Showtime!

It's 10 a.m. at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, and the entire staff is assembled in the main ballroom. Porters, housekeepers, front desk clerks, concierges — they're all there, waiting, with the expectant look of kids lining up at Disney World a few miles away.

They are not disappointed. The lights dim, and a spotlight shines on the stage. Drums start thumping and a marching band weaves a conga line around the room to the front of the stage. A very large woman in a cheerleading outfit with a megaphone jumps up and launches into a routine, whipping the staff into a frenzy, as the leadership team springs up to join her. Hotel General Manager Kemp Gallineau bounds onto the stage, leaps into the air and chest-butts his vice president of sales and marketing.

This is the quarterly staff meeting, and it's a trifle over the top for Washington, D.C.. But this is what's coming. Last weekend Gaylord Entertainment completed a four-day blitz to hire 1,300 employees for the Gaylord National, the $870 million hotel and convention center on the banks of the Potomac River, part of the new National Harbor complex in suburban Maryland. By the time the place opens on April 25, the staff will be fully indoctrinated into the enthusiastic Gaylord culture. Seventeen thousand people have registered to interview.

The Gaylord National is the latest product of chief executive Colin Reed's strategy of building and buying hotels across the United States. D.C. is a particularly important market for him, partly because it is home to many of the country's 24,000 associations and organizations that hold large meetings — Gaylord's specialty — and because the company thinks it has tapped just 1 percent of this market so far.

CHALLENGING TIMES

But the Gaylord opening comes at a challenging time for the hospitality industry. During the credit crunch, slowing economy and weakening of the dollar, most hotel chains have delayed domestic expansion plans or put them on hold. Gaylord and other hotels, including Marriott, posted slackening profits at the end of last year. Earlier this month, Gaylord announced that it was pushing back closing on its newest property, in San Antonio, to bring in an investment partner.

All the more reason to sharpen the focus on service. The Orlando rally, like all Gaylord staff meetings, is really about serious business — customer satisfaction. At this meeting, the news is mixed. Surveys show the staff is doing a great job of being friendly, prompt and helpful. But they scored lower in two areas: showing that they genuinely care about their guests and going out of their way to make their stay a special one.

Leadership delivers its "needs improvement" message with a positive spin. As the music blares and the managers cavort, nobody in the room seems self-conscious or skeptical. They all appear to be thrilled to be there, waving pompoms, wearing funny hats and T-shirts, and cheering for themselves at the Pep Rally for the Stars. It's an event that's held every quarter at all Gaylord hotel properties, and it's designed to make staff members feel good about themselves and their work. Each hotel, or "resort," spends $500,000 a year on employee events.

The Star leaders call to the stage the newest "All Stars" — employees who have gone above and beyond. Winners tearfully accept their awards as video montages of them play in the background. The ceremonies and talent show performances by Gaylord employees are beamed by satellite to other properties. Winners have been known to be paraded around the property on the back of three-wheeled bicycles.

'CULTURE IS STRATEGY'

Emily Ellis, vice president of Star culture, is one of the architects of the Gaylord Entertainment protocols.

"Nobody's asking anybody to be somebody who we aren't," she tells a group of new Gaylord National employees at a recent orientation day. "It doesn't mean being the Osmonds on acid or Cheerleaders USA. But if you think it's hokey, you're in the wrong business."

Hospitality workers in general may not be highly paid, but Gaylord's philosophy is to treat employees as if they're special — to call them "stars," hold fashion shows where they can choose their own uniforms, give them regular cash bonuses — and trust that they'll treat the guests as if they're special. Guests, in turn, will keep coming back.

"Culture is not an accident," said John Caparella, chief operating officer of Gaylord Hotels, in an interview. "Culture is strategy. If you can establish and control the culture, that will drive the success of the business."

So far, the model has worked for Gaylord. By creating an all-inclusive environment for guests, with upscale restaurants, cafes, a spa and nightclubs, the company has one of the highest rates of guest spending outside the room — one of the key industry measures of a property's success. At the Gaylord National, there'll be 2,000 rooms and ferries to take guests to Alexandria, Va., Georgetown and the new Nationals baseball park. But there'll also be plenty to keep them indoors, from the 18-story glass atrium to the indoor river to the 20,000 square feet of spa facilities.

Gaylord sees rich potential in groups that have never been to one of their properties before and has positioned the National property as a "gateway" venue for meeting planners. If all goes according to plan, the company and its vaunted services will persuade them to schedule next year's event at another Gaylord property.

OVER-THE-TOP SERVICE

Key to this strategy will be how well Gaylord delivers on its promise of over-the-top service. After the recession of the early 1990s, which prompted downsizing and operational restructuring, the hospitality and service industry spent years battling to regain customer satisfaction ratings.

At a recent orientation for about 50 new Gaylord National employees, Sheldon Suga, the former general manager of the Gaylord Palms and the new general manager of the Gaylord National, laid out some of the basics of the culture.

"I'm a leader Star and you're a line Star," Suga said to the group assembled around tables decorated with silver foil centerpieces, jars of candy, workbooks with colored markers and glossy booklets about Gaylord. "I have a different role, but I just want to tell you that I don't have a designated parking spot. It's first come, first served. That's how you get a good parking spot here."

For the rest of the day, Ellis introduced the new employees to the ways of Gaylord — both the work and the perks of joining the team. There's the subsidized cafeteria. English as a Second Language classes. Softball teams. Family days at special events like the holiday ice village, a 14,000-square-foot exhibit of ice sculptures, hand-carved from 2 million pounds of ice by visiting artisans from China. The first big meeting hosted at Gaylord National, she told them, will be for them — a Stars rally.

And there are opportunities for advancement. At least half of the management positions for National are open, and Gaylord hopes to fill them at last week's four-day hiring event. Gaylord's expectation is that every employee will work to deliver his best "performance" for the guests, Ellis said.

"Dennis Miller once said, 'If you're 35 years old and you're wearing a plastic tag with your name on it, you've made a serious mistake,' " she said. "Well, he didn't work for us."