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Milking Sacred Cows—How Junk Science is Being Used to Enrich The Few

It is somewhat ambitious for an article on hospitality to move beyond the immediate zone of hospitality, but trends outside the industry do impact it, and where conventional wisdom is a bit too solidly in the box, it may not be so good for business.

Take for instance, the issue of global warming and pollution hitting the headlines of late. The worldwide focus is on greenhouse gases (CO2), diverting attention from issues such as disposing of petroleum-based plastic trash (that does not break down, whereas soy- and corn-based plastics do); or discovering ways to neutralize radioactive nuclear waste, air pollution, and hundreds of thousands of toxic chemicals in the environment, almost none tested singly let alone in combinations, for their impact on the human body. Just one class of toxins, psychiatric and other pharmaceutical drugs, are already in our drinking water and the food chain, while chemicals exist in almost everything we consume, including most “organic” foods, and most personal-care products in hotels read like a chemical experiment—which factually they are.

It is therefore worth knowing that global warming is a sacred cow that will yield no milk, Monsanto’s best efforts notwithstanding. It has not been proven that CO2 causes temperatures to rise: the idea is only a hypothesis that the media and a few others are promoting as fact, backed by doomsday images of floods and droughts that do nothing for anyone’s morale.

If we examine the simple facts, we find the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen (N2, 78%), oxygen (O2, 21%), and other significant elements, such as water (H2O, 0-7%), argon, and “greenhouse” gases ozone (O3, 0-0.01%) and carbon dioxide (0.01-0.1%). Can such small amounts of these two gases really cause global warming?

More to the point, if the industrial revolution and combustion engines cause climate warming, then why was there a warm period in the Middle Ages that was 5-6 degrees warmer than temperatures today, when Greenland was a Green Land replete with vineyards.

Why, since 1650, has there been an almost a linear increase in temperature of about 1° Fahrenheit every century, including the 19th and 20th Centuries when the Industrial Revolution and automobiles came to prominence? Indeed, how does one explain temperatures increasing significantly between 1910 and 1940 (5 of the hottest years on record were in the 1930s) and then decreasing between 1940 and 1975—even though CO2 began to increase in 1940? Or how does one reconcile the fact that CO2 is much like insulation in an attic: beyond a certain amount, no matter how much one stuffs the attic, the insulation factor is not increased.

What sense can one make out of the sea level around the Maldives (the world’s lowest-lying island group) dropping 20-30 cm in the last quarter century due to evaporation, yet the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reporting glacial melt at the poles as a catastrophic global warming event caused by man’s pollution, which is causing rising sea levels currently and will result in the flooding of cities and countries around the world. In truth, our planet experiences natural warming and cooling phases and the current 11,400-year warming period is beginning to wind down.

In truth, scientists do not yet know what causes temperature fluctuations beyond geologic, orbital, and celestial phenomena. For instance, the fact that the sun is at its hottest in the last thousand years, could have some bearing on the current high temperatures. One fact that analysis of two-mile deep ice cores has revealed recently, however, is that wild temperature swings occur in a matter of a couple of decades, not centuries. Our current civilization cycle has been lulled by a good run of stable weather, so planning on that to continue is not a good idea. We capitalize in hospitality on the beauty of the world and nature, but when it comes to controlling it, we are as flies to wanton boys.

Certainly, focusing on CO2 as the culprit will consume significant funds and attention, but not solve anything other than the need by politicians for an apparent solution to be offered the masses alarmed by a science hijacked by politicians and media hyperbole. The cost of the proposed carbon taxes for each family, should any of the proposed dozen bills (as of August 2007) before congress be passed, will be approximately $4,000 over the next five years. How, then, will this global-warming fixation impact hospitality? In the short term, higher fuel prices for operators of hotels as well as airlines/transport, driven in part by carbon taxes; perhaps added taxes to fund efforts such as the construction of barriers against putative rising seawater levels; and potential guests with less funds available for vacations and travel.

With premier hospitality venues in low-lying areas and islands, there might be a reluctance to invest; or there might be a drive to make more northerly climes into preferred destinations. The fear of increased monster hurricane activity, for instance, might drive people away from Florida.

But more importantly, it will focus hospitality and travel industry attention on reducing CO2 instead of addressing real concerns, such as those touched upon above—or for that matter, the more compelling (in terms of atmospheric damage and global warming) cow flatulence, otherwise known as methane gas. Chasing CO2 reductions makes as much sense as trying to reduce the indigestion of cows, but what if these industries were to demand plastics that decompose, and solutions to the thousands of toxins in our environment that mean even a staple like water has to come in bottles at high mark-ups (when sea water is the most abundant resource on the planet and relatively easily converted to potable water)? What would happen if they demanded the brakes be taken off alternative fuel sources that not only do not pollute, but also do not rely on a finite fuel source such as oil, which can be manipulated in the marketplace and the halls of power? If only 5% of US oil comes from Iraq (Nov 2005), then why do oil prices rise and fall on rumors and uncertainties about Iraq?

Free and clean energy such as alcohol, water, and non-toxic bio fuels have existed for almost a century: today, we have not only solar voltaic electricity, wind and wave power generators, but also vehicles that can run on water/sea water. Oil companies have not been supportive of these disruptive technologies that, for multiple reasons today, are capable (with a bit more funding and development), of replacing existing technologies of energy derived from wood, coal, and oil. Currently, 4% of energy comes from renewable sources in the US and nuclear power is being held back when it (nuclear fusion with Thorium) can provide clean and safe energy with no military uses.

A cheap fuel source would increase the numbers of travelers in the same way cheap cellular connectivity has put a cell phone on the ears of poor farmers in third world countries. Will these cheaper fuel sources be used broadly, thus boosting tourism? Slowly, as the sacred cow of oil is milked to the last drop and the next bountiful resource repainted as scarce to facilitate a monopoly and wealth creation for some. In balance, energy and travel costs will increase as fuel continues to be made “scarce,” but will drop relatively speaking in decades ahead.

So far, these trends have resulted in changes for hospitality: any hotelier in Florida can testify that insurance rates have risen dramatically in the last two years because insurers have been spooked into using formulas to assess risk based on mega- hurricanes from global warming. Yet 2006 saw no hurricanes make landfall in the US and half way through the 2007 season, a total of one hurricane had clocked in, completely by-passing Florida/the US.

Many other sacred cows exist that take liberties with one’s intelligence, but they fall outside the scope of this article. One of interest for its scope that does portend a major shift for hospitality in the fairly near term, including a boom for spas and medical spas/longevity centers in particular, is the subject of this article: within a couple of years, a “health” monopoly will have been engineered world wide through the agency of Codex Alimentarius, resulting in mass ill-health and ultimately, no doubt, early demises. Those with wealth will be anxious for possible solutions and will be prepared to spend time and money to access them. On the flip side, increasing health-care costs for employees and reduced availability of personnel will create problems for management and HR alike.

Riding the Codex Wave
Codex Alimentarius is Latin for “laws governing what people may put down their throats”—and by extension, manufacture, sell, discuss, and possess on the subject.

The United Natons tasked the two Codex Alimentarius commissions on food and nutrition to compile standardized laws concerning food for trade purposes back in 1962. The unelected individuals on these two commissions were (and are) supplied by or have ties to pharmaceutical, medical, bio-tech, agribiz and chemical corporations. Because half of all Americans use alternative health solutions, spending $20 billion in 2005; and because every dollar they spend on these solutions represents $40 not spent on allopathic medicine (treating disease symptoms with drugs and surgery) and pharmaceutical drugs, the focus of Codex has been on creating standards and thus laws that prevent the manufacture of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients (all of which underpin the preventative, non-allopathic model). In effect, businessmen, not doctors, have engineered a legal sequence on an international scale, that promotes their own businesses by dictating what health options will be available to the citizens of all countries.

The requirements of Codex Alimentarius will come into full force worldwide on 31 December, 2009. Each country involved in a trade dispute under the aegis of the World Trade Organizaton, will automatically lose its case if it is not compliant with Codex Alimentarius, irrespective of the merits of the case it is disputing. This is forcing every country to align its national/state laws with Codex.

Codex Alimentarius has already resulted in legislation against the manufacture, distribution, and consumption of nutritional supplements in Europe and is currently forcing through legislation that will make illegal any claims concerning nutritional supplements. Similar laws were attempted in the 109th Congress but died with it.

  1. HR 3156 Dietary Supplement Access and Awareness Act, which would have permitted the FDA to ban any nutrient which had any degree of risk associated with it, even in the absence of any proven harm from that substance.
  2. HR 2485 DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act) Full Implementation and Enforcement Act of 2005 which would have appropriated $175M over the next four years for the FDA to enforce more-rigorous regulations on supplement manufacturers than those required of pharmaceuticals.
  3. HR 2510 Dietary Supplement Regulatory Implementation Act of 2005 was similar to but worse than HR 2485 above, providing for the adverse event reporting system for supplements, but not drugs, and $10 million to educate physicians and consumers about dietary supplements.

However, 2007 looks like a better year for those wanting unfettered access to the wallets of potential customers and patients:

  1. HR 2900/S.1082 was passed in July 2007, watering down a law that once proposed to end the American monopoly on pharmaceuticals and ban advertising of new drugs, instead granting more power to the FDA to promote pharmaceuticals, increase censorship of nutritional education, and discredit alternatives that threaten drug company profits. The Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA is a new entity that places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities. This conflict of interest is deepened with the funding of the FDA by drug companies, the continued right granted pharmaceuticals to advertise new drugs with unknown risks directly to consumers, and the power by the FDA to remove any dietary supplement from the market at whim.
  2. SA 1379, attached to S 1042, creates an adverse-event reporting requirement for supplements while none exists for pharmaceuticals. The bill is currently referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

The grass-roots-propelled DHSEA Act of 1994, which thwarted a similar effort by the FDA and pharmaceuticals to cut off access to alternative health, is the cornerstone of the nutritional field. When finally overturned, the way will be clear for the wholesale closure of manufacturers, distributors, and retail outlets for efficacious nutritional supplements. Then in domino effect, alternative therapy practitioners will mostly go out of business, without access to nutrients for their patients. This can be expected to take place in 2010 and 2011. The only companies able to satisfy the stringent requirements for manufacture will be large pharmaceuticals, who already produce supplements of very low dosage and synthetic ingredients that have no actual nutritional value, but which are patentable and therefore lucrative.

The hundreds of millions of individuals who have been maintaining good health through the alternative health industry will be faced concurrently with food that, by Codex mandate, will be irradiated, genetically modified, and raised/grown with toxic residues from pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics and other drugs (none of which will be mentioned on the labels because it inconveniently puts off consumers). Already, the passage of the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill included a rider lobbied for by the “Organic Trade Association” (representing not organic farms but corporations like Kraft, Dole, and Dean Foods), which weakened organic food standards by allowing synthetic food substances in the preparation, processing, and packaging of organic foods. Another key organization/association that has been taken over by big business is the Council for Responsible Nutrition, which in earlier years was key in pushing through DSHEA, but which is now almost exclusively comprised of such as Monsanto, Wyeth, biochemical companies and laboratories, ADM, Bayer, Cargill, even Eastman Kodak.

With no access to non-toxic and nutritious food, individuals will sicken and not be able to recover. They will be forced to spend significant sums (as in $40 for every dollar they spent before) on the only “option:” the pharmaceutical/medical industries. Of interest is that no deaths have been reported through use of alternative therapies or nutritional supplements: Ephedra/ephedrin is sometimes cited as the prime example of dietary supplements causing (57) deaths (in 1997), yet pharmaceuticals were responsible for all those deaths with their synthetic version of the ephedra herb. Rather predictably, the FDA targeted the herb, not the synthetics, when it took action over the ephedrine deaths. Likewise, 2.2 million people experienced adverse drug reactions to prescribed medicine (2001) in the US and 783,936 deaths occurred from medical mistakes during that same year. The pharmaceutical/medical industries are actually the leading cause of death in the US, not nutrition-based products and practitioners.

If Codex really were about food safety, as originally mandated and still claimed, the pharmaceuticals would not be the first choice for shepherd to the world population’s alimentary canals.

Whether or not one believes the alarming projections made by one doctor, based on figures from the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization (one billion people dying from simple starvation and two billion from preventative diseases, in good measure in the industrialized nations, as a result of implementing Codex), it is likely that untimely deaths and increased sickness will follow the implementation of Codex Alimentarius—if only because every single medical text book and honest nutritional study ever done has found nutrients to be vital to life, rather than dangerous elements to be considered, and now reclassified by Codex, as drugs requiring regulation and eradication.

Those dying of simple starvation will not impact hospitality too much, being that part of humanity that is already living on the edge and not candidates for tourism or travel. But those suffering from preventable diseases under the allopathic model of slash, burn, nuke, and drug symptoms, will mean fewer employee resources, increased employee absenteeism and health care costs where offered, and ultimately, fewer guests taking vacations and traveling. On the positive side, as mentioned already, it will mean increased business for health and medical spas.

In terms of the food supply, fruits and vegetables grown in nutrient-depleted soil and pumped full of chemicals to look good, factually lack taste—as anyone who has sampled fresh fruit or vegetables in countries with less of a toxin stream in their food supply, can attest; which means chefs will be increasingly challenged to create gustatory masterpieces and so will resort to the neurotoxin monosodium glutamate (and its many faces, such as hydrolyzed/autolyzed anything, “natural flavors,” etc.) to enhance flavor, as well as piling on the sugar and salt. These issues will increasingly impact higher-end restaurants that might otherwise rely on fresh foods for their actual flavors.

As Benito Mussolini once observed, Fascism should be called corporatism because it is the perfect merger of power between corporations and the state. We see this corporatism (Corporatocracy is the modern term), as a political system in America and Europe, where legislative decision-making and power is given to unelected civic assemblies representing economic, industrial, agrarian, and professional groups. The reach of these groups increased thirty years ago with the inception of the Global Village and its power was magnified in the Global Economy, with international corporations growing stronger than governments and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and WTO (World Trade Organization) controlling the economies of countries indebted to the World Bank for loans made. This faceless corporatocracy is behind the maneuvering in the health field and has various other facets that will also impact the hospitality industry, but which are outside the scope of this article.

In summary, therefore, considering how best to address these two sacred cows, hospitality players would be best served by not devoting any resources to reducing global warming and CO2 levels. They might be better off focusing on efforts to clean up what man is doing that is impacting the environment, and about which they can do something meaningful.

More immediately, any major player wanting to ride the Codex wave would do well to create or expand an existing division for health and medical spas, teaming up with hospitals and medical providers to offer the kind of treatments that would appeal to a public looking for natural solutions, and which might still be legally possible under Codex Alimentarius. For the rest of the planet, Codex will be a hard pill to swallow, but it will be a legally prescribed pill that may well go a long way to resolving the putative overpopulation on this small planet.

Alternatively, if Codex Alimentarius seems like a cow that is sacred to some but not you personally, then you may want to visit www.winhs.com to find out more about your options while something can still be done about it.

This article was also published by Hotel News Resource (www.hotelnewsresource.com) and Airline News Resource (www.airlinenewsresource.com)

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Hope Does Not Need Rose-tinted Glasses

With the global economy still front and center and, frankly, a completely distracting and unwelcome subject that has gone on far too long, the questions remaining could be phrased as “How much longer?” and “How much worse, or is this as bad as it will be?”

Looking to the experts is of little use: opinions are all over the map and crystal balls seem to be in short supply. So perhaps the following will provide a new angle that may allow you to decide for yourself what the future may hold—for the future does not happen to more able individuals, it is made by them.

Two or three years ago, I wrote an article suggesting that private service and even hospitality butlers do something from their positions to send a signal to the wealthy financial people they were happily serving, while these illustrious gentlemen (generally) were equally busy setting up the economy for a collapse to end all collapses. I was persuaded to withdraw that article as it would not have been understood, was too political for a butler to be engaging in, and not to mention counter-productive, insulting one’s clients (in the private sector) and some amongst one’s client’s clients (in hospitality).

I took heed only because of the first point: very few people were willing to look in 2006 at what would be unfolding and so the article would not have achieved its purpose, high as society was at the time on the excesses of an inflated economy. This article carries a similar risk of falling beyond the acceptance level of some readers; but this time, I will not make the same mistake: just one person saying, “Ah…I see, yes, that does explain things a bit better,” makes the article worth the pixels expended.

As for the political accusation, anyone who understands that classic work on service, butlers, and duty, The Remains of the Day, knows that the author, Kazuo Ishiguro, was exploring exactly this issue: the glorious following of duty over one’s ethical obligations to society and the ramifications it has on one and all, the butler included, when he puts blind duty to an individual above duty to the greater society. And for the last point, it does not take an IQ greater than about 80 to know that a collapsing economy, just like a sinking ship, brings down all within it, so what concern would one have for criminal (as in “expecting great returns in exchange for nothing of value, and under false pretenses”) clients not hiring one?

How did I know that the economy would collapse? Probably because (a) I looked at what was actually going on (see below) instead of thinking dim, introspective thoughts about it or listening to the dim thoughts of the “experts” based on the thoughts of earlier experts and (b) because I know the simple fundamentals of money and that when one ignores those basics, reality has a habit of asserting itself before long.

Maybe butlers handing in their notice to employers who were pulling apart the fabric of society, or refusing to service them in hotels, would have sent a strong message that would have focused attention on the problem, or maybe all it would have done would be to lose some butlers their jobs while others less ethical would be happy to fill the gap. Like I said, however, life has a way of rubbing one’s nose in one’s own failings when ethics is not the watchword. We have a number of butlers looking for work currently because their employers failed to do the right thing and are suffering the consequences, unable to afford butlers or much of anything else; so perhaps there is something to be said for integrity after all and the idea of butlers (and others) voting with their feet.

The difficulty, of course, is that this approach requires a butler be judgmental of clients, guests, or employers, and this would never work in a hospitality setting. But it is actually very simple in a private-service setting where a contract for employment works both ways.

The same could be done at a hospitality level, but frankly, the bottom line beckons us with a boney and compelling finger to take whatever we can while ethics takes a back seat. Well, it does work for the short term, but how certain are we now of following this strong agreement that we have no obligation in hospitality to identify and refuse to harbor criminals, whether Capones, Banksters (a 1930’s term), or other white-collar criminals? We all agree that if guests are criminal towards us directly, we have every right to refuse them service (see the three articles on The Guest from Hell and the subsequent creation of HotelSafeguard). Well, what about indirect impacts? Currently, high-end hotels around the world are averaging a drop of over 15% on occupancy December to February (CNN report). Managers and marketers are becoming creative and enterprising in attracting guests, offering better packages without actually degrading their image by lowering rates.  Unemployment (in the US hospitality industry) has increased since the first shoe dropped, from 8.2% to 11.6%.

If one listen to the mealy mouthed financial experts, one hopes by 2010 things will have turned around. Yet predictably, word is starting to seep through the media filters of 2011, perhaps 2012, according to the IMF now, before we will see an end. Some don’t think we will see an end. We have progressed in the media from mild language about a correction in housing prices to mild recession to recession and now, to the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Soon they’ll admit this is the deepest Depression (in fact, since the 14th Century in Europe, when the bankers of Venice left their mark on the same kind of scale). Thanks to government actions taken during the Great Depression (the same as those being taken today), what was just a Wall Street collapse that impacted three million at most was expanded to the entire country and prolonged for years in the form of the Great Depression.

Whether or not a past fact requires the future follow the same model, there are economic fundamentals at work here that until remedied, will continue to bear down upon us with an inevitable conclusion. So the fact that the economic powers that be (the same exact individuals who encouraged the “irrational exuberance” that they complained about but made possible in the derivatives and housing markets) have tried to make the real economy make up for their losses with a trillion bailout here, a trillion there, all the while inflating the money supply; and have yet to admit to us what they know well: that their losses are not one or two trillion (the IMF just admitted that it may be as high as $4 trillion), but somewhere between USD60 trillion and 1.4 quadrillion (depending upon which expert one listens to). With a total US economy of $11 trillion (before the collapse), it seems the financiers have a problem akin to trying to make an elephant fit into a Mini Cooper and all the while, trying to convince the other passengers that it is not an elephant, but an anorexic Praying Mantis.

The Banksters need to succeed, however, in order to continue with their financial system and cosy set-up which has lasted for almost a full century since they pushed through income tax in the US and at the same time, established the privately held Federal Reserve to control the money (and thus the government). And so they have persuaded Congress and we the people today to support their reasoning of a devastating collapse of the economy and society if the handful of large financial institutions that had engaged in these Ponzi schemes, were not bailed out (many US banks did not involve themselves in these schemes). The powers that be even threatened martial law if their “reasoning” were not accepted, with 20,000 US troops specially trained in combating civil unrest ready for deployment (violating the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act) and prison camps newly constructed in every state ready for anyone who objected.

Well, I have some childish reasoning to put to these experts: why do the literal handful of big banks need to be bailed out so they can refuse to say what they are doing with the money, other than paying more-than-handsome executive bonuses, refuse to lend citizens any of that taxpayer money, and also dramatically alter for the worse their credit lines and interest rates without cause? In the US, $2 trillion given directly to US citizens would give a family of four $30,000, certainly enough to keep their mortgage going and buy a car from General Motors.

Too bad the financiers allowed their “arrangement” to run out of control and into broad daylight so we had no choice but to sit up and take notice.

Sorry to take the gloves off, but maybe it is also time the rose-tinted glasses came off, as they prevent accurate perception. Whereas one perhaps has sympathy when a person has fallen and asks for help, this is not what is happening. Crimes of great magnitude have been committed, and instead of atoning or trying to make up, the perpetrators are bullying the victims into giving more. This isn’t the way the cowboy movies are meant to end. Let’s just take a quick look, then, at what actually happened to trigger the collapse that is affecting the lives and futures of 6.7 billion people on this planet.

By taking “liar loans” (called that at the time because people were encouraged to lie in order to qualify for large house loans and so inflate commissions for the brokers), financial institutions then folded these into whole new exotic-sounding super-safe investment vehicles and sold them to foreigners and US citizens alike who (a) did not understand the nature of the investments because they were so complex, and (b) were assured they were safe by US rating agencies that did not actually look at what they were giving an AAA rating to until after the whole house of cards had collapsed. Then, like Mr. Alan Greenspan, the venerable Federal Reserve chief responsible (with other Wall Street individuals who funneled $5 billion into lobbying Congress to remove any government oversight of Wall Street*) for pushing the whole concept of derivatives on the world economy, they sheepishly said, “Oh, I made a mistake.” Now, instead of putting these people in charge of fixing up the mess (trying to disguise the reason for and extent of the problem and recoup their losses from everyone else), should not be behind bars for the white-collar crime of the millennium? Mr. Made-off’s $50 billion is just so insignificant in scope compared with the tens or hundreds of trillions these experts have visited upon us and the resulting global meltdown.

As an internal memo from Mr. Tom Fitzpatrick, Citibank’s chief technical strategist revealed in November 2008, what the big banks really think about the global financial situation is, “The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed through into an inflation shock.” Or, as he goes on to explain, if the massive money creation efforts by the Federal Reserve and other central banks does not bring about a surge in inflation in 2009 or 2010, then the other scenario is a fall into “depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars.” Thinking like a true economist rather than a humanitarian, he suggested investing in gold because it will climb to over $2,000 per ounce (it’s half way there already). He certainly has no confusions on the fundamentals of money: he, I am sure, knows that the US currency supply has been inflated in the three decades from 1977 to 2007, from $50 billion in 1977 to $750 billion in 2007; and the money supply from $1 trillion to $11 trillion during the same time period…a figure that has climbed a further $4 trillion over the last two years, to an estimated $15 trillion.

One has to wonder if 20,000 troops will be enough to quell a populace of over 300 million when it realizes the little hard-earned cash it still has, has been turned into worthless pieces of paper by the Federal Reserve. One wonders if those 20,000 troops would not connect the dots: inflation was really riding at 15% until the recent price drops, not the government-advertised 4%; unemployment in the US is actually 20%, not the advertised 8%, and their families are in the middle of it all, too.

One would prefer to think that there will be a quiet accounting, and real managers invited to manage the economy of the US, and thus the world, on an honest basis of, “You do an honest day’s work, you are rewarded. You fiddle the books, you don’t eat in Michelin- and Mobil-rated restaurants anymore.”

But in the meantime, it seems the more likely scenarios are either the financiers manage to fit that elephant into the Mini, squashing the other passengers with inflation, or the Mini collapses under the weight it was not built to carry. Neither option offers much hope of an early end to the occupancy squeeze for the luxury hospitality markets.

Behind the Curtain

But let’s take a step back from this tired drama and look for something completely novel: an answer to the question, “How did things get this bad and sad?”

Some people live by a“tooth-and-claw, survival-of-the-fittest, the-hell-with-everyone-else” philosophy. Capitalism as it has become, is based after all on creating scarcities for others in order to bring about wealth and power for oneself. Looking beyond economics, there is really no guarantee or pre-ordained command that man will survive. Civilizations have come and gone on this planet with monotonous regularity. Without answering the question, “Why?” we can expect to repeat the same painful end games time and again. Let’s rephrase the question a bit more intelligently: “What could be behind these economic and other turmoils, when the majority of us are quite happy to get along with our neighbor and for him (or her) to succeed, too? After all, we do not go out of our way to harm others on the road to our own success.”

And a well-posed question elicits the answer, for there we have it: we, as a specie, are so nice and decent, that we cannot credit that a few in our midst may not be nice and may be working in hidden ways to steer us onto the rocks. We assume everyone thinks the way we do, which is about as correct as saying that everyone looks the same, weighs the same, and likes the same television programs. Would it surprise you to know that 2-3% of the populace has secretly bad, destructive, evil if you will, agendas? And that our error is not recognizing this; and secondly, allowing this minority to take control, bit by bit, because we think life is too short to mess with people who are mean-spirited as they claw their way to the top and fill the positions around them with like-minded people?

Now this is probably a novel idea, that beyond the obviously evil people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy (whom the authorities deal with), that there could be people like that next door, in or in the local government, or wearing suits on Wall Street. And here’s another idea: when this kind of person does manage to work himself into a position of power, he or she will act in what he considers his own interests, not yours and more than that, will actively work to reduce your welfare, strength, and happiness.

Why? Because they are secretly terrified of others becoming stronger than them, because they just know that everyone is out to get them (as that is how they think), and the only way they can survive is to undermine others (secretly, otherwise they would be caught and their power taken away). The good news is that two or three in every hundred people is a distinct minority. The bad news is, that means we have about 170 million of these jokers working their sad ways amongst us planet-wide. And the other not-so-good news is that their type is pretty well running the show (this is not to say all people in power are like this, but a sufficient number in key places is all it takes to steer for the rocks).

Look at Mugabe in Zimbabwe, he is an obvious example: death, fear, destruction of the real economy, and inflation of the money supply using the same procedures as are currently in vogue in the US, so that by 2008, three eggs cost 100 billion Zimbabwean dollars: all the work of one evil individual who has his fist firmly in all lines of power.

But how about a person who knowingly takes actions that collapse the entire world economy, not that of one African nation? Yes, they dress in suits, yes, they say things that sound so convincing, yes, they drive Royces and have hot-and-cold-running maids and butlers, but as the saying goes, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Individuals who try, and generally do bring about more good than bad, are among the good guys. If the actual result of their actions, long term not just short term, is destructive, then we are looking at one of the bad guys.

What does one say about a person who knowingly pushes cocaine from Columbia on children; or SSRIs** on babies and children based on the fiction that there is such a thing as a Prozac deficiency in the brain, or such a thing as a chemical balance (which nobody can possibly establish) and then watches the suicide rates and shooting incidents in schools explode on the nightly news?

What does one say about someone who causes the money supply in the US to multiply and multiply, knowing that it will take food off the table of those individuals and families living on the borderline; and who tries to cover his gambling losses in the derivatives and exotic investments markets by raiding the real economy and presiding over its collapse and the concomitant suffering for every man, woman and child around the world?

And here we come to the crux of the matter: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke). The hardest thing for anyone to face up to is evil, meaning the deliberate actions by another to harm or destroy others. One desperately looks for any excuse not to have to call a spade a spade; one does not want to be uncharitable, “we all have things to hide,” etc. etc. “Peace in our time!” said the British Prime Minister after meeting with Adolf Hitler just before that madman launched a war that killed 72 million people. “His mother did not breastfeed him enough;” “He had a troubled upbringing;” And as one steps over the rivers of blood in the streets, “Oh, they are really nice people, deep down.”

Actually, they are mad dogs and need to be removed from any lines of power and fixed up for the sorry human beings they have let themselves become. That’s the truth of the matter, and that, also, is the basic problem we face in this world economy. We can try to fix this and that, we can argue about supposed causes and motives and ramifications, but unless we take the hands of the evil people off the wheel, they will keep steering us all towards the rocks.

Because you are sensible, you will say, “Oh, they wouldn’t do that, not sink the ship deliberately, especially when it means they would drown, too.” And here we have the basis of your problem: you are trying to apply your sense of fairness, rightness, logic, and good sense to people who are nuts. They do not think like you do, which is why they are the bad guys and you are one of the good guys. Remember, secretly, behind those cold eyes or that too-ingratiating smile, lies a feverish world of cold calculations, how to bring about your demise without you knowing, and therefore their own (rather miserable) survival (they think).

This may not be an easy point to take in, but just inspect your own life and see if it is not haunted by the actions of others (known or unknown) which just bring about disaster…the actions of those big-tipping financiers who have imploded the world’s economy and are now sitting on their ill-gotten wealth while you sweat it out, trying to work out how to raise the occupancy rates and perhaps already wondering whether your hotel will be open next year.

Just Kidding, Right?

Alright, so maybe the above rant was just the result of a caffeine deficiency. In fact, the outlook is rosy for hospitality: by the end of this year, the scare will be over, the government programs and bailouts for ex-colleagues in the financial sector and the hyperactive printing presses will have kept the banks lending, corporations producing, consumers buying, vacationers traveling, and business conferences back on track in exotic places; staff will be rehired, butler programs will be reinstated or beefed up again to deliver on that idyllic promise of pampering guests, and we will look upon 2009 as an unnerving but thankfully brief aberration in an otherwise new era of planetary leisure-and-pleasure courtesy of our industry.

One can dream, but dreams usually take an awful lot of intelligent action behind the scenes to bring into the real world, as anyone in hospitality knows.

You can write to me if you’d like a few pointers on how to spot the bad guys, because they make themselves hard to spot; it does no good to spot someone who is simply behaving irrationally under the influence of the bad guy. You’d be surprised what a relief it is to identify the bad guys and cut them out of your life, starting with any that might be in your immediate environment. If we all did that, we would increase our sphere of influence and, who knows, one day help bring about the widespread practice of insisting upon ethical solutions to our problems, looking after the interests of all (or as close to all) of those impacted by any decisions being made.

I look forward to that day, because hope springs eternal, even at the darkest of hours; and in the meantime, I wish you well in raising those occupancy rates despite the ill-wind blowing against you; and even seeing some of you when training your butlers or staff, for if there is one useful truth, it is that we are responsible for our own success and for creating the world we want, rather than sitting back and whining about how insurmountable are the obstacles, or worse, seeing the obstacles through rose-tinted glasses.

* The repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies, & brokerage firms; and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which prevented the US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, from having any oversight over financial derivatives trading.

** SSRI drugs prevent existing serotonin from leaving the brain and so allow newly produced serotonin to accumulate into higher and higher levels (the theory being that serotonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for the ‘feel good’ emotion). The same holds true for other “feel good” neurotransmitters, such as dopamine. The substance that causes dopamine to be kept in the brain is cocaine. So we have pharmaceuticals hooking hundreds of millions of people on the chemical formula of cocaine under the guise of “mental health” and profits, and even having laws passed that force newborns, their mothers, school children, foster children, and literally anyone onto cocaine—in direct legal competition with illegal business enterprises from Columbia and elsewhere. An interesting business model, to be sure, but hardly an ethical activity.

Published in various magazines, including Hotel News Resource, Hospitality Trends, Hospitality Net, 4Hoteliers.com and Airline News Resource (April 2009).

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The Hidden Drug Menace

A recent article I wrote (Why Good Employees Are Hard to Find) elicited quite some responses, some of them downright upset. I completely understand the upset, but cannot change the facts. Half of the US populace is on psychiatric drugs, and the vast majority of them do not need to be. But having taken these mind-altering drugs, they develop a biochemical personality that cuts them off from others, either making them wooden and unemotional; or causing great discomfort, making them into walking time-bombs who blow up from time to time (sometimes with disastrous consequences to those around them).

The hospitality industry is based, well, on the concept of hospitality, a word that comes to us from Latin hospitalitem, meaning “friendliness to guests.” It is hard to be friendly to anyone when one feels half dead, drugged, or when one is seething with upset. It is hard to be genuinely interested in the welfare of another, a basic prerequisite to good service, when one is struggling internally.

The argument that people need these drugs because they have such issues as depression, is putting the cart before the horse: whatever issues a person had before taking a psychiatric drug, they were often quite simply explained and susceptible to a) proper medical treatment (for hernias, allergies, etc.), b) proper diet and exercise, or c) counseling to get through some of life’s inevitable roadblocks emotionally, hormonally, etc. This is the regimen the National Health Service in Great Britain has ordered its doctors to follow, instead of prescribing psychiatric drugs. By not isolating and treating these real-world issues, one condemns these individuals to continued problems stemming from those issues. By also inventing a “mental illness” to account for the symptoms, and prescribing some very powerful, mind-altering drug, one merely deadens the symptoms as well as the individual. Then one does have a mental issue!

A groundswell of protest by those in the medical and even mental health professions, governing bodies, and those mistreated by such sanctioned drug addiction, gives weight to my observations and contentions. Any Internet search will uncover it, but most recently, Ms. Jeanne Lenzer added the prestigious British Medical Journal to the discussion when she stated in her June 19, 2005 article entitled Bush plans to screen US for mental illness, “President Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a ‘comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.’ The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003Š and found that ‘despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed’ and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for ‘consumers of all ages.’Š. The commission also recommended ‘Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports’ including ‘state-of-the-art treatments’ using ‘specific medications for specific conditions.'”

As I pointed out in my own article in the BMJ in response to Ms. Lenzer’s, “I find I have no argument with senior members of the psychiatric community when they admit to having no clue about the cause of or cure for mental illness.

“‘We do not know the causes (of psychiatric disorders). We don’t have methods of ‘curing’ these illnesses yet.’ Director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, Rex Cowdry, 1995.

“‘The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill will have to learn to live with their illness.’ Norman Sartorius, president of the World Psychiatric Association, 1994.

“This is not the forum for detailing exactly why psychiatric drugging is junk science, but suffice to say, if it were not, it would obtain some positive results. Yet study after study not paid for by pharmaceutical companies pushing their own drugs, shows harmful effects and less positive outcomes than mere sugar pills.

“While we have heard plenty recently about skewed statistics during drug trials carried on by pharmaceuticals eager to rush their latest drug to market, it is telling that no statistics are kept anywhere in the world on improvements brought about in real life by psychiatric drugs. That is, except for King County, Washington (including Seattle), which is the only government organization wanting to know how well its citizen’s money is being spent and interests served. About $30 million was spent in 2000 on psychiatric drugs in King County, with the following outcomes: Of 7,831 patients, 6,949 (88.7%) showed no improvement, 597 (8%) showed some improvement, 295 (4%) regressed, and 4 (.05%) recovered. Who would take their car to a mechanic who successfully fixed one in every 2,000 vehicles that passed through his doors?

“In a nutshell, the main problems with the psychiatric theory of a chemical imbalance in the brain as the cause of behavioral disorders are that no tests exist to determine the chemical status of a person’s brain while he is living (so how could one recognize an imbalance?); and no delivery system exists to replenish any supposed ‘prozac deficiency,’ for instance, to a specific part of the brain.

“But this doesn’t discourage psychiatrists from misdiagnosing tens of millions of people as having these ‘diseases.’ Or pharmaceutical companies from making psychiatric drugs to treat these made-up diseases.”

If the British medical community has tumbled to what is going on with over-prescription of pharmaceutical drugs, why have we heard so little about the government’s plans to medicate the other half of US citizens not already on psychiatric drugs? Perhaps because, as the American Psychiatric Association boasts on its web site, “The BMJ story [by Ms. Lenzer quoted above] has gained some traction in derivative reports on the Internet, though mainstream media have not touched the story, in part thanks to APA’s work, for which the administration is appreciative.” Interestingly enough, Ms. Lenzer’s article was the most downloaded article in the history of the BMJ. It manifestly struck a nerve with a public wary of doctors and politicians whose pockets are lined with drug company money. But for the majority of people in the United States who do not visit the BMJ’s august web site, the APA made sure the story did not reach them.

So to return to the hospitality profession in particular, we hear that good personnel are hard to find. Certainly, there are many very competent individuals in the industry who are wonderfully hospitable, but they are the ones who keep the guests wowed, and the ship afloat and off the rocks. Their job is made much harder by the mistakes made by people who are not quite tracking with the rest of us and by the upsets they cause by their attitude, lack of awareness and caring. If you find yourself dealing with employees like this, then realize there is a hitherto hidden influence at work: such employees may well be legal drug addicts. We don’t allow street drugs in the work place, so why do we allow psychotropic drugs that are classified as Schedule II drugs (same as cocaine) by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency?

So how does one handle this situation and move on? Are such employees dead losses? Absolutely not: If they recognize they are in trouble and want help, then all they have to do is see a competent medical doctor or alternative health practitioner who is not sold on the marketing campaigns by the pharmaceutical companies, for a full and searching physical exam. They may need to fix some physical condition or allergy, change their diet (from junk food high in sugars, synthetic sugars such as the killer aspartame, and empty calories, to nutritious and proteinaceous foods), possibly start some exercise regimen, or have some counseling from a competent and caring individual. They can also do a detoxification program that will remove the residues of the psychiatric drugs so they do not keep releasing into the their blood stream long after the individual ceases taking them.

In the meantime, what does HR do in a hotel environment? First off, research this whole subject for yourself. Otherwise you’ll just think the author full of something unmentionable and will continue to miss this important dynamic in your organization. You may also want to consider the impact such psychiatric programs and agendas are having on health care coverage as the cost of health care spirals out of control. It was not so long ago (2001, pushed heavily by pharmaceuticals and psychiatrists) that the Mental Health Parity Act tried to compel businesses to cover mental health insurance (i.e. psychiatric drugs) to the same dollar amount as physical illnesses. Now we have TeenScreen, designed to screen and put the 50 million children in this country on psychiatric drugs as the first step of the President’s Orwellian-named New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in drugging all Americans. Once you realize there is a clear and present danger, I am sure you have enough understanding of HR issues to work out how to proceed in your organization.

Sorry if this is all new and bad news to you, and even more so if anyone finds it upsetting: but the truth is that nothing will work short of the truth in the long run. Good luck.

This article also appeared in the December issues of Hotelexecutive.com and 4Hoteliers.com

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Taking Big Brother On Vacation

Next time you stay in a hotel, you may be surprised to find that Big Brother has tagged along: not yours, everyone’s. That’s because hotels are solving a problem with fraud that reportedly costs them $100 million each year. Strictly speaking, of course, it doesn’t cost them anything…they pass the cost on to you. So in effect, there’s a trade-off: Big Brother is invited on your vacation and you save some money.

This invitation follows the publication in hospitality trade magazines of three articles written by Steven Ferry, Chairman of the International Institute of Modern Butlers (www.modernbutlers.com) drawing attention to the excesses of the “Guest from Hell.”

As he tells it, “Guests from Hell complain about everything and when it comes to checking out, they complain some more and loudly enough for an alarmed duty manager to comp them (cancel their bill). Such guests travel from hotel to hotel repeating the same MO. Sometimes, Guests from Hell set up employees to fail, such as happened once when a guest ordered breakfast from the butlers I was training at a newly opened hotel, and also from room service. This gentleman (if he deserves such a title) requested different items for different times. When the butlers and room service independently delivered the requested items at the requested time, the guest complained they were early/late and had forgotten/brought unnecessary items. This upset the employees but worse, at checkout, the guest listed these and many similar “failings” and demanded the entire week’s stay for himself and entourage in the Presidential Suite be comped. It was. This incident first alerted me to this violation of fair play.”

One hotel manager reported a couple had complained the toilet flushed all night and they couldn’t sleep. He complained the cooling didn’t work and she complained it was too cold. Afterwards, maintenance found the toilet flapper had been moved off by 90 degrees and the A/C thermocouple had been bent out of shape and was unusable. The couple filed an official complaint that counted against the hotel, and yes, their bill was cancelled. The manager’s final words: “This database of Guests from Hell means we won’t lose so many good people to less stressful jobs, like bomb squads and hostage negotiations.”

Ferry’s articles called for an international database to be established to flag and put an end to criminally inclined guests. When one magazine editor offered his organization to run the program, Ferry provided them with the template and the Sales and Marketing director, who was tasked with establishing the identity and web site, was off and running, bringing in investors and setting up what was to become HotelSafeguard. It is testament to the need for such an organization that within half a year of launch, 14,000 hotels, motels, and resorts globally had subscribed to the database and submitted no less than 60,000 guest compensation reports.

It’s unlikely you will see a credit in your check:

“Guest from Hell program deduction, $5”

But rest assured, the bill would be higher without this program. What you may well see, if your hotel is a member, and if you look in the compendium (hotel information pack), is a small disclaimer stating that the hotel is a member of HotelSafeguard. That should be warning enough to the criminals (hopefully they are paying attention) and for the rest of us, it has no real impact.

Putting an end to the free ride for Guests from Hell is a laudable goal. It’s hardly a Big Brother intrusion when compared to the highly intimate scans one can be subjected to at airport security lines, for instance. But the tendency to expand the reporting brief to include behavior—whether rude, angry, complaining, jocular, or anything that some little Hitler may take exception to or use as a smoke screen for his own failure to serve—is palpable. Such would obviously throw cold water over the very concept of hospitality. In the early stages of setting up HotelSafeguard, bad guest behavior was one of the things hotels would be expected to report on, but this was later removed and the Web site currently mentions only guest comp histories being maintained.

Making sure it stays that way is a job consumers have, as well as hotel managements; for bureaucracies have a tendency to grow (the IRS was founded in 1913, taxing 1% of the US populace).

The program definitely deserves support for the peace of mind of the hoteliers who are hardly motivated when Guests from Hell are allowed free reign. So next time you see Big Brother on your vacation, just smile, because those serving you will be more inclined to.

 

Maureen Herron

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Thin Red Line Or Red Ink? Fighting Terrorism in the Hospitality Industry

The likelihood that any single hotel will be the target of a terrorist act is very small indeed, given the number of hotels in the world.

The risks increase with the size of the hotel, its location, it being a trophy building or the destination of guests whose views are antipathetic to those of any of a variety of terrorist groups. Or perhaps the fact that it is an easy, soft target and offers a way of doing what terrorists do best: destroy buildings and lives, undermine the peace of mind and economies of whole nations. So how safe does that make any hotel?

While the hospitality industry is experiencing lower occupancy rates since that pivotal day in September 2001, it is at the same time being forced into spending money on higher insurance premiums and/or greater security measures. Perhaps not vast sums of money in the overall scheme of things, but certainly insurance rates doubling in three years is at odds with the need to reduce expenses. The JW Marriott in Jakarta didn’t hesitate to do the right thing, however, instituting more stringent security procedures and so saving the day. Not the lives of some of its security personnel, but certainly of the majority of its guests and the integrity of the building itself, which was structurally intact after the car bomb exploded on that day in August 2003. The October 2004 bombings in Egypt showed what can happen when inadequate security measures are in place.

In August 2004, the hotels on the Strip in Las Vegas (including 18 of the 20 largest hotels in the world) were accused of withholding from the general public the fact that Al Queda low-lifes had been “casing the joint.” There was concern reportedly that a public warning might hurt tourism or increase legal liabilities. The casino hotels apparently did increase what was already arguably the tightest security in the industry, but their experience and systems were designed for criminals, not terrorists. One thing is certain, their approach resulted in a PR flap that did little to enhance their image. The fact that these hotels also handed over names and other information on quarter of a million guests to the FBI over the New Year’s Eve celebrations 2003/2004 may not have endeared them to those and future guests, either. Dealing with the threat of terrorism isn’t easy and was certainly not covered in any great depth during any hospitality training for American hoteliers.

For a look at effective anti-terrorist measures in the hospitality industry, Sea Island provides a better example during the G8 summit in June 2004. A tour-de-force in terms of electronic gadgetry and armed security forces, it was the government not the hotel that drove (and paid for) that security event. Nice if you can get it, but hardly within the budget of any hotel, and certainly the siege mentality was not conducive to the ambiance that generally draws guests to hotels.

So where does this leave hotels? Certainly, terrorists do not make it easy, presenting the prospect of any of a number of ways of creating their effects via an unknown individual at an unknown time. As the homeland security advisor to the governor of Nevada is reported to have said, “We have so little information. We pray a lot.” Not to argue with the power of prayer, but a concrete plan would probably sit better with guests, insurers, owners, and employees alike.

Fear is a third-rate motivator employed by weak individuals, so perhaps a better approach to this whole subject of combating terrorism is to view it as a challenge to our intelligence and resourcefulness. Our purpose as an industry is to provide comfort and pleasure to our fellow man and woman. Maybe our goal in providing adequate security, then, should be the retaining of our freedoms and joys, not the fighting of psychotic individuals or the purveying of fear. This may seem like an extraneous piece of philosophy, but any lesser goal on our part lets the terrorists set the rules, makes us play their miserable game.

What’s the Problem?

Perhaps the first point to establish is, what is one protecting against? Ill-intended individuals or groups coming onto the grounds and into the premises in any of a variety of ways: by stealth as overnight guests, day guests, guests of guests, convention attendees, vendors and service personnel, employees, ex-employees, on business (whether as reporters, law enforcement, or any number of guises); or by brute force as a swarm of invaders or behind the wheel of a truck or car‹the favored method of the terrorist. And what is one concerned they may do once they have access? The most obvious is use explosives, or weaponry. Then there is the possibility that they may use biological or chemical weapons.

How would these elements be brought into the hotel space? By people on their person, in their luggage or vehicles, or via packages delivered. The next question then is, how does one ascertain that these routes are clear of threat without a) invading privacy and upsetting guests, b) inordinate expense, c) creating a siege mentality and ruining the ambiance, d) delaying guests or tying up employees with added tasks.

The task for security then is to monitor these routes for these harmful elements in a way that is not only effective, but does not interrupt the flow of guests arriving and deliveries being made, and which maintains the ambiance of the hotel. If we were being real smart, we’d find a way to turn the need for security to advantage for guests, possibly even making it fun.

What’s the solution?

Let’s consider a possible ideal scenario based on existing resources in the market and industry. When guests arrive, their vehicle drives over a simple wireless camera system with infrared capability that beams the license plate and picture of the driver to the security office, while also surveying the undercarriage for bombs attached. The guests disembark at a slight remove from the hotel structure, where bollards have been placed to prevent vehicular access, and are given their favorite beverage served on a tray. They walk through a metal detector at the front entrance (or even part of it) without even noticing it, and through a detector that can sense explosives carried in the plume of hot air that wafts upward naturally from their warm bodies. Their bags are removed from their trunk and the seats of the vehicle and carried up to their room via a scanning machine such as is seen in airports, as well as one that detects the possible presence of biological or chemical weapons or explosives. The valet then inspects the trunk and under the hood before parking the vehicle. Those dealing with the guests are trained to look unobtrusively for tell-tale signs of explosive belts, shifty guests, etc.

Impact on guests? Improved service. Impact on hotels? Slightly larger payroll with more personnel hired to cover valet parking and bellhop, and a better rating for security and service. A bite out of the budget initially for the detection equipment.

What about the employees and ex-employees? Set up parking away from the hotel and institute an ID card that has to be scanned, together with the employee’s face, before entry to the grounds/hotel is authorized. These scans are recorded and transmitted in real time wirelessly to the security office.

And tradespeople? Set up a similar procedure that requires their vehicle undercarriage be scanned as covered above at a distance from the hotel, and then a security employee inspects the cargo container (again, this can be done using a camera system with infra red and wireless capability, so unlit areas can be viewed at a command center removed from the truck being inspected). And only then have the driver bring the vehicle to the hotel building, where he or she can be asked to scan his driving license into a machine that snaps a photo of his face and sends both images to a command center. Invaluable for determining that any unexpected or unusual driver is legitimately at the location on behalf of the company he claims to represent.

Looking for Eyes and Ears

When the terrorist alert was raised in Las Vegas, taxi cab drivers were given photographs of wanted terrorists. That was a good idea and capitalizes on the basic truth about all law enforcement: the police cannot possibly maintain the law without the cooperation of the populace. Which means they rely on the general public’s eyes and ears to be law enforcement’s eyes and ears.

So why not take this one step further? Let guests and employees be kept up to speed on law enforcement needs, as well as public service announcements? Similar to the reality TV shows that highlight America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. Imagine then a TV screen embedded in a piece of equipment positioned strategically in a hotel lobby or staff entrance, that shows terrorists and felons, provides Amber Alerts, the latest updates from Homeland Security, and when those are not being broadcast, which shows PSAs (such as hurricane alerts) or ads. Ads, incidentally, which can pay for the equipment. How about if that piece of equipment also provides two-way intelligence? If it took images of people coming and going and relayed these wirelessly to a security office. They could check these against databases, especially where an individual behaved suspiciously (such as hiding his face and walking away rapidly) when he notices the images on the screen.

How about a similar machine that was also a cellphone charger, and which a guest could also stand in front of, call a family member who would log onto a Web site and then be able to see the person calling on his cell phone from the hotel lobby (or convention space)?

This kind of wireless, 2-way intelligence equipment is coming onto the market now (see for instance www.homelandintel.us), driven by the need to use technology to respond to the threat of terrorism at home. This equipment goes beyond the old security cliché of stringing wires to multiple cameras and hoping to catch someone in the act.

The common denominator of these solutions is an intelligent use of technology to ferret out not just terrorists but also criminals. The smarter rationale, however, is one that preempts or discourages anything destructive from occurring by being more overt or obvious. What self-respecting criminal or terrorist would walk into an environment in which his physiognomy was likely to be flashed in a hotel lobby or staff canteen, or snapped in real time and compared within seconds to a data base which he has the misfortune to be featured in? In other words, the real desired product is incident-free days, more than thwarted terrorists. The intelligent approach also solicits the cooperation of guests and employees alike, not because they are frightened, but because they are informed and even pampered a bit.

It takes surprisingly little green in the long term to build a thin red line around a hotel when one goes beyond the idea of snooping cameras, bollards and personnel as the weapons available. It is certainly better than drowning in red ink because guests are sufficiently unimpressed with antiquated or invisible security systems to look for safer ports of call, or because terrorists perceive a soft target in their sights.

This article appeared in:
Hotel Executive Magazine October 4, 2004
Hotelonline.com on October 21, 20044
Hoteliers.com on October 23, 2004
Hotel News Resource
Syndicated on HSyndicate.com, October 21, 2004
Airline News Resource, November 2005

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Are You Being Served?

If you think the latest hot trend in vacations is Italian packages, climate sightseeing, or medical tourism, then adjust your sights a bit higher, because a quiet revolution has taken place in some of the better hotels around the world: look for that icon of superior service, Jeeves, waking you up gently to a bright new morning in your hotel suite. Hotel butlers first appeared in the 1980s, but have become increasingly popular in the last few years. Currently, The International Institute of Modern Butlers lists 150 hotels and cruise ships with butler service (https://www.modernbutlers.com/butler-rated-hotels).

So what is a butler in a hotel? What does one ask butlers to do? How does one judge a hotel’s butler service? Does one tip them? Is he really going to come into your hotel room while you are in various states of undress?

The simple answer is that not all butlers are created equal. A “tanning butler” is a marketing gimmick, not a butler. What a butler should do is be the single contact point who schlepps around the hotel taking care of all the little things that would otherwise raise blood pressure when you have better things to do. He (or she, lady butlers are becoming increasingly common) can start by unpacking your bags so you can get right down to the vacation (in some resorts, they even take the stress out of the trip by bathing your feet when you first arrive while you sip margueritas on the balcony); and by packing your bags, they allow that extra hour on the beach.

Early morning field trip or tee off? The butler will wake you gently with the beverage of your choice and while he clears up the mess from the night before, lays out your golf clothing, and runs the bath, you sit in bed reading the newspaper.

Want a romantic bath with all then trimmings (in Manhattan, baths can cost up to $1,600 for what [not who] the butler puts in the bath and, more particularly, the bottles of fun stuff they serve)? The butler’s your man.

This isn’t the kind of luxury most people will pop for, but you’d be surprised how many hotels, recognizing that improving service is the best way to a tourist’s and business traveller’s heart, are drawing upon the same expertise formerly reserved for the elite, and all at non-stratospheric rates.

If your hotel offers butler service and you decide to try vacations in the well-served lane, here are the questions to assess whether your butler will be an asset:

  1. How many other rooms does the butler service (unless you are paying over the odds for your own private butler, you’ll be sharing)? If you share with too many others, you’ll hardly see the butler.
  2. 24X7 service?
  3. What services do the butlers offer?

Steven Ferry, Chairman of the International Institute of Modern Butlers, who spearheaded the industry’s Hotel Butler Rating program to sort the Jeeves from the “Jeepers!” points out that, “Unless hotel butlers have been trained by one of the few real butlers who are also reputable trainers, one is likely to experience a pale shadow of butler service that may put one off prematurely from experiencing real butler service at hotels offering it. It’s best to review the Institute’s listing for a hotel’s butler service rating and to ask questions before booking. If the butlers do not pack and unpack and otherwise care for your clothes, deal with any personal secretary/business needs, provide personalized service such as the traditional morning wake-up service and luxury baths, and essentially take care of you during your stay, then the likelihood is that the hotel is just climbing on the bandwagon.”

As Ferry says, “When you experience discreet, anticipatory and creative service from your butler, you’ll know you have arrived and your vacation really is one.”

So what do you ask your butler to do? According to Ferry, anything and everything (legal). Does one tip them? Yes, at the end of the stay. How much? Well, how long is a piece of string? Whatever you feel the service was worth: tips range from nothing to thousands of dollars, but whatever you decide will be graciously and discreetly accepted (by real butlers). And if he or she comes into your suite while you’re in a state of undress or packs your unmentionables, count upon more discretion and a professional response.

 

Maureen Herron

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Hotel Butlers – Lynch or Lynchpin?

Butlers were first introduced to hotels with great success to the bottom line and guest satisfaction in the 1980s. The last few years have seen a steep increase in hotels offering butler service. The key driver has been the realization by top-tier hotels that when one had everything marble and gold could offer guests, the arena where the most rapid ROI and increased guest satisfaction could be achieved was improving service; with butlers the quintessential haut-service providers in private service, a metamorphosis into the hotel environment was an obvious move in the dance to win guest loyalty.

Currently, the International Institute of Modern Butlers lists 150 hotels (https://www.modernbutlers.com/butler-rated-hotels) offering butler service of many stripes. The Institute created the Butler Rating system to help hoteliers move their butler service to the next level, as well as allow potential guests to distinguish between the pretenders, the also-rans, and the serious players.

Enough track record exists now to discern where the pitfalls in establishing butler departments may lie, and what actions or situations may allow butlers more surely to deliver on the promise. For in many a hotel and resort the author has trained, the butler concept has formed the lynchpin in the marketing strategy to differentiate that hotel in the local market. Yet too often, hotels are finding themselves floundering short of this goal with much time and money invested and the time to deliver on the promise well past. Rather than waiting for this dire state of affairs before calling in Butler Busters, a proactive approach as follows might be easier on the blood pressure readings and wallet.

Top Down

Butler programs begin with an owner signing onto the concept and management embracing the mandate. Yet I have seen one hotel manager pay for two rounds of expensive training and the minute it was over, replace the carefully trained head butler with an individual without butler experience who decided that the services being offered by the butlers were not to be continued. Result: half the butlers left almost immediately and the guests complained that the butler service was not up to standard. An alert to the chain’s COO was met with, “Well, the service I received there just now was very good.” Hmm, ever met a corporate exec who was not given the red-carpet treatment?

In another hotel that found itself in a crush to meet the opening date through the construction dust, and so neglected to properly market and sell its services, the newly hired GM decided that the best way to reduce costs was to let go the “overpaid” butlers. The problem was, however, that the butlers were very popular and the only thing of note about that hotel in a city with plenty of others.
Perhaps the most egregious was the GM who took the owner’s bright vision for a butler department that had been ably grown to a department of 45 butlers by a strong head butler and trained by the Institute, and reduced the butlers to glorified bellman while blowing off half the staff. What was driving this glad-handing GM was the knowledge that the high standards of service being demonstrated by the butlers was showing him up in a most embarrassing manner; and as further investigation was to reveal, hiding unethical behavior, such as personally taking over the ordering of coffee for the resort—coffee that caused the owner to bring his own whenever he stayed and the guests to go off resort for a good cup—on the basis that he could bed the rather good-looking coffee vendor.

Where do I Find Butlers?

Some hotels have really struggled to find butlers for their departments. The difficulties tend to start with HR not fully understanding what butlers are and so not clearly communicating to prospective employees what they would be doing and why it is a desirable thing to do.

Calling butlers something else (such as “personal concierges”) is a non-starter, because people go blank and inert when they encounter something they do not understand. There is no precedent or clear definition for “personal concierge,” so nobody knows what it is. The effort to move away from the more formal and stiff-upper-lipped butler is understandable, but this is achieved in the training process and the resulting attitude of the modern-day hospitality butler: not by denying the name of the relatively recognizable (in many countries) butler moniker.

If HR and management and the head butler do not conduct a PR campaign to gain acceptance of the butler concept, then the butlers will not fit in, will be elbowed out, their income and morale will be low, nobody will want to be “one of those butlers” and butlers will keep leaving the department, making the butler/guest ratio untenable and the butler department hard to populate.

Butlers should be paid the most of any line staff and be tipped positions. As the hospitality side of the prestigious private service butler, there is a certain cachet/prestige to being a butler; and when taken to heart, the delivery of service to butler standards is extremely satisfying. It should not be difficult, therefore, to hire for the position once it is explained properly to prospective employees. One does need high-caliber staff for intelligent interaction with guests, but there should be enough locals of this caliber interested in the profession without having to go to the lengths and expense of hiring overseas trainees who leave after a couple of years. While it helps to have previously trained butlers, only the head butler really needs to be in this category, and therefore also perhaps non-local. There is no reason why a month of training should not create a very effective butler staff from scratch (given basic hospitality experience and a service-oriented mindset).

When Unions Run the Show in First Gear

There was a time when unions were a much-needed antidote to employer abuse. The author’s experience of them in hospitality in various countries in the 21st Century has unfortunately shown them to be particularly insensitive to the purpose of the activity in which their members are engaged: namely, the protection of member “face time” with guests/tip revenue being more important than the guests having smiles on their faces. Butlers at one resort instituted “morning wake-up service,” for which half the resort signed up on the first day; judging by the tips generated, they found it most pleasant. The service was cancelled the same day. Why? Because the unionized IRD staff found out about the tip stream and stated that as a beverage was presented as part of the service, only IRD could present it. However, as there is a lot more to a morning wake-up service than beverages, this was a non-starter. So the union cancelled the service.

In another unionized hotel, butlers were introduced at its reopening. The extent of the butler service had been ironed out with the different departments ahead of time and the butlers began to deliver much-appreciated service. Within three months, the unions had stepped in following specious grievances and basically eviscerated the butler offerings with the result that the butlers had been reduced to “the guys who get the ice” and were about to quit en masse.

In another hotel on a small island, the staff offered to strike one hour before a large wedding unless the GM gave them a raise. His plaintive, “But I just gave you one last week” fell on deaf ears.

It is easy to bash unions given such stories, but there is a need for unions in many countries in the world that stand where the US did a century ago. For unions to have a survival role in the Western world, however, it might be more productive for all concerned to come off the entitlement kick and work with management to bring flexibility, reason, and balance to the employee experience: what purpose a union in a bankrupt hotel?

For butler service to be instituted in a union environment, one needs to meet with the unions and handle their concerns. If they are intractable, then skip instituting butler service, because they will undermine it into an unworkability. Otherwise, consider having the butler department unionized so that the union is more inclined to look after the butlers’ interests, too.

Turf and Face Time

Unions or no, butlers are a Johnny-come-lately to the hospitality scene. They therefore tend to displace other departments, cutting across their face time with guests and customary duties. Unless this is addressed up front before a butler department is created, other departments will elbow out the butlers, or fail to support them in servicing guests. The result? Inter-departmental strife, poorly serviced guests, and butlers who leave because their job description does not match where the penguin suit hits the corridor.

What to do?

Try hiring the butlers internally, especially from IRD, so there is no issue with the butlers taking over IRD. The same could be done with concierges in hotels with 100% butler service. Conduct PR campaigns with all the staff so they understand what the butlers do and how they will benefit the hotel and themselves. And make sure that SOPs are worked out that take into account the needs of the other departments.

Great I have a Butler—Now What?

One resort had a good butler department that management was about to disband because the guest feedback showed the butlers weren’t doing anything for the guests. Why not? They had no idea what a butler could do for them. Solution: put out a CD for guests before they arrive explaining not only the resort but also what the butlers could do for them. This answer was augmented by a pictorial compendium of butler services in each suite. Result? One of the most effective butler departments in the world.

In another hotel where the failure to introduce the butler concept properly had resulted in the butlers literally bringing ice and doing nothing else, we introduced new services for them to offer the guests and created a Butler Services menu card so the guests a) knew what was on offer and b) asked for it so c) they were happy and d) so were the butlers.

Let’s Do the Butler Thing

A butler department is not a service that can be instituted by reading a book and implementing it internally (flattering for the author but unfortunately, not proven possible in practice); calling in the cheapest trainer; or simply renaming the pool attendant a “pool butler.” One would think that managers would be able to see what an oxymoron “butlers on the cheap” is. Likewise, a glitzy web site does not a good trainer make. It is easy enough to put on a dog-and-pony show of the mechanical skills expected of a butler, but if there is no comprehensive program to inculcate the right mindset and create the necessary communication skills and attitude, then one will end up with a Ford or worse a Trabant when one’s sites were set far higher. It is embarrassing for butler trainers to have to retrain a butler department trained poorly by a peer in the profession. Such represent wasted money, time, and service time with guests and just should not be borne by managers working hard to make their hotels achieve stiff targets and quota.

Some hotels approach the Institute wanting their butler department slamdunked in three days. A refresher course makes sense in three days, but not creating something that essentially requires a lifetime of learning to perfect. One expects such enquiries from a country predicated on cheap imitations and lacking any reference point for what a butler is after decades of communism; but not from Western countries in which managers should have some understanding of what a butler stands for.

There are many ways to fail, but only one basic route to success. It involves the owner making a decision, whether off his own bat or at management suggestion; management adopting the goal as its own and hiring a strong head butler (not two, as one resort is busy doing currently); hiring from within where possible; obtaining agreement with PR campaigns and meetings with any unions and other employees; bringing in competent consultants to advise at the front end (including on space needs for butlers); and trainers capable of creating a well-rounded butler department that really can deliver; and ongoing training and hiring and use of the Institute’s Butler Rating System (free download at https://www.modernbutlers.com/standards/rating-system-for-hotel-butlers) to guide ongoing improvements.

Having beaten the drum noisily about the value of butlers in high-end hotels, it is incumbent upon the author to do what he can to ensure hotel managers enjoy the promised fruits (with apologies for the mixed metaphors).

This article has appeared in the following publications:

  • http://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2008_3rd/Aug08_HotelButlers.html
  • http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3258
  • http://www.htrends.com/researcharticle34068.html
  • http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4037243.search?query=hotel+butlers+lynch+or+lynchpin
  • http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/pdf/dyn/34068.pdf
  • http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/pid/news_print.php?sid=34068&pid=10027
  • http://www.comfortbudgethotels.com/?tag=lynchpin
  • http://www.ihrestaurantsforsale.com/news_print.php?sid=34068
  • Airline News Resource, August 2008 (www.airlinenewsresource.com)
Categories
Published Articles

Taming The Guest From Hell

Back in 2006, the concept of the Guest from Hell was introduced to the industry in two articles entitled Besting and then Muzzling the Guest from Hell published by several industry organs. The feedback demonstrated strong support for the idea of an international database for the hospitality industry that would put an end to the free run of free service some guests have enjoyed by following the formula of “complain loud enough, be mean enough, and the suckers will comp you.” This strategy echoes Hitler’s “The bigger the lie, the more the people will believe it” — as long as they fail to face up to the unpleasantness and do nothing about it.

Typical of the feedback received was, “Your articles have given us strength to carry on. It seems these people gravitate to new facilities such as ours in the hope less-experienced staff and managers will be easier prey….and they may be right.”
“Please let me know if anything comes of the national database. It is a wonderful idea and will find tremendous support from the hospitality managers if not the entire industry.”

Several readers shared their own experiences with guests from hell, such as the following: “Reading your article about guests from hell has made my day. I had only been in this business for less than a year as the GM of a modestly sized hotel in a small Mid-western town, when I was ready to look for any other work. Why? Because of the stress caused by the few bad guests out of the thousands of good guests we had served. I believe, as you, that these are indeed serial criminals acting the way they do just to get free lodging.

“Take one guest who had reserved a room for one night. The next day, he asked to extend for a day and we granted that. The next day, his wife complained that a housekeeper had stolen make-up from the room.  We checked with the staff, but no one had noticed any make-up in the room. Still, we purchased comparable make-up for her and I offered a discount on the cost of their room (as a result of which my owners now want to pre-approve all purchases). The next day, the couple was supposed to check out and did not do so, although all their possessions had been removed from the room; so we ran their card and checked them out. That night they came back upset that their key would not work. The gentleman ranted about having a five-day reservation and would not listen to anything else, including any apology. We put them back in the same room, rearranging future reservations for other guests in order to do so. I even extended the additional discount to all five days of their stay. When they finally left, it was a distinct relief for everyone involved.

“A few days later, the gentleman called the hotel demanding to know what the additional charge was on his credit card statement. I asked him to send me a copy of his statement so that I could research any unauthorized charges. When I pulled up his folio, the ‘additional charge’ was for the first two days and the other one was for the next three days. I refunded the first two days’ charges and ended my letter to him with, ‘I hope you find future stays in other hotels to be more enjoyable’ …hoping he would take the hint and never return.

“I have also had guests demand the manager come in late at night so they could argue about rates; one of these guests brought my front desk clerk to tears with his abuse, then complained to our HQ when I asked him not to return to our facility.
There are also the saboteurs. We had a couple complain to our headquarters that the toilet constantly flushed all night and they could not sleep. It was not flushing when I was in their room helping them with Internet access, but after they left, it was running constantly because someone had moved the flapper off by 90 degrees. He complained that the AC would not work and he could not get cool all night.  She complained that it was too cold and she could not get the heat to work.  Maintenance found that the PTAC thermocouple had been bent out of shape and was unusable.  It had been working fine while I was up there earlier. They filed an official complaint that counted against us, and yes, they got their comp room.

“I guess that in this business you see the full range of people and the 98% who are pleasant just seem to fade into the background due to the noise of the 2% of guests from hell. Thank you for offering a glimmer of hope for the future.  Maybe with that database of guests from hell we would be better prepared and wouldn’t lose so many good people to less stressful jobs, like bomb squads and hostage negotiations.”

In searching for a partner to create and manage this Guest from Hell database, early advice included: “Your article was quite something. I am told that Talbots has computerized customers who continually create problems, particularly with their gracious return policy. They track these folks and their history and actually get to the point where they inform this type of customer that they are no longer welcome to shop at Talbots. Hospitality and sensibility only go so far when someone has ransacked the relationship. Typically, the guests from hell you are referencing receive free meals, rooms, cocktails, etc, and sometimes they even bring suit—a nuisance and expense. Perhaps consider working with and being sponsored by insurance companies that cover hotels for such suits (presented on the expense side, it would fall under their umbrella, and insurance companies probably already have this info somewhere, as all businesses are subject to ruse), as well as the larger hotel chains and the AH&MA. Good lord, credit card companies have protection built in, too, for any charge, which may be the seamless protector needed and offered as a service or specialty to their market.”

However, the editor of the magazine publishing the articles said in July 2007 that he would like to use his resources to run the database. He put his Sales and Marketing Director onto the project and the Institute provided the initial text for the Web site and overview and policies on how the program should run, as well as a program of steps to take to bring it to fruition. After providing initial feedback on the name of the database (Guest from Hell was fine for editorial, not a serious business), the Sales and Marketing Director ran with the concept, brought in investors and by the beginning of 2008, launched the database as Hotel Safeguard.

Keeping the Database on Target

The danger of keeping a database on guests is that it can set the hospitality industry on a course that belies its true nature: hospitality being, after all, a caring welcome for strangers, no questions asked. We cannot turn into Stasi or FBI agents, suspicious and challenging of our guests, secretly collecting information on them in ever more intrusive ways or using the threat of blacklisting to bulldoze genuine guest complaints, justifying shoddy service. The answer is to define clearly the very few who are to be reported on, and hold vigorously and unfailingly to this definition. Otherwise, like the Federal Income Tax of 1913, or the current Alternative Minimum Tax, both of which targeted a small percentage of the very wealthy and gradually expanded to include everybody (Income tax currently, AMT predictably eventually), all guests may have files kept on them eventually.

This database or directory should not be for guests who occasionally have issues and are either comp’ed by the hotel to redress an imbalance in service or product delivered, or who seek to be comp’ed in proportion to an actual failure to serve or damage done.

Nor is an angry, inconsiderate, rude, and generally highly unpleasant person really the definition of a guest from hell. Yes, there are hellacious guests and we’d prefer not to service them, but in hospitality, one is there to serve graciously. Such unpleasant guests are part of the terrain, they are often not always so, and it is not for hotels to screen guests according to their character.

To illustrate the point, let’s take this story from a hospitality professional: “As I walked into the front desk area of a beautiful property, a woman was going ballistic at the hotel manager, ranting and raving and giving him a mouthful in a very serious manner about how she didn’t need to bring business to his hotel. I couldn’t help but ask the lovely front desk girl what the problem was all about, as I thought something really bad had happened. Can you believe that the woman had asked for a horseback ride to be arranged and, in order to be fitted with the correct horse, had been asked her age, height, and weight! What a very sad person she must have been to make such a commotion over something so trifling.”

What hoteliers do have a right to do is prevent fraud. Anger and antisocial conduct in and of themselves do not show intent to defraud. Consider these two stories.

“In 25 years, the strangest guest(s) was a family staying at large hotel near Disney I managed in the mid 1980’s. The husband reported money had been stolen from their room. The new Manager on Duty reported it to me as I was leaving for the day so I decided to assist. On arriving at the room, we were met by a husband, wife, and two kids. The husband was fuming and beet red, telling us how $10,000 had been stolen from his room while they were at the attractions. I asked to see where the money had last been seen. Yelling and calling us all kinds of names, he showed me a black overnight bag. I asked him if he travels differently when with family versus for business, and could he have put the wallet someplace else. Across the room lunges his 4-foot 2-inch wife, bounding up on the bed in a feeble attempt to go eye to eye with my 6 foot 2 frame while calling us names that must still be hanging in space over Disney.

“I called the law. The law arrives and took their report. Included in the wallet were credit cards and travelers checks. I offered the use of my phone and office so he could place cancellation calls. Again, he continued to call us names when in the office, in front of his kids and others. He placed a call to his boss instructing me to tell him what had happened. Feeling for the kids, we offered to buy them dinner in one of the restaurants. During the meal, he told anybody and everybody his opinion about what had happened to his wallet. He demanded to speak with the housekeeping staff and I told him that would not happen. His response was that he would talk to anybody he wanted on a Sunday morning.

“The next morning, as I entered my unlit office, the phone line lit up. Looking down at it I said to myself  ‘That has got to be Mr. Guest from heck.’ I answered the call. It was his wife. She wanted to tell me that they had found the wallet. She asked me if I could call their credit card and Traveler Check Company to cancel their cancellation. Hours later, the wife appeared in the lobby to checkout while her husband sat in the car…maybe, just maybe, too embarrassed to make eye contact. Method of payment? Credit card or traveler checks….those had been canceled…of course, I helped them out to help the kids.

“The award for second place goes to the case of the Lost-and-Found hand gun. Same hotel, highly populated by families with kids. A guest checks out. Room cleaner calls to report gun found. I approach it with caution, empty it, cover it in a towel and take to my office for inventory and placement in the safe.

“Several days later, the guest calls housekeeping to see if he had left his gun at our hotel. The call is transferred to me. The caller announces ‘I cannot understand why that imbecile transferred me to you. All I want is my gun back.’ I asked the caller to describe the gun, with manufacturers name and serial number. To which he replied, ‘I guess you are the hard ass there.’ My response was that I was just doing my job. After we exchanged stats and pleasantries, I asked when he would be stopping back to pick it up? He said ‘You  ******ing idiot, I live in the Great Lakes area and will not be back there for years. Just mail it to me.’ I had to explain to him that I could not mail it to him as it is against the law and weapons can only be shipped from one dealer to another. At that point he said ‘Just stick it in a box and mail the ******thing, you *****’ To which I said, ‘OK, you can pick it up at the County Police Department,’ giving him the number and address. To this day, I can still here him yelling as we closed our phone conversation. Thanks for listening: better and cheaper than a psychiatrist.”

To make the grade as a Guest from Hell, there really has to be the distinct intention to defraud, and a pattern of doing so or attempting to do so from one hotel to another. In such cases, the game or focus for hoteliers switches from providing hospitality to playing cop.

That is what should have happened at a hotel where I was training the butlers, but did not happen because no mechanism existed for defining and pushing back against guests from hell. It was what gave me the idea for such a database. Picture a hotel opening where the staff had pulled off miracles to open on time (the owner and his family even rolling up their sleeves to sweep floors, organize, push, debug and drive through the myriad projects and sub projects involved in constructing and opening a large, five-star standard hotel). With great anticipation, the opening ceremony goes smoothly. The full house includes one gentleman and his entourage in the Presidential and adjoining suite. We first started to notice trouble when this guest ordered breakfast from the butlers and from room service. He requested different items for different times from each department. When the butlers and room service independently delivered the requested items at the requested time, the guest complained they were early/late and had forgotten items. This upset the employees initially until they compared notes. At checkout, the guest listed these and myriad similar “failings” and demanded the entire week’s stay for himself and entourage be comped.

It was.

Subsequent enquiries with two hotel chains found this individual to be blacklisted within each chain for what essentially is fraud. It is this kind of deliberate effort to steal or defraud, as well as tendency to damage property, which should be the subjects of reports for any Guest from Hell database.

Another way of putting it, is we are not behavior monitors or censors, but hospitality professionals with a duty to employees, corporations, and guests to discourage and eliminate criminality when it raises its ugly head. Every time a Guest from Hell, who may have been written up in another hotel’s database, comes to your hotel(s), you are behind the 8-ball and have to go through grief before becoming the wiser. For the one-time effort of transferring any existing database and ongoing input of information, and a fee per hotel, you can have access to a far more complete database than your hotel alone can create, save on comps and their narrowing of the profit margins, increase employee equanimity for better service, and leave the chore of running the database to another.

So the next time a guest trashes a suite or noisily demands to be comped at the end of a stay for reasons without merit, you don’t have to fawn or smile a smile you do not mean and hope that the steam coming out of your ears isn’t visible. You can do something about it! Skewer away!

This article also published in www.4hoteliers.com, www.hsyndicate.com, www.hotelnewsresource.com and Airline News Resource (www.airlinenewsresource.com)

Categories
Published Articles

What To Do If There’s Nobody At Home

We all know what are right attitude and good service, but how does one bring them about in others?

The answer to that question should be worth your attention, if not $64,000.

The basic philosophy behind the answer is that presence precedes action both in terms of sequence and importance. Without the ability to be, one cannot do—an understanding that could have put Hamlet’s mind firmly to rest. It could likewise save many megawatts of energy on the part of trainers the world over, trying to inculcate(1) into their hopeful charges various mantras and set patterns of behavior in dealing with guests.

The point being missed is that the simple ability “to be there, in the moment” is the starting point for three vital skills, all of which add up to ability, and without which, actions invariably end up being inappropriate:

  1. Can you perceive what is there in front of you (as opposed to what you think is there)?
  2. Can you compute rationally?
  3. Can you act appropriately?

In order to perceive what is in front of you (such as a guest), you have to be in front of the person in front of you. No argument with such a truism(2), perhaps, until we ask for a definition of “You.” Who are you? We are back to philosophy. A question that is easy to answer, in this case, if we imagine your body standing in front of an irate guest who has various things to say, while you are daydreaming about the night before; or perhaps thinking furiously about your employees who messed up in so disagreeable a fashion; or zoning out in any number of ways.

The guest finally finishes talking and you do a quick replay of what you thought he said, and your response results in another ten minutes of invective. “You” in this case, does not refer to your body. While some people might guess it refers to your mind, the thing you are busy computing with—“Your mind was on something else”—this is not correct, either. “You” are the person who is aware of being aware, who is aware of the thoughts about your juniors, or the pictures of the night before, and busy looking at them instead of the guest.

If being in the moment is so important, why can’t or don’t more of us do it more often? How come our minds keep wandering, we become impatient or angry with the person in front of us, or bored, or any other attitude? These are all a departure from being there comfortably in front of another person and really tracking with what he or she is saying, doing, and needing.

Well, 20th Century pill-pushers have most of us convinced that these modern potions and elixirs will fix our wandering attention. Yet every single person I have seen on these legalized drugs or trying to shake their addiction is a mass of random thoughts and introversion that make it very difficult indeed to be in the moment, observing calmly, computing and acting rationally. With 80% of the US population on these drugs and the rest of us beginning to enjoy them in our water supply, I’d say we had one reason people’s attention is not always in the moment. Obviously, street drugs, some of which are as powerful as their psychiatric cousins, have the same effect, but we tend to try discourage street-drug-popping employees from remaining employed. So this may not be a factor, except in the case of employees who have indulged a bit too much in the past—drug residues remain locked in various parts of their anatomy and occasionally go into circulation and thus effect.

Another element that makes it hard to be in the moment is thinking we understand something while not actually doing so; or not understanding something at all. If this guest with a big issue uses words we do not understand, or mumbles something so we cannot hear it, or uses a word for which we understand the wrong definition, or has a limited ability to express himself, there is a subtle disconnect on our part from the guest, and if enough of these non-comprehensions occur, we start to feel frustrated or worse at the guest, compounding the problem that we are not understanding their problem and so are not going to be able to deal with it to their satisfaction.

Or maybe we have had an argument with a significant other. That’s an upset and a problem and maybe, if we have something we did to him or her that we haven’t come clean on, also a source of anger toward them (paradoxically): the end result is attention anywhere but on the guest.

Many more factors compel a person out of the moment, but rather than belaboring the point, suffice to say that trying to beat in SOPs over these distractions does not resolve them and so success remains ephemeral.(3) When employees walk around with an unfortunate attitude or serve salami in the soup instead of croutons, then one has to cut back and fix the “ability to be in the moment” before one can make any progress with “Well, this is what really goes in soup,” and “This is the kind of attitude guests tend to appreciate when servicing them.” The ability to be in the moment no matter what is going on in one’s own head (such as dislikes of certain types of guests), one’s private life (such as financial problems), or one’s body (such as pains, or drugs numbing or speeding up life), is the desired end goal. Handling the different elements that drive one out of the moment is of course the best long-term fix. But this lies outside the scope of a hotel executive’s purview.(4)

By definition and requirement, British butlers are a phlegmatic (5) group tasked with observing what is in front of them so as to anticipate and provide invisible service. That was my starting point as a butler, so meeting with shortfalls in those under my charge in terms of superior service, I realized the basic issue was this question of inability to be there in the moment and thence observe what is right in front of one’s face. Under-butler standing behind a guest who has just lit a cigar: does the under-butler observe that the room has no ashtray, thereby predicting an imminent need and so acting swiftly and discreetly?(6) No, he is off in the stratosphere about goodness knows what, reason unknown. So the inevitable happens: the guest has to ask for an ashtray, about which the under-butler may or may not have an attitude, and then the guest has to focus on calibrating the required angle of his cigar to accommodate a one-inch length of sagging ash while the cigar slowly extinguishes itself and the under-butler tracks down an ashtray in a flurry of coattails and perspiration.

The search for a solution to this malaise led to a most unlikely place: A series of drills created almost six decades ago by the researcher, Mr. Hubbard, who was the first to recognize this issue of people not being in the moment and the various reasons they are not. He created drills that would enable the counselors he was training to be in the moment during counseling sessions that would sometimes last hours on end. The requirement being interested observation and concern that was completely invisible and natural to the other person. Nothing introduced by the counselor that could distract the other person, continual observation of the other person’s world, computing and anticipating futures, and taking appropriate action. It would be nice to think Hubbard was inspired by observing his Rhodesian butler in action a few years earlier, but that would not be the actual case.

Suffice to say, the drills work very well when done properly, because they give employees the ability to be present in the moment, and therefore observe, anticipate, and act. It does not matter how wild a situation or person may become, the employee has the ability to calmly and appropriately face the situation, weigh it up, and act to improve it. Where everybody has this skill, more often than not, situations do not spiral so far out of control that they need to be salvaged with great decibel- and fraught (7) emotional-levels.

If a person can be himself, accurate observation, intelligent computation, and effective action can then take place. Beyond this, however, is one other element that is singularly critical to anyone interested in serving another, whether a writer, actor, butler, or President: the ability to be that other person, to see life as he or she sees it.

What do my constituents really want that will make them vote for me again? What do my customers really want to buy? What does my guest like and want? Yes, we research, ask questions, build databases if we are smart. But beyond that, when all is said and done, are we sitting in our own space thinking, thinking, thinking? Or can we go out and look at another person and just see them for who and what they are? Can we assume their point of view, geographically speaking, literally look at the world through their eyes and listening through their ears and hearing their thoughts?

When we can, then we won’t have any trouble anticipating their next need and desire. When a butler long in experience, including with the British Royal family, told the author that mastering the art of butling is a life-long ambition, he was right on track, because this kind of skill is some of the magic that goes into being the quintessential butler, and therefore, the quintessential service professional.

And it all starts with being.

  1. Instill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction
  2. A statement that is obviously true while providing nothing new or interesting
  3. Lasting a very short time
  4. The extent of the concerns or influence of someone or something
  5. Having a dependable and calm disposition
  6. Intentionally unobtrusive
  7. Causing or affected by great anxiety or stress

Published in HotelExecutive.com in Summer 2007, Hotel News Resource in July 2007 and Airline News Resource in 2007.

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Muzzling The Guest From Hell

If response to an article is anything to go by, the recent one about Besting the Guest from Hell (Hotel Business Review and since reprinted by request in various other venues) hit the spot for a number of readers. Who hasn’t had a run-in with a guest from hell and, following the dictum, “The Guest is Always Right (even when they are acting criminally and anti-socially),” have taken it on the chin, turned the other cheek, and dare I say it, bent over—and in so doing, also exposed their sense of what is right and just to a good drubbing. After which, invariably, there is the giving away of the farm to appease the guest; huge amounts of angst about possible repercussions from head office, the media, and whatever other sources of retribution the guest promised to inform of one’s misguided efforts at service; and a lessening of one’s liking for the job, eventually to the point of quitting the profession.

It is essential that the hospitality industry preserve the “hospitality” in its approach to guests; guests from hell undermine the openness and good humor upon which such hospitality depends. Yet this “Besting the Guest from Hell” article is reportedly the first to espouse skewering such guests in order to protect that usually sacrosanct bottom line and that otherwise-well-nurtured employee morale.

Read on to discover exactly how we can take this old “bull” by the horns and deliver the coup de grace.

Consider momentarily two of the responses received to “Besting the Guest from Hell”

“I had the misery of dealing with such a guest when I was the GM for (named) Hotel. Sadly, this cretin called the corporate offices and lied and slandered me ruthlessly. I had worked with that company for four years, increasing occupancy and profits. Yet, this one creature, behaving similarly to the Presidential Suite creep in your article spouted off about legal action and my tenure quickly changed into being micromanaged. Needless to say, I resigned within a year. It seemed his celebrity superseded anything I had done. I did tell everyone in my city and chain about his behavior and we were protected from his ilk. I believe your bad guest list is a wonderful idea. I hope it takes hold. I thank you. It is rare that I respond to an article, I felt yours required positive feedback.”

“Thank you for telling the truth—such a rare thing now—and addressing a topic near and dear to many service people’s heart. Although no longer employed in the Hotel/Restaurant business, my eighteen-plus years in the business, unfortunately, left me with more memories and stories of the bad guest than the good. Throughout my time in the business, I compiled these stories in my head and contemplated my first book, to be titled ‘The Customer is Not Always Right.’ Without ranting on with these stories, but sticking to my intention of giving you good feedback for your article, my one comment would be that the select few who behave this way do it because they have consistently gotten away with this behavior. When managers empower employees to treat these people correctly, and their success rate goes down, maybe they will learn that far more is achieved with honey.”

Without wanting to undermine application of the dictum, “The customer is always right”—invaluable in gracefully resolving genuine customer complaints from guests who are merely poorly served, cantankerous, or difficult…even if they do often embellish their complaints with hyperbole for effect—I feel the time is ripe for a counterattack on those whose intent is not to right a wrong but who make a habit of trying to obtain something for nothing.

For such is the definition of a criminal, whether bopping one on the head and running off with one’s wallet; “making” vast fortunes through hedge funds and other manipulations of virtual money at the expense of the actual, physical economy; or hopping from one hotel to another without exchanging the valuables required to pay the wages and bills. It does not matter how many platinum cards guests carry or tailored suits they wear: if their intent and activity is to maneuver for a free ride by manufacturing complaints out of whole cloth instead of enjoying good service delivered in good faith, then they are criminals.

So what to do? Well, it’s time we applied some good old hospitality technology to what is probably an age-old problem. “Besting the Guest From Hell” recommended adopting the Butler’s traditional “Black Book” of employer misdeeds and character issues. We would upgrade this tool, a hard-backed book filled in with a stubby pencil or quill pen, to a 21st Century Web-based databank solution administered by one or two individuals. Having the same general purpose as a sexual offender list, the Hospitality Black Book would differ in that the list would not be open to the general public or even anyone in the hospitality industry, but only be accessible by the administrators, with oversight by an industry board of advisors. Said information on egregiously offending guests to be solely in the form of facts: date and time of criminal acts; location; exact specifics on what the guest said or did without any opinions or conjecture thrown in; the outcome of the guest’s actions; and a sworn attest from the person(s) making each report.

The administrators would be sworn never to divulge the information, but only to answer any queries from any member hospitality company as to whether an individual has been placed in it. The administrators would collect any new reports on new or old names on the list and would be charged only with ensuring that the information in it is factual before filing it. These administrators would receive a small sum of money from hotels to cover their costs of administering the list (given the number of hospitality venues in the world, the sum could be as little as $5 per hotel).

In the event a guest surmises he is on the list (from the continued refusal by hotels to accommodate him or her), he would have recourse to an independent committee of evidence (made up of four independent hospitality industry and public figures), which would show the reports to the party, get his or her side of the story, and make its findings, including proposing what the guest would need to do to make up the damage to the hotels submitting the complaints (i.e. refunding the comps, public apologies, etc.) and thus allow the guest to clear his or her name. This provision is mentioned only for the occasional time a guest with a genuine complaint has been incorrectly included on the list. Factually, the names on the list will be serial abusers with no slightest concept they have ever done anything wrong and so incapable of reforming.

The above would be the administrative set-up and easy to institute, given software programs, Internet, and Paypal.

While this independent body is being established by whoever wants to step in and set it up, a campaign needs to be run in the industry to identify such guests from hell, provide the parameters for their recognition and the rules of engagement/disengagement, including the meticulous keeping of notes as soon as one has identified a guest as being from hell.

If one has not been able to identify such a guest before his or her arrival and thus been unable to steer them away from one’s facility, one can still check with the independent body the moment a guest seems to show his or her true colors. Thus confirmed, employees would be instructed to keep the notes that will later be submitted to the independent body; as well as have the GM present to the guest who, upon checking out, will be trying to deliver his coup de grace with a demand for a comped stay or heavy discount because of all the “bad service” received.

It might help to educate guests from hell that their number is up. The simplest way to freeze them in the headlights is to produce a popular level book (as suggested by the reader above) and let the media get their hands on it. This book would detail some of the more egregious and wild examples of the activities of guests from hell while sewing examples throughout of how they were eventually brought to justice. The existence of such a book would put such guests on notice and may well cause some of them to tone down their activities. It would certainly empower employees with the knowledge that their nemesis has been caught squarely in the headlights—their criminal behavior acknowledged as unacceptable, and the mechanism existing for dealing with it.

It is only when one cannot do something, anything, about evil individuals, that they can give one the blues and blunt one’s desire to serve. So when there is some way to fight back, there is no need for employees to sink into a funk, or for the hospitality industry to feel skittish about employees and the bottom line being assailed by the ill-willed. Morale and income can only improve as a result, if only because, as one head butler indicated after reading the original article on the subject, the amount of money his resort would save in egregious comps as a result of curtailing the activities of guests from hell, would be significant.

To start the ball rolling on the campaign, please send in the horror stories of your experience(s) with guests from hell. Doing so may well prove a catharsis of sorts, as well as enabling this long-needed counter-attack. Final publication will not include your or any guest or hotels names, only your initials. Language and grammar will be cleaned up, so do not feel shy if your writing skills may be wanting.

First published in Hotel Business Review on 6 September, 2006
This article was also featured in Hotel News Resource, Airline News Resource and Hotel-Online.com