Instead of boring you with more Iceland ash jokes and airport tales of woe I am thinking positively about airports and hotels. Whilst waiting for news and fielding calls from my staff that they finally reached their destination, I realised why I love this job after 20 years in the hotel industry. I love the camaraderie. It doesn’t matter who you work for; hotelier, cleaner, supplier, consultant, it is times like these when the industry shows its strength under stress against all adversity.

Acentic staff members that were stranded in airports and hotels have told me their stories of outstanding service, especially in relation to turnaround times and “feeding the masses”. As for these hotel services, our quick thinking German operations are also part of the team. When this crisis broke, our NOC deployed additional overtime coverage to monitor the systems, especially our 40K rooms with High Speed Internet Access, which we knew would take a hammering these past weeks. I am exceptionally proud of my staff’s well-played part (while working quietly in the background 24/7) to produce a 99.3% digital services uptime!

Speaking of airports I was recently reading an article about world’s “best” airport (Votes were calculated before the whole air transport crash due to the volcano) http://ehotelier.com/hospitality-news/item.php?id=D18363_0_11_0_M, and it made me recall the hours I spent in each of them, using their unique facilities. Indeed Acentic has its systems installed in Hotels at all of the European hotels in the  top 10 of this list!

Understanding the customers’ needs in order to optimise products and services is what this industry is all about and what adds value to our business! Working with our hotel customers is certainly the best job in the world, keep it up team!

Travel safely.