 Live on YouTube and there as well. All right Hello friends, we're gonna get started in just one moment We're gonna let the room fill up a little bit. We want to thank you tonight for being here on a Unusually warm San Francisco night. It's been gorgeous weather here lately We want to thank Our friends the San Francisco Public Library always for being part and sponsoring and helping for what we do around here Thank you, Ed Fuller and Gary Grossman for being here as well. And let's get on with some library news and announcements The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the raw Mutushaloni peoples Who are the original inhabitants of San Francisco Peninsula? We recognize that the raw Mutushaloni understand the interconnectedness of all things and I have maintained harmony with nature for a millennia As the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the raw Mutushaloni have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for all people who reside in their traditional territory as Uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the raw Mutush community We must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record indigenous knowledge and care for San Francisco and all of its peoples All right, and just some other upcoming amazing news. I also put In the chat box. I'm going to put it in there right now for folks a link to tonight's document that has That land acknowledgement that I just read as well as links to upcoming news and events at SFPL and links to tonight's presenter and how you can get their book I'm really happy about partnering with Zizava San Francisco's journal and letter A quarterly publication who have been running for a very long time. So come check this out September 29th number 121 the family issue and we'll have readers from this issue And this will be in zoom partnering with moad for woolly shoyinka September 30th at noon a lunchtime event also amazing person Um tomorrow night. We are started. We have started some ways started celebrating fever already latinx heritage month and you can come in person tomorrow night at the main library the beautiful sixth floor skylight gallery area under the nautilus and view the poets and listen to the poets from floria kanto who is a literary organization working to preserve the literary arts on the 24th street quarter of the mission here Sunday, we have author haimi cortez in combo with yosimar reyes amazing humans again And this is all part of our viva next week carolina de robertas and julian Julian delgado lo opera So so excited for those two amazing humans as well And just like I said, we have so much coming up for viva And then starting in october we head right into filipino american history month super excited again lots of great events with authors poets cooking We have a nine author panel, which is going to be just Whoo, it's going to be an intense one all amazing Are on the same page this uh september and october, which is san francisco public's libraries By monthly read encouraging you all to read the same book is carla cornejo de la vencencio's book the undocumented americans And she will be in combo with jonathan blitzer on the 26th of sept october All right, and the last literary push for tonight sf chronicles total sf book club our third event And this too the corrett auditorium. It says the corrett auditorium. We're having an event in the corrett auditorium i'm so excited This will be our first event in the corrett and i mean since you know the pandemic closures And it too will also be streamed. So you don't have to miss it. We are doing hybrid And all right without further ado tonight we are excited to have Gary Grossman and ed fuller and they are behind the red hotel series um pretty interesting stories and i mean interesting stories is how they The two of you have come together to do this. I like that part of this Ed fuller is a ceo of laguna strategic advisors a global consortium providing business consulting services worldwide He has served on both businesses and charitable boards during his 40 year career with marriott international Where he was chief marketing officer followed by 22 years as president and managing director of marriott international Gary grossman's first novel executive action propelled him into a world of geo political thrillers Executive treason executive command and executive force further tapped grossman's experience as journalist newspaper columnist documentary television producer reporter and media historian all right Mr. Grossman and mr. Fuller Take it over Thank you very much Gary do you want to start with? Discussion of how we got together and then we can go from there Great introduction there from a lane Thank you. Thank you. And uh, then we can play the trailer too because we do have a trailer for our uh our book It's a good way to kind of kick things off. Maybe we go to that first ed. Is that Sure enough. Okay Stand by i'm just going to share my screen for a moment And hopefully everyone is Uh, hold on one second Uh, gonna share the screen one more time make sure everything is Right and it is And we're going to see our trailer for red dissection What the hell happened riley Elizabeth I was on the bridge when the truck exploded This is right out of the report that I drafted for you and then the attack in dc Someone in your office leaked this It came from inside The terrorists followed it chapter and verse I'm sorry, but there's going to be more Who rightly? The question is not who The question is why? And the answer to that They want to keep You're right. We're locked. Oh, I think we might have lost gary. Oh his screen is still there I'm gonna ring him real quick. He may be enjoying the video And I'll go up to the there we go last page And there you go. Okay Imagine the music still playing Okay Well, uh, we are very honored to be here and lovely seeing people piling into and watching on YouTube and other portals Whoops, okay, I gotta clear that out. Hold on Well, I'm gonna tell the story of gary and compliment him so we don't lose Any time for you tonight and to Let technology go its way Sounds good Gary and I have been working together since I retired from merit in 2012 He'll tell the story of how we met I kind of filled in gary while you were gone You will not believe what I told them about shoes. So Why don't you pick up the how we met story and we'll get going? Okay in my apologies. Um The still, you know, a lot it's like live tv anything can happen Ed and I met through a very interesting way and I would call it a james bond story That comes true I was walking our dog who I just let out a few minutes ago The door here, uh, and I bumped into a neighbor's name is bruce fierstein lives in the neighborhood actually And he was walking his dog named shadow our dog is tames And kind of interesting that his dog is named shadow because of the kinds of things that bruce fierstein writes He was the screenwriter of the first three pierce brosnan james bond movies Why not have a dog that sounds like he's a spy? And bruce, uh bumped into me. It's a gary. I'm so glad to see you tonight because there's a fellow I'd like you to meet he is on a board with me at boston university And uh, he's interested in finding a collaborator to write a novel Well, I thought that's interesting. I've not collaborated with anyone yet in terms of novels, but uh Sure, tell me more about him bruce said Well, he is the former president of marriott international He thought wow I have a marriott. I have marriott points. They stay at marriott But what could I possibly have in common with the former president of marriott? And he said you have to meet with him well, I did and within I don't know less than 30 seconds. I realized that ed was as much in the anti-terrorism business as the hotel business His properties marriott and ritz Were attacked in In chicarta and they had to deal with the aftermath and learn from that Getting getting guests out of chiro at the fold mubarak and likewise when kadafi fell in triply He was the real deal and I was sitting across the table from him And I think ed if I remember correctly my first question to you was So who do you have on speed dial? And I don't recall you told me at that moment But I realized that that speed dial list was very long And we reached across the table and shook each other's hands and we've been working together ever since And so we work as a pair And quite frankly, I couldn't have a better partner who has become really a great friend. So this has already Had a benefit right there Gary and I have different backgrounds and role His producer role was critical in helping to understand some of his theories and writing And as gary says i'm the storyteller I had done a book while I was working for marriott Which was a business book Which is called you can't lead with your feet on the desk, which is gary's cube And it was strictly a business book But I could do that But when it came to writing a novel which I wanted to do when I retired just to have fun with it The the skill was not totally there. I can tell a story, but I cannot Make the story fit together And so gary became in my mind a chef An individual who could really make the booty base come together And not get lost and all those secret flavors worked together So we combined stories We also worked on theories on what we wanted the book to tell you But we wanted to have fun doing it. Well, that's a big accomplishment. That's already done We're currently working on our third book and already thinking about the fourth and we've been very excited about the results and Big interest in the audio portion has really increased some interest in the second book Because it came out a little late It is now available so all in all We have had that working relationship and uh, he's the Chef and I'm the storyteller And so you want to invite us to camp site We're pretty good together And every time Ed and I get together I learn more about the inner workings of security Inner workings of keeping people safe and the inner workings of smart people who Are smart enough to work with intelligence agencies all around the world And what you'll read in red deception Is basically flying off the front page and and the cable news and the network news It begins with an attack on america's infrastructure And america's infrastructure today basically gets a c-minus. We are woefully behind fixing our bridges and roads Our water systems without something like 148 thousand individual water systems around the country with very little national regulation And the information to attack those water systems is as easy as going to well The san francisco public library or the los angeles public library or the new york public library because so much of the information is right there and How to break into someplace? We're not trying to present a a novel that's a how-to book In fact, there are things that we know that ed has experienced that we don't put in so it's not a how-to book But we do know in the case of red deception america's infrastructure is vulnerable now who's after it In our story and it won't be too much of a spoiler alert our stand in for bladamere poop and that's character named Gorshkov, micolai gorshkov He wants to do what bladamere poop wants to do. He wants to rebuild What was the old soviet union? He wants the the eastern bloc nation's back has protection from nato And he wants a whole hell of a lot more And some of it began with red chaos and it continues in red deception It'll continue. I'm sorry sort of it started in red hotel the first book It'll continue in red deception and continue with red chaos And the real secret the real secret sauce the real fun that I have to work with Is that so many of the stories are based on ed fuller's actual experiences? and hair raising To me breathtaking things that he's done to ensure the safety of people around the world So at number one the name The red hotel Red hotel being the first book Really comes from a need we attained early in my Arrival in 1990 on the responsibility for the international hotels And that was driven almost totally By the fact that we had a Well, we had a hotel. We still have the hotel in cancun, but the entire executive committee was kidnapped And so this was 1990 And I just come on board And here I was trying to help our people down there solve the problem Now we haven't used that story. So i'm not going to go any deeper But the fact was that said to me and said to my staff We need to get plans. We just can't sit here You would be amazed that i've been teaching at uci That not more than a few years ago Did a major corporate hr come up to me? And say we don't have a crisis plan And you all know this company and i'm not going to put them on the spot We don't have a crisis plan and we just had a crisis in indonesia Where the plant was under attack from the employees inside and out We brought an indonesian army unit over recovered the plant And our guy paid the army some 20 000 dollars And guess what? That's against the law for the americans to pay A government agency under the terms of foreign corrupt practices And he says i need help So i helped him But the point to these stories is not legal systems per se But having fun As readers of thrillers Of trying to figure out some of the twists and turns And angles I had lunch today with a friend. He just finished red deception and i said He said i'm here to find out which one of these stories Are the same story that you told Now we're not going to let you out of the hook here and give you that lead But he came up with four stories Three out of the four came from real experience and the fourth one did not it came from gary Twisting the knobs and making things come together and i said number four is strictly us working together But gary's writing in hand And he he said it's just amazing so i'll give you Maybe one example because it's short Uh that happened not long after the mexico incident um general noriega and panama some of you may remember this some of you may not The attack from the united states on noriega was to really get controlled the panama canal back And address an american population of retirees in the country The problem became immediately when we put troops in that land noriega of course was retaliating against americans and he sent his troops to the most frequently used but obviously all the hotels in panama with the direct orders to Get hold of the americans and bring them to me so we can hold them as a form of hostage so they our general manager Was back in the u.s. Having an open heart surgery That was required very quickly and so the team was all panamanian and The resident manager was leading the hotel And sure enough he saw the troops coming He knew they were going to come He then led them through the hotel They happened to machine gun every room without stopping and checking And i was down there about oh, let's say 48 hours later And i can tell you that that was true because the holes were in every room and then He took them down And he showed them the back of the house housekeeping food and beverage prep and then through the laundry Nobody was there they left In fact, we had 63 guests And what they had done was put the guests in the laundry in the tumblers in the dryers and Just put them in Put dirty laundry in so there was good enough smell if they opened up the bins and All 63 were hidden We eventually got some support Which is a total difference another story that we won't bore you with right now And we haven't used gary And that whole thing came together So everyone got out of the country And they weren't all americans some were european But the fact is they were safe And that continued to focus us on keeping safe So going back to the red hotel the u.s During right after 9 11 formalized A color coded security system Which you may not even know what level we're at And I haven't checked in about a month but might take a look one night And that worked in the united states But we were in 73 different countries ultimately And uh, if anybody can come up with the u.s color, I think it's orange, but you'll have to tell me And so we developed an entire protocol For different levels of protection in our hotels throughout the world Now I couldn't have I can tell you that story But I needed to blend I would need it to blend Into a real story That goes through the red hotel To really red deception And that's why the red theme That stays with these books Gary kind of gave away the title of the next book. It's called red chaos We're not talking about the fourth book at this point though. We we needed to Come up with the start of the fourth book to be able to end the third book without any Errors in trying to bring the two together Now people will ask if If the lead character dan riley is ed fuller And in many ways he is I think ed maybe more handsome and debonair But we're working on making dan riley all those things Now dan riley is the is the uh, is the guy who is out there around the world looking out for trying to Outthink the bad guys and you know as thriller writers if we think of what could possibly happen We have to know that Rogue nations and and bad figures around the world are thinking those things And to that point after 9 11, I really find this very interesting After 9 11 among the first people who were called into washington To the pentagon and to the cia to the to the white house to the state department Were they military experts? Well, no, they were thriller writers. They were authors Was before I was writing novels But they were thriller writers. They were screenwriters They were people like bluestpierstein who wrote those first three pierce brosnan james bond novels They were the people who were thinking the unthinkable And I think washington and the rest of the country woke up realizing if we're not thinking what's unthinkable Then we're not going to be able to come up with What's next? And what's really interesting about working with ed and sitting down and plotting a book And then writing with him is that he's teaching me to think well, who's behind that next door? Who is plotting in a small way, you know, if you I mentioned the water supply before Uh, is it possible to poison all of the water in the in the country? Absolutely not Is it possible to create enough fear that we won't know what to trust? Whether it's going to a 7 11 or at a restaurant or what comes out of our own well If we're if we're living in a rural area That's very possible and with things like that with people doing and and coming up with plots like that And I mean real like plots not a plot in a novel We've got to be thinking How do we fight that how do we prepare against it and infrastructure right now is at the top of everyone's mind It's certainly congress debating it. There really should be very little debate about what we need We live in san francisco. You live in a city relying on bridges in los angeles. We are relying on roads and overpasses What kind of thinking are the bad guys doing about that? Well ed has taught me and and because I write from the comfort of my computer which i'm sitting in front of with contacts in government in cia in law enforcement But ed deals with and i'm still convinced you do ed deals with them directly and did For the safe operation of hotels all around the world I I I have things yet to learn ed who's on speed dial You'll have to come over again and look first to find the speed dial And because I still have the old fashioned one That I can flip through Okay But gary gary's right about some really critical things My favorite by the way, I appreciated your comments gary, but i'm the older version of dan not the younger And uh smarter than dan hopefully and uh the key thing for me is My favorite carrier or character is of course vladimir putin And I use his name literally like that And applies that But the experience that I share with you and through the book Comes from 22 years running that international division Which took me to 150 countries and operated in 73 Every country with its own culture Every country with its own challenges every country with situations That overlap to the point that we had 52 hotels in red zones While we were operating That number has increased with the acquisition of sharon and starwood But marriott during that time Was not the original target But we became a target as we grew as we got larger in scope And we had at least three hotels Which the police well actually you can say four because one of them was hit Our first one to be hit was really in cyprus, which is saralan cut today And that was five hotels successfully hit That was our italian restaurant, which got me off italian food for a short while And then the other four the police Told us very clearly When we got the people in the room and behind the table They said we went to the marriott or renaissance first To try to get in And we could not figure out how to Successfully we may get in but we weren't going to get out and we weren't sure we could achieve the mission And that was mum bye When they chose other locations that included athens greece That included jordan to a huge significant amount And i mentioned cyprus But it also dealt with some other indian cities That luckily we never got hit in also And puna The uh, which is the educational center of india We had a clear attempt on our courtyard there And ultimately they gave up And what happened in most cases But we have to convince the owners That if they did not bring up the standards to our standard They weren't going to be in our system We put safety of our employees safety of our a guest number one And that's bill marriott. This isn't an This isn't ed fuller creating it. It was a philosophy of the company And we built systems to ensure That they were safe When they were in a marriott hotel When we found errors and when you work in all these different countries, you're going to make an error Most of these countries didn't know what marriott even met When you find errors you change them fix them recreate them So when we had the explosion and jacarta that gary mentions That was a very interesting situation From a perspective of somebody planning And gives you an idea how in much they invested The florist in the hotel In the marriott and the ritz carlton But his office was in the marriott Was a vendor was not an employee of the hotel He developed such great relationships throughout the hotel the security team And he brought in through the back dock His daily need of palm trees and whatever And of course he you can see him on tape friendly wave and the guards waving back so When the attack occurred He had built the two detonation bombs with a vest And the two bombers came in checked in One in the marriott won the ritz At the time they went over to the marriott picked up their vests And went to sleep the next morning They came down the bomber going back to the ritz these hotels were connected by tunnel Went back to the ritz and blew The restaurant up With several guests in the hotel And then the other bomber went to a chamber of commerce meeting American chamber of commerce And took out people that I knew from the first bombing I happened to be in vietnam at the time so I was at the hotel by that afternoon and so My security guy was there at that time Alan or a lob who you might recognize in the book as alan cannon And uh, he was there when the bombs went off in the hotel And acted appropriately But the point was How did that happen? And I would leave that question with you But i'm gonna let you off the hook because gary just winked at me to go ahead And that is very clear that the florist Was bringing in the parts in the plants And our guys would look on top of the plant maybe even run their hand through the soil But the items were well deeper in the containers And at that point we said Without dogs We're not going to be able to really find these kinds of Challenges which took me to a new education called dogs and I I was delighted to find out that security dogs that looked for bombs have a 45 minute work period And then their union calls and they go over to the the hotel that we built for the dogs A fairly space a spacious one And then they take a break and the next shift comes on We also found through some And gary i missed the punna story. I'm sorry We found some things that found potential bombers Using both the dogs and observation But the key to the whole program is that you want to protect your associates your guests And make sure That your hotel is safe And it requires a team Ed Ed was there in the field and the field it was all the countries that he was talking about Danger zones and hot spots But his team was the head of security his team were the Operatives who were law enforcement in those countries. Sometimes the team ends up being What the cartel that you have to work with to to get people out safely? There were kidnappings of staff that you had to negotiate people's Return and these stories These stories are real but unlike a james bond or a born novel or a born movie Where it's just basically one guy doing it The thing I I learned from ed and i'll get to a question that is up here too Is something that I'd also learned from my dad who was in law enforcement in new york state And that is if you see something say something share the information with other people It's what didn't happen a lot prior to 9 11. Can you imagine? Somebody comes in you're running a flight school. Somebody comes into your flight school and they say I want to learn how to Fly the plane. Okay. Here's what we do to teach you how to fly a jumbo jet And here's what you you you do here's what we'll teach you to to land the plane and to take it off No, no, no, no, I'm only interested in knowing how to how to fly the plane Not land or take off wouldn't that make you if you were in that job think I better tell somebody I better share that information. I better call the fbi which by the way ed has relationships with and They vetted elements the very beginning of our next book and they've read it You've got to really you've got to share the information. You know you know And getting to and there are just a couple of questions up here. I'll take one ed. You can take the next What is your process and this is from bill? What is your process from gathering? Ed's information Questions to getting them to publishing. How do I form that? How do we form that? Well, we meet we meet regularly in person Through the pandemic a lot of it's been certainly on zoom and zoom chats but Ed and I will go through Plot, okay How do we want to go from here to here and then we try to think about what stories of eds will work into them and and what really What kind of action can really be very helpful in in telling that story and god knows there's 22 years worth of stories that has had that ed has whether it's it's getting people as you'll see in red deception Again, not giving away too much But if you have three buses in order to get people out of a danger zone And you load those buses up you better make sure that one of the drivers hasn't lost the key In the middle of a battle And you'll read that in danger zone So that's the process then we write and we go back and forth I'll do a draft send it to ed He'll read it more notes back Come up with ideas that we plant within the book Things add more action Add more suspense. I mean things come in action suspense intrigue and character And and often we'll say well, you know, we could have another character here That that can move things along and there's also what we Call sex being an ash It's espionage that the russians have played very successfully in that game has had the greeks and the romans as does the united states And there are characters who will use that there's a a Russian general former russian general in the kgb who now lives in the united states oleg kalugin and he says Um Very well known statement in russia Um, well, I'll start with america in america You train your men and your armed forces to stand up for their country in russia. We train our women to lay down And that's the sexy and uh sex being our side now ed. There's a question. It actually works into uh red hotel It's about cyber crime. Do you ever feature a cyber crime in your books? Ed, have you experienced cyber crime in your career? In our situation We are describing a period of time That a lot of different things have occurred You're specifically asking about cyber crime impacting our hotels I can assure you that sometimes the crime is not the criminal It's the government of that country Uh, I was in miramar and I got a call from our cfo from washington and uh, he said I need to go over these budget issues because you're all the way over there and We were going through them on the phone and it went a little over an hour I came down to the gm's table where we were having lunch and the gm was in hysterics He says you have caused the government turmoil Because their tape recorder only goes 45 minutes and you went over another half hour And so he says they're scrambling around trying to get another tape linked up to our lines That was back in the 90s. I'm sorry. That was back in 91 or 92 When you didn't have the technology level we do today but I can take you also to a situation today where within Well, let's use the Beijing Olympics The Beijing Olympics you've got to remember certain hotels Are totally wired And that means when you're in that hotel Everybody Is being watched or overheard through a significant system? And again, you might have surprised if a key word Kind of puts an emphasis on that room nothing surprising there and Even when I retired in 12, I can identify five countries That every time I was on the phone or at that time computer I was being screened and they were either holding keeping or maintaining That material that I had When you got to Beijing you've got to remember The secret police Are the key authority in that city But your own security department Is also The authority in that city Because they work for the secret police They don't work for the hotel company even though they're paid by them But their leadership is And when we were getting ready to go into Beijing One of the Lufthansa GM's they had their own hotel system at that point I told us a story That his resident manager was dating a local girl and The other morning he said the the security director came in And told me I had to tell This guy to get away And never speak to this young lady again And he said and these are germans So he said well, I'll try to deal with it But the resident manager came in and he said I'm in love You know, I really love this woman. I want to take her back to germany And so boom The he says and we're going away for the weekend and I'm going to ask her to marry me Which they did The next morning he came in with pictures of the entire event Everything every moment And put him on the table for the general manager He says the secret service has picked up the young lady And she's in jail and your residence got one week to get out of the city or he'll never leave So there are a ton of those stories and during the olympics One of our company key executives who I have utmost respect for got upset because The newspaper put out That all of the hotels Hilton Hyatt Marriott Anyone you want to list were in the process of installing computer and phone security systems unique to each hotel Because they couldn't keep up with it in a central capacity They were putting staff in each of the hotels to listen And This key executive Who's wonderful person? Said you can't do that and I said that what do you mean? She said you can't do it and I said We are not only doing it We're installing them and helping them to connect the wires Because if we don't If we don't we're out of the hotel and out of the country And we at that time had about 72 hotels And I said what we're going to do is put a letter under every door and in every check-in Telling our guests that they're being monitored So There's all levels of technology But over the 22 years We went from the basics of pictures And there's some overlap into the sex side of the business That is tied to hotels because hotels are meeting places and I was in Kuwait just a day before that war started and I saw the Upper area Which was where all the broadcasters On two networks were set up And I said how's everything going? Are you getting your information out? They said whatever they want us to So you've got to remember that This thing goes on and on and on But it's certainly entered and it's now personally Ed Get back to something on joe Who sent in the question on cybercrime? Just give me a number. How many attacks Are there or attempts to infiltrate the company daily? You can be assured it's usually a hundred thousand And and that was when I was leaving Because what they're trying to get to is the reservation data And in our case the bonvoy data Which is got very critical name address credit cards and everything And when we acquired Starwood They had less defenses than we did And so there was a hack While I was working We got hacked and nobody could figure out how I got hacked In the detail that they got And it turned out to be in Puerto Rico. I carried all of the casino Ownership responsibility Which required me to fill out an information piece for the Well, it's not a republic. I'm sorry Puerto Rican government to Ensure that I qualified as a representative and as it turns out Puerto Rico called one day and said We were hacked And that by the way works into red hotel our first our first novel together Because they couldn't get through the hotel system But they could hack through the gaming system that is in Puerto Rico And through that gets in got into the hotel. And I have to share this with you Bill writes that you're like the William Burroughs of hotel security And that is it's great great praise. I I put it this way imagine sitting with and you're getting Much of this right now. You're sitting at dinner table A party or whatever and you're sitting next to the person you discovered to be the most Interesting person in the world with with stories That's ed fuller. That is my relationship working with ed fuller and Just when I think that I've I've heard The topper There's there's another story and that's why the series of books will go on Because it's their fiction. They're they're thrillers. They're political thrillers But they're steeped in reality and the reality is the experience and also the reality of tips And i'm going to turn to ed again. What kind of tips i'm ready to book Tripped in new york or san francisco. I'm ready to go abroad to china stay at different hotels I'm ready to Just go out and have a good time. What do I need to think about ed? Well, gary you're going to have a good time out there whether I talked to you or not about that So you you have the flavor of a lot of our customers and frankly You would be amazed how many people Are not looking at the back of the door in their room And I know everybody listings gone into the room. There's this little ugly piece of paper But it has the most valuable information You can find to help you get out of that room if there's a fire And now even more so other challenges that are out there And it also tells you where to go Now unlike the airlines, we don't have the lights going down the hallways yet But frankly that may come sooner than you think And so marriott was very very proud of not losing a guest at all in a fire or a situation suicides other things that happened but In the case of life safety Marriott bill marriott just wouldn't tolerate anything but high degree of quality in the system Even still fires would occur usually because somebody was smoking in the bed and candidly That leads you to think about something you're checking in You're tired But you would really like to sit down have drank maybe enjoy the big balcony But you didn't book that room You booked a regular room and the young lady or gentleman behind the desk says Well, we for $25 more can put you in a suite up on the 47th floor Actually the hotel I operated in boston had 53 floors and then a couple on top and so The response is oh god. That's great Well, you need to remember That unless you're in a super big city like new york They don't have fire equipment That reaches the 47th floor And if you're in a smaller city Even though they have high rise hotels now in Des Moines or other places You've got to remember they generally don't reach above seven So you'll find me Now that i'm retired down in the lower floors Because it's just safer And then there i've got over 30 others We don't want to bore them and I saw some more questions come in But there are a significant amount Of things you need to be conscious of when you travel Especially internationally That's the takeaway. Those are the little easter eggs that are in red hotel and red deception and will be in Red chaos as well a question Have our books been optioned Well bruce fierstein who I mentioned earlier wrote the first three james bond Movies that pierce was in He's the screenwriter attached to it We're talking right now about options and where they could possibly be picked up But we're talking with and meeting with studios now We think it would be a great series and We'd be there on set to say Why is dan riley's character staying on the 24th floor? He needs to be on the seventh floor Well dan riley always gets the best suite in the hotel When he visits as did bill marriott Then he would kick out dan riley and get the better And it was important to the associates especially internationally To see the person that was in charge Get taken care of because they were aspiring for those jobs and since globally We tried like the devil to always have A development program to bring the international local person Up into the executive positions I'm very proud to say that of the presidents Three that are operating. I'm sorry two of the operating Are locals from india from china Also from germany And i'm very excited about the fact That under them are a whole series of people that started with us And we spent a lot of time money And education to make sure These people would be part of our team Loyalty became the most important thing And since I don't have a stopwatch on me gary or we don't have questions bending I'll keep chiro to the end. Okay, and my apologies for getting up because Our there's a little emoji of a dog Our dog was just crying outside, but I must say Tames walking tames our dog that night was what brought Ed and I together So we enjoyed having a little personal appearance right here And we have him as a security dog in one of our hotels No, we can't but there is a dog named After my first dog in in Red deception and he's the president's dog. I don't know if I ever told you that That's a very interesting Part of technical research that we did On an assassination attempt that is maybe one of I I'm happy to say one of the cleverest things that That I've seen and we developed and that's in red deception and I and I hope you'll enjoy that The book is at or will be at the san francisco public library I also encourage people to go to their local bookstores Support them. They certainly need to walk in and call in The customers amazon and barns and noble and other book sellers as well The audible just came out about two weeks ago and sounds great So if you're driving or stuck in traffic Just waiting to find something else to listen to at night red deception and red hotel are absolutely Go go to books And just what are you worried about in terms of the future of travel? Well, the future of travel right now is so complex with health and other issues What really concerns me quite frankly is the volatility of the passengers That has become a real challenge for airlines and while it's not in every location It's always a concern travel as a whole in in 2019 Had the highest number of international visitors Coming to the u.s. And an even larger market Around the world because the middle class has grown significantly and a lot of markets china being not an exception And in many of these countries real estate in their objective for the individual clearly for the Government and some of the major companies real estate is huge But the family is not spending money on owning a house. They're spending the money on Taking trips seeing the world And one reason that that customer is significant is the size of that market And quite frankly it was sitting very close to the number one position When we all ran into covid What i'm concerned about is And this is where I get a little off a key And have my opinion what i'm concerned about The best way to introduce peace Is to know people From these countries It takes down barriers Tremendous barriers. I still have a lot of friends overseas And the communications has sometimes better With them than people in the united states except for gary and so The fact of the matter is If we don't take down some of these personal barriers Travel will always be that important If they do come down Personal relationships are developed You want to go over and meet the folks If that doesn't happen We're missing out on a wonderful opportunity And travel will return But it's how you travel Why you travel how you use the time to travel If you just run into old building and run out without studying the history And understanding the people And meeting new friends You haven't been on a trip You just ran in ran out and you didn't get any essence of what's there And understanding other people Now i have an italian wife And so i can tell you that mackayla is wonderful and is more americanized than Anything else now But it when we go to italy when we did go to italy It was like we had instant friends Not from her family but just meeting people And being able to communicate Sorry that's my soap box It's a great one and what i've learned from ed And i think we're still yet to learn as a country as we get involved in other countries Is that there's a mission when we go into countries But more important than the mission is understanding the culture And ed has taught me that you just don't go in with your american team You are recruiting people from that country And they're teaching you what you need to know about this country And that makes it safer for everybody as evidenced by the story that you told about panama and noriega You relied on the the good will of the people who were in place to protect the people In the hotel and get them to safety and out of the hotel without being behind those doors that were Shot down by noriega's military And i would only add to that gary that These people were panamanians If they believed that country came first And values and morals came second They might not have responded to how they did We always supported the local country And except when we got into countries that were under major difficulty Then we kept our mouth shut And worked with the people as the individuals they are And again, i'm not watching the clock, but Be it kidnappings and we've had several and be it how we rescued people from different countries during crisis And that went from the latin american to the middle east and to asia The key was to convince our employees that we're not american that we cared about And that we took action to help them And save their lives and their family's lives And we didn't forget about them because they weren't american There's a lot going on right now that backs that up And i also dealt with that in vietnam So it's important That we as a company i'm not preaching to every individual But we as a company looked out for our associates Whether they were american or not And that's what was a major push And everything we dealt with Well, read the fiction in red hotel and know that it i don't know if it's backwards or forwards there for you You're doing fine. Okay, but uh know that so much of it is not fiction. It's reality It's the world as it is today And the world that we have to be aware of as we know if you see something say something and i hope that You'll all see red deception and red chaos And i think that's probably our cue to say That was a perfect ending. Thank you so much. Um ed and gary and great advice and sentiment On why we should be traveling. Thank you so much And yes, check out the book. You will have to place a hold unless you're into ebooks You can get it instantly right now And we also have a really great system called link plus you can get it from there as well All right friends library community ed and gary 100. Thank you Amazing stories. Thank you for your questions everyone. Thank you ed. Thank you. Thank you