Guest Speaker

I wanted to talk about the guest speaker we had in Intro to Hospitality this morning. He's one of the Senior Directors at the Savvis Center and he had a totally fascinating history, which just pumped me up about going into my industry even more and I came out of class in such a great mood. Anyways he talked about his long career in hospitality, how he was born in Dublin, moved to New York, and grew up with the catering business more or less, and that led to becoming a chef, and then working in hotels, and then eventually his job at the Savvis Center. (by the way, he gave us an amazing statistic. Savvis Center was #7 in the the world for non-sporting event sales. Number 1 was in Manchester, England, then came Madison Square Gardens and some place in New York City, and our little Savvis Center was #7. Amazing.) Anyways one of the things this guy did... he was approached by someone who found out that he was Irish and was an excellent chef, and asked him to work at a 12th century castle on the west coast of Ireland. Imagine that. He had his own staff of cooks, even his own gardener to grow his own vegetables and herbs and fruits and what not. He said it was an absolute fairy tale. And that's why he only did it for two years, because it was such a fairy tale and he couldn't do that forever. I think I'd wake up every morning asking someone to pinch me. I just sat there rapt while he was talking about this, it was so awesome. I want to look up what that castle was when I get time and I'll come back and link it... anyways. I started dreaming all these wild dreams and I am so excited about making it into the field... even if I'm starting out on the corporate side. Because I know I'll be in leisure travel soon enough.

Edited to add: Dromoland Castle is the one he was talking about. Check it out. WOW.