“Table of Eight” – May 2009 HSMAI-South Florida Lunch Meeting

It was wonderful to see a sell-our crowd at our luncheon meeting at the newly re-branded Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina yesterday. We were pleased to see a nice mix of our local hospitality industry as well as some of our General Managers in attendance.

Our speaker, Carlos Molinet, General Manager of the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina, was his usual brilliant self in his presentation on “World Class Customer Service”. Many of us in the audience were taking notes. And the great program was immediately twittered, commented on, and quoted in both Twitter and Linked-in. Kudos to Carlos for an enjoyable and educational experience. Who knew that our attendees could stand, clap, laugh, and even sing?! (The song was “Proud”. Lyrics included: “I step out of the ordinary…And you can do the same” “What have you done today to make you feel proud? It’s never too late to try…”)

Carlos reviewed the components of the three keys to World Class Customer Service: Communications, Teamwork, and Loyalty. (Stacie Faulds, our Chapter President, put it in an acronym: TLC – making it easy to remember.) As Carlos said, (great) customer service is recession proof – it’s what we have to deliver to make the difference -- and there’s no better time for (great) customer service than now in these tough economic times.

Coming Up: We’re over in Ft. Myers/Estero on June 5th for an evening networker. Details are posted on our website under chapter events. So register now for that one. Our July 22nd lunch meeting should also be a sell out so please, please register early for this one as soon as it’s posted. Bruce Turkel, CEO of Turkel Advertising-Miami, will be speaking on Branding. The venue is the new W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Also: Save the date for our August 19th meeting – it’s a panel of experts on Revenue Management to be held in Miami/Dade County. Our new-this-year Revenue Management Committee (under the direction of Chris Crenshaw, Director, Revenue Management) has put this event together and it looks to be an awesome, talented, informative program. Hope to see you soon, Julie Wernick, Managing Director.