​Five years on
 
To Meet or Not to Meet That is the question ..
 
God knows what Shakespeare would have thought about Covid but the displays of virtue and righteousness, versus common sense and ingenuity would have given him much to write about. The strengths and weaknesses of human nature! One thing he most certainly would have weighed in on would be as Plato said “the gregarious nature of humans”. We are animals who need contact, we need touch and smell and smiles. We need recognition and affirmation. Our clans need to meet to validate our identities and leadership, our fellow thinkers need to be reinforced, our contrarians listened to. Our networks need to grow to intersect to collide. It all would have been rich content for Will to craft a few more plays.
 
Five long years back, on the show floor, in the moment, as we lived out these dramas, it was a dark time of intense uncertainty. The Covid wave came in early spring the beginning of the busy season for conventions and conferences. Panic and prudence flamed through the boardrooms of corporations, associations, and governments . Cancellations and caution suddenly swept through society and the idea of thousands of people in one big hall was some sort of doomsday scenario. We all remember three weeks to bend the curve. Lock it all down right, mask up and shut up. Well, we survived, at least most of us, and we are much wiser, at least most of us.
 
There was a major question in the air that would drive OR not key decisions of future planning in the mid and long term. “What was the future of in person meetings. Meetings of all sizes both big and small”. The answer would not only affect the meetings in the mid and long term but importantly the long term strategic and capital planning and commitments.
 
There was the Zoom crowd who said why we shouldn’t invest in places to gather. Though Zoom is efficient for some types of meetings and has drastically changed the corporate transient world group travel is another animal. It is a Human animal and we are gregarious. ‘Til the day we die we yearn for company, comfort and contact all things that Zoom cannot provide.
 
The recent 2025  Freeman, Harris Trust poll highlights  and validates the magic of in person meetings. (https://www.freeman.com/resources/infographic-2025-freeman-trust-report/ ) The numbers are very compelling and show that while the trust in corporate media weakens the trust of eye to eye contact is immensely more powerful and growing. It is a great report and as always Freeman has taken the lead in affirming what we always knew.  In our fast-paced world of change, trust in new ideas and new products is not easily garnered in the virtual space but when done right the live event is irreplaceable. We have come out of Covid with a precious appreciation of convening and congregating. Our profession is creatively driving events to new heights of excitement and meaning. 
 
One hopes that corporations and governments will trust our instincts and now our data and invest in the future.

Hospitality H-1 Visas
 
The Wall Street Journal and most other media are weighing in on immigrant visas, particularly the H1-B. As a career hotelier having worked for international luxury brands, I spent years working with my respective HR Directors and outside attorneys to maximize the very positive impacts of the US working visa programs.
 
J, H1 and H2, L, and O visas were the battery of options available. They are tools that give the ability to build cohorts of international, talented young managers. They each work for different levels of staffing and skill and timeframe. Our global hotel management culture has much to be thankful for with the working visa programs.
 
Forty odd years ago we here in America were still building a homegrown sense of hospitality. We were still modest of our strengths, still under the shadow of ‘the ugly American’, didn’t have our confidence yet. Hadn’t found the ‘art’. Still in awe of European elegance and manners. There were a handful of great Hospitality schools, not just Cornell but a few others, soon though hospitality was a serious career opportunity and even Community colleges opened some great programs. On the culinary side we had the new CIA, Culinary Institute of America but we were a long way from the American cuisine revolution and a whole generation of now highly successful world class chefs. We mimicked our service standards with French and Russian pretentions before the likes of Danny Meyer, Tony Fortuna or Eric Weiss and other mentors created incredible hospitable American service.
 
The exchange of foreign and American young managers was always a twoway benefit, The standards of the Swiss, bright smiles and sharp pencils; the financial focus of the Singaporeans, the bottom line; the soft spiritual gift of the dignity of serving of the Indians; were teaching moments and we were so eager to learn. In return they learned American ingenuity and drive, innovation and even showmanship. The magic of these teams sustained the narrative that allowed our global brands to deliver an authentic outcome and experience of the brand promise. 
 
It was certainly a meritocracy. A J visa was good for a year and a 6 month extension if you were very good, an H-1 for up to 6 years, but if someone messed up they could soon find themselves re-patriated. It was a privilege, an opportunity to be in America. Work hard and work smart and good things will happen. Each year you got to see the superstars the potential department heads and even future General Managers and company Presidents. If you couldn’t devise an ongoing visa strategy you would at least try to steer them to one of your overseas properties and keep them in the corporate family.
 
For some the visas may have been a year or two abroad, an international finishing school if you will and then they returned to their home country and grow into senior positions back in Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, India, Korea, Ecuador, China or wherever. However quite a number of men and women moved upwards here in the US with their careers, securing a pathway, perhaps a green card and eventually citizenship. Some came from dangerous countries and an American visa was a road to safety and the elusive American dream. General Managers, world famous chefs, VP’s of operations, Chief Concierges, Regional Revenue Directors. Great colleagues and many great friends (to this day).
 
Like any government program there will always be misuse and even fraud, but the companies I worked for leveraged the visa programs into huge successes for their respective companies and personal life builders for many of the recipients. So go ahead and clean it up just don’t blow it up.
 
 
 
 

​I enjoy and often write about the operational and people side of our industry but this series is about the bricks and mortar side. The lessons learned from planning. The long horizons and timelines of real estate and urban development.
 
Soon after the demise of Robert Campeau’s Boston Crossing I arrived in Boston and took up my role as General Manager of the Lafayette Swissotel. The 500 room property was a component of the mixed use Lafayette Place – which was the core of the would be Boston Crossing. The hotel had been built originally as an Intercontinental Hotel. Just pre-opening, Bass, the parent owning company was shedding assets and sold off 3 or 4 US properties. Swissair and Nestle ownership, with their new Swissotel brand, purchased the Boston property and re-flagged it in time for a grand opening, Swiss guards and all.
 
After 5 dismal years of performance, the failed promise of Campeau’s vision for Boston Crossing, the absolute failure of the Lafayette mall retail component, the continued downward spiral of Washington Street and Downtown Crossing, and the overall economy of the country I was parachuted in to ‘turn things around’. It was a beautiful hotel in an ugly building in a terrible neighborhood in an awful economy. Being owner operators put me in a dual role. One as an Innkeeper practicing the art of hospitality under the iconic Swiss brand and the other as property owner representative in one of the most blighted urban markets in the country. Despite the challenges of ‘location’ we operated a magical, warm hospitable oasis in the middle of the Combat Zone. It was like the images of post war Europe where you would see the staff of a hotel particulier scrubbing the sidewalks while next door was a bomb site.
 
One key lesson I learned on the real estate side was that there is a huge difference in the shelf life of retail versus institutions. The mall went bankrupt and went through planning iterations of retail visions that never materialized. Every BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority) meeting promoted rose tinted visions of a brighter future for Downtown Crossing; every lease on Washington Street was going to be the beach head to turn the critical mass of success; even the name change from Jordan Marsh to Macy’s, with the loss of 4 floors of retail was spun as a positive step forward. The Lafayette mall itself had different plans that never materialized and eventually it became an urban office park.
 
Lesson learned.  While retail came and went, and continues to do so, two academic institutions and three theatrical landmarks have bravely anchored the still troubled neighborhood. Berkeley School of Music and Suffolk Law Library are the two academic institutions that have bookended Tremont Street. Berkeley almost moved from Boston 30 years ago but instead of urban flight planted their flag on Boylston and Tremont on the edge of Chinatown and the theatre district; and Suffolk Law under the leadership of David Sargent, at that time, built a beautiful law library and then politely named it after David. The three theatres, The Paramount, The Opera House and The Modern were another story and their survival and now success was the direct result of the actions of the then mayor, Tom Menino who set an architectural charette in motion and obtained landmark designation for the three moribund properties.
 
It is comforting to know that in the long run ballet, opera, chamber music, black box theatre, the learning of law, and the study of the broadcast arts will long outlive the departed (and beloved) Filene’s basement and the Holiday displays of Jordan Marsh.

 

 
The Lafayette Place – the 90’s
 
Let’s start before I ever traveled to Boston let alone transferred up from New York to manage the Lafayette Swissotel. The then Boston General Manager was staying with me in New York while he attended meetings for the Master Planning of a project called Boston Crossing which was comprised of the Lafayette Place parcel which included the hotel and the moribund mall that connected the hotel to the second parcel, Jordan Marsh the landmark New England department store. The third lot and final piece was the infamous Hayward parcel across Avenue de Lafayette.
 
A Canadian developer, Robert Campeau had acquired separately through massive leverage the department store chains Allied and Federated that included Jordan Marsh and Bloomingdales. His vision was to have a super mixed use urban center with over 3 ¼ million square feet. The project would be bookended by Jordan Marsh and Bloomingdales with a massive atrium mall in the middle. The fledgling Hotel would abut the atrium and the rooms up to the seventh floor on that façade would be inside the atrium overlooking the mall. (this was the same era of the birth of ‘Mall of America”).  The project was going to be the saving grace, the turnaround project for Boston’s notorious Combat Zone! The podiums created by the department stores would be topped by 400foot towers. Across Washington Street from the Bloomingdales site was the Avery Hotel parcel which was going to be the Federal courthouse and the adjacent, ghostly Opera House, under the leadership of Sarah Caldwell was going to be reborn. A utopian future for the downtown retail and theatre district. A real estate dream!
 
The problem with masterplans and real estate dreams is that they move the goalposts while you are coming down the back stretch! Joe Moakley, the congressional native son of Southie grabbed the courthouse and dragged it across the channel to his longtime congressional district. (Today we have the harborside Moakley courthouse not far from the Moakley bridge.) Sarah Caldwell a true musical genius lacked the business skill or luck to survive. I believe the electric bill was the last straw despite the intervention of the local Cardinal.

Then the economy did what economies do about once a decade and it crashed leaving Campeau’s empire drowning in a tidal wave of debt. The Bankruptcy ended the fantasy of Boston Crossing and left the Lafayette Mall parcel in the hands of Chemical Bank the receiver. 
 
The Hotel portion was owned and operated by Swissotel a partnership between Swissair and Nestle. As the neighborhood staggered from the broken promise of the Campeau megaplan the bottom line of the hotel plumbed new depths of red ink. Zurich brought in the management consultants. Lots of reorganization and severe cost cutting and a change of leadership. That is when I got the short straw and was transferred up to Boston to turn things around. ..to be continued ....
 
 
 

We recently went off for a short trip to visit relatives and found ourselves needing a convenient place for one night. The ease, comfort and confidence of booking a hotel room in a big familiar city was replaced with the task of finding the right stay in a small up country New England town. Shades of Stephen King!
 
Comfort, cleanliness and security mixed with a genuine smile and efficient process are always the key criteria. Value helps, the rates are a relief from the cosmopolatan sticker shock one never gets used to in your favorite big city but all markets are competitive so you want and need to shop.   
 
Though I could book on line and have an algorithm solve the matter I prefer to call the property and book from the desk. Reputation and past experience coupled with the promise of a brand and the decision was made. There is a special place in hospitality heaven for the polite Front Desk manager in a small property who is the Jack or Jill of all trades. One day they are the polite person taking your reservation over the phone and two days later are the welcoming smile checking you in. Later in the day they are your concierge giving you tips from the local’s point of view. These ambassadors of our trade, our art of hospitality are our unsung heroes. They make us all proud and give us that re-assuring smile that all is well in the American profession of hospitality. 
 
Safe travels!
​

​
 
Doormen- Endangered species!
 
A friend recently shared a sad story out of Denver. The management of the grand and iconic Brown Palace hotel laid off their doormen and bell staff and outsourced whatever service standards are left to an out of state valet company. The last bastion of luxury will be that only 5 star properties will offer and deliver the level of service we once took for granted.
 
Since they put wheels on luggage even a 4 year old will drag her princess suitcase across the lobby and into the elevator.  Covid didn’t help, hard to assist a guest from a safe six feet. Gone are the days that guests planned to have some tipping cash in one of their pockets. Everyone now expects an Ipad prompt to begrudgingly do the right thing.
 
The following is a posting from my archives and some personal thoughts and my high regard for the Front Services team, the ambassadors of our business.
 
The Doormen
2/24/2015
 
Whenever we drove down Park Lane and passed The Dorchester my grandfather would tell us stories of how the top hatted and tailed doormen were wealthy men in their own right. Like palace guards they were the sentries who controlled the door and the forecourt and choreographed the comings and goings of power, luxe and history. For this they were gratuitously rewarded with cash and gifts and even the occasional hot tip on a horse or a stock. 

In my career I have had the pleasure of working with a number of legendary doormen, gentlemen and one gentlewoman, who were as famous as the properties they manned. 

Tipping in today’s world is always a thing that intimidates many powerful people. Doing the math and the protocols at a dining room table with a cognac in one hand and a gold card in the other is much different than trying to figure out what to give a surly doorman on a crowded sidewalk on a rain driven New York night. The world wants a cab but they are all headed for Queens. The right bill in the doorman’s hand and the crowd is parted and you are safe and dry, ensconced in the back of a  black sedan, on your way, on time, to an expensive Broadway curtain.

When I was a rookie Executive Committee member my family would arrive at the hotel for an MOD weekend and as they got out of the cab Sonny the head doorman would reach into his pocket and give my kids $5 each and tell them they had to be good boys. Years later after he had retired I was once again back in New York and heard that he had passed.  I gathered a number of the staff and we went up to the Bronx to the wake to show our respect.

A great place for any General Manager to stay in touch with the reality of his property is to spend some time each day standing at the door listening to the doorstaff, the employees who are literally on the front lines. They will tell you the real deal of how you are doing. Listen!
 
 

​Master Planning
 
 ​​
The Drake
 
My first masterplanning was on the team to totally renovate and re-decorate the Drake Swissotel on Park Avenue. The hotel was vintage 1927. Swissair and Nestle had purchased the property from Loews and wanted it to be the North American flagship of the young airline affiliated hotel brand. 
 
The property was originally a residential pied-a-terre with polite vertical lift of 3 slow small front elevators. Most importantly with the evolving corporate transient comings and goings of a modern hotel we had to add an elevator bank and drive a shaft through 22 floors. Over 500 rooms were renovated, bathrooms were gutted, meeting rooms enhanced, terraces glassed in. Design contests were held. Facades were cleaned. Roofs were re-rubbered. Electric vaults were modernized. On the ground floor we moved out boring retailers, (who were paying rent) for money losing F&B that we thought was brand defining. The irony of this lesson took some time to sink in!
 
After a spend of $80 million, the property settled into a successful  and profitable decade run throwing off strong competitive set Revpar and despite the New York union locals a respectable NOI. Soon however Nestle decided they were in the food business and Swissair needed to focus on flying. Deemed no longer a core sector of the parents we were spun off as a brand and the asset found itself a chattel of a major REIT.
 
Best and highest use!
​
 
Prime lesson of real estate is there is no brand emotion, no architectural legacy. A parcel is a financial instrument and just like water seeks its level, real estate will find its true value. A dozen years after the above renovation the property came to market more from demand than intent. New York real estate values in mid-town were eclipsing any EBITDA that even the most successful hotel could achieve. The bidding was fast and wicked and the property quickly changed hands and was closed on short notice in an attempt to catch the market. The market turned downwards and by the time the property was emptied and demolished it found itself as the world’s most expensive vacant lot.  A quote of the day was “Manhattan has 79 other stalled construction sites but probably none to rival the Drake in location. It is inarguably the best development site in the country and possibly the world,”.  A resilient and persistent NY developer rose from the ashes of that recession of the moment to create 432 Park Avenue an ultra-luxury condominium and the tallest residential tower in the western hemisphere. 

A year ago I was appointed to the position of Executive Director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. To say the least it has been an exciting and fulfilling year on many fronts. One area in particular has been the opportunity to analyze and understand the long term booking dynamics and strategies of the region. To delve into the numbers and leverage the power of the data.
Early in my tenure here I found it necessary to educate and reinforce, to non-hotel stake holders, the basics of room segmentation and the resulting gap between a robust transient prevailing rate and a good, but sober, base convention rate.  There was little knowledge or understanding of the way blocks are built with commitable rooms that were booked far out over the horizon, or that these blocks are the foundation upon which we build a matrix of rates from many years in advance right up to the hour of arrival.
Convincing the development and regulatory community that all hotel rooms are not created equal was another challenge. Hotel development has changed in the past decade, owners favor small limited service properties that are quick and affordable per key to build, are light on operational labor costs and have leased out F&B (if any). These properties receive the benefit of hotel room rate compression generated by a major convention but are rarely if ever part of the block that secured the business. From their perspective they get the best of both worlds - skimming the cream of high priced compressed room rates during an event while avoiding long term bookings that could impede an exit strategy that is likely well before the commitment date we require for a room block. Their fiduciary responsibility may be in protecting their flexibility to flip the asset long before the convention in question comes to town. Also, consider the fact that the convention planners prefer fewer and bigger properties rather than cobbling together, and contracting with a wide array of small and mid-sized properties.
It was not just the lay audience that I needed to engage. My native hotel industry is currently enjoying the financial fruits at the top of a long uphill ADR run. Compression causes an intoxication that comes when all the right factors are in alignment and causes an irrational surge in last minute transient rate. I reminded my colleagues of the history of the last two cycles where the ‘over/under’ has played out in the past. When markets crash transient quickly cascades downhill and suddenly group rates look golden by comparison. In good times properties start to restrict their blocks, in great times they resent their blocks. However, as soon as there is a shudder in the market, there is capitulation and the phones start ringing and formerly wary partners are once again eager to increase their blocks. The problem is that we, at the Authority have such a long trigger time. The convention we do not have today is because four or five years ago we were unable to assemble an acceptable block for the client. Conversely, the proof of the decisions you make today about blocks will not be realized for years to come.
If it was a stock portfolio then room blocks and convention business are the bonds, lower yield but solid, while the transient are the more volatile stocks subject to quick and often severe volatility.  As a market we need to true up our investments and re-calibrate our strategies on a regular basis to match short term rewards with long term stability to create a healthy, durable hotel marketplace.

I love the movie 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' for many reasons, the beautiful whimsy of the landscape, the craftsmanship of the camera work, the skill of the actors, the audacity of the script, but it is the romance of our hotel industry, that is portrayed so acutely in this masterpiece of film, that I love the most. The eccentric guests, the legendary staffers, the rundown palace, the glorious hospitality, the ever turning wheel of fortune, the camaraderie of co-workers - it is all captured here.

If you started as a dishwasher, a bellhop, a busboy, or a kitchen commis and made your way through the labyrinth career ladder then you know these characters with all of your heart. You too became one of the brotherhood and sisterhood of the hospitality industry. Friendships for life that are in your pores and anchors your DNA. Your smile is forever tattooed with that welcoming charm, that open warmth that you extend to all. Wherever you go in your travels the professionals you meet are always just 2 degrees of separation from someone you worked with or for. ‘The Society of the Crossed Keys’ is there to hasten your journey, book you a private table, secure a suite during the convention.

What is different than the movie is the ownership. There are more REITs and fewer baronesses in the boardroom. There are more inspectors looking for standardization, more job combinations and cuts. However, despite all of the commoditization of our properties we are still a community of individuals with a loyalty to each other and a devotion to the art of service.

When you walk into a lobby on the other side of the world you are always at home.

Whenever we drove down Park Lane and passed The Dorchester my grandfather would tell us stories of how the top hatted and tailed doormen were wealthy men in their own right. Like palace guards they were the sentries who controlled the door and the forecourt and choreographed the comings and goings of power, luxe and history. For this they were gratuitously rewarded with cash and gifts and even the occasional hot tip on a horse or a stock. 

In my career I have had the pleasure of working with a number of legendary doormen, gentlemen and one gentlewoman, who were as famous as the properties they manned. 

Tipping in todays world is always a thing that intimidates many powerful people. Doing the math and the protocols at a dining room table with a cognac in one hand and a gold card in the other is much different than trying to figure out what to give a surly doorman on a crowded sidewalk on a rain driven New York night. The world wants a cab but they are all headed for Queens. The right bill in the doorman’s hand and the crowd is parted and you are safe and dry, ensconced in the back of a  black sedan, on your way, on time, to an expensive Broadway curtain.

When I was a rookie Executive Committee member my family would arrive at the hotel for an MOD weekend and as they got out of the cab Sonny the head doorman would reach into his pocket and give my kids $5 each and tell them they had to be good boys. Years later after he had retired I was once again back in New York and heard that he had passed.  I gathered a number of the staff and we went up to the Bronx to the wake to show our respect.

A great place for any General Manager to stay in touch with the reality of his property is to spend some time each day standing at the door listening to the doorstaff, the employees who are literally on the front lines. They will tell you the real deal of how you are doing. Listen!

[email protected]
Linkedin