ShareAs part of the 2020 Adrian Awards, HSMAI Hospitality Heroes is honoring hospitality professionals for their efforts to take a leadership position, champion a cause, or create a program that has directly benefited industry workers, medical personnel, first responders, or communities impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Nominations are open.
HOSPITALITY HERO: Mary Parks, director of sales for the Hilton Garden Inn Annapolis Downtown in Annapolis, Maryland, and an HSMAI member
CONTRIBUTION: From the beginning of the pandemic, Parks has kept herself busy — using the Hilton Garden Inn’s kitchen to bake chocolate-chip cookies for medical personnel, firefighters, and other first responders as well as personally making hundreds of masks for friends, colleagues, and people throughout Annapolis. But she took things even further when she created #Masks4Annapolis, a Hilton Garden Inn Annapolis Downtown–sponsored contest to encourage clients and partners to make masks for donation, with the hotel awarding prizes for the best ones. Parks enlisted Annapolis’ mayor, State Delegates Henson and Jones, State Senator Sarah Elfreth, and office of emergency management to help publicize the contest, and got members of Waldorf, Maryland–based rock band Good Charlotte to serve as judges.
RESULTS: The initial goal of #Masks4Annapolis was to make 2,000 masks over eight weeks, but within two weeks the initiative was on pace to exceed that. Learn more here.
NOMINATED BY: Rodrigo Arandia, regional director of sales – mid-Atlantic for OTO Development, which owns and manages the Hilton Garden Inn Annapolis Downtown — “Mary does this because she truly wants to do good and help others. She is simply an amazing human being.”
The HSMAI Adrian Awards have been honoring excellence in travel marketing for 64 years. Entry information for the 2020 Adrian Awards will be available soon. For more information, visit www.adrianawards.com.