About KENNEDY GROUP

	Kennedy Group is a specialized hospitality consulting firm providing customized, partner-level services for owners, investment companies and operators.
	Our focus is operations, sales, marketing and management of executive conference centers, conferencing venues, private clubs and lifestyle hotels in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia.
	Kennedy Group associates are recognized in the lifestyle hotel, private club,  golf course management and resort meetings industry with more than a decade of front line experience among corporate America’s top conference facilities, Europe's leading design hotels and the most demanding clientele worldwide.
Kennedy Group's notable careers in most aspects of conference center sales, marketing and operations are founded on the experiences and the key roles they played in acquisitions, repositioning, developing and maturing of domestic and international destinations.
John Sears is managing director of Kennedy Group. A professional consultant and facilitator whose roots began in Mobil rated Five-Star front of house golf and conference resort operations.  Sears has an intensely rounded background in operations, sales, marketing, contract negotiations, development, property evaluations and acquisitions.
Sears pioneered the formation of the first North American Conference Center alliance and a network of independent boutique lifestyle hotels.  He leads the industry in joint-venture marketing for independently owned and operated residential and non-residential conference centers, resorts, small hotels and private clubs.  He has developed a proprietary golf instructional program, Golfinar, acquired by a NYSE golf community development corporation.    Sears is a certified instructor of Professional Selling Skills, Effective Listening, and New Millennium Marketing.  He received his degree in The Theory and Practice of Commerce from Catrefle College of Commerce, Wrexham, Wales, UK, through the University of Wisconsin Stout international programs and has served with the board at Lynn University School of Hospitality Management, Boca Raton, FL.
	A native of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Sears is a dynamic factor in entrepreneurial development boards ranging from historic building preservation, learning expansion, and golf automation to high elevation rainwater harvesting.  He is authoring "FiveStar" a hotelier's guide to uncompromising Five Star personal service and "From Meetings in a Mansion to E-Centers", The History and Evolution of Conference Centers.
	more