Benchmark Hospitality Cleans up Island as Part of Special 25th Anniversary All-Employee Outing
Sheffield Island in Long Island Sound
THE WOODLANDS, TX, August 31, 2005. Benchmark Hospitality International recently conducted its 25th Anniversary all-employee outing, gathering employees from across the company to a lobster and clam bake on Sheffield Island in Long Island Sound. The day concluded by putting into action a Benchmark "Hometown Hospitality" initiative.
Representative employees from nearly all of Benchmark's 28 properties -- from Hawaii to New York -- celebrated the hospitality management company's milestone with Founder, Chairman & CEO Burt Caba~nas. While there, they put into practice the corporate Hometown Hospitality program of "giving back to the community," doing so by clearing unsightly debris that had been gathered from around the island.
Benchmark's President & COO, Sam Haigh, whose converted Korean War-era military vessel and summer residence, The General, transported the employees to the island for the lobster and clam bake, had asked the island lighthouse keeper for a community project that would help the island. The project turned out to be moving a massive pile of scrap metal, old engine parts, old boat frames and other debris to an area where it could be retrieved by a barge for proper disposal. The debris had been originally deposited near the century-old restored lighthouse museum, presenting an aesthetic challenge and possible safety hazard to visitors. Benchmark offered its 88 pairs of helping hands on the island that day to solve the problem.
"We have a great time on Sheffield Island, a place we gather as a company nearly every year," stated Haigh. "With almost all of our resorts and hotels represented this year at the 25th Anniversary outing, this was a unique Benchmark-wide opportunity for us to put into practice our Hometown Hospitality program of giving back." Haigh concluded with, "Sheffield Island is a beautiful place that has given us many great times and we were glad to help the island lighthouse keeper accomplish the task of debris removal with our team of 88 people - a job that would have taken a smaller crew a very long time to complete."
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