Hospitality View: Hotels

Brittney Anderson
Posted: 3/28/2020

Hello Again! Today’s blog post is about how the coronavirus is affecting some hotels here in the United States, and even a little bit about Bruno Mars! Hotels tend to be the face of the Hospitality Industry and are a key force for growth in the industry. But with travel bans nationwide how are hotels surviving?

Let’s take a look at one of the most well-known hotel brand names- Hilton. At franchised and managed hotels across the nation, most operations have been suspended. The Hilton brand hotels that are choosing to stay open are only offering limited operations and reduced services. On the corporate level many upper level employees are taking pay cuts. For example, the executive committee is taking a 50% pay cut for the duration of the crisis and the president and CEO, Christopher Nassetta will forgo his salary for the rest of 2020. Since so many employees are out of work, the Hilton Workforce Resource Center is directing employees’ access to more than 500,000 temporary jobs (Amazon, CVS, etc.) and are hoping to have team members back after the pandemic. On top of Hilton taking these positive steps internally, they are also using their resources to help the community externally. For example, “Hilton is assisting local and national governments to provide housing for first responders and health care workers.”

Another very famous hotel brand name is MGM Resorts International. You will find a lot of these resorts in Las Vegas, Nevada, which as you probably know, is on lockdown in efforts to stop the spread of the Coronavirus. So, while most front and back of the house employees are not able to work right now, the MGM Resorts Foundation is hard at work. 

The MGM Resorts Foundation has an Emergency Grant Fund and Children’s Medical Support Fund. This fund is designed to offer short-term assistance to MGM employees and their families especially during this time. MGM Resorts International has also pledged $1 million for an Employee Emergency Fund, as well as, has donated an equivalent of 400,000 meals across America. Many people love this brand whether they are workers, visitors, or even performers of MGM. Bruno Mars is one of those performers. Mars has pledged to donate $1 million to the MGM Resorts Foundation.

You can read further about the steps Hilton is taking due to COVID-19 or more about MGM Resorts Foundation. See Hilton's Corporate Response to COVID-19. See MGM's pledge to employees. And Bruno Mars support for MGM Resorts.

A Love for Comic Books

Madeline Colón 
Posted: 3/27/2020

Today I will be talking about the most recently displayed exhibit. It talks about a currently loved topic… Comics! From how they made the guidelines for them throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. If you have a love from childhood of anything DC or Marvel, you will love seeing this exhibit once we open back up to the public! 

In this exhibit, a focused point is the comic book code and the history of how that changed. The Comics Magazines Association of America, Inc. was established in 1954 to allow comic books to have their regulations. Throughout this section of the exhibit, it discusses how the regulations had also changed because of different parts of modern history, such as wars happening and when mature topics such as abuse and unfortunate ethnic stereotypes were coming to light. 

Yet in the end, many can agree that these comic books have been great ways to escape and wonder what our world would be like if there were people with superpowers or super abilities. It shows you how comics, from well-known ones such as Spider-Man and Iron Man to the less known ones, you see how comic books have evolved since the 1950s.      

Another part about this exhibit that many will enjoy is the movie props from recent Marvel and DC movies. We have at this exhibit props from the second Iron Man movie and some of the X-Men movies as well. In the movie section about comics, you will see a mask used in one of the X-Men movies that came out in 2000. There is also an Iron Man movie poster! 

If you are like me and have been a fan of the Marvel Movies, you will greatly enjoy this part of the exhibit. Taking comic books to a new level in modern history, and teenagers, along with the young at heart, have been loving it. Check out this three-page pdf that shows an early version of the Code that will show how the rules for comics have changed or stayed the same. This version of the Code came out in 1955, and list in number format the regulations.                

Trader Jon’s: A World of Aviation Memories

Alex Ardoin
Posted: 3/26/2020

Hello everyone! My name is Alex Ardoin and I’m a member of Historic Pensacola’s Visitor Experience Staff and a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of West Florida. I am originally from Lafayette, Louisiana and have been living in Pensacola since the summer of 2017. Planes and aviation are one of my passions in life, so much so that I even once considered becoming a commercial helicopter pilot many years ago. Upon starting my job at Historic Pensacola, I discovered the Trader Jon’s exhibit located on the second floor of the T.T. Wentworth, Jr museum. I had no clue who Trader was, as I hadn’t heard of him before. After spending some time in the exhibit and later meeting former patrons of his bar, I had grown to learn of just what his pub had meant to so many people.

Trader Jon was more than just a man that ran a peculiar pub on Palafox Street. He was an aviation enthusiast who loved his bar and the culture created by not only himself, but also the customers who visited. Trader didn’t set prices for drinks but rather traded stories or memorabilia in exchange for a couple of cold ones. This barter system became known as “Tradernomics” and is a large part of how the bar’s walls become covered in pictures and aircraft parts. Once his establishment gained worldwide fame, aviators from all over the world wanted to bestow their memories onto the walls as well. 

As Pensacola is home to the world renowned Blue Angel’s, Trader Jon’s became adorned in team photos and flight gear. Naturally, Trader’s became part of Blue Angel culture and even hosted their annual homecoming parties. The different Blue’s classes had spent many nights in Trader’s bar and shared many stories between themselves and Trader. Trader Jon’s Flying Pub closed in 2003 after Trader’s passing a few years earlier bringing an end to a pub full of aviation history and memories. 

In 2016, Historic Pensacola opened the Trader Jon’s exhibit in the T.T. Wentworth, Jr. Museum. The exhibit recreates the historic pub and celebrates the life and legacy of Trader Jon. The walls and ceiling are covered in flags, pictures, posters, and aircraft parts in a wonderful reimagination of Trader Jon’s. There is a documentary with interviews of Trader himself as well as patrons talking about life inside of his pub. 

In 2017, the Blue Angels held a reunion in the exhibit, and I was lucky enough to be working the event that evening. I watched and listened as some of the world’s best pilots walked around the exhibit and saw some of their own memories on the walls. They started reminiscing about their flying years and shared stories of their experiences with Trader. They described the amazing times they spent with their fellow pilots and how important Trader Jon’s was to the community that developed within the Blue Angel’s. Thankfully, the Trader Jon’s exhibit allows those stories to be remembered by those who lived them and shared for those, like me, who visit the exhibit to appreciate them.

Pensacola Speaks, a Project Idea Introduction by Kelli

Kelli Green
Posted: 3/25/2020

Hi there, Kelli Green here !

So, I had been trying to think of a project to expand Voices of Pensacola’s reach for a while. There’s a documentary called , Home of the Brave about Viola Liuzzo’s murder in Alabama during the March on Selma. At one point in the documentary, there is a scene where a Selma museum has a wall of sticky notes where people come in and write what they remembered or what their connection to the march was. There was a wall full of these notes and I got to thinking how great of an idea that was in general.

I started thinking it would be cool to encourage people from our community to tell their stories about anything they deemed important and impactful during their lives in Pensacola. I thought Voices of Pensacola would be a perfect museum to showcase an exhibit like that because it’s the multicultural museum and it is dedicated to the...voices ...of Pensacola! That’s perfect!

I also noticed that the Voices museum just has a lot of potential to be much more engaging for our guests. There’s a stereo to play the music of Devillers street and there’s a projection that can run full time slideshows. There are little rooms with TVs to play footage. All of these things could be amplified and joined with the new ideas we have like a board for notecards or even an mini- archive of stories that remains in the museum for people to flip through.

Now that we’re all confined to our homes, I figured this was a time to flesh out the ideas and writing up plans.

Here's a blog post we found that is good to get people creatively thinking in terms our project ideas. The story telling process, and information gathering is the purpose of this link. Any other views of philosophies expressed by the originators of the post do not necessarily represent the views of the UWF Historic Trust

Pensacola Speaks, A Project Idea Introduction by Sam

Sam Earley

Posted: 3/25/2020

Hello, Sam Earley here! While shifting to remote working, I will admit I have been a little stressed and unsure what to do with this new normal. The first week of planning on our projects I reached out to Kelli to see what she was doing for inspiration. And I am really happy I did! I knew I could help assist her over these next few weeks on ‘Pensacola Speaks’.

I see this new project as a way to encourage people who are living, or have lived, in Pensacola to share their stories and memories with others. While giving us the opportunity to learn how project proposals are created. The best thing about setting up this foundation for Pensacola Speaks is all the possibilities that can grow from it. Just for a couple examples, we could host an exhibition with all the local tales at Voices of Pensacola or create a small archive of them!

Recently we have been organizing a possible timeline, creating forms, and setting up an idea for an unpublished Facebook to help communicate with the community. We would love all of your advice or thoughts on this project. Now, I’ll turn in over to Kelli!

Hospitality View: Theaters

Brittney Anderson

Posted: 3/24/2020

Hello readers! My name is Brittney Anderson and with the Coronavirus fleeting through the country temporarily closing many businesses and organizations, I will be working on posts like these remotely for the UWF Historic Trust. 

I am a senior majoring in Global Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of West Florida. I am currently interning at the UWF Historic Trust as an OPS Visitor Experience Associate. All Florida universities were mandated to do remote online instruction and work through the rest of the spring semester. Although I cannot do my typical duties from home, I will instead be researching and blogging how COVID-19 has affected museums and other businesses in the hospitality industry.

With governments declaring lock downs on cities, counties, and states in order to kill the spread of the Coronavirus, it is also killing the hospitality and entertainment industry. Beaches are closing, movie theaters are closing, even restaurants are closing. So how are these institutions handling this global pandemic? According to the New York Times, “the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco has reminded ushers that they don’t have to physically take tickets from people — just scan them.” 

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley offers for patrons to exchange their tickets for another date. The Metropolitan Opera issued guidelines for employees and artists to not come to work at the Met for 14 days if they have recently been to a country flagged for Coronavirus outbreaks by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

On the brighter side, the Met is offering a virtual substitute. “Each day, a different encore presentation from the company’s Live in HD series is being made available for free streaming on the Met website, with each performance available for a period of 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. the following day. The schedule will include outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years of cinema transmissions, starring all of opera’s greatest singers.” By offering this, it encourages people to stay home to stop the spread of the Coronavirus.

Here are some articles and websites you can check out:

New York Times, From Coughing Fits to Closings, Cultural World Girds for Coronavirus

Met Opera, Nightly Met Opera Streams

Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), Current exhibits

Smithsonian Institute

All about the Wentworth

Madeline Colón 
Posted: 3/23/2020

I hope everyone is doing well as we all adjust to a new normal! My name is Madeline Colón, and this is how I will be working while the Trust is closed. I am a student at UWF, love to go on walks and enjoy trying any kind of coffee as well! I am studying History and Education and will be graduating with my bachelors next year. As we at the Historic Trust are adjusting to working from home, I wanted to talk about my favorite museums and exhibits we have in Downtown Pensacola. I hope you will come to check us out once things open back up again!

detail, T.T. Wentworth, Jr. Florida State Museum

For today, I will tell you about my favorite museum I have seen as a tourist and as an employee… The Wentworth Museum! This building, the Wentworth Museum, is located in what was the first City Hall for Pensacola and built-in 1907. It has three floors of exhibits total with the first floor being all about Pensacola History and the second and third floors have rotating exhibits that are always changing! 

T. T. Wentworth, Jr. Florida State Museum exterior

Architecture is another part of history, and there was a Mediterranean Revival when this building was constructed. It is clear to see in the photos above. The current postcard exhibit we have in the museum shows the Wentworth throughout the 20^th century as it transitioned from the city hall to the museum; it is known as today. 

T. T. Wentworth, Jr. 

This a great place to visit for all age levels and backgrounds because of the rotating exhibits. Not only was this building involved with early Pensacola history, but its name was for one of Pensacola's first local historians in the 20^th century that helped establish everything we know and love in historic downtown Pensacola. The Wentworth Museum is named for historian T.T. Wentworth, Jr.  He was born and raised in Pensacola, Florida, and was one of the first locals to help preserve Pensacola history and Florida history in general. 

This museum costs $8 for adults, $4 for children ages 3-14. If you are a military member, AAA member, or a senior citizen, you are eligible for a discount. Children under three and UWF students get in for free! The tickets are suitable for a week. We hope to see everyone back at the Historic Trust to visit us when everything is back and open.                                                                                      

Here is a link that also talks about the museum and T.T. Wentworth himself.                              

Welcome Blog

Welcome to VEX Views. 
Visitor Experience=VEX
The Visitor Experience Group defines Visitor Experience as:

all the tangible and intangible aspects of the presentation of your organization’s mission with which a visitor could interact. It is the perceptions, sentiments, and reactions a visitor has with your institution and ensures that every visitor is granted a pleasant and rewarding experience from pre- to post-visit.

Welcome to our new normal for a while. While our museum complex is closed to the public, our visitor experience associates will share their views on Historic Pensacola. These are our front line staff always ready to assist our visitors with whatever customer service needs may be, but remove them from behind the front desks and they are students of the University of West Florida and/or devotees of Pensacola history. They are passionate about sharing our story. Some will share their favorite exhibits while others will share their favorite museums. Each provides a unique perspective on what it means to be Historic Pensacola.