Itineraries: Hotels Look to Stand Out in a Sea of Uniformity

At the Wyndham Grand Orlando hotel in Florida, meals are created with some of the latest culinary technologies, including anti-griddles, liquid nitrogen tanks and Pacojets. Guests at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara are trying out a new booth for soundproof worldwide teleconferencing. If these new features go over well with customers, they will stay.

The new offerings are part of a push among hotel companies to speed up the innovation process and to foster new ideas at the local level by testing them on-site and receiving quick feedback from customers.

“In the past, hotels would develop the new idea at headquarters using focus groups and research, and then roll it out,” said Berkita S. Bradford, assistant professor of hospitality and tourism management at St. John's University. “Now, they go right to their guests” to get the immediate feedback they can use to continue, modify or cancel the project.

On-site testing of new ideas is also happening on a hotel-by-hotel basis, as hospitality companies across the price spectrum encourage individual locations to express themselves and offer a local difference to their guests, said Steven A. Carvell, associate dean for academic affairs at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.

Until recently, the goal of a chain hotel was to deliver a consistent level of service that varied little, according to Jeff Semenchuk, Hyatt Hotels’ chief of innovation, so customers anywhere around the world knew what to expect. Procedures were dictated from the top and checklists were the focus, “but now there is a sameness across the industry,” he said, and some hotel operators and executives are looking for new ways to make their hotels stand out. “We’ve begun to ask managers to think about the experiences they want guests to have, not if they have the right amount of chairs in the conference room,” he said.

About a year ago, Hyatt Hotels started using nine of its hotels around the world as lab hotels, experimenting with new concepts and prototypes. Now Hyatt is encouraging local managers around the world to examine their customer feedback and test new ideas.

This has been a paradigm shift, Mr. Semenchuk said. “A year ago we didn’t talk about failure,” he said, but now, “we tell them fail fast, fail cheap and learn from it. Take a week, illustrate a concept, and try it.” Managers, he said, should share what they have learned and move on. Other hotel companies, like La Quinta, AKA and Affinia, are giving more latitude to local managers as well.

Many changes, of course, still come from the top, using broad-based data and cost analysis, because introducing something new can be expensive, Dr. Carvell said.

Managers at La Quinta Inns & Suites, a nationwide chain, saw that customer satisfaction scores on their free breakfast were the lowest among all its surveyed topics and lower than their competitors’ scores. The managers zeroed in on the two most common breakfast complaints, that there weren’t enough healthy choices and that guests had a hard time finding what they wanted. After testing different layouts and surveying guests, they found that by displaying the healthy foods they already offered more prominently, breakfast scores and overall satisfaction rose. “The answer was better organization and new signs,” said Julie Cary, who oversees marketing for La Quinta, adding that it was much easier to change than expanding kitchen facilities or offering a wider variety of products.

New ideas can change significantly from drawing board to final offering. Last year, for example, Hyatt tried expanding its replacement and loaner services for guests who needed items like chargers or toiletries, by creating a test kiosk in a hotel lobby to supply guests with forgotten items. They soon found that guests were stocking up on supplies, rather than taking just what they needed for an overnight stay, and some of the female guests told workers they were embarrassed to take personal hygiene items in a public setting. The hotel manager called the other lab sites that were about to start similar test kiosks and told them to halt construction.

Get Creative With Your Filings to Stand Out From the Crowd

Brief writing is so hemmed in with picayune rules, it's no wonder lawyers want to bust loose now and then. Required sections, word limits, margin width and font size -- not much is left to the imagination.

Perhaps fed up with all the rules, some lawyers have gotten creative. In 2011, appellate lawyer David Holman of the Holman Law Firm filed a motion asking the Texas Supreme Court to rehear its denial of a petition for review in Mabon Ltd. v. Afri-Carib Enterprises Inc. Confronting the problem facing all such movants -- the first effort at persuasion fell flat -- Holman devised a novel solution.

Ditching the usual, dry recapitulation of legal arguments, Holman created a fictional dialogue between an editor and reporter at the invented Corporate Counsel Quarterly.

"So you tell me that you have a story brewing in Texas?" the editor asked.

"I think so. It could be really bad for defendants in civil litigation," the reporter replied.

They go back and forth like this as the fake-but-dogged reporter lays out what's wrong with the lower court decision. The state Supreme Court granted the petition and reversed in 2012.

This recent ingenuity isn't limited to the written word. In litigation between ownership groups of the Dallas Mavericks, Tom Melsheimer of Fish & Richardson drafted a summary judgment motion disputing the plaintiffs' claim that Mark Cuban had mismanaged the team. Filed days after the Mavericks won the 2011 NBA Championship, the brief ran only 10 sentences but featured an enlarged photo of players jubilantly hoisting the championship trophy.

"Under Cuban's stewardship the Mavericks have become one of the league's most successful teams and are now NBA champions," Melsheimer wrote.

The court ruled for Cuban, and legal journal The Green Bag named the brief one of the best examples of legal writing in 2011.

One more recent example is "the illustrated amicus brief." According to a September 5, 2012, article on the legal website abovethelaw.com, a district court limited Bob Kohn, appearing as amicus in a major price-fixing case, to five pages for his objection to the parties' settlement. What to do?

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DealBook: On Witness Stand, Former Analyst Describes Insider Trading Scheme

Mike Segar/Reuters and Charles Krupa/Associated PressAnthony Chiasson, left, a co-founder of the Level Global Investors hedge fund, and Todd Newman, once a portfolio manager.

In 2008, Jesse Tortora, a junior tech-stock analyst, made $2.25 million, his best year at the hedge fund Diamondback Capital Management.

“It was a very good job,” said the defense lawyer Stephen Fishbein during his questioning of Mr. Tortora in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday.

“How would you define that?” Mr. Tortora asked.

“You liked being there,” Mr. Fishbein responded.

“No, I did not,” Mr. Tortora snapped back.

The fresh-faced Mr. Tortora, 35, also did not like being at the criminal trial of Todd Newman, his former boss at Diamondback, and Anthony Chiasson, the co-founder of the hedge fund Level Global.

But he sat in the witness box over two days this week, testifying dutifully as one of the government’s key cooperators in the case. Federal prosecutors have accused Mr. Newman and Mr. Chiasson of being the most senior members of an eight-person insider trading conspiracy that earned about $70 million by illegally trading technology stocks. Both men have denied they were part of any conspiracy and say that their underlings are using them as scapegoats to curry favor with the government and avoid prison.

Mr. Tortora, who has pleaded guilty along with five others, is the centerpiece of the government’s case against Mr. Newman. On Thursday morning, Mr. Totora described in his direct examination how Sandeep Goyal, a former tech-stock analyst at Neuberger Berman, fed him secret financial information about the computer maker Dell that he then passed on to Mr. Newman. Mr. Tortora said that Mr. Newman knew the information was confidential.

In perhaps the most incriminating part of Mr. Tortora’s testimony, he told the jury how Mr. Newman helped facilitate $175,000 in “consulting payments” to Mr. Goyal’s wife. Mr. Goyal had been unable to accept the payments directly because he was not allowed to receive outside compensation while employed at Neuberger.

During cross-examination, Mr. Fishbein, a lawyer for Mr. Newman, sought to portray Mr. Tortora as a disgruntled employee with an ax to grind. When the F.B.I. knocked on his door in late 2010, Mr. Tortora had already left the firm and had every incentive to throw his boss under the bus to protect himself, Mr. Fishbein suggested.

“Isn’t it true you understood that your ticket to freedom was to give evidence against Todd Newman?” Mr. Fishbein asked.

“No, that’s untrue,” Mr. Tortora said.

Mr. Tortora said that he resigned from Diamondback in April 2010 after the firm refused to give him “his own book” – a term for letting him manage his own pool of money. He also said that Mr. Newman was an “abusive boss” and that their relationship had deteriorated by the time he left.

There was testimony about a nasty phone exchange between Mr. Tortora and Mr. Newman around his departure date. Mr. Tortora acknowledged that he told Mr. Newman during the call, “You’re going to have to see me at conferences.”

Mr. Fishbein suggested that Mr. Tortora meant that as a physical threat, but Mr. Tortora denied that he meant it in that way.

The defense also tried to attack Mr. Tortora’s credibility by focusing on a disputed expense report that Mr. Tortora had submitted around the time he left. Mr. Tortora had claimed about $7,500 for a business trip to San Francisco, but the fund told him that it was only going to cover $6,100. Mr. Tortora acknowledged that his girlfriend traveled with him, accompanying him on many of his work excursions.

“We cannot reimburse you for magazines such as Life & Style and OK magazine,” wrote a Diamondback official. “Lastly, we do not reimburse for movies.”

Mr. Tortora said that Diamondback had never before had a problem with his expenses, but in the end agreed to reimburse the fund. “In the end, I accepted it and moved on,” he said.

After Mr. Tortora agreed to cooperate with the authorities, he recorded conversations with several of his friends in an effort to entrap them, he acknowledged. On one those calls, Mr. Tortora told Danny Kuo, a Los Angeles-based tech-stock analyst who has since pleaded guilty, that the government wanted to make Mr. Newman “the fall guy” and they wanted his help investigating him. Mr. Tortora testified that he was sticking to a “fictional” script fed to him by the F.B.I.

“You pushed the blame to Todd Newman,” Mr. Fishbein said. “You made stuff up, didn’t you?”

“I told the truth,” Mr. Tortora said.

As with nearly every trial, the testimony was plodding at times. The tedium apparently led a juror to request an extra jolt of caffeine. As Judge Richard J. Sullivan, who was overseeing the trial, excused the jury for their 10-minute afternoon break, he told Juror No. 1 that he had fulfilled his request to stock the jury room with Red Bull.

The trial resumes on Monday with more cross-examination of Mr. Tortora.

A Bar of Their Own: Korean-Americans Stand Up in Atlanta

Korean-American Bar Association members include, clockwise from lower left: Sara Hamilton, Alex Shin, Steve Park and June Towery.
John Disney, Daily Report

In a sign that Atlanta's Korean-American legal community is gaining critical mass, a group of lawyers of Korean descent has launched the Korean-American Bar Association of Georgia.

One impetus for forming the new bar association is to mentor younger lawyers, said Jeong-Hwa Lee "June" Towery, a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, who helped organize the group.

"For a few years I have been wanting to put the Korean-descent attorneys together for mutual support, information exchange and networking," said Towery, who is KABA Georgia's president.

"The main thing is the mentoring," she added. "Typically these are the first attorneys from their families and they don't have the exposure to lawyers. They can have a hard time adjusting to the big firm environment."

Towery said about 45 lawyers and law students came to KABA Georgia's first meeting in late August. About half the lawyers who attended were small practitioners serving Korean individuals, she said, and the other half work for corporate firms.

"The response was incredible," she said, noting that a lot of law students attended, including some who had driven to Atlanta from the University of Georgia in Athens.

Towery estimated that there are more than 100 lawyers and law students of Korean descent in the Atlanta area, with about 50 Korean lawyers in Gwinnett, where there is a large Koreatown, and another 30 or more in corporate Atlanta firms.

"There is a general feeling of trying to help people out," said Han Choi, a partner at Ballard Spahr, who is the new group's vice president. "We're trying to make sure younger Korean-American lawyers get some opportunities to meet people."

He and Towery said major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Washington and Chicago already have KABAs.

In Atlanta, the Georgia Asian-Pacific American Bar Association has been around since 1992, but until now there has been no bar association specifically focused on the growing Korean legal community.

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