...In the audience were a number of executives from various print and multi-platform media, who I think had to snicker when Rubel predicted that print will virtually be gone within five years. It was an assessment few in the room agreed with...

...some of Rubel's suggestions included using Concierges and Chefs to represent hotels on line. As one hotelier I was sitting with noted, "My Chef has a full time job. It's called cooking."...

* "Corporate All-Stars" references the above, making your concierge, maid and Maitre D' your spokespeople. It is an idea that certainly has some interesting applications, but [Rubel] couldn't answer the tough questions about the liability of hotels whose selected All-Stars may have alter-on-line personalities that don't mesh with the brand image of a luxury provider. It is an idea that is interesting, but perhaps better suited for sectors where image is less important.

* "Power of Pull" is about making sure you are found. Again, while Rubel's ideas make sense for mass brands, does a 120-room hotel in New York City need to be one of the most popular pages on Facebook? Does putting an exclusive hotel out to the masses in the wide open domain of the wild, wild web take away from its exclusivity or perhaps turn off existing customers who value the privacy one expects with a luxury hotel? I don't know the answers. I thought Kozma Kaplan the next day did a good job of providing some examples of how LHW and its hotels can use networks like Facebook and Twitter. Her example was reaching out to current customers who use them so that hotels can then communicate to those customers via the social networks they use, as well as encourage loyal guests to post positive experiences that their friends will then see.

I can't say I shared the unbridled enthusiasm for being part of every mass social network and talk board on the web unless it is part of a specific strategy. As always, with luxury it is the quality of the contacts, not the quantity in my opinion. That said, I view the web a bit like the telephone: It's how you use it. Are you making personalized calls, reading off a telemarketing script, or doing thousands of those annoying computer generated calls? Clearly luxury brands are going to have to think how they want to use the web and make sure they figure a way that matches their Brand DNA.

Sacks recalled a recent lunch he had at The Modern, one of Danny Meyer's New York restaurants. Sacks and his guest both had trouble finding each other as they asked for reservations under different names at the reception. Later in the meal, the Maitre D' came over to the table. Politely, she told Sacks and his guest, "I understand you had a problem earlier, so I wanted to give each of you my card. Any time you need a reservation with us, please feel free to call or have your assistant call me directly." She didn't offer a free dessert or some other amenity.

As hotels struggle with a combination of discounting and value added amenities that also cost money, Sacks pointed to the power of connection, as a consumer: "I can buy a bottle of wine, I can't buy a relationship." He now uses his relationship to always get a top table whenever he needs it, while the bottle of wine would have been long gone.

...Sacks notes in all the years he has stayed at luxury hotels he has never gotten a personal note thanking him for staying. He noted a story about eating at Del Frisco: Towards the end of the meal, his waitress asked him if she could add him to their database. A week later, instead of getting an email he got a personalized letter from his waitress that even made note of something specific to the dinner. Sacks' advice: "Hire a letter writer, an English grad."

For food books, only about a quarter of Bon Appetit (25 percent) and Gourmet (27 percent) readers spent over $2,000 on fine dining in 12 months, or less than $200 per month! Of course the readers of Conde Nast must not spend too much on dining when they travel either - only 34 percent broke the $2,000 annual spending market.

Only 49 percent of Conde Nast Traveler readers had been to Europe in the past three years, while 68 percent of all Conde Nast readers could also say the closest they have come to Paris may be in Las Vegas. Since 73 percent of Conde Nast Traveler readers have not been to Hawaii in the past three years, and 86 percent have not been to anywhere in Pacific/Asia

Within ten minutes of that post, Society's manager approached my table.

"Ah, you're the one," he said.

"Sorry?" I replied bewilderedly. Had I made some egregious error? Was Steve Wynn finally going to eighty-six me from the joint for being too obsessive with his new property?

"The Twitter guy."

"What?"

"Let me explain: I just got a call from our Office of Internet Outreach saying that someone on Twitter was eating at our restaurant. I looked on the web page, saw your profile picture and knew it was you."

The server was rude and short with us and the food was not prepared to the menu’s description. Towards the end of the meal, I tweeted out our experience...

I received a Direct Message back asking for more details about our experience, followed by an invite back to Terrace Point Café for the following day that would be “taken care of”.

...We were told to ask for the manager on duty when we arrived, who arranged everything from start to finish. Service was back to the top-notch level I expect from anything Steve Wynn touches. The food was fantastic, as it was when we last stayed at Wynn. The most impressive part of this whole experience was that we were encouraged to order alcoholic beverage and deserts even though Wynn was picking up the tab.