NEW YEAR'S EVE 2011

As 2011 draws to a close amidst the lights and gala of the holiday season, I would like to acknowledge and thank each of you, our associates, coaches,  team leaders and participants, board members, vendors, franchise partners, family and friends who have helped make this year extra special.


In spite of one of the worst economies in many of our lifetime Hotel Equities saw our portfolio grow by more than thirty percent. Thank you for your continued dedication and support.

May the beauty and memories of the holidays inspire gratitude for yesterday, joy for today and hope for the New Year to come.

Coach Fred

WOW, WHAT A RIDE!

As we close out another chapter in the life of Hotel Equities [HE] entitled 2011, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the many accomplishments and milestones which our team realized this year. Here is a brief summary of some of our achievements:

We added 19 hotels and will close the year with 42 hotels in our portfolio. Our revenues will top $61 million. HE will close the year with approximately 1,000 associates in our growing HE family.

We added another state and now have hotels in the six states of GA, FL, NC, VA, AL, and LA.

HE held our first annual Maintenance Chief’s meeting at The Lodge at Simpsonwood which was a huge success according to all attendees. This event was hosted by Phil Bullard, our Facilities Coach.

We hosted 30 classes with approximately 900 students in attendance at Hotel Equities University. We renamed and re-launched the Foundations Class [formerly known as Culture Class] and will hold 7 classes this year.

With the help of our Training and People Development Coach, Nancy Curtin Morris, we re-launched our Management Development Program which will see its first class graduate in July of 2012. Eleven extremely talented individuals qualified for the first class. A new class will begin every 6 months in order to keep pace with our forecasted growth plans.

We saw one of our hotels, the Hampton Inn in Okeechobee, Florida receive the Connie Award, named after Hilton founder Conrad Hilton. The Connie Award is the highest award a hotel can receive within the Hilton family of hotels. Our Okeechobee hotel was one of seven honorees out of a total of 2100 hotels in the Hampton franchise system.

Hotel Equities received its 10th General Manager of the Year award this year when Troy Moser walked across stage as the recipient of this prestigious honor at the annual General Manager’s conference held in Indianapolis, Indiana. Troy is the GM of the Fairfield Inn in Lumberton , NC.

We completed another successful year of operating three training hotels for Marriott: the Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott in Dunwoody, GA; the TownePlace Suites by Marriott in Kennesaw, GA; and the SpringHill Suites by Marriott in Alpharetta/Milton, GA. Kudos to our training hotel GM’s Kenny Silvia, Cailin Riddell and Mike Poe and their staffs as well as to our Training Manager, Ken Ramsey.

We successfully completed the renovation of our corporate offices which included the addition of 10 new work stations to accommodate our projected growth plans.

Our coaching staff completed another year of hosting Life Lessons over Lunch [LLOL] which included a career transition training opportunity for those individuals who are unemployed in our neighboring community of Dunwoody, GA where our corporate office is located. LLOL hosted approximately 1500 people who were in work-place transition this year.

InStep and our corporate chaplain, Rev. Greg Smith, conducted mission and leadership training trips to China, the Philippines, and Costa Rica. InStep and other non-profit organizations continue to receive support from the corporate tithes of Hotel Equities. Greg also hosts the 24-hour prayer line which is available to all guests and associates of HE. Greg visits our hotels regularly, prays for our guests and associates, and is available to those who may be in need of spiritual counseling. Through our Chaplain’s program HE has distributed more than 10,000 Purpose Driven Life booklets and Journey Books. HE is one of ten sponsors for the Atlanta Hospitality in Ministry Prayer breakfast which saw 400 in attendance this year. 

HE GM’s and Coaches packed more than 150 shoeboxes for the Samaritan’s Purse organization’s Operation Christmas Child.

In 2012 HE will serve as a doctoral study program in corporate chaplaincy for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

This year we hosted approximately 850,000 guests in hotels either owned and/or managed by Hotel Equities, many of whom heard the often stated HE-favored phrase , “Thank you for staying with us. We know you had a choice. Thank you for choosing us.”

HE sponsors a weekly on-line Bible study for HE women hosted by Ruth Kornegay with 36 participants. Ruth continues to host the HE e-mail Prayer Chain with approximately 50 HE associates participating.

We donated hundreds of pounds of used soap to The Global Soap Project, a ministry which accumulates used soap bars from hotels and re-manufactures them into new soap bars which are then shipped to countries with under privileged people to help prevent disease. The Global Soap Project was one of 10 finalists of CNN Heroes in 2011.

Several of our hotels will end this year ranked among the top 10% of their respective brands. Two of them will end the year amongst the top 5 hotels of their entire respective brand.

HE associates continue to be invited to serve on several hospitality boards throughout the industry.

Thank you for your continued dedication, support, and efforts on behalf of our company. You inspire me to want to grow more and to continue to attempt great things for God. May He receive the honor and glory. Coach Fred

CHARACTER AND THE TRUTH

Honesty recently cost a family $50,000. Eleven-year-old Nate Smith shot a hockey puck 89 feet into a 3.5-inch hole in a board laid over the mouth of the goal. For this remarkable feat, he won $50,000 from contest organizers. However, his twin brother Nick was supposed to take the shot; his name was on the ticket that Nate used. No one but the family knew. They could have pocketed their money and kept their secret. But their father, Pat Smith, chose instead to notify contest organizers. The promoters then decided not to give the money to the Smith family, donating $40,000 instead to youth hockey leagues in Minnesota. What was Pat's motivation? He wanted to teach a lesson to his sons: "They learned that honesty is always the best policy, and you can never go wrong telling the truth." His strategy apparently worked, as Nate responded, "Some people wouldn't tell the truth, so it's cool that we did." By contrast, consider the story of a frontier preacher and his two sons who found a stray dog and decided to keep it. The dog was coal black except for three white hairs on his tail. One day they saw an ad in the local paper for a lost dog that fit their stray perfectly, including those three white hairs. With the help of his boys, the preacher carefully pulled out the three white hairs. A few days later the owner heard that the preacher had a dog like his and came by. But he couldn't find the three white hairs, so he had to give him up. Later the preacher wrote, "I kept the dog, but I lost my boys." Their names were Frank and Jesse James. Character has consequences. Attitudes become thoughts, which become words, which become actions, which become habits, which become character, which determines destiny. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that "character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think." Abraham Lincoln agreed: "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." What would others say about the fruit growing on the tree of your character?