- Hello, and welcome to this course
on Sustainable Lodging Operations.
I'm Todd Comen,
and I'll be your guide for the next four modules
over the four-week period
that you'll be taking this course.
I've been a professor for 21 years,
first at Johnson State College in Northern Vermont,
and then as Dean of the Hospitality Program
at Endicott College.
So I'm well versed in the theory,
but also the practice of hospitality and tourism management.
I love hotels.
I'm a hotel junkie, as I love to tell my students.
Anytime I get a chance, I go to hotels,
resorts, theme parks, ski resorts
just to experience what the visitor,
what the guest is experiencing.
It's fun to observe, it's fun to have fun,
but you have to know how.
So I hope you have a little bit of fun in this course,
but I also hope you learn a lot.
What makes hospitality so different
from other forms of enterprise?
Well, there are several variables,
and I'm sure you are already aware of some of those,
whether or not you've been in the hospitality industry
as an employee, as a manager, or as a guest,
but some of these are vitally important to understand
and to take stock of as we move through this course.
I'll mention a few now
before we really get into the bulk of the course,
but these will be recurring themes throughout.
The key concepts that make up lodging and other services
such as restaurants, spas, ski areas,
airlines, guided tours, national parks, experiences,
and these kind of things,
the unique aspects of this industry, this service industry,
first of all is simultaneous production and consumption.
What? What's that mean?
Well, basically it means that if I'm your server
and I'm taking an order from you,
you're experiencing the product right then and there.
That's the service.
You're consuming it, and I'm delivering it
as in real time.
Service is an intangible product.
It can't be inventory.
You can't touch, feel, taste, or smell it
before you get it.
You're getting the service
at the same time as you're consuming it.
So it's intangible.
It can't be inventoried,
which means it can't be sold another day.
You can't put the service encounter on a shelf
and wait for tomorrow.
That's called perishability as well.
If I don't sell that airline seat
now for this takeoff period,
that seat's gone.
It's in the air, it's left its place of origin.
So that idea of perishability
spans throughout the service sector,
especially in the lodging industry,
you have to sell a room today.
You can't sell that room tomorrow
when it's in inventory today.
Once midnight hits,
it's the next day,
and so you've lost the opportunity to sell that room.
Very important concept
just to always have in the back of your mind.
Of course, there's seasonality.
Right now, we're in the middle of winter,
well, I should say the end of winter,
but it feels like the middle of winter,
now mid-March
in like a lion out like a lamb.
Hopefully it's been cold and snowy
and the skiing's been fantastic.
That's the winter season.
Of course, we've got mud season coming up.
That is always gonna be great,
and this year's gonna be a doozy, I'm sure.
Hopefully not too many people will visit Vermont,
at least the back roads during mud season
because invariably they're gonna get stuck
and we'll have to pull them out.
There's also the idea of periodicity.
What? What's that?
Well, during the day,
you have different meal periods.
During the day, you have different busy times
and slow times.
You know that if you're in the industry.
Check in time, four o'clock,
it's gonna be pretty busy from 4:00 to 6:00.
Later, late check-ins,
maybe early check-ins if you allow them.
That's periodicity.
So we can track the busy times,
we can track the slow times,
and we can make staffing decisions.
We can make inventory decisions.
We can make work task decisions
based on periods of the day periodicity.
So these ideas,
perishability, intangibility,
simultaneous production and consumption, seasonality,
they're very instrumental in influencing
how we operate a lodging property
in a sustainable fashion.
Now, I'm not gonna get too much into the weeds right now,
I just want to introduce these ideas to you
to let you know that this course over the next four weeks,
four different modules,
it's gonna have some pretty deep stuff in it to consider,
and I want you to consider these things seriously,
and especially in your writing and your reflection
on the questions I ask you
to grapple with during the course.
There are gonna be small projects,
especially writing projects,
because I think writing's very important.
It's all about communications in this industry,
especially with the guests,
but also between teammates.
So writing is, I want you to take that seriously.
I'm not gonna be correcting your grammar.
I'm not going to tell you how to punctuate your sentences.
I would like you to be polite,
to be respectful,
to not swear.
These kind of things
that typically gets into the common vernacular these days.
Common language, I hear it all the time,
but in a professional setting,
that's just inappropriate.
So let's refrain from any anything inappropriate
in our communications.
Pretend you're working with guests.
I mean, guests, you're there to make happy,
to work with closely
to respect no matter where they're from,
how they got to you,
who they're with,
it doesn't matter, their guests,
and we're here to satisfy their needs and expectations
to keep them safe and secure.
We'll be going through all of this in the course
over the four weeks.
So we do wanna be respectful in our writing,
but I also want you to explore your own ideas,
to present your own ideas,
and I will provide feedback as we go through the course.
My job is to facilitate the learning process.
I think I've done a thorough job
of filling the content of this course
with aspects of lodging operations
that are gonna be essential to you in your career
no matter where you start,
no matter how far you go.
These are essential aspects of the lodging operations sector
that should be paid attention.
So you can read the rest of my intro.
I've posted it on the website
for the course.
And please feel free to send me any questions,
comments, or concerns via email's best.
But if you need to phone me,
my phone number is at the bottom of the intro page,
my email, Tcomen, C-O-M-E-N,
@uvm.edu.
Email me anytime and I'll get back to you within 24 hours.
If you wanna schedule an appointment,
be nice if it's between the hours of 7:30 am and 7:30 pm
any day of the week works for me.
We're in hospitality, we're open 24/7.
It's no different here in this course,
open 24/7.
Although best are the waking hours
between 7:30 and 7:30 am and pm.
I expect if we're gonna talk,
it'll be professional.
If you're working in an environment
that's working with others in hospitality,
you're professional, dressed professionally.
And may seem old fashioned,
but old fashion still is good fashion
if you wanna succeed in this industry.
Thanks very much for being here,
and I look forward to working with you
as we proceed through this course.