Can I work in hospitality without a hotel degree?

I do, and I don’t have a hotel degree. (Mine’s in architectural technology, from a two-year comm-tech program. I’m a drafter by trade. When I completed the program, none of the area architects were hiring, so I ended up with a job as a night auditor in a hotel at the then-not-much-more-than-minimum-wage of $4.00 per hour, but it all worked out . . . )

If you want to run a really upscale, specialized, or complex property — a big box Hilton or Marriott with food, beverage and meeting space; a luxury property or resort — a degree in hotel administration or a specialized hospitality field is very helpful.

But much of it is going to be wasted on a select service or economy property, and that is where most people who are employed in hotels work.

It’s also the only kind of hotel we manage. We have, in one location, a Hotel RL in development. (We like the concept, so if it performs well, and running it and having it bring in enough revenue to keep the bills paid doesn’t drive us nuts, we may do more, because it looks like something that would be a particularly fun hotel to run). That one hotel will have about the most complexity — the food and beverage operation, ‘The Living Stage’, the meeting space — that we have any plans to deal with in the foreseeable future in any of our hotels.

Michael Forrest Jones' answer to How do you get into hotel management?

Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What is a smart answer to "Why should I choose you over the other candidates"?

Originally appeared on Quora

Does your cat meow back to you when you talk to it?

My two cats don’t, but some do.

I’ve had cats that did. And I could introduce you to one that does.

This is Sally. She’s the official mascot at the Brookstown Inn in Winston-Salem, N.C., one of my favorite hotels in the area. I was doing some work for them a year and a half ago, and we’ve ‘spoken’ quite a few times.

The Historic Brookstown Inn - Timeline

Sally is a hotel cat, and the almost perfect hotel cat at that.

(One of the things The Algonquin in New York is famous for — besides the Round Table and the $10,000 martini — is an even more famous hotel cat, Matilda. She gets lots of fan mail — the hotel g.m.’s administrative assistant and ‘chief cat officer’ helps her out with answering it, since she ‘doesn’t have thumbs and can’t hit the space bar’ — she has her own Facebook page, and they have a big birthday party for her every year in the ballroom.)

Where did all those clowns come from?

I keep Bozo around when I want to bust on a hotel chain or franchise organization . . . Figure, if I'm going to use one as a punching dummy, they may as well look the part.




Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Business Travel: How far should hotels go to please and appease dissatisfied or unhappy guests?

First jobs, and inauspicious (however fortunately inconspicuous) beginnings . . .

Inspired by an article by Larry Mogelonsky at HOTELSMag.com
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My own first job in a hotel was working for a group of drug traffickers, who were using a pair of Durham, N. C. hotels as a money laundering operation.

I am not making this up.

After I left that job, I was actually questioned by North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement (NCDPS - Alcohol Law Enforcement ) about their activities, told the ALE guys everything I knew (which amounted to . . . nothing at all other than that my former employers were people of highly questionable character, reputation, and wisdom - although by then, I wouldn't have put it past them at all to be involved in something like that, which was a big part of why I'd moved on to another job . . .). I then shared what I found out from the ALE guys with my former g.m. (we were still friends, and I was confident she wouldn't be involved in anything illegal); and while at first she didn't believe a word of it (she knew I didn't think too much of the company's 'owners'), I later learned from her, right after she resigned abruptly from that company, that I 'was right about them all along'.

The 400 in its younger days, as Durham's original Holiday Inn.

And I had been fixed up with that job by a Durham city councilman.

Why don't hotel rooms have liquid soap dispensers?

Like this?

It's too high-tech for a hotel. Seriously. 

And it's unsanitary. 

(Are you already starting to not believe a word of this one? . . .)

This past week I've been letting daylight in upon magic and holding us up for ridicule as an industry disinclined to have our technology keep up with the times and modern needs (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Why does it take so long to check in at hotels? ), but oddly enough, this really is too high tech for a hotel. Before you start laughing . . . well, here's why: 

By how much do you think corporate taxes should be lowered?

I think corporate tax rates need to be raised, not lowered. And I say this even though I am the sole individual shareholder in my company (it's partly owned by a charitable foundation), which has a corporate form of ownership . . . 



A pair of reasons . . .

Why don't we make the minimum wage in the US $100 an hour? That would get rid of poverty!

Because you don't want to pay $1000-2000 per night for a hotel room.

Minimum-wage laws are inflationary. A mandatory ten-fold increase in wages can only be dealt with by means of generating a nearly ten-fold increase in the revenues needed to pay it -- meaning that we lay on a nearly ten-fold increase in prices to consumers.

They don't really help the people they're intended to help. No one really benefits any from raises in the minimum wage for low-end wage earners except for low-end landlords (most often, slumlords who shouldn't be allowed to be landlords, at that) - the rent goes up to wipe out the increased income of the low-end tenants.

The minimum-wage model is not a good model at all to insure a living wage for workers at the lower end of the pay scale.

Here, try this instead - I bet it would work:

What does Michael Forrest Jones think about Airbnb?

I don't think about Airbnb.  

I know a lot of hotel operators have a lot of anxiety over it as a potential 'competitor' (just as taxi owners and drivers in many places have duck fits over Uber), but . . . c'mon, people! As an alternative to a hotel stay, it's a completely different experience. Its relevance as a 'competitor' to hotels is limited to nonexistent. 



As a wannabe competitor to hotels, it's not even anything new. Every hotel that seeks to maintain a good price point has the problem of potential guests seeking a cheaper solution that will work for them. 

What you usually choose travel do you prefer classic hotel or budget hotel?

I like classic hotels as an occasional treat, but for trip-to-trip use, I’m not fussy.

What I’ll do is bring up a city on TripAdvisor, rank all the hotels by lowest cost, scroll down past the voodoo hellholes, and go with the least expensive hotel that has a bubble score of 3.5 or higher that’s located in a part of town that will work for me . . .

Example: let’s go to Nashville, Tennessee; and unless my reason for going to Nashville is in another part of town, I’d want to be near Lipscomb University.

Rank them by lowest price. Scroll past the 2.0-bubble-score Quality Inn and Suites Downtown . . . past the 2.5 Fiddler’s Inn (which Anthony Melchiorri ‘fixed’ — for a day — in an episode of Hotel Impossible a few seasons back) . . . looks like it’s going to be one of those America’s Best Value Inns at 3.5 bubble score, $60. But unless I want to low-budget this trip as much as possible, I’d probably want to pop the extra seventeen bucks and go with the Best Western-Sunrise Inn (4.0 bubble score), because it’s a lot closer to where I want to be . . . although taking the traffic and traffic patterns into account (which I don’t always check Google Maps and do ahead of time), the ABVI Airport South would work just as well.

Originally appeared on Quora