
I’ve never been on a cruise ship, and I’m not looking to change that any time soon. I realize that cruises are the ultimate vacation for some people, but they’re just not for me (especially after hearing about food poisoning outbreaks and the Costa Concordia disaster). Still, I respect the brilliance of the cruise ship. Travelers can sample a variety of destinations without having to think about logistics or anything else really. When you can combine hospitality, transportation, and gambling all in one, you have pretty good foundation for a business. The second largest cruise company in the world is Royal Caribbean Cruises, which is based in Miami, FL and owns the following cruise lines: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Pullmantur Cruises, Azamara Club Cruises and CDF Croisières de France. Those all contribute to nearly $7 billion in annual revenue.
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Mid-February is a great time for a vacation. It’s typically still really cold, but it’s late enough in the winter that you can reasonably expect that it might feel like spring when you get back home. Unfortunately, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, but if I was, I’d really like to use Inspirato. It’s a super high-end vacation club that offers members access to amazing residences in fantastic locations. The company is based in Denver, CO, but they have long-term leases on properties in places like St. Barts, Paris, Patagonia, Jackson Hole, Kenya, and Tuscany. For a meager $15,000 initiation fee and a $2,500 annual fee, you can access any of these properties. You still have to pay a nightly rate, but it’s well below what’d you pay if you were renting a similar property on your own (the average nightly rate is $650).
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Want to try Hotel Tonight? Use this link to get $25 off your first booking.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I either book hotel rooms way in advance or the day of. When I reserve a room in advance, I’m usually looking for more than just a place to sleep. Price is still important, but it’s not the most important thing. But when I need a room for tonight, I want a place that meets my minimum standards for the lowest price. As long as I can get a good night’s sleep without being bitten by bedbugs or woken up by a domestic dispute, I’m happy. It’s the latter situation that can be frustrating for bargain hunters. You know that the hotel is at 12% capacity, but they still won’t give you anything better than the AAA rate. As long as they can cover the cost of cleaning the room, they should be willing to take you. Hotel Tonight is a San Francisco, CA based company that is making it easy to get rooms for up to 70% off at the last-minute.
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Travel search engines are great. You can find the best rates for a place to stay in almost any location. The only problem is that the results can be a bit overwhelming. You have to do some serious research to make sure that the hotel that you picked isn’t a fleabag (or do we call them bedbug bags now?). And since it’s not uncommon to find a room in a luxury hotel for a price that is comparable to the price of a room in a lower tier chain, you might as well stay somewhere interesting and unique. So why not just limit your search to a curated list of luxury properties? That’s exactly what Tablet Hotels does. They’re a hotel booking site that offers access to great rates at a “tightly edited selection” of hotels. The company is located in New York, NY, and they’ve been around since 2000, so they’re experts when it comes to booking rooms at an affordable rate at some of the nicest hotels in the world.
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Cornell students! I’m on campus right now for the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration. I’ll be here through Monday, so e-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com if you like to meet up and pick my brain about careers or entrepreneurship.

So far I’m loving being back in Ithaca to connect with fellow Cornell entrepreneurs. I’ve met a ton of great people and learned about some really cool things that other alumni are working on. Yesterday I got to watch the finalists in the Cornell Venture Challenge pitch their businesses to investors and sit in on a panel about social entrepreneurship, but the best part was actually the keynote. I almost skipped it because I usually find those kind of talks boring, but I wanted to learn about Cornell’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” Harris Rosen. He is the President & COO of Rosen Hotels, and he is a fascinating guy. He came from meager beginnings in New York City, and somehow made it to Cornell. After going through a few jobs, he bought “a bankrupt 256-room Quality Inn in Orlando in 1974.” His company now owns 7 successful hotels in Orlando, FL that combine for 6,300 rooms. It may not be a massive chain like Marriott, Hilton, or Hyatt, but the business that Harris Rosen has built is just as impressive, if not more so.
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A few weeks ago I was able to escape Chicago just after the blizzard and spend a weekend in Miami Beach. My girlfriend’s company had a region-wide annual retreat, and significant others were invited–all expenses paid! I had a great time, mostly because I was with good friends and the weather was great. (I also got to go fishing. I caught a 70 lb tarpon and as I got it to the boat a 400+ lb shark came out from under the boat and ate it.) Another thing that made the trip great was the accommodations. We stayed at Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, FL (no need to say it with a French accent, Fountain Blue is ok), and they took care of many of the weekend’s events. The resort was beautiful, the staff was great, and the location was quite an upgrade from Chicago in February. My only complaint was that Fontainebleau’s grounds are so expansive that you do a lot of walking, and sometimes you get lost. Still, it was an awesome trip at an awesome resort (I even got a massage).
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Since it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, you may want to check out our post on The King Center from 2009. It also happens to be my anniversary with my girlfriend, which means that we’ll be going to a fancy dinner tonight. I try to stay up on the Chicago food scene as much as I can, and one way that I used to do that was by subscribing to TastingTable (though I must admit that I eventually unsubscribed even though the e-mails are really good). They send “a free daily email that delivers the best of food and drink culture to adventurous eaters everywhere.” The company is based in New York, NY, and beyond their national e-mail list, they also offer e-mail lists for New York City, New York Specials, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chef’s Recipes with lists for Boston, Philadelphia, and Portland coming soon. In the national e-mail they send “one delicious idea about dining, wine, cocktails, cooking or restaurant personalities” every day, while in their local editions they’ll “alert you to a must-try dish at a forgotten restaurant, a hot new bar that deserves its buzz, under-appreciated cook shops and neighborhood food purveyors who may otherwise go unnoticed.”
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Happy Thanksgiving! In past years we’ve taken a look at jobs at Pilgrim’s Pride, Jennie-O, and Plimoth Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg. This year we’ve been influenced by the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, so we’re going to take a look at entry level jobs at Macy’s. They’re headquartered in both New York City and Cincinnati, and they are “one of the nation’s premier retailers, with fiscal 2009 sales of $23.5 billion.” The company operates more than 810 stores across 45 states. Over the past decade or so they’ve absorbed a number of other retailers, but the Macy’s brand has reigned supreme—and I bet the popularity of today’s parade has had at least a little something to do with it.
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You know what’s awesome? Having one of your restaurants on The S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restauarants list. You know what’s even more awesome? Having two of your restaurants on the list. That’s the case for Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and its eponymous chef Thomas Keller. Per Se in New York City came in at #10, while The French Laundry in Yountville, CA came in at #32. Additionally Thomas Keller Restaurant Group owns and operates Bouchon Bistro, Bouchon Bakery, and Ad Hoc Restaurant (which are all in Yountville as well). I had the pleasure of dining at the latter for Brunch a few weeks ago, and it was fantastic (especially because we got dessert after breakfast in the form of fancy, but simple ice cream sandwiches). Thomas Keller is probably the biggest name in American fine dining, and he deserves it—he lives up to all the hype, which is hard to do when you have that much hype. Although each of Keller’s restaurants has a unique feel and purpose, they all share “the common desire to provide memorable experiences for every guest that visits.”
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One of my least favorite things about the “real world” is that summer doesn’t automatically mean vacation. Unless you’ve gone into teaching, you’re expected to keep showing up for work every day like it’s the middle of February—even if it’s totally beautiful out. The good thing is that “real world” summer usually lasts from May through early October (at least here in Chicago). Even though you have to keep going to work, your summer isn’t regimented by school’s start and end dates. Anyway, we all know that summer is really all about vacation, and for many that means hitting up a resort like The Balsams in Dixville Notch, NH. In the summer you can play golf or tennis, go kayaking or mountain biking, take a hike, or just relax. In the winter there’s skiing, sleigh rides, snowshoeing, snow mobile races, and I’m sure fireplaces to warm up near. It’s an old school New England inn with modern luxuries and fine dining. I’ve never been there, but I know the style—and I like it.
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I don’t know if you’ve ever spent anytime on the Appalachian Trail, but if you haven’t, you should. The trail stretches from Georgia to Maine, while the range of mountains touches as far south as Alabama and as far north as Newfoundland. It’s 1,500 miles of natural beauty that is prime territory for naturalists and adventurers. Back in 1876 there was a club called the Appalachian Mountain Club started in Boston for people who enjoyed the range. Now the club consists of more than 12 chapters and 100,000 members—it’s the “nation’s oldest outdoor recreation and conservation organization.” They’re still based in Boston, and they’ve developed into a non-profit that promotes “the protection, enjoyment, and understanding of the mountains, forests, waters, and trails of the Appalachian region.”
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Be sure to check out our new contest, Maghound Your Way to a New Job. We’re giving away two one-year subscriptions to an awesome new magazine subscription service that can help you find a job.

In continuing with my obsession over jobs at Inc. 5000 companies (which fits in perfectly with our latest giveaway), we’re going to take a look at Blue Entertainment Sports Television today. They’re a Louisville, KY based “full-service sports and entertainment management, event and production company.” They’ve taken the unified agency approach that you often see in Marketing and Advertising, and have applied it to sports. That means that their areas of work include representation, marketing, promotion, hospitality and events. Their strategy seems to be pretty solid considering that their revenue has grown 4,685.3% over the past three years to $22.9 million.
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Good startups create tools that people use. Great startups change the way people do things. Take eBay for example. Yes, people have always bought and sold junk, but eBay enabled people to buy and sell junk all across the world. By expanding the market for your junk, eBay made it worthwhile to sell stuff that would otherwise be collecting dust. San Francisco’s AirBnB hopes to be the eBay for space. Now, they’re not talking about outer space. They mean that spare bedroom that you never use. They want you to rent out your extra space, and they will help you find someone to rent it (read their FAQ for how it works). It could completely change the way that people on a budget travel… or it could be a total flop, but you have to love the idea.
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When I moved to Chicago last year, just days before my 24th birthday, my parents decided that they wanted to treat me to a truly amazing Chicago experience to start off my life in the city right. They took me and my girlfriend to a dinner at Charlie Trotter’s, one of the finest restaurants in Chicago and the world. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, Trotter’s is usually found somewhere on Restaurant Magazine’s list of the Top 50 Restaurants in the World (although they seem to have dropped off the list this year).
When I dined at Charlie Trotter’s I chose the Grand Menu, which is an 8-course tasting menu. Although the menu is constantly changing, I had the pleasure of enjoying: Prince Edward Island Oysters with Sea Water & Pickled Daikon; Chilled Snow Lake Trout with Roe, Watercress & California Crayfish; Four Story Hill Farm Quail with Spring Onions, Chanterelle Mushrooms & Chorizo; Grilled Nantucket Bay Scallop with Boudin, Pig’s Tail & Fennel; Forty Eight Hour Braised Short Rib with Lobster Mushrooms & Fermented Black Garlic; Concord Grape Sorbet with Grape Leaf & Parsnip; Honey Crisp Apples with Cider Granite & Ginger Jelly; and Black Mission Figs with Shaved Fruit Cake, Marcona Almonds & Pedro Ximenez. It was an amazing meal that took food to a level that I didn’t know it could reach.
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My first introduction to William Shatner was watching Rescue 911. Little did I know that his body of work extended far beyond narrating a show about real life heroes. I imagine today’s children will have an equally narrow view of William Shatner’s career, as they’ll know him as “Priceline Negotiator.” (Can you read those words without hearing the corresponding tune? I can’t.) Anyway, the whole idea behind William Shatner’s newest role – besides his doing the commercials in return for stock – is that Priceline.com will negotiate the best deals on travel-related items like hotels, car rentals, and airline tickets. They also have a “name your own price” model that used to be the core of their business, but now Priceline has widened its focus to discount travel in general.
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Having a girlfriend who is a consultant, I’m often subjected to hours of consultant-speak. It’s not really English, as it consists mostly of acronyms. One thing consultants seem to talk about a lot, even though they don’t have an acronym for it, is the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Card. It’s apparently by far the best credit card for the consulting lifestyle (especially when you work for a firm that almost exclusively puts you up in Starwood hotels). Since I’ve been hearing the Starwood name a lot, and I’ve had a few people recommend their Jobs to me, I thought it was time to take a look at what kind of entry level jobs are available with one of the world’s largest hotel and leisure companies. In case you’re not familiar with the Starwood brand, they’re the company behind Sheraton, Four Points, aloft, W Hotels, Le Meridien, The Luxury Collection, Element, Westin, and St. Regis. All of them are nice places to stay, and a few of them are about as trendy as you can get when it comes to hotels – check out aloft.
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Yesterday I told you how my move to Chicago has extended my baseball watching season, but I’m not sure that I mentioned that I have tickets to today’s Cubs game! I’m pretty excited about it, although I’m not excited about the fact that it might get into the 40s tonight during the game. October baseball is not for fair weather fans – the types who might prefer a catered event at the stadium to a real baseball game. Whether you’re a fair weather fan, an insanely devoted fan who just wants to be as close to your team’s stadium as possible at all time, or even if you just enjoy fine dining, a job with Levy Restaurants might be something worth thinking about. They’re a company that is all about hospitality and dining experience, and they happen to do catering/events at some pretty amazing venues – Wrigley and U.S. Cellular Field included.
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The idea for today’s post came straight from a reader and friend. She graduated a few months ago and has been looking for entry-level jobs in event planning since. She told us about one company that she was really excited about, but asked us not to post about it until she was either working for them or had landed another job. She recently landed a job doing exactly what she wants to do (big congratulations to her), so we’re free to tell you about hip consulting group, a boutique event management firm. They definitely offer internships, and they seem amenable to hiring new grads, so they’re definitely worth a look for anyone who has an interest in event planning.
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Waiting tables isn’t what most new college grads want to do with the degree they (or their parents) just spent 5 to 6 figures on. In most cases that makes sense, but with the Chicago based Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises even jobs waiting tables can lead towards a career in restaurant management. LEYE is a restaurant empire – they have over 70 restaurants and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 employees. Restaurant management is tough when you have one location to watch over, but somehow founder and CEO Richard Melman has been able to repeatedly launch and then manage successful restaurants.
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It seems like security lines at airports are either hit or miss. You’re through in a few minutes, or you’re waiting somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour to be x-rayed, questioned, prodded, and possibly poked. There’s probably a middle ground too, but you never seem to remember those experiences. You’ll often hear people say that they’d pay a lot of money to not have to wait in security lines. Well you can buy a private jet and avoid security completely, or you can invest $100 a year in a Clear Card. It won’t actually allow you to skip the security line, but it will definitely speed up the process. Someone should invent a “Clear Resume” that gets you an interview without all the hassles of cover letters, job applications, and screening phone calls.
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Most CEOs have resumes that include business school, many of years of experience, and boring lists of financial accomplishments. How would you like to work for a company where the CEO’s proudest accomplishments are his being named Bon Appetit Chef of the Year and International Food and Beverage Forum Restauranteur of the Year? Michael Mina of the Mina Group is just that CEO – Chef Executive Officer (sorry, that is a horrible pun). Making deals, like any CEO should, Mina formed a partnership with Andre Agassi, the tennis star, in 2002 that has resulted in the launch of a line of high end concept restaurants.
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If you consider going fishing after work and being in bed by 10 a night well spent, then working at Orvis will be perfect for you. Ditto if you enjoy helping your co-workers train their dogs on your lunch break. How do I know? I spent the summers after my sophomore and junior years as an intern in the Human Resources Department. Why did I pick Orvis? Because I am a life long fly fisherman and I love their products.
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Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and you told your sweetheart that you’d make a reservation and take care of the dinner plans. You forgot/procrastinated. You’re one of those people who is petrified by phone interactions. For some reason the simple task of picking up a phone and dialing a restaurant to make a reservation intimidates you to no end. Shoot, you stared at the phone for 3 hours before you built up the courage to call your date to ask him or her out in the first place. Why can’t you just make a reservation online?
If you’re going to be an effective job searcher, you should probably try to get over this phobia before your first phone interview. Calling around for reservations might be good practice, but we understand that Valentine’s Day can be stressful enough. We’ll let you off the hook just this once. You can use OpenTable.com, a site that lets you make reservations at some of the best restaurants in the country with the click of the mouse. All you need to do is enter your location and the date and time you’d like to book, and they’ll show you what’s still available in your area. It might even save you from completely blowing Valentine’s Day.
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At this point in December, we hope most of you are done with exams and home for Winter Break. This is a great time for you to relax, subscribe to One Day, One Job, and start looking for great job ideas. Your Mom will probably want you to figure out what you want to do after college by spending 8 hour days cruising job boards, working on your resume, and calling her friends so that you can “network.” We think you should go on vacation – even if it’s just a day trip somewhere. Expose yourself (not that way, perv) to complete strangers in places you’ve never been before. Strike up random conversations. See a cultural attraction that fascinates you. Eat a new type of ethnic cuisine. Observe everything that you experience in the context of your job search.
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