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Presence Without Substance: A Straight Red Card

Albert BarraAugust 13, 2018 · 3 min read
THE IDEA

A reflection on the boredom created by irrelevant content at industry events and across social media, and why hospitality professionals are becoming more selective about what they read and who they follow.

Presence Without Substance: A Straight Red Card
Today I read an article that many of us could have written ourselves. The article bears the emphatic title “I’m bored…” and I think it has a point. If I were in the same situation, I would be bored too. I am referring to the number of spam events whose invitations flood our inboxes and refer to “something that is changing”. It is true: I too am bored by the lack of content at such events, just as I am bored by the fact that blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. fail to generate relevant content worth paying attention to. Valuable contributions are scarce, truly scarce. Sometimes I get the feeling that everything that needed to be said was said long ago, and that insisting on it again would be repetitive. Perhaps that is why the frequency of articles on this blog has fallen considerably. Call it workload, call it lack of motivation, or perhaps call it a lack of interest in belonging to this universe of recycled-content contributors. There are few events I attend, limiting my appearances to those where I am speaking, and even then, I also limit the number of speaking engagements I accept. Last Friday I had the opportunity to take part as a speaker at the Instituto de Empresa Corporate Identity Conference, and although some people there may also have been bored, it left me with the feeling that useful and interesting events leave behind. It is true that it is tiresome to hear “something is changing” so often and so repeatedly, but I also understand that if someone is left feeling that they either need more content or have something to contribute, they can speak up when given the opportunity and ask whatever question they wish or make whatever contribution they wish. I do not think it is reasonable to leave and then criticise the event afterwards. Of course, among those of us who provide services to hotels, with greater or lesser success, it is especially ‘cool’ to criticise the content of others as a way of appearing to be above it. The point is that ‘I am bored too’ and, for that reason, just as I stopped attending conferences some time ago, I am also becoming increasingly selective about what I read and the people I follow on Twitter. Those who know me personally are aware of this and of the detailed reasons behind it, but as I concluded my presentation on Friday:
Having a presence without showing substance generates rejection or exclusion.
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