching every four months for the butlers (Thakurus, in Divehi, the Maldivian language), especially focusing on soft skills and always leaving the guests happier with each interaction.

Realizing the importance of butlers in making possible more personalized service, he quadrupled their numbers, added more butler services and had all the butler SOPs fine tuned—and importantly, is maintaining the ratio of butlers-to-guests as occupancy increases so the butlers do not drop their level of services from sheer lack of time for each guest.

Moving beyond the usual online booking process, Niyama now has its Online Preference Menu, in which all direct bookings, OTA and TO receive this link [http://www.niyamamaldives-ppm.com] with their reservation confirmation to capture guest preferences and allow Niyama to prepare for their arrival (such as placing fins and diving masks in the villa before arrival, based on the shoe-size information submitted).

Instead of the “usual” guest arrival experience, with welcome messages on the bed written in palm fronds or flowers (nice touches, of course), he looked for ways to “rise above the noise” of his competitors. So now Niyama guests see a welcome message in lipstick on the mirror, bed decorations, and welcome gifts beyond the usual complimentary bottle of champagne or wine, such as a frisbee, mini hand-fan, and mini-speakers, all of which create a sense of expectation in the guests that the rest of the stay will be marked by innovation and attention to myriad details that add up to desirable things to experience and have.

And that is exactly what Didi’s team focuses on delivering.

Knowing that a variety of gustatory delights rate high on the list for most guests, he added three new restaurants: Blue, a Mediterranean restaurant; one of the largest tree-top restaurants in the world—appropriately called Nest—offering Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, and Japanese cuisines; and converting the underwater night club into, appropriately, a seafood restaurant. He hired top cooks for these outlets and then reviewed and aligned the menus based on guest comments. This in addition to the other 6 restaurants and bars, including Tribal, an al-fresco, beachside-by-the-jungle restaurant offering African and South American cuisines that combine local inspiration with global flair; and an authentic ambiance, whether the tall Masai-warrior host, the chefs and wait-staff from different African and South American cultures; the flaming, open fires, hot-rock grills, and Argentinian Asado woks; or the traditional, complimentary (and potent) Dawa (Swahili for medicine) pick-me-up that the bar tender brings to start off the meal in the right spirit. It’s a hands-on experience, as guests muddle their own “medicine” using fresh lime wedges, honey, vodka (refined Dawa), and crushed ice—and take their muddler home as a souvenir. They can also be photographed performing traditional dances around the campfire after the meal with the entire African team, equipped with spears and shields—or posing with the Masai warrior—which photographs are framed and put on their bedside table at turndown the next evening. These touches are genuine from-the-heart fun with Africans steeped in their own culture, not skin-deep, mass touristic, Disneyesque performances. One detail that has proven popular is the African coffee menu, served the traditional way.

Didi with welcoming, multi-lingual African Grey Parrot, and guest, outside Nest
Didi with welcoming, multi-lingual African Grey Parrot outside Nest

A redesigned Chef’s garden, Spice, supplies all restaurants with fresh vegetables, salad items, herbs, etc., in a country that has to import all food items (except fish and coconut!) from Australia, Sri Lanka, and other remote points.

As an example of the creativity, of details being explored beyond the basic level of creativity, the Nest experience includes the sound of exotic birds amongst the Banyan trees and being greeted in your language (English, Russian, & Chinese) by a Macaw and African Grey. The modern, natural multi-level wooden structures include private pods suspended 18-feet above the ground and domed pavilions, all linked by wooden walkways and blending into the jungle.

Beyond the architecture and dining experience, guests can participate by making their own coconut oil, which is bottled in small Niyama bottles for the guests to take home; or cutting sugar cane, using a manual, antique sugar-cane juicer located on a rustic table, and drinking the juice they produce. Or muddling their own curry, starting with a trip through the Chef’s Garden with the chef to select ingredients fresh from the trees, bushes, and plants, listening to the chef describing the different methods for making yellow, red, or green curries, and chatting with the chef afterwards while they make, and then eat, their own curry.

For the all-important name recognition by all employees, Didi introduced “Show me you know me,” based on photos of guests being taken upon arrival and shared daily with all departments—printing each photo and placing it on each departmental board with the appropriate villa number.

In order to ensure guests take advantage of everything they would like to do during their stay, all employees were provided with a pocket leaflet describing all the facilities, and the Thakurus tasked with scheduling each guest’s stay at their earliest convenience. Daily Preference Capture cards were introduced and entered into Opera to be shared with the HODs in the morning, when the Thakurus also provide feedback on each guest’s activities and any glitches.

Guest engagement by ExComm is part of the culture—not in a way that distracts the guests, but which allows them to know that management is interested and there for them: Didi, for instance, rides around the islands on his bicycle with the parrot on the handle bars, and when the parrot is not engaging the guests, Didi is. The ExComm members express little reluctance to participate in the wine tastings with the guests, or joining them on sunset cruises.

Then there is the follow-up and connection via all social media and responding to every guest questionnaire received. Didi initiated the Glitch Report, “Measure what you treasure and manage what you measure,” which tracks the cost of each giveaway to defuse guest complaints, whether upgrades, comp’ed dinners, or vouchers, and uses it to resolve issues that make guests complain and so reduce giveaways.

In terms of outlets and services offered, Niyama now boasts its own, world-class photo studio, complete with wardrobe and hair stylist/make-up artist, which is constantly booked to take photographs of guests in various locales around the islands, or even underwater; the only dive chamber in the country at its diver instruction school; the first Paul Ropp boutique store (Asia’s answer to Armani, with prices to match) in the Indian Ocean, offering only hand- and custom-made, once-off, silk clothing and proving immensely popular with guests (and remunerative for Niyama). The children of guests put on a fashion show to showcase the Ropp clothes made specifically for Niyama; the Coconut Express, where a team member walks around the island harvesting and opening coconuts and offering the milk with straws to guests.

Three initiatives were introduced in the Spa: Pedro Sanchez, celebrity Swiss Hair Stylist, opened a salon; a beauty clinic opened, offering Botox treatment, as well as thread lifting and filler treatment, which combined with Itraceutical, instantly makes a face look younger; specialty Spa practitioners were brought in each month during the high season.

In collaboration with a German radio and TV presenter, Didi is creating the first, worldwide, web-based hotel radio station, starting with a morning show featuring 10 minutes of talk and 50 minutes of music: think interviews with the Chef on “News from the Kitchen;” interviews with the Kids Program Director and with guests about their holiday experience and their favorite activities or dishes; calling in a music request either in house or from overseas (guests can continue to listen after they leave through a link on the Niyama site or an App which is under development).

Daily classical concerts (or live performances by celebrities during the Manager’s complimentary Cocktail Hour) will be covered live at the Dune Bar and moderated by the Radio Master, with all sunbeds facing the sunset and waiters in white gloves serving Roeder, Cristal, Armand de Brigand, and Dom Perignon.

In terms of a sense of place and locale, again, the focus is on guest participation, rather than simply being on the receiving end of engineered experiences—guests are encouraged to contribute their efforts to the local environment by creating their own legacy, collecting corals with Niyama’s Marine Biologist and attaching these to a coated-steel frame and placing them strategically (with their names attached) to build the reefs that are critical to the existence of the island as well as attracting sea life. Soon to come, a Niyama Marine Micro website will provide scads of information on reefs, reef life, and those in particular around Niyama, including quarterly updates on each person’s reef-section growth.

Also in the immediate pipeline: completing a tennis court, a football court, and a mini-golf course; and Bongo Bar, a shack on the surfing beach where a Rastafarian bar tender and young Cuban lady will serve Cuba Libre, Rum cocktails, etc., all to a reggae beat.

If there is one thing that is clear from the Didi modus operandi, it is continuous creativity adding up to a large number of improvements and innovations at every opportunity, driven by passion and high interest—the push to exceed one’s own expectations as a manager—the intention for oneself and the staff to have fun creating memorable and fun experiences for the guests.

The metrics show this to be a winning formula, and one encouraged by, and aligning with, the Per Aquum brand and the Minor Hotel Group’s philosophy—without corporate support, it would be difficult to achieve such innovations and expansion plans so rapidly, which says something about the rapidly growing MHG brand.

 

Originally published in Hotel Business Review

then in Hotel News Resource

and Hotel On-line 

and 4hoteliers