At 68, Ray Stone is working his way out of fulltime corporate life at Accor Asia Pacific and in this first parter, he talks to Yeoh Siew Hoon about the journey he's taken and the road he's about to take, and the lessons he's learnt on the way.

When Ray Stone (pictured right) started his travel career, it was a different world, you could say. Flight was a glamorous word – associated with Howard Hughes, not Michael O' Leary.

Stone, who recently announced his retirement from fulltime corporate life at Accor Asia Pacific where he has been leading the sales and marketing charge for the last 13 years, started off doing tour and incentive sales with TWA - a great airline in those days - in London in 1967.

After four years, an instinct that's kept Stone on course throughout his career kicked in – "the natural urge in me to make progress".

"I learnt that the travel industry was for me, I took to it and I loved it. I also saw that I couldn't go any further in the airline as the top person in passenger sales division at that time was an American and wasn't moving."

He moved on to the hotel industry, joining Hilton Hotels Corporation as its European sales manager and between 1971 and 1976, he worked across Europe looking after tour operators, conventions and leisure in the development of Visit USA business.

That experience made him realise that two things drove him in life – substantiation and contribution. "I have to believe I am making a contribution – it's part of my personality – and there has to be substance in what I am doing. I loved the job, I loved Europe but I felt there was no real substance to what I was doing, and I felt I needed to work in a hotel to understand the industry I was in."

And so he looked to the US which was then playing a leading role in hospitality marketing and sales, particularly in the area of major conventions. He made a request through Hilton Hotels for a transfer. "At that time, Hilton Hotels Corp did not relocate people to the US and I was one of the first to be moved."

That was in 1976 and Stone took on the role of account manager in the NE Regional Sales Office,then two years later he moved to the 1,800-room NY Statler Hilton. That's when he learnt the importance of personal relationships in the workplace.

He knew his best ally would be the chief room clerk and he, being a Yankees fan, Stone would get World Series tickets for the clerk to "make sure you give decent rooms for my guests".

He recalled an incident when New York City was totally sold out and he was in Europe on a sales trip. He received frantic calls from his European tour operators, each of them asking him, "what's happening, your hotel is trying to move my group and they don't have rooms for us".

His hotel was around 300 rooms overbooked over a three week period. "I immediately flew back to New York,met with the GM and Front Office Manager and said that I would personally meet and relocate every group but we had to find other rooms in the area (there were no rooms in Manhattan),and if we have to pay more, we would make up the difference and I would pick out the groups we was going to move."

Stone phoned all the operators, met every customer at the airport and handled each situation differently. He recalled one in particular – an Italian woman who burst in tears when she was told her group had to be moved to a new hotel in New Jersey.

"That had the worst effect on me. I could handle all the screaming but the tears made me feel terrible," said the man whose heart is obviously not made of stone.

All's well that ends well however and from these incidents, Stone learnt that the strongest relationships are built under adverse circumstances. "You make strong friendships by the way you handle bad situations. All of those tour operators returned to the hotel the next year."

From Hilton, Stone joined Westin. At that time, no one could get into Westin as a hotel division head from outside the company but Stone got it because "nobody in Westin wanted to go to Detroit and I thought, I'll do it for two years and we'll see what happens. As always,my wife was totally supportive. "

Detroit and lakeside living in Grosse Pointe turned out to be one of the best residential experiences for the Stone family and two years later Stone was moved back to New York,promoted to Regional Director of Sales for the Northeast Sales Office for Westin,based at the Plaza. Shortly after and having been promoted again to be Regional Director of Marketing, he met Donald Trump who had just bought the hotel and from there, gleaned another perspective to hospitality.

"I remember Trump doing a hotel tour and he was shown the Edwardian Room, the power breakfast place for the city. He looked at it and asked the general manager, what's your revenue, your profit and he got the answers. Then he asked, how many square feet and he didn't get the answer.

"He was looking at it as return per square foot. He closed the restaurant and put in a shopping arcade of luxury retail outlets."

Did Stone ever consider a move into operations, like most marketers at a certain stage in their lives? He did. An opportunity came to manage the Waldorf Astoria Apartments but he turned it down. "This is what I love to do and after that, it never entered my mind."

"I love to travel. I enjoy changing landscapes. It was part of what motivates me."

That next landscape was Asia Pacific when he took on the Accor job and moved to Sydney. "My title hasn't really changed that much in the 13 years but what has changed is the nature of what I do,mostly because of our extraordinary growth in the region during that time."

"One of Michael's (Issenberg, chairman and COO of Accor Asia Pacific) concerns when he hired me was my lack of economy and mid-market experience. I found that the most exciting part of the job. You can do that much more in marketing and consumer direct work."

For a man who believes in "substantiation" and "contribution", another personal challenge was getting around the perceived intangible aspects of marketing. "That's why it is critically important that whatever processes you have in sales and marketing must have an outcome and relate to objectives that are set in the first place. It constantly amazes me that intelligent people can lose track of objectives."

Says Stone, "We are constantly asking, what is the business outcome? Are we still on track? Is this going to contribute to profitability?"

He says that the intangible elements of sales and marketing are so powerful but they need to be managed and channelled. You can literally spend years debating brand positioning,for example,but at some point a customer has to notice and respond in their buying behaviour to what you're doing. At the end of the day,he believes,the guest experience - with an emphasis on service delivery - will determine the value of the brand and will either support or undermine the marketing promise.

The biggest change of course in the sales and marketing landscape is technology and how that has changed communication,the sheer weight of "stuff" that comes through the channels. Of course the sheer volume of travel today compared with those days of TWA has also increased enormously.

What's not changed is "you still need to fill a hotel" and "in the right circumstances, the importance of relationships has not changed".

"Today, I have a number of instances where a handshake with a customer and our word is enough and we do not need a contract but it's not happening as often,says Stone. Obviously in complex negotiations you must have a legal document in place but this is something that,in the best of circumstances,you should be able to file it away and never need to look at again."

What does concern Stone is the fact that the quality of sales and marketing personnel simply cannot keep up with the pace of development in the region. "I try to train people with the belief that they're going to be around in another year. Individuals should have a strategic approach to their career – three to five years ahead – and not just leave for better money. They should analyse what comes with the salary."

And so as Stone works his way out of fulltime corporate life – he will continue as senior advisor for a year with Accor Asia Pacific working on selected projects – he is asking himself some hard questions. The question he is known to ask staff from time to time over the years, "What have you done today that will make an impact to profitability?", he continues to turn onto himself.

"Profitability can be measured in two ways – financially and morally. It's the latter I want to work on now," he said.

"I feel a little nervous and slightly uncomfortable but I think it is good to move out of your comfort zone sometimes. You have to move into something that makes you feel nervous.

"One thing I do know, I want to feel better about me as a person. My great motivator is self-fulfillment and I have yet to fulfill my potential."

As for his interests outside work, Stone would love to read more of the books he has bought and he is a movie buff. He remembers a quote from Orson Welles, who said, "I am probably inherently a lazy person. But if I find a passion, I am at it for 20 hours a day."

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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