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Mastering the Fickle Customer
Three years ago, Loews Hotels chairman/CEO Jonathan Tisch penned his first book, The Power of We: Succeeding through Partnerships. Received inside and outside the lodging industry with much acclaim, Power of We provided insight and ideas into connecting people and companies for greater results and good. In 2007, Tisch returns with Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience.
This time around, he again looks far and wide in American commerce for examples of the emerging ethic of customer-centric business. Tisch finds ample case studies in such companies as Commerce Bank, Duke University Medical Center, In 'n Out Burger, Urban Outfitters, and Land's End. Of course, he provides plenty of examples from personal experience running the Loews brand. The solution to the problem of fickle customers is simple, he writes:"You don't have to be an anthropologist-or a CEO-to have powerful insight about the customer experience, you just have to be human."
Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience. Wiley Publishers. March 2007. $26.95 (hardbound).
Truth or Fiction-Mastering the Art of Lodging
Some train to run hotels. Others fall into it from first jobs. Still others have the business thrust at them, as former Marine Edwin Church finds in this novel by Greg Plank. Plank, who in his 40 years of lodging at the property and corporate levels (he was a senior executive at Sheraton and Travel Lodge), knows the industry inside and out and has woven into the story many personalities from the multitude of people he has known in his career. Church learns much about lodging and human nature when he inherits a financially free-falling hotel in a fictional city. There's love, violence, and everything in between in the part-novel, part-mystery written in the vein of Arthur Haley's seminal Hotel. Saving the Saint George should appeal to industry insiders who may recognize some the fictionalized characters. Outsiders will enjoy it for the behind-the-scenes insight into running a large urban hotel.
"Writing this book was something I have always wanted to do," Plank says."The characters are composites of people we have known over the years. I intentionally left out a lot of physical detail and description of them so the reader could imagine people they have known. I never intended to write the next great novel-I just wanted to tell an interesting story about some very interesting people, and what the real hotel business they love is all about."
Saving the Saint George. Available at www.iuniverse.com and www.barnesandnoble.com by searching Greg Plank or Saving the Saint George.
READER COMMENTS
Thursday, March 08, 2012 by Discount OEM Software
dKjU8T Major thankies for the article post.Really looking forward to read more. Awesome.
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