After spending 28 years in hotel management and operations and several years at IH&RA, I was lucky to travel the world and meet hundreds of professionals in our industry and gather information, ideas, success stories and learn about various issues concerning hospitality trends during the last 25 years.

Several hundred things came to my mind. Starting with IH&RA that was created 65 years ago, and now that I have become the President of IH&RA, I am trying first to take care of about three issues: Natural disaster and hospitality, mobility of workers worldwide into our industry, and finally climate change and hospitality.

I am trying to educate our members and others about these issues and, at the same time, I am trying hard to rebuild our membership, stabilize our finances, create "The" major Hotels & Restaurants Association Worldwide to be the "ONLY and LARGEST" representative of the private sector facing various public sectors and organizations that are trying to regulate and organize our industry without having enough knowledge of our business.   These are very important issues, and we know how to do it and how to obtain results. Lobbying for the private sectors is our goal always. IH&RA starts its operations in Geneva this year moving toward the next generation of efficiency, stability and growth.

As President of two major hotel chains, I still believe that the US market is one of the best markets, and I am looking actively to develop our business in the US market. The Middle East has some advantages as a permanent positive and the highest RevPAR and continue to grow, but the US market for several years is not only healthy but growing positively.

We put forth a goal this year to achieve the merger of our three brands and create one major hotel group with our three brands: The US, The European and the Middle Eastern brand. The re-organization of our group started  in January with a new team or, as we say, fresh blood. I already have one President and 3 Vice Presidents for Development, Marketing and Finances, assisted by various Regional and/or Technical Directors. Everything will be based in Washington, DC, however, we will have European offices based in Geneva, Switzerland. I hope by the end of this year, I will be able to announce it.

We should remind all public government and associations that the hospitality industry is first a social and human oriented industry, and second it's a major contributor of social life as well as a force to limit poverty in the world.

I invite all hotel chains regardless of their size, various international and regional hotel and restaurant associations and all independent hoteliers worldwide to join us at IH&RA to become stronger, and unified since we all share the same concerns worldwide and that together we can make a difference.

www.ih-ra.com
www.chamhotels.com
www.royalregencyhotels.com

Post Date: April 8, 2008

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