ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - January 4, 2002

Looks like the travel won't start again until later in the month (good news and bad news.) The projects this week have been focused on setting up the Super Conference, making arrangements for the roundtables and starting a new service through Effortless, Inc . . . but more on that below.

RE: VIRUSES R NOT US
My note on checking out virus rumors before passing them along drew some additional information. Cella Quinn suggested http://www.snopes.com, http://urbanlegends.com and http://www.stiller.com/hoaxes.htm. Fred Held suggested http://www.securityfocus.com/virus. These are well-maintained, legitimate sources of hoax info. Hopefully you're running a virus checker (such as Norton and McAfee make) that can update its virus "dictionary" over the web on a periodic basis.

Cella also suggested two good starting points when you are looking for good info about virus prevention and clean-up: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html, http://www.datafellows.com/virus-info/ and the authoritative, yet more technical http://www.cert.org/. Remember, rumors are a form of e-mail virus.

COMPLAINTS IN THE NEW CENTURY
Larry Clark, training guru at Damon's, passed along something new in the realm of complaints -- a PowerPoint show from a disgruntled hotel guest outlining his problem, how it developed and what he planned to do about it. This show was extremely well done and funny in its tragic way which has made it an attractive e-mail attachment. Forget about one dissatisfied diner telling 8-10 people. Today they can tell thousands . . . and the complaint will never go away.

A note from the Doc:
Forget about who is right and who is wrong. You simply cannot let a guest get out of your doors having had a bad experience. You may know this . . . but does your staff share your ownership of any problems? I realize this can put us at the mercy of scam artists, but such is life. (Max Hitchins' new book on hospitality scams will be premiered at the May Super Conference. It will be required reading, if only for self-defense.)

THE OPERATIONS GROUP
My consulting work usually involves concept development (or re-development) and operational troubleshooting. There are not many people who do what I do in these areas and my clients have enjoyed a great success rate. However, occasionally I run into situations where I know the perfect answer . . . but also know that the client does not have the understanding to implement it!

Rather than settle for less than the best approach in those situations, I have wanted a way to put someone "on the ground" for a month or so to work with the staff and provide the technical expertise that may be missing. It isn't practical for me to spend that much time on site, so over the holidays I finalized the first phase of my Operations Group, a network of talented individuals who can be there in the trenches for a longer period . . . and who can do it at a rate that makes sense within the typical operating budget. Every couple of weeks, the EHC will include some ideas from the Operations Group members. I think you will find them interesting.

THE WINTER ROUNDTABLES
The 2002 Hospitality Industry Winter Roundtables will be held in Orlando on February 4-5 and Las Vegas on February 9-10. Airfares are lower than ever right now and the early registration deadline (and accompanying discount) is approaching, so time is of the essence. To save you the hassle of wrestling with a PDF file, I will send you the basic information on these unique events tomorrow in a separate message. Just delete the message if you aren't interested, but I suggest you take a look, mark your calendar and make plans to be there. Nothing like this happens anywhere else in the industry.

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