I'd like to preface my article with a story about Count Basie, the great jazz pianist. He once told an owner that he would never play in his night club again because the piano was so badly out of tune. A month later the owner called Basie and said come back, it's fixed. Basie showed up, sat down, played a few bars and slammed the key cover down in disgust. He said, "This is worse. What did you do to this piano?" "I had it fixed," said the indignant club owner. "What do you mean you had it fixed? What did you do to it?" asked the Count. "I had it painted" was the answer.

Suffice it to say, a lot of hotel owners can probably identify with this story. No matter how much paint is used or the color of the paint, it doesn't help if the hotel is out of tune. I'd like to elaborate a bit about what I consider to be the two greatest broken components that need to be tuned in our industry - personnel and marketing.

Putting an End to the Revolving Door Syndrome

I'm amazed at the current turn-over rate at a majority of hotels. It's ...