High Point Task Force to Address Market Hospitality Issues

August 21, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in High Point on August 2006 The High Point Market Authority announced yesterday that it has formed a hotel task force to provide strategic advice, feedback, overview and recommendations from the hospitality industry to the Market Authority staff, executive committee and board.

The group recently held its first meeting.

“The hotel task force will review current issues among Market attendees, as well as offer ideas on how the authority can improve the housing situation around the bi-annual High Point Market and its working relationship with hoteliers,” said Brian Casey, president of the High Point Market Authority. “I wanted to establish a forum where we could have dialog around the issues and what we can all do to make things better for everybody involved.”

Casey sought a diverse group of hotel properties in terms of size and location, as well as representation from the Piedmont Triad area’s convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), when seeking participants for the task force.

Hotel Task Force members include: Chris Adams, representing Ashford Suites; Mo Milani, Sheraton Hotel; Joe Varipapa, Comfort Suites Airport; John Rothkopf, Airport Marriott; Pamela Vargas, Marriott Downtown Greensboro; Tim Peters, Embassy Suites; Joe Tarasaria, Holiday Inn Express; Paulette Seaton, Hilton Garden Inn; Ron Stephens, Twin City Quarter; Henri Fourrier, Greensboro CVB; and Charlotte Young, High Point CVB.

Vargas was nominated to chair the group at the first meeting, where topics of discussion included the sharing of information and historical data between the Authority and the hoteliers, the development of best practices related to customer experience, and plans for the Market Authority to secure blocks of rooms with select hotels that the Authority would then make available to Market-goers.

“This is not intended to be a discussion about costs and rates; we can’t legally sit in a room and talk about those factors,” Casey said. “Rather, the whole premise behind this is to set that aside and focus the discussion on what we can be doing as a community to make the overall Market experience for our attendees as positive as possible. Nonetheless, we hope to take away some ideas that we can use to formulate strategies to more effectively deal with the rate issue as we move forward.”