YOU'RE FUCKING AWESOME

Notice something? That?s right! You?re at home reading these lines, or in an empty office or worse ? in an empty hotel or airport. And the truth is, that scenario is probably not going to change any time soon ? we know it, your partners know it, your clients know it and so do you. Travel the way we once knew it is gone for good and yet, you have accomplished more than you might think the past days.

Let us remind you of your 5 biggest recent achievements, in case you had so many other things happening that you forgot all about them:

1. You have not lost your mind or broken your computer, despite having been invited to roughly 50 (feels like 250!) webinars, online panels, virtual events, digital conferences, which were all marketed to you as an absolute must to join, beacuse each was going to give you the magic key of what to do in light of recent events. By now you ignore all of those invites, because you ended up attending one. For 20 minutes. Thinking WTF?!
2. During the past 50 video-meetings on Zoom, GoTo Meeting or Zoho Meeting you managed to not make a fool of yourself whilst being on video or shared screen. You wore pants to most meetings, nobody realized that your last hairdresser?s appointment was months ago, nobody saw the wine-glass and most importantly you closed your porn-sites before sharing your screen (or did you?!).
3. You stayed at home and finally had the time to properly meet the people that you call family in person and spent more time with them than just breakfast, dinner and weekends. Quite the experience we would imagine, you may have even started talking to eachother again ? and let?s be honest you loved most, if not every minute of it. We?ll be watching the birth rates closely 9 months from now? Any babies ?made? whilst listening to a podcast episode of ours, please let us know!
4. You started picking up hobbies and doing things that never in your wildest dreams you have imagined yourself doing. Puzzles, cleaning, reading a book (who knew that was still a thing, right?!) or rewatching all Harry Potter movies and realizing how old you have become, given that the first movie was released in 2001. Hell, you even started working out again and going for a run ? surely nothing short of a global crisis could have persuaded you to do that!
5. You are working in hospitality, an industry that was struck hard by the current world state. Yet, you have remained a positive attitude as best you can ? be it to your co-workers, subordinates, family or friends, to the point where some probably questioned your sanity. An entire industry has stood together in truly obsurd times, supported eachother, developed and reimagined the ways business is done and even found time to support those who needed supporting. You opened hotels for frontline medical staff, used your passenger airplanes to bring people home and donated your excess food supplies to charities and those that lost their jobs. By all means, the hotel-industry even had time to launch a war on the world?s largest OTA booking.com in Europe/Germany, so it can?t all be bad, right? Who needs peace right now anyways?

So this goes out to all those who stayed positive and will continue to do so, even though there isn?t much positive news around these days. You have now read 579 words on this post and not once have we mentioned the words?virus,?#covid19?or?pandemic. Instead, we have managed to make you smile (hopefully!) and remind you about how flipping fortunate we all are to be in hospitality. This comes to show you that communication is key, now more than ever. So make it work for you by focusing on the positive and stop drawing imaginative scenarios or trying to predict the future, when in reality nobody can predict what will happen and when ? not even one of those super special digital conferences you just saw on LinkedIn will give you that answer!

SMACK will continue to be there for you during these messy times and beyond in ways that we can. Quality hospitality entertainment, jokes that at least we find funny and mocking those deserving of our sarcasm. Ain?t no virus gonna be killing our vibe!

Feel free to share this text with all those in need of some positivity ? it might just be your first good deed of the day. Stay the hell at home and enjoy the show!