After a brief meeting with Coach Paul, we have really narrowed down our options of hotels and are looking to see what other options we can play with. Today I was to see if it was beneficial for us to take the team to a Golden Corral for breakfast instead of risking a bad breakfast at one hotel compared to the cost of the other hotel. The first thing I did was contact the DoubleTree to see if we could get rid of the $16 per plate. What they did was just add it to the room rate for the breakfast and would seat all of us in their Bistro. That rate was $129 though and still more than what we want to spend on a one day stay and breakfast. Next I decided to call the Golden Corral to see what it would cost to feed the 100 people that would be on this trip. They offered to comp 5 of our meals and only charge for 95 of us at $11.75 a head. Adding this to the $95 rate it was still a little high.
I decided to call the DoubleTree back to see if they could do better than the $129. My contact at the hotel came back with an offer of $119. While this is a lot better it is still higher than what we want to pay even though it is everything we want. So putting all the numbers together if we decided to stay at the Holiday Inn and eat there this would be our cheapest option. However, if at the last second decide that this is not going to be a good situation for the breakfast and have to go down the road to the Golden Corral we just added an additional cost of $1200 to the trip. By going to the DoubleTree, there is no inherent risk because they have everything we want, it is just a higher cost than the Holiday Inn but cheaper if you add the Holiday Inn and Golden Corral combo together. So this is the current dilemma that we are facing and hoping that I hear back from another sales manager from another hotel with better news in the next couple of day because it is time to get this done and to move on to other pressing matters. I will be off for the next few days and will return next week and look forward to finalizing this trip.
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It’s Tuesday April 12, 2016 and I am back in my luxurious office. I say that because my office is the VIP lounge and conference room but I get to overlook the swimming pool or basketball court. Well I am back to calling these hotels hoping to getting to talk to the sales managers. While I continuously called I still either got voicemail's or sorry they are out of the office responses. So I worked with what I had in front of me and focused mainly on the breakfast that these hotels offered and if they could set up the same breakfast in a conference/banquet room so that they team could eat together in an orderly fashion. The response I received were neither encouraging nor expected. Having worked in the Hotel industry I knew what could be done in order to contribute to an easier time for the team but I was unable to get any cooperation from any of the hotels.
I had a brief meeting with Coach Paul and explained to him what we were facing as far as the breakfast plans from the hotels I had spoken with. He was as disappointed as I was about it and showed me what they had done when they went to Wisconsin for the playoffs. They stayed at a Holiday Inn where they setup the entire breakfast in a conference room and then only charged them a setup fee since the breakfast was included with the room rates. This is mainly what he is looking for with our trip to Utica. So I decided to expand my search to a few miles off of I-90 and found a few more hotels that I could call and get some rates. I spoke with the DoubleTree by Hilton who offered me a comparable rate but here came the biggest obstacle, breakfast. Since we want the team separated they offered us the banquet room to eat in but would charge a setup fee and a $16 dollar plate fee per person. This obviously is not going to work. What I soon found out is that the breakfast is operated by another company and is not complimentary so we would have to pay for each player. So tomorrow my focus is going to be on negotiating a better price if I can and looking at other options for breakfast. Today was a very busy day calling a getting rates from many different hotels around the Rochester, New York area. Ohio Northern is traveling to Utica at the beginning of September but are leaving on the Thursday before. I am in charge of finding a hotel for the team to stay at and to insure that they have a suitable breakfast for the team and coaches to eat along with enough available seating as well. Today I talked with a Holiday Inn Express right off of I-90 and received a rate of $95 a night which is great! The only thing suspect about here is that the buffet that they offer is going to be a tight fit for all 100 of team to get through the line and find a place to sit.
I continued to work on calling and getting different rates from other hotels during my time and to find out if the team could be served in a conference/banquet room as well. I called around 10 different places but to my surprise only got to talk to 4 sales managers of these hotels. While I am thoroughly enjoying this mentorship, this has been very challenging just trying to get sales managers to call you back. I will keep working hard at this because I want to ensure that Ohio Northern gets the best place available at a fair price. On Thursday April 7 began my 3rd day working with Ohio Northern University. Coming in to my big office I started work on finalizing flight details for one of the big recruits out of California. While we worked very closely with the mother of the recruit in order to make sure that we set up a flight time that would work for her and her son leaving Oakland but also on their trip back from Ohio. I was able to get a great deal on a flight that left at 12:30pm Oakland time with only 1 stop over which was only for 45 min in Phoenix and would arrive around 5:30pm here in Ohio. The flight back would also be right around the same times going back, so we were very excited that we had everything set up for this recruit and his mom to make the trip here to ONU.
After working on this for about a half of an hour I started working on the football team’s trip to Utica, New York. This was very ironic for me because the last sports class I took I worked with Utica and their Athletic Director to discuss how they take advantage of NCAA grants that are available. Why it was ironic was because the time I was talking to them they were making the trip from New York to come here to Ada and now I am working with ONU and helping set up their trip to Utica. What my project was to do is to find hotels around Rochester, New York which is about 2 hours from Utica. The team is going to drive to around Rochester on September 8th and spend the night and then on the following day make the final 2 hour drive into Utica. What I am doing is researching the hotels that are in the area that are available for the day of September 8th and to find out the rates in which they are going to charge. I had found four great hotels which were right off of I90 outside of Rochester and called all four. I currently am waiting for 2 of them to get back with me but have received the rates from the other 2. What I have learned is I can now leverage the rates back and forth in order to drive the price down, which I have done successfully between the two so far. I also have to make sure that they have a full hot breakfast buffet in order to feed the team in the morning before they head out to Utica. While I am not working in the office this weekend I will continue to research other hotels in order to make sure dates are available to get rates that they will charge. On my second day here at Ohio Northern I worked primarily on scheduling flights for some out of state recruits. Why this is important is simple. In order for a program to be successful you often have to reach beyond the local high schools around you to find talent. In this case, Ohio Northern has been very successful at creating a pipeline out of Florida and that was my focus today. I was setting up flights out of Florida to Ohio for the next couple of weeks and trying to do it in order to maintain a low cost to the school. As we all know everyone has a budget to which they have to work within and at a Division III football program it is vital that the traveling costs associated to the recruits stay within the budget. Athletic budgets are very small at smaller schools so saving money where ever you can is imperative.
April 4th began my mentorship with the Ohio Northern University football program. As I began my day first day I went into the King Horn Center at Ohio Northern University into the Athletic Offices to meet with Coach Dean Paul. A brief meet and great with a few of the other coaches we needed to find me a work area. Because most of the offices were already occupied I moved into what I call the biggest office in the building, the VIP lounge that overlooks the basketball court and swimming pool. This has become my new office for my time here with ONU and I cannot complain because of the room in which I have to work.
So today was recruiting, recruiting and some more recruiting. The King Horn center was home to a lot of recruits looking to become part of the Polar Bear team. While the coaching staff was excitedly buzzing around I was working on finding the best deals available for airfare for a high profile recruit from California. After meeting with some of the staff and head coach I started on my first task which was getting the best deal available for the recruit and to make sure that the Athletic department stayed within their budget for recruiting trips. While day one was short, I cannot wait to get back at it tomorrow and learn even more as my journey continues toward my goal. |