I'm writing this column on Sunday, March 9th, the first weekend I haven't been traveling in nearly a month. It's nice to sleep in one's own bed. Since the beginning of the year I've slept in beds in from Dana Point, California to Zephyrhills, Florida. I've slept in beds that were in rooms of independent hard core budget rooms and beds that were in Ritz Carlton's nicest U.S. resort, not to mention beds in my own hotels that were purchased just last year. No matter the price of the room or the quality of the hotel, my bed is the best! Now, if I could only get paid based on the miles I've flown or driven...

Early in the month, my wife, Vicki Richman, and I attended a hotel conference on the west coast. Mornings were filled with meetings and afternoon schedules permitted one to get a sense of the area and relax. Without going into the entire conference agenda let it suffice to say that it was very informative, motivating and supportive of being with old friends and making new ones.

Peter Ubberoth (best known for managing the Los Angeles Olympics and being Commissioner of Baseball and lesser known as Chairman of Doubletree Hotels) and Jonathan Tisch (President of Loews Hotels and Chairman of the American Hotel & Motel Association) both spoke in different sessions. Significant portions of their speeches included a call to all of us in the hotel industry to remember we are citizens of our home and business communities. As citizens we have a responsibility to the surrounding communities of both. A responsibility to impact our community in a positive way by actively supporting area schools, community volunteer social services by encouraging staff at all levels to participate both in person as volunteers and financially when resources are available. 

Both men encouraged us to have our management reach out to the nearest local school and ask what we can do to help them be more successful. Doing things to enhance civic pride and responsibility can't help but make a community a better place to live and one that supports more businesses. Clearly we hoteliers have a responsibility for our surroundings and clearly act- ing on that responsibility is good for business in the long run.

Think about the places where you see poverty rubbing up against wealth and you'll find two of them relate to the hotel industry. There are a significant number of hotels which are located within a block or two of very low income residential or economically deprived commercial areas. This isn't good for business whether it makes visitors apprehensive or is a catalyst for crime. We also have a large disparity between our lowest paid employees and many of the guests we cater to. While in some cases the contact is minimal, both parties are keenly aware of it.

We feel that giving those at the bottom of the economic ladder tools for getting to the next step is good for business. Currently in several of our hotels we have established a dental program for cleaning and check-ups. When one doesn't have extra money, teeth are only attended to in emergencies. Yet, they affect your appearance and self esteem in a big way. We also like our employees to smile! Another program is English as a second language. We have three goals: we want to communicate with our employees more effectively; we want our guests and employees to be able to communicate specialized hotel subjects like asking a room attendant for more towels or to simply have the employees confidently greet our guests; and finally an improved ability with the English language gives our entry level staff an ability to get a better job with us or elsewhere if we do not have one to offer.

Later in the month I was in Florida with a long list of things to do. My first stop was Daytona Beach where our company operates two hotels for clients. Mid-February in Daytona Beach is the beginning of Spring Break when the Canadian college students come and it was also Bike Week. Bike Week, for those of you that aren't up on the latest in motorcycle trends is a gathering of 650,000 motorcycle enthusiasts similar to Sturgis, South Dakota in the summer. More on this later in this column.

As I traveled in February I became more and more conscious of how dependent I was becoming on voice mail and e-mail. With voice mail on my direct phone line I was saving tre- mendous amounts of time because callers could leave me very detailed messages which I could act on rather than continue a game of phone tag. Interestingly, I feel like we lost business because a potential client did not have it.

We had issued a proposal to a group in South Dakota who were building a hotel and wanted help opening it. They had passed me a message through a third party rejecting the proposal as beyond their means (Interestingly it was a hotel associated with a casino!) and asked for a scaled down proposal. Each day, or two, as I traveled I called the responsible individual, who was either on the phone or out of the office, and left a message with various people who answered in his office stating that because I was traveling I couldn't be reached but that I would call again. He had no voice mail and any detailed message I needed to leave would clearly have been too long and detailed, not to mention confidential, for any one but a very competent administrative assistant or voice mail to deal with. After a few days I received a voice mail from an associate of the individual I had been calling saying they had elected to use another firm. 

When I finally reached the individual a week later he stated he'd only received one message from me rather than the four or five I'd left him and that he had left me several messages but could not remember whether he left them with my assistant or my voice mail. We, as you may suspect, have no record of any of his calls! Clearly it is easier to do business with people you can reach and who can reach you. You're easier to do business with if you fall in that category!

In some of our hotels where we have no voice mail we have been placing answering machines in the maintenance and housekeeping offices. These facilitate communication with those departments, especially when there are language problems. If the front desk needs to com- municate quickly with either department and radios aren't available they can simply page the per- son they need on a beeper and then enter their answering machine's extension number so the person knows there is an urgent message waiting for them.

As for e-mail, it has arrived for business and it is here to stay. Whether it is e-mail over the internet or any other net you can imagine, it is has arrived and it is growing fast. I chair an annual workshop for management companies and multi-unit owner operators and nine related regional receptions and meetings. The primary means of communication between the various sponsors, the AH&MA and me is e-mail with some support from voice mail and fax. In the case of one of the hotels in Daytona Beach initially most of the communication with the bank officer involved in the matter and our attorneys was done by e-mail. At last count over 125 in four months.

E-mail allows me to pick up written messages as I travel. Usually I pick them up at night from my hotel room. The people I send them to find them in the morning when they get to work. I can write reports on the plane and e-mail them when I land. E-mailing or faxing from the phones on the plane is simply too expensive. If it is that urgent you probably need a real conver- sation! I also use e-mail to keep in touch with friends, business associates and my daughter in college. I encourage you to look into and use these technologies to your advantage if you are notalready. Regularly I get e-mails about this column or questions from readers.

As for Spring Break and Bike Week - let me skip descriptions of the obvious visual and behavioral entertainment which you may have been expecting and comment on some other less obvious ones. Kids from American colleges on Spring Break out spend Canadian college kids by multiples of two or three. The behavior is about the same. Some kids clearly revel in the outlandish behavior while others try to ignore it and relax or simply observe it. I suspect kids who are polite and responsible at home and at school are that way at Spring Break, too. All hoteliers know people may behave somewhat differently when away from home, how differently is the issue.

As for the bikers, they are an interesting group. Affluence clearly ranges from those who can barely afford the bike and the cost of getting to Daytona Beach to those who come in 150 foot yachts and have a semi-trailer driven in with an assortment of their bikes to use while there. I saw people on mopeds and $70,000 bikes cruising down Main Street enjoying each other. Clearly the Harley-Davidsons dominated the more comfortable Japanese bikes with air-conditioning and CD players. 

Among the bikers who had tattoos the tattoos were larger and more lavish than on the Spring Breakers. Theirs were smaller and more discreet. The Spring Breakers had more body piercing! The clothing of each group was distinct from the other's except that they both love to collect tee-shirts commemorating their visit to the World's Most Famous Beach.