Find below the special comments delivered by Fred Tibbitts at FTA's Hong Kong 2006 Dinner Event:

Why We Come Together

I would like to share with you my thoughts on “Why We Come Together” for these FTA business dinners.  We hold these business dinners to celebrate our hospitality industry in New York City and across Asia for our common good and of course to celebrate and recognize excellence in hospitality.

But the deeper purpose of why we come together is really at the very heart of why the hospitality industry is so special to so many of us who have come to consider it our calling.

Hospitality is all about service and in particular SERVICE EXCELLENCE: Service to others.  For service is truly the highest calling.  It is not what we do for ourselves, but what we do for others that is the measure of our worth to humanity and ourselves.

So I would ask you to reflect on just these five thoughts as we are together this evening as ONE:

Everything and everyone is connected: We are ONE: We are not separate from one another; so live your lives with an open heart without qualification and treat everyone as though they were your closest family at all times.  Honor and respect all others.

Service is the highest calling: Serve the least of humanity with compassion and reverence as though you were in the presence of royalty: For in fact the least of us are the closest to the energy of the universe.

Act based on what is the right thing to do: Not what appears to be most to your immediate advantage.

Practice relieving the suffering of all others by wishing that you can suffer for them.

And finally, try not to fill your day chasing after all that you can take: Instead, receive what is given.

Namaste.