A conference success

Congratulations to the British Association of Hospitality Accountants (BAHA) on its first-ever conference held recently at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel Heathrow. More than 100 of us gathered for presentations and discussions over two days on "Managing Capacity for Profit". Chairman Martyn Levitt and chief executive Carl Weldon and their team put together an excellent programme, ranging from presentations on performance indicators and benchmarking through to investment and taxation.

Professor Peter O'Connor from the Essec Business School in Paris spoke on the effects on long-term profitability of current trends in hotel electronic distribution, while our own Oxford Brookes Professor, Peter Harris, outlined the industry-sponsored research into customer profitability through accounting for customer and market segmentation profits. The conference was widely publicised.

Members of the Hotel Marketing Association were offered the BAHA members rate, but where were the marketeers who could have benefited from this input? The event was exactly the sort of programme to enhance and equip the role of the marketing manager or director within a hotel company. If emerging marketing, revenue, sales or commercial managers want to develop their knowledge and aspire to a place on the board then they must sign up for conferences like this.

Stuart Harrison
Principal, The Profitable Hotel Company, Witney, Oxford

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