by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Pity the poor employee of the Omni.
While the rest of Northeast Florida gamely shivers under its woolens, several of them will wrestling with serious problems. Such as, which suntan lotion works best under the Cancun sun?
Five employees of the Omni earned three-night stays at the resort in Mexico for reaching their sales goals for the past year.
They are Brenda Campbell, senior sales manager; Yolanda Bradley, David Diaz and Lisa Boisclair, all rooms sales managers; and Danita Williams, catering sales manager.
In addition, Campbell will be going to New Orleans for a two-night stay since she reached her goals for three consecutive years. That qualifies her as a member of the Presidents Club, which also carries with it “a nice cash payout,” she said.
“When we go on these trips, they usually do a session with a motivational speaker,” said Campbell. “We always do something as a group, but they give us a good amount of free time.
“It’s a wonderful company to work for.”
The trip to New Orleans begins Jan. 27. She and her husband will leave for Cancun Jan. 29.
“It’s a very impressive ‘thank-you,’” said Campbell, who has visited both places before.
“My first concert to see the Rolling Stones was in New Orleans,” she said. “So it’ll be nice to see it in a different frame of mind and a different era.”
Earlier trips to Cancun have also been courtesy of Omni. Last year, she and her husband went to San Francisco and the wine country of Northern California.
“I’d never been there before,” she said, “so it was a nice treat.”
Campbell has been with the 354-room Omni for four years. Her responsibilities — in part — include the government, sports, and tour and travel markets. There’s an acronym, SMERF, for the conglomeration of other areas that she also covers: social, military, education, religious and fraternal.
“One of the reasons why a SMERF sales manager has so many of those segments are they tend to be small producers,” she said. “Social, for instance, may be wedding groups that equate to 50 rooms.”
Year in and year out, religious groups make up a big part of the Omni’s business.
“There are so many different denominations, and the Omni tells the religious segment, ‘We respect what you do.’
“Our owner is big in his church in Texas. One of the things he did about three years ago was eliminate all adult-rated movies at all Omni hotels. To the religious groups, that means a lot.
“And also to the youth groups. That way they don’t have to worry about what the kids will be watching on their free time.”
James Caldwell is president of Omni, a privately owned company with 40 hotels in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Thirty-one of them are owned and managed by the company, seven are franchised, and two are under construction.
The headquarters is in Irving, Texas.
“It is a small company,” said Campbell, “and the nice thing is you’ve got the consistency in any hotel in any city you go to. It works well for a sales manager who would want to transfer.
“I could go to an Omni in another city, and everything is done pretty much the same way: same computer system, same guidelines, same policies.”
Business has been good for the past year, and Campbell expects continued improvement.
“We’re looking, hopefully, for an upswing this year,” she said. “We’ve already started to see a lot of requests for information.”
Part of the reason is that word is spreading about Jacksonville’s desirability and affordability. Improved security helps, too.
“And there’s the dedication to what people do in their lives,” Campbell said. “You can’t stay home all the time. If this is the way the world is, then we have to work around it.”
Renovation on “everything down to the wall tacks” will begin in May on all the Omni guest rooms. Work should be complete in October in November, with plenty of time to spare before the Super Bowl.
“We’re going to start promoting it heavily in February or March, letting all our clients know,” said Campbell.
All that work should bring in more business . . . which should help Campbell meet her goal once again.
“My understanding is, if I make my goal another three years in a row, then I’ll qualify again for that extra cash incentive,” she said, already planning ahead. “The incentive to keep making and exceeding your goals doesn’t go away.
“They value their sales staff and their sales team. It’s a good company.”