Editor’s Note: Connecting the Dots is a series of monthly conversations with Michael Dominguez, President and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International. The series examines issues in the global economy in 2024 that will “connect the dots” to be helpful not only in business but in life as well. This installment is moderated by Tim Altbaum, Founder and CEO at Vario, a full-service A/V and production company. Altbaum is president-elect of the MPI DFW Chapter, a former board member of NACE, and holds CSEP, CMP, HMCC and CMM designations.  

 

Tim Altbaum: You talk a lot about politics, and you have a saying about politics versus policy. You don't dictate how you run your life and how you run your business by politics, you dictate it by policy. Can you go into that a little bit more? 

 

 

Michael Dominguez: It's a statement I make often when I speak and I do mean it. I care about the policy, not the politics. When we talk about politics, you care about whose idea it is, which side of the aisle it falls on. I don't care about any of that. I really care about policy and the policy is what's going to impact our lives, impact our business. We've lost the civil in civil discourse. We've lost the ability to have a difference of opinion on how we fix things. But to at least understand, we're all trying to make the country better. We've been in this attacking mode for some time across the board. But I will stress something. There was an interesting presentation we had from the Cook Report at a U.S. Travel (Association) event a while back. It's a nonpartisan think tank and all they do is analyze. But when we talk about how different the world is and how different the U.S. is and how much we've changed, what was really fascinating is they put up a map and it was county by county in the election of President Obama in 2012. It was three counties that he turned that put him into office that year. They put up the map of President Trump in 2016. It is the exact same map except for three different counties that flipped that put him into office. When you go county by county, the maps don't look any different. The world doesn't look that different. 

 

 

Altbaum: How do you cut through the politics and get to the policy? For example, you've got the different news stations you're watching, different articles you read. What's your go-to? People are really curious to where are you getting this information so folks can feel just as empowered as you are. 

 

 

Policy

 

 

Dominguez: It’s a question I get asked often and you've seen the slide that I've shown before. It's the AllSides media bias slide and what it shows you, there is a center. There is a little left of center, far left, little right of center, far right. People need to understand that because your news has a narrative, it has a point of view. My news comes from the center. I only read the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times; I read Barron's because it's all about business and companies because that helps me run my business. Candidly, the only newscast I watch is the BBC. 

 

Read more installments of Connecting the Dots at alhi.com/industry updates