What I learned from the Hospitality Industry

The last 2 days I have been taking part in some meetings with various CVB's (Convention and Visitor Bureaus) and other similar entities, country representatives and large hotel chains and cruise lines.

iPads were the key item for many but regular laptops still showed up.

Most if not all people had an iPhone.

Their industry, like most, has sufferred greatly and the outlook for the future is not real good until Q1 oe Q2 2011.

The interesting thing is planners have shrunk down the lead time for an event from 6 months to a year out to 2 months or less. The reason is budgets. They get a yes/green light and they want to book everything yesterday for tomorrow.

Sound familiar?

I was speaking about training to many people and no one said they receive any training, from new laptops to phones to how to use their Notes client, I will be helping those people.

Training in every organization is key, technology is one thing, sales is another and product knowledge and awareness is important. So if it is so important, why doesn't anyone pay for it anymore?

Online training, web based, self study are only as good as the effort put in and few people really put in the effort. Plus the knowledge an instructor has to provide from real life experiences and answer questions or better yet, prompt for questions is what allows people to truly learn and remember information.

When we speak at events we try to be that audience, think about what they need or want to learn.

When you sit in front of an online tutorial it's just not the same thing.

Looking to follow up some of the discussions, but it brought a reality that people need training and want it and know they need it.

Management are you listening?

Sorry about that Calendar Invite

Those who received it were probably quite puzzled.

I know I was, especially since it went out from my personal email and not my corporate one.

While it set off all kinds of amusing emails in response, a number of things happened within a close proximity to each other and we are trying to work out what caused it. Especially since I was not logged into Notes or Gmail at the time of the incident.

No I don't have an iPad or iPhone or Android device but am using 852 traveler(Windows Mobile) and template.

What I did find was a iCal overlay of a Gmail account which I use for demos that seems to have sucked in a calendar appointment that should not have gone there.

We continue to investigate the situation because coincidentally I lost all 5,216 contacts from my phone. Not from Notes or iNotes just my phone. Had to reinstall Traveler to fix it.