Hospitality key to The Berkshires’ success

Berkshire County’s population of 130,458 needs to become ambassadors of goodwill for the future of Berkshire County.

If each of us – residents, commercial owners and those that have relocated to The Berkshires and offered a helping hand – do, The Berkshires could become the place to live and work.

There is one negative issue that circulates annually: You can work in the restaurant/bar segment, but you do not have to be nice to outsiders?

Yet, parents and friends tell those in the hospitality business the customers will buy and tip. Maybe so, maybe not.

We are today competing against a national and international hospitality trade. We can change out methodology and become consumers of goodwill and offer the hand of friendship to outsiders who may wish to relocate here after “Sandy” and other national tragedies like 9/11.

The time is here for change. It is an opportunity waiting to be developed.

We need to grow The Berkshires.

We need to have our visitors consider moving here and perhaps buying property. They don’t have to come from New York and New Jersey; they can come from the eastern and central parts of Massachusetts, the southern part of Vermont and the northern part of Connecticut.

Case in point: I was in the hospital when a nurse introduced me to a fellow worker from Melrose. She and her husband moved here to take jobs at Berkshire Medical Center, hers in radiology and his in the hospital’s finance department.

Asked why they moved here: The job. How do they like it? They love it, and it beats the traffic conditions on the north shore and the cost of living is lower here.

The kicker to this story is she lived at 18 Marmion Rd. and I grew up at 45 Marmion Rd., which had and has a horse pole in front of the house.

Was there an issue? No. It was simply a generation differential. I left, she moved in. We share the goodwill of Melrose and a time passed.

Today we call The Berkshires home.

Posted by George C. Jordan III on January 31, 2013. Filed under Editorials,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry