The neighborhood's outstanding hospitality professionals

News

by Max Marbut

Staff Writer

When you go to a hotel or restaurant or anywhere else hospitality is the order of business, you come in contact with many people and their work. Some of those people like managers, servers and front desk staff are the faces associated with the business, but there are always dozens more people working behind the scenes to create the best possible experience for guests and customers.

Often, even the people who are responsible for face-to-face interaction with guests aren’t noticed, much less lauded, for their dedication to making where they work more successful.

As a way to change that, last year the North Florida Hotel & Lodging Association presented its inaugural ROSE (Recognition of Service Excellence) Awards. The mission of the program is to recognize front line hospitality employees who exemplify the highest level of customer service. Through one-on-one or behind-the-scenes contact they are the people who create the visitor experience in Northeast Florida. Hospitality professionals may be nominated for the award by their managers, coworkers or even guests who have met them while visiting a venue or attraction.

Ninety-six people were nominated for this year’s awards and from that group, 54 finalists were selected including 14 who work Downtown. The Omni and the Hyatt led this year’s roster of finalists with five and four representatives, respectively. This year’s nominees will be recognized and the winners announced at a dinner and ceremony next week. Awards will be presented in 19 service categories plus the “Mayor’s Award” which recognizes the top hospitality professional of the year.

The idea for the awards came up at a meeting of NFHLA’s board of directors, said Dan King, general manager of the Hyatt. He was president of NFHLA when the ROSE Awards were created.

“We were talking about how Jacksonville competes with other destinations,” he recalled. “We know that customer service is what brings people back, so we thought the ROSE Awards would be a way to create a market-wide experience to increase awareness of how important customer service is when it comes to marketing our area. It’s the people who make the difference when it comes to hospitality.”

One of this year’s finalists works at Visit Jacksonville’s welcome center on Laura Street. Vicky Koele-Bryan enjoys helping business travelers, leisure tourists and even people who are in Jacksonville for medical treatment learn about what the area has to offer. She has a lot of hospitality-related stories to tell like the time she arranged theater tickets for a group of boaters who were cruising through the area and tied up at the Landing for a couple of days. The waterborne visitors attended the Artist Series at the Times-Union Center while they were here.

“They said it had never occurred to them that they could see a Broadway show in Jacksonville,” said Koele-Bryan.

Barbara Halverstadt, air trade development manager for the Jacksonville Aviation Authority and the chair of this year’s ROSE Awards, said it took several hours for the selection committee to narrow down the list of nominees to the finalists and ultimately select the 2010 honorees.

“In some cases we had people who were nominated by more than one person,” she said. “It’s incredibly hard to pick winners because they all deserve to be recognized.”

The public is invited to the 2nd Annual ROSE Awards cocktail reception, dinner and ceremony Feb. 3 at 5:30 p.m. at the Omni. Tickets are $25 per person or $250 for a table of 10. For more information or to make reservations call 421-9176 or visit nfhlaroseawards.com.