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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
 
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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!
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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.