Brian Hope addresses students at St. Lawrence College

Hope is an established sales professional who has been in the hospitality industry for over 20 years. Some highlights from his presentation to the students include the following anecdotes:

• Hope was in the Governor General’s Foot Guards. Why is that important to hospitality? In his second interview at the Chateau Laurier, the interviewer was a former Foot Guard. "That's pretty well all we talked about so, needless to say, I aced the interview and my hospitality career began,” said Hope.

• “The Fairmont Royal York is where my Sales career began. I started there as a telecommunications supervisor and on the first day of orientation I met Michele Bryan, who was starting her new job as the director of sales for the U.S. corporate market. We laughed and hit it off during orientation (if you know Michele you'll know that we probably disrupted the orientation by laughing so much) and when her coordinator position popped up I applied and, VOILA, I'm now in sales.”

• “I've received a call from Bill Marriott because I blew my numbers out of the water in one quarter, like over 300 per cent of my goal. I was the first person in the Marriott Canadian sales office to receive a call from Mr. Marriott. Also, Anita Kuhn, my director of sales at the time, had to tell me in advance that he was going to call so I didn't think it was a prank call (over my years there, I may or may not have made such prank calls to colleagues.)"