PUBLISHER'S VIEWPOINT
December 2001
Pizza in Milan, Beer in St. Louis

It has not been an easy year for those working in the global foodservice and lodging marketplace. Long before terrorist attacks here in the United States, other forces were impeding growth around the world. And they’ve affected the big worldwide players everywhere. Travel, whether for business or pleasure, is down. Unit expansion plans have been trimmed. We all feel a bit tentative about the future. It’s natural. But the forces that have driven the globalization of the restaurant and hotel business are also natural.

I’ve just returned from a week in Europe—Paris for Equip’Hotel and Milan, Italy, for Expo Tour. What truly surprised me was the sense of business as usual. Oh, everyone was concerned and sympathetic. Our European manufacturer customers all wanted the latest outlook for the U.S. market, the plans of the big chains. But the conversation quickly returned to business in the usual sense: global strategies, new products, how European equipment needs to adapt to the U.S. market, potential partners.

The American manufacturers were also out in force. It always amazes me how much of the market is a matter of American suppliers sourcing in Europe and Asia and vice versa. And fortunately, the operator customers—American and European—were present, too.

I stayed out in the banlieu (the Paris ’burbs) for Equip’Hotel. The show is now out in the big convention center in Roissy. Across the street from my hotel: 1) Carlson was building a Country Inn and Suites; 2) Dorint was building a four-star hotel; 3) Accor was building a suite hotel; 4) Marriott was erecting a Courtyard. This was in a quarter-mile stretch.

Don’t get me wrong: 2002 will be challenging nearly everywhere. We just received the latest Blue Chip Economic Indicators forecasts. Real GDP growth in Euroland, as they call it, is projected to be a meager 1.7% in ’02. And most of the developing countries with big tourism components in their economies have been severely affected.

But travel the world, and it quickly becomes apparent that the forces that have made foodservice global are here to stay. Why, on Tuesday, I was sitting at Lambert Field in St. Louis with a consultant and a school  foodservice director from Pennsylvania. We were chatting up the waitress, and we learned the concession operator is European. And I recalled that I had a slice of pizza from an Autogrill—which now owns Host Marriott Services—just four days before in Milan.

Cheers,

Robin Ashton
Publisher