Teaching hotels to be gay-friendly
A Philadelphia group puts together an unusual course to make check-in and other experiences less awkward.
By Gail Shister
Inquirer Staff Writer
Have you heard the one about the hotel clerk and the gay tourists?
Not funny.
For gay and lesbian couples, checking in at the front desk can be the most uncomfortable part of a trip. (One bed or two?) For hotels, it can mean the difference between building loyalty and losing customers.
The Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus hopes to encourage that loyalty with a sensitivity-training program believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.
Already, at least one marquee travel corporation wants to license the interactive program nationally as an educational model for increasing gay tourism.
Ka-ching!
Designed for hotels and related businesses, the hour-long presentation features skits of situations commonly encountered by gay travelers. Actors stay in character throughout.
The program made its debut Thursday at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown before 45 managers. The 1,408-room Marriott - which claims to be the largest hotel in the state - markets itself as gay-friendly.
In one skit, an African American man and his white partner, cradling their black baby, argue with a check-in clerk who questions their request for one king-size bed instead of two doubles.
It's not just a skit. On a recent trip to Calgary, Alberta, Philadelphia marketing executive Tami Sortman and her partner ran into almost the same situation.
"The clerk said, 'But there's two of you,' " Sortman said. "I said, 'That's correct. We're here to be in one room, in one bed, together.' She was very embarrassed and didn't know what to say. It was awkward."
Jeffrey Miller, general manager of the Park Hyatt Hotel, says he or his partner frequently hangs back at check-in to avoid such moments. "It makes you feel like a second-class person."
In another skit, a homophobic waiter gives lousy service to a lesbian couple at their anniversary dinner. In another, a clueless repairman makes a lesbian couple uncomfortable in their room at night.
Debra K. Blair, a professor in Temple's School of Tourism and Hospitality, helped create the program and served as moderator for the Marriott presentation.
"This is a necessary piece of diversity education," she says. "It's a timely topic, with the emergence of gay marriage and rise of hate crimes. We hope to motivate business to get on board and train their people."
Ultimately, of course, it's all about the Benjamins.
If the downtown Marriott's 900 full-time employees become more responsive to gay travelers' needs, "we'll have a competitive advantage over everybody else in the city," general manager Bill Walsh says.
Thus far, the Sofitel and Park Hyatt also have signed up for the training. Of 35 convention hotels in Center City, 13 designate themselves as gay-friendly, says Jeff Guaracino, vice president of communications for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. and cofounder of the caucus.
Gay tourism is big business.
Typically, gays and lesbians stay at better hotels, spend more money, and stick around longer than do their heterosexual counterparts, according to a 2006 survey by the Travel Industry of America.
They tend to shop more (especially the men), eat at fine restaurants, and partake of nightlife and cultural activities, the survey says.
In Philadelphia, gay tourists more than double the spending of heterosexuals, on average, according to a 2005 survey commissioned by the tourism corporation.
With more travelers - as well as hotel employees - coming out of the closet, it's easier to reach potential customers, says Bob Witeck, chief executive officer of Washington's Witeck-Combs Communications and author of Business Inside Out.
"The hotel industry is trying to understand who their customers are. Gay people are saying they don't want to be treated differently, but they expect a very specific welcome. They want to be acknowledged for who they are."
The Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus, a private, nonprofit organization, was founded in 2002 to promote the city as a gay-friendly destination. It has about 100 members.
"We wanted to ensure that gay travelers had a good experience in Philly, and that hotel employees had the training to provide it," says Guaracino, architect of the award-winning "Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay" campaign.
"We felt there was nothing out there that really met our needs, so we started our own program."
Guaracino reached out in June to Temple, which agreed to underwrite the first five training sessions. Other sponsors are sought to keep the program as a free service.
"There's obviously a great need for this," says Blair, who teaches a class in diversity. "With so many cities going after this market, there has to be some mechanism in place so people are comfortable."
Philadelphia, the city that loves you back. No matter whom you love first.
Contact staff writer Gail Shister at 215-854-2224 or gshister@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/gailshister.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Conserve Your Old TVs
Interesting piece...
Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008
Time to think about converting your TV
Over-the-air broadcasters will end analog signals one year from today. Many consumers need to prepare for the switch to digital.
By Bob Fernandez
Inquirer Staff Writer
The nation's over-the-air TV broadcasters are going digital.
In exactly one year, on Feb. 17, 2009, broadcasters will stop beaming the analog signals they've used since the dawn of TV time and switch entirely to digital.
The new signals - already being broadcast by some stations - offer TV viewers brighter and clearer picture quality and will expand the number of over-the-air channels for local broadcasters, allowing them to compete with cable and satellite.
If you didn't know about the so-called digital transition, or if you've postponed thinking about it, stop dillydallying.
Start preparing.
Twelve years in the making, the digital-TV transition will force households with over-the-air reception into these choices:
Get cable or satellite. The cable industry has said it will continue to carry analog signals until 2012, so people can use older TVs.
Buy a new TV with a digital tuner.
Purchase a digital-to-analog converter subsidized with a $40 coupon from the government. The converter, like a cable set-top box, will plug into analog TVs.
The government has budgeted $1.5 billion for the $40 coupons and began taking requests for them - maximum of two per household - over the phone and online in early January, said Bart Forbes, spokesman for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration.
The first batch of coupons will be mailed out Tuesday.
About 2.6 million households have already requested more than five million coupons, a government official said Friday.
If a person requests a coupon now, it will take a month or longer to get it because of the initial five-million-coupon backlog, the official said. After the backlog is cleared, it should take two or three weeks between the time a coupon is requested and when it arrives. Coupons are valid for 90 days.
As long as they last, consumers can request the coupons through March 31, 2009, and redeem them at stores through July 7, 2009, the government says.
Retailers expect the first of the converter boxes in stores in the next two or three weeks. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently announced that it had received its first shipments of a Magnavox-brand converter.
There are about 40 models of converter boxes, ranging in price from $39.99 to $69.99.
The government is not making any purchase recommendations.
"We are not doing this to annoy consumers," said Forbes. "As the federal government, we cannot highlight one box over the other. We can only talk about features," he said.
The digital transition was first mandated in 1996 federal telecommunications legislation. Its implementation was delayed until a deficit-reduction measure in 2005 forced the February 2009 deadline. Washington tied the digital transition to raising billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury by selling the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that carried the analog signals. The new uses for the spectrum include carriage for public-safety radios, and, potentially, wireless services.
Broadcasters will obtain additional channels in the digital transition, giving over-the-air customers more choices, officials say.
In the Philadelphia area, the number of over-the-air channels is expected to increase to 30 from about 14, said William J. Weber, vice president for content distribution and chief technology officer with WHYY TV12.
There are 575,460 households in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that receive their TV reception exclusively over the air, according to figures from the National Association of Broadcasters.
Several hundred-thousand more households in Pennsylvania and New Jersey buy cable or satellite TV service, but also operate a second or third TV on rabbit ears. Those additional TVs will have to be converted to accept new digital signals.
People who bought TVs in the last few years might be OK, experts say. The question is whether the new TV has a digital tuner. If it does, you're OK. If it doesn't, you're not.
The government has budgeted $5 million to advertise the digital transition - enough to buy about a minute of advertising during the Super Bowl - and is expecting the broadcast industry to do its part to inform the public.
The broadcasters association has said it will spend $1 billion on public service ads and grassroots outreach to help with the transition.
The group has broadcast 30-second public service advertisements since September. Broadcasters have been criticized for airing many ads in the middle of the night when no one saw them. Shermaze Ingram, spokeswoman for the NAB, said the ads run "all hours of the day."
The NAB released three new public service advertisements to stations Friday and plans a 30-minute informational show, Ingram said.
"We did not want to get into messaging on converter boxes when there were no converter boxes available for shoppers," said Ingram.
The digital transition, experts agree, could be bumpy. Consumers will have to choose a converter box and install it.
Other issues could develop.
Centris, a market-research firm with offices in Los Angeles and Fort Washington, said last week in a new study that millions of TV households may need to upgrade their roof-top and rabbit-ear antennas to receive digital signals.
"You got a lot of holes," said Barry Goodstadt, a Centris senior vice president. "Not only may you have to get a converter box, you may also have to buy an antenna for this."
Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008
Time to think about converting your TV
Over-the-air broadcasters will end analog signals one year from today. Many consumers need to prepare for the switch to digital.
By Bob Fernandez
Inquirer Staff Writer
The nation's over-the-air TV broadcasters are going digital.
In exactly one year, on Feb. 17, 2009, broadcasters will stop beaming the analog signals they've used since the dawn of TV time and switch entirely to digital.
The new signals - already being broadcast by some stations - offer TV viewers brighter and clearer picture quality and will expand the number of over-the-air channels for local broadcasters, allowing them to compete with cable and satellite.
If you didn't know about the so-called digital transition, or if you've postponed thinking about it, stop dillydallying.
Start preparing.
Twelve years in the making, the digital-TV transition will force households with over-the-air reception into these choices:
Get cable or satellite. The cable industry has said it will continue to carry analog signals until 2012, so people can use older TVs.
Buy a new TV with a digital tuner.
Purchase a digital-to-analog converter subsidized with a $40 coupon from the government. The converter, like a cable set-top box, will plug into analog TVs.
The government has budgeted $1.5 billion for the $40 coupons and began taking requests for them - maximum of two per household - over the phone and online in early January, said Bart Forbes, spokesman for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration.
The first batch of coupons will be mailed out Tuesday.
About 2.6 million households have already requested more than five million coupons, a government official said Friday.
If a person requests a coupon now, it will take a month or longer to get it because of the initial five-million-coupon backlog, the official said. After the backlog is cleared, it should take two or three weeks between the time a coupon is requested and when it arrives. Coupons are valid for 90 days.
As long as they last, consumers can request the coupons through March 31, 2009, and redeem them at stores through July 7, 2009, the government says.
Retailers expect the first of the converter boxes in stores in the next two or three weeks. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently announced that it had received its first shipments of a Magnavox-brand converter.
There are about 40 models of converter boxes, ranging in price from $39.99 to $69.99.
The government is not making any purchase recommendations.
"We are not doing this to annoy consumers," said Forbes. "As the federal government, we cannot highlight one box over the other. We can only talk about features," he said.
The digital transition was first mandated in 1996 federal telecommunications legislation. Its implementation was delayed until a deficit-reduction measure in 2005 forced the February 2009 deadline. Washington tied the digital transition to raising billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury by selling the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that carried the analog signals. The new uses for the spectrum include carriage for public-safety radios, and, potentially, wireless services.
Broadcasters will obtain additional channels in the digital transition, giving over-the-air customers more choices, officials say.
In the Philadelphia area, the number of over-the-air channels is expected to increase to 30 from about 14, said William J. Weber, vice president for content distribution and chief technology officer with WHYY TV12.
There are 575,460 households in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that receive their TV reception exclusively over the air, according to figures from the National Association of Broadcasters.
Several hundred-thousand more households in Pennsylvania and New Jersey buy cable or satellite TV service, but also operate a second or third TV on rabbit ears. Those additional TVs will have to be converted to accept new digital signals.
People who bought TVs in the last few years might be OK, experts say. The question is whether the new TV has a digital tuner. If it does, you're OK. If it doesn't, you're not.
The government has budgeted $5 million to advertise the digital transition - enough to buy about a minute of advertising during the Super Bowl - and is expecting the broadcast industry to do its part to inform the public.
The broadcasters association has said it will spend $1 billion on public service ads and grassroots outreach to help with the transition.
The group has broadcast 30-second public service advertisements since September. Broadcasters have been criticized for airing many ads in the middle of the night when no one saw them. Shermaze Ingram, spokeswoman for the NAB, said the ads run "all hours of the day."
The NAB released three new public service advertisements to stations Friday and plans a 30-minute informational show, Ingram said.
"We did not want to get into messaging on converter boxes when there were no converter boxes available for shoppers," said Ingram.
The digital transition, experts agree, could be bumpy. Consumers will have to choose a converter box and install it.
Other issues could develop.
Centris, a market-research firm with offices in Los Angeles and Fort Washington, said last week in a new study that millions of TV households may need to upgrade their roof-top and rabbit-ear antennas to receive digital signals.
"You got a lot of holes," said Barry Goodstadt, a Centris senior vice president. "Not only may you have to get a converter box, you may also have to buy an antenna for this."
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Gay-Friendly Places to Work
By PAUL B. BROWN
Published in Wall Street Journal: December 2, 2006
AFTER decades in which discrimination and harassment were routine, U.S. financial firms have become more gay-friendly than those in any other industry, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign,” Bloomberg Markets reports.
In writing about the annual ranking of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization dedicated to achieving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality, Lisa Kassenaar notes that 19 financial service companies received a 100 percent score. “The banking and financial services industry has moved well out in front of the others,” said Daryl Herrschaft, director for the Human Rights Campaign Workplace Project, which conducted the study.
Wall Street chief executives told the magazine that the gay-friendly policies were simply good business: they help them recruit the best talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
And, of course, supporting gay employees could help financial services companies with customers as well. Ms. Kassenaar notes that gays and lesbians will have about $675 billion in disposable personal income in 2007.
As J. P. Morgan Chase’s chief executive, James Dimon, put it, “We serve a lot of people in different cultures and locations and we need to reach out to all of them.”
Published in Wall Street Journal: December 2, 2006
AFTER decades in which discrimination and harassment were routine, U.S. financial firms have become more gay-friendly than those in any other industry, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign,” Bloomberg Markets reports.
In writing about the annual ranking of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization dedicated to achieving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality, Lisa Kassenaar notes that 19 financial service companies received a 100 percent score. “The banking and financial services industry has moved well out in front of the others,” said Daryl Herrschaft, director for the Human Rights Campaign Workplace Project, which conducted the study.
Wall Street chief executives told the magazine that the gay-friendly policies were simply good business: they help them recruit the best talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
And, of course, supporting gay employees could help financial services companies with customers as well. Ms. Kassenaar notes that gays and lesbians will have about $675 billion in disposable personal income in 2007.
As J. P. Morgan Chase’s chief executive, James Dimon, put it, “We serve a lot of people in different cultures and locations and we need to reach out to all of them.”
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