SHR Soundbites

It’s a real treat that a friend of mine is able to join me on Soundbites, someone I reconnected with on LinkedIn, someone I’ve not spoken with since leaving high school, Amy Bates, CEO of Bates Events.

Come to find out, Amy runs an events business in Arkansas. She talks about her experience, what her corporate clients are saying, and her take on moving forward.

Adele Gutman Milne, CHDM, longtime VP of Sales, Marketing, and Revenue at Library Hotel Collection joins me from South Carolina.

I’m coming to your from the magnificent, Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston.

Adele is a native New Yorker, who studied dance in Houston, Texas, then hotel management.

Bianca Porto Barga gets nerdy, joining me from Los Angeles, California, to rapid-fire through the necessary technology—or seriously considered technology—for every hotel looking to work their way out of this mess.

Hold on to your boots, she’s rolling fast!

I sit down with Dustin Mathews, Sales Manager with Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe | Houston

As you might imagine, a resort, on a lake, just an hour’s drive from the 4th largest city in the United States, and 3.5-hour max drive from 20MM Texans, has done pretty well. Cooped up people around the state have flocked to the spacious venue to forget about the outside world, at least for a time.

It’s been awhile since our Director of Revenue Management Services, Nicole Adair, CRME, has joined me, and I wanted to see how our clients were doing amid the pandemic. Good news is, not too bad.

Opening a hotel amid a pandemic?!

Jeremy Nichols, CPC with Gecko Hospitality (Corporate) joins me from Tampa Bay, Florida.

Jeremy gives us some insight into the hospitlity job market--bleak, but not dead.

Rachael Larson, Group Sales Mgr, joins me in her hotel, The Houstonian Hotel, Club & Spa.

Her first day of work, was the day Houston’s mayor gave our first ‘stay at home’ order—didn’t even have her email address yet.

After a temporary close, the hotel is back open, and booking rooms.

Alyssa Milton, Sales & Marketing Manager, with Compass Hospitality, joins me from Cardiff, Wales. She talks about Compass’s 39 hotels located in the U.K., Thailand, and Malaysia.

Dan Wacksman, CHDM, CRME, CHBA, Chair at HSMAI and Principle at Sassato LLC joins me while quarantining in New York City.

I ask Dan, 'Where do we go from here?'