Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Managing America's Largest Summer-Only Resort: David Jurcak's Mackinac Island Story

Transcript

Managing America's Largest Summer-Only Resort: David Jurcak's Mackinac Island Story · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Codispote and
0:17
today's guest is David Jersack. He is the president of Grand
0:21
Hotel, an iconic hospitality landmark on Mackinac Island,
0:25
founded in 1887. Known for its unique blend of
0:30
historical charm and modern luxury, Grand Hotel offers
0:34
guests beautiful accommodations, memorable dining experiences,
0:38
and a variety of recreational activities.
0:41
Under David's leadership, the hotel continues its tradition of
0:45
excellence, drawing visitors from across the globe.
0:48
He has guided the property toward new growth initiatives
0:51
and continues to uphold its renowned commitment to
0:54
exceptional service. David has more than three
0:58
decades of experience in hospitality, having held key
1:01
roles at Omni Hotels and Resorts and Ambridge Hospitality before
1:06
joining Grand Hotel in 2021. He has successfully managed
1:11
operations in multiple states, improving a guest satisfaction
1:15
and business growth, and he even finds time to serve his
1:18
community as a volunteer firefighter in both Michigan and
1:23
Virginia. Now before we get into all that
1:25
good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
1:28
Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offered very specific and
1:32
unique employee benefits that are both great for your team of
1:35
workers and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.
1:38
Imagine being able to give your hotel employees free access to
1:42
doctors, therapists and prescription medications.
1:45
And here's the fun part, the program actually puts more money
1:48
into your employees pockets and the companies too.
1:52
One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per
1:57
employee per year. Results vary for each company
2:00
and some organizations may not be eligible.
2:03
To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
2:06
AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:09
today, President of Grand Hotel, David Jersack.
2:12
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:14
Well, thank you for the invitation.
2:16
So, David, you've been in the hotel and hospitality industry
2:19
for decades now. How did you first get your
2:21
start? Well, it's kind of a mistake or
2:24
by accident. I took a summer job out of
2:27
college before I went to grad school and thought I'd take a
2:29
cap year. My dad worked for Japan Airlines
2:32
and so he thought great opportunity for me to be his
2:36
flight attendant. I didn't think the travel would
2:38
be great. So I, you know, went down to the
2:40
street and planted a hotel and 35 years later I have the
2:45
opportunity to talk to you. So a lot happened in between.
2:48
What was it in that first job that kind of hooked you on it?
2:52
Well, you know, I, I love the idea that every day is
2:55
different. Every day is a challenge.
2:56
Every day I, I met somebody new. That hotel I was the Westin
3:00
Crown Center in Kansas City gave me the opportunity to, to grow
3:04
real quick. I mean, it was every six months
3:07
for the 4 1/2 years I worked there, I had another
3:09
opportunity. And so, you know, I saw growth
3:14
in this industry that my friends weren't seeing in the industries
3:17
they worked in. I never expected I'd be here for
3:20
35 years, mind you, but it, it just got into my soul that, you
3:25
know, I, I don't think I could ever do anything else but what
3:27
I'm doing today. Why do you love it so much?
3:30
Again today, just like it was 35 years ago, I meet somebody new
3:34
every day. I, I talked to somebody new
3:35
every day. I learned something about
3:37
myself. I learned something about where
3:39
I work every day. And so every day I get to grow a
3:42
little bit. And then the business is
3:43
challenging. It's, it's really hands on.
3:47
It's not, you know, you know, my mom, you know, ran a division in
3:52
her business and she went to her cubicle every day and took a
3:55
stack of papers every day and went through it every day.
3:57
And, and I could tell her six months from now, this is about
4:01
what you're going to do on this Wednesday.
4:03
Whereas today to me, I don't have no idea what I'm going to
4:05
do in about an hour and a half when this is, you know, when
4:07
this interview is over, you know, it could be something
4:09
completely different, something that I had no idea was going to
4:12
come. But it's, you know, it's, it's a
4:14
great part of our business. Prior to finding your way to
4:18
Grand Hotel David, what would you consider to be the most
4:21
formidable stop for you along your career path and what did
4:24
you learn? Well, early on in my career, you
4:28
know, someone just gave me the opportunity to go to work and
4:30
housekeeping, you know, I went to our number two of the hotel,
4:36
725 room hotel. And I said, you know what, I
4:38
think I want to try this housekeeping job that you have
4:40
available as a supervisor. And she was like, why, why would
4:43
you go to housekeeping? Why do you want to go to
4:44
housekeeping? I said, I, I think it'd be a
4:46
great, great way to learn about business and great way to learn
4:49
about people and dealing with people.
4:52
So I, I took a small career path in housekeeping and I remember
4:55
my friends used to tell me, what do you do?
4:57
Clean rooms? And I'm like, well, no, I, you
4:59
know, I threw half three years out of college, you know, I had
5:02
over 110 people on my staff. I had a three and a half million
5:05
dollar labor payroll. I was running a small business
5:09
inside a large business at a very young age.
5:12
And so to me that that opened the doors to a lot of things for
5:16
me in my career. Not only to open the doors
5:18
because I had other opportunities, but it really
5:21
opened my eyes to what the real business was of operating a
5:24
hotel. Yet at the end of the day, I
5:27
hate to put it to minimal inputs.
5:29
At the end of the day, we are a manufacturer of clean guest
5:33
rooms. So you, you, you need a room
5:36
attendant and you need a, a dishwasher every single day to
5:39
run your hotel. Because if you don't have clean
5:41
dishes and plates and you don't have clean rooms, you don't
5:43
start. And so I had that opportunity to
5:46
work in that department. It kind of opened my eyes to
5:47
what what a hotel is all about, the business side.
5:49
Of it, and this was something that you sought out.
5:51
How did you kind of have that foresight to know that there
5:55
were so many valuable lessons for you to learn by?
5:59
Because like you're saying, your friends are like, what are you
6:01
doing cleaning rooms all day? Like, like there's like a little
6:04
bit of like an ego slide from, you know, that kind of a role
6:07
from the outside looking at and. And a lot of it was I wanted to
6:12
grow. I, I said, you know, if, if I'm
6:13
going to take an opportunity in this, this place, give me
6:16
another opportunity. And, and, and unfortunately,
6:18
there's, there's a good side of this and a bad side of this is
6:21
that, you know, I wanted to grow and I wanted to move every six
6:24
months or any, anytime somebody gave me another opportunity, I
6:27
took it. And, you know, I learned what I
6:29
possibly can learn in that. So I can, so I can, you know,
6:32
stack that knowledge on to the next position and I continue to
6:34
grow and continue to move to the next position.
6:38
And part of that was for me just to want to win, you know, I, I
6:41
just, I, I needed it. I needed to move on and and
6:44
progress my career as quickly as I could.
6:47
So how did the opportunity at Grand Hotel come about?
6:51
Well, you know, so I, you know, 30 years into the, into the
6:55
business, I know a lot of people.
6:57
I'm a lot of friends with a lot of people.
6:59
I, I moved, I ran hotels. I, I ran America's first resort,
7:03
the Homestead in Virginia at that hotel was a resort was
7:07
built in 1766, ten years before the country was formed.
7:12
So that the United States is going to celebrate 250 years
7:14
ago, 250 years next year. The Homesteads celebrated their
7:18
250 10 years ago while I was there.
7:20
So I love old hotels. I love historic hotels.
7:23
I worked in one in Saint Louis, my first GM job, a smaller
7:26
operation. There's just more stories to
7:28
tell. And so when I did that and I
7:31
kind of moved on and I took this corporate job with Ambridge,
7:33
which I loved. I loved my job, you know,
7:36
everything about my job in that role.
7:38
I love the company, I love my job.
7:40
So people said, would you ever go back to a hotel?
7:41
And I said, no, I, I, I don't want to go back to hotels.
7:44
I just, I'm fine where I'm at and they kept pushing.
7:47
I said, OK, there's 8 hotels in the United States.
7:49
I'd go workout. Just kind of be fun.
7:51
There's 8 hotels, I'd go workout.
7:52
One of them was this hotel Grand Hotel, because it was historic.
7:56
It was, it was unique. It's iconic.
7:59
And if, if I was going to leave a job that I really loved, I
8:02
need to go to another job that I would really love.
8:04
And this was one of them for me. On that short list.
8:08
You know, it's, again, it's on Mackinac Island Horse and
8:12
carriage. It's, it's an iconic hotel.
8:14
It's we're in 139th season, 138th year.
8:17
Then we've been open. You know, it's, it's got 1000
8:21
stories. It's seasonal, unlike any hotel
8:24
you're really going to find in the United States, especially in
8:26
a large hotel. We have the largest seasonal
8:29
hotel in the world or summer hotel in the world.
8:32
What does that mean? That you're seasonal in your
8:33
summer. We're, we're only open from the
8:36
first Friday of May to the 4th Saturday of October.
8:39
And now we close. So we've closed the hotel down.
8:42
We've opened and closed the hotel 139 times or really not.
8:45
We're going to close the hotel for 139 time, 139 time in two
8:50
weeks. But then the hotel shuts down
8:52
and you go, you know, you continue to work and you plan
8:55
and, and you refocus what we're going to do next year.
8:57
You go out and recruit people and, and then you reopen the
8:59
hotel. That's something like anywhere
9:00
else. And so that, as well as all the
9:03
other iconic nature of it and historic nature of it, you know,
9:06
put that on the top of the list. So let's sort of paint the
9:09
picture for our listeners who aren't familiar.
9:11
Mackinac Island, northern tip of Michigan, right?
9:16
And so the reason that you guys close every year is because it's
9:22
just hard to get to and it's so cold up there, right?
9:24
The lake freezes over and the and the only way to get there
9:29
would be you know what, like a snowmobile or skis.
9:32
Or yeah, in the winter there's three ways to get there.
9:35
Ferry until the ice forms and they shut down the ferry.
9:39
You can fly up, they can. The plane goes, it's about a 3
9:42
1/2 minute flight. It gets to the island, but
9:45
sometimes that doesn't work. And then if the ice freezes
9:48
enough, there's an opportunity to ride a snowmobile across the
9:51
lake to the place. However, we are a wood frame
9:55
structure built now. I don't know if you know this.
9:57
We were built in 1887 and 93 days.
10:00
So our wood frame structure on top of the hill off the lake,
10:04
Lake MI and Lake Huron, there really doesn't have a lot of
10:08
insulation in it. So, you know, we couldn't keep
10:11
water running. We couldn't, you know, couldn't
10:13
heat it. And so you close it.
10:15
It's kind of like The Shining, but a little different.
10:18
That is creepy. Definitely not as creepy.
10:21
Yeah, and, and that's an incredible part of the story,
10:23
right? The the structure was built back
10:25
in 1887, like you said, in 93 days during the dead of winter
10:30
when the lake was frozen. I don't even understand, first
10:34
of all, how that was possible, and then second of all, like,
10:38
why was that even the goal? Why was the project undertaken
10:40
in that way? So back in the late 1800s, it
10:45
was really the new rich. So it's not when I say the new
10:48
rich, there were rich people like the Vanderbilt's rich, the
10:51
Rockefeller's rich. The people that we cater to are
10:56
their children. So they were then the first
11:00
formation of wealthy children or wealthy people, second
11:03
generation in the United States. They wanted to get out of dirty
11:07
cities, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and they wanted to go
11:12
to places. And so railroads, we used to
11:15
bring them places, they would get on a railroad and they would
11:17
go 3 or 4 days to a destination. And the railroads got smart to
11:21
that and said, hey, you know what, not only can we get make
11:23
money on the way there and the way back, let's build these
11:26
hotels and we'll at the end of the line and they'll stay there.
11:30
You know, a la Grand Hotel in 1887, the Del Coronado in San
11:34
Diego in 1888, the Homestead in Virginia, the Greenbrier in West
11:39
Virginia. All these big hotels, wood frame
11:44
structures were built by railroads and they were built
11:47
quickly, cheaply and never meant to last.
11:52
In the turn of the century, between 18119 out of there were
11:54
1200 wood framed hotels, greater than 200 rooms and there's 12
12:00
left. And so it's a special group of
12:04
hotels that are there. But you know, that's what they
12:06
did. They used to come to this hotel
12:07
for two months a year in the summer, get away from The Dirty
12:11
cities and get fresh air. Sit out on the porch, the
12:14
world's longest front porch, 660 feet overlooking Lake MI and
12:19
Lake Huron and get those clear breezes and and fresh air.
12:24
So trying to better understand this place because it it sounds
12:30
incredible. So was the initial owner builder
12:37
of this hotel, then one of the railroads?
12:39
Two railroads and a steamship like.
12:41
OK. And so and they wanted to get
12:43
this up quickly just because, hey, the season's coming and we
12:46
want this to be open and ready for the next season.
12:48
July and August is when usually people came.
12:51
We were open July 10th, 1887. We're supposed to be July 7th,
12:55
1887 on a Thursday. We opened on a Sunday.
12:58
He missed it by three days. The funny thing about here is
13:01
Charles Kowski was our builder's incredible builder.
13:05
And just the foresight, just the just the magnitude of putting
13:08
all this together to make it, build it and then get it done in
13:11
93 days. Amazing.
13:13
But about halfway through, you know, up in northern Michigan in
13:15
the early part of latter part of the winter, early part of the
13:18
spring, he had to go higher, upward of 600 men to come live
13:23
on this island for 90 days and build a hotel.
13:26
Well, not a lot of people were out there that wanted to do it.
13:28
So he paid double wages. And so he advertised double
13:31
wages. Well, you know, I couldn't swing
13:34
a hammer. You know, I, I, I could
13:35
probably, I could probably hammer a nail, but that's about
13:37
it. But if double wages were being
13:39
offered, I think I'd raise my hand.
13:41
Well, he found out about halfway through that there were a lot of
13:44
me's there. And so he called back to the
13:47
ownership group funded by the two railroads in the in the
13:51
steamship line. It says, listen, if you want
13:53
this thing open in 90 days, you're going to accept it as is.
13:56
It might not be plumbing, it might be square, but it will
13:59
stand the test of time. And, and I, I stand by it.
14:03
And today, 138 years later, we're standing here on the on
14:06
the, you know, the edge of this Cliff overlooking Lake MI and,
14:10
and Lake Huron. But you look at the building
14:13
and, and you can see inside and it's, you know, a lot of things
14:16
are a little cattywampus. Is that right?
14:17
Not everything is square, not everything is plum, but it's all
14:20
stayed in place. This hotel between winter and
14:23
summer moves about 2 1/2 to 3 inches a year, expands and
14:26
contracts. And so that's a good one.
14:30
He built a good one. So what is the upkeep on this
14:34
place like? You wouldn't.
14:36
It's like crazy. So again I.
14:39
Imagine, I mean you guys right there on the lake, you know,
14:41
lots of cold weather, exposed to the elements, old structure.
14:45
So just just think about a wood framed house uncovered.
14:47
You know, we don't have signing on the building where it's it's
14:49
wood sitting on this lake getting rain storms, getting,
14:54
you know, parallel, you know, rain coming into the building,
14:57
you know, hitting it for 138 years.
15:00
We're going through now we are going into year 4 of A5 year
15:05
restoration project of the 660 foot front porch.
15:09
And that is taking down all the columns, refinishing the columns
15:12
back towards their historic nature, putting them back up,
15:16
standing all the paint down off the building, repainting it back
15:19
white, redoing the floor and putting back a wood plank porch
15:23
on the on the porch. You know it, one would think you
15:28
could do that, you know, in a in a year.
15:30
And unfortunately on our island, you can only do it five months
15:33
at a time. You can only do it when we're
15:34
closed. So there's no scaffolding on the
15:36
building like you would see in a restoration project in
15:38
Washington, DC. We get 5 months every season,
15:41
every offseason and the dead of winter.
15:44
I don't know if you've read it back of a paint can, but you're
15:47
not supposed to paint in cold weather.
15:49
Well, we have to put sheathing around the building and then
15:51
heat it inside the sheathing inside this little shelter just
15:55
to put paint on the building. So it's open in April or late
15:58
April, early May. So all the the upkeep, the the
16:02
the big projects Anyways, that's all taking place when the the
16:05
hotel is closed. For the winter, so we run in the
16:09
season 94% occupancy so we we don't take rooms out of order to
16:12
do a renovation. During the season.
16:14
Everything we do other than upkeep, general maintenance or
16:18
something breaks and we got to fix it really quick.
16:20
Other than that, everything takes place from the Monday of
16:24
our close. We start tearing things down
16:27
until a week before we open in May.
16:31
Wow. And tell us about the customer
16:33
experience. I mean, you're saying you cater
16:36
to the kids of, you know, the the Vanderbilts and The
16:39
Commodores and the Rockefellers. It is still the case, like still
16:42
super luxury today. No, not necessarily.
16:44
Not necessarily to that extreme wealth when I, what I really
16:51
love about this hotel and I love about historic hotels is because
16:53
they become generational. You know, I, the gentleman I
16:58
met, one of the first people I met here in 21, introduced
17:02
myself. His grandfather actually went to
17:06
my college, which was a really tiny school in Kansas City, MO.
17:10
But he's been coming here for 70 years, 70 years.
17:14
He's been coming here as a kid, as a 12 year old came his first
17:18
time. He's brought his kids.
17:20
Now his great grandchildren are coming with him generational
17:23
into a point where there is a a connection, personal connection,
17:29
spiritual connection between them.
17:31
These visitors that come here every year and the hotel and our
17:35
our team members. We have team members.
17:36
We have a team member this year that celebrated his 60th 60
17:40
seasons at this hotel. We have, we had our gala the
17:44
other night. We have a 45 year team member.
17:46
We have a 40 year team member. Now remember when I say 40 year,
17:50
I only, only only need six months at a time.
17:53
So they go do something else for six months and they continue to
17:55
come back year after year after year, taking care of our guests
17:58
that come back year after year after year.
18:02
And there's about 30% of our guests that come for the first
18:05
time. Some come because it's a bucket
18:07
list, because they saw somewhere in time a movie with Christopher
18:10
Reeve and, and Jane Seymour or people that find out about Grand
18:15
Hotel through our marketing efforts or through history
18:17
lessons or a friend. And they, they make the
18:21
pilgrimage up to Upper Upper Peninsula of, of Michigan and
18:26
get on a ferry, 18 minute ferry. And they come over and, and
18:29
then, you know, cars disappear and they jump on the back of it,
18:33
jump in and cars. Disappear there are no take the
18:36
car over on the ferry. Right.
18:37
No cars on this island, none. 122 years we have been car free
18:42
on this island. The only motorized vehicles on
18:45
the island are the fire engines and ambulance, and we have one
18:52
police vehicle that does that only goes out in the when it
18:55
when it actually has to like to transport somebody or something
18:58
like that. Otherwise it's a horse and
19:00
carriage in everything, any, anything and everything that
19:03
moves 365 days a year moves via horse and carriage.
19:08
If it's if it's freight or a box or an Amazon box or whatever it
19:13
is, it's counting on a horse and carriage pulled by Percheron or
19:18
it's another type of draft horse up the hill.
19:22
So when I'm on the island, I'm either getting around by my own
19:25
2 feet horse and carriage, or probably bicycles and a bicycle
19:29
as well. But no motorized scooters, no
19:33
Ubers, no no cars. No, we almost named two of our
19:37
horses. So we have three, what we call
19:38
buses, which is a big carriage. We almost named two of the
19:42
horses, Uber and Lyft, but we chose to use two other names so.
19:48
OK, so when I'm there at the hotel, like aside from sort of
19:53
the the horse and buggy and no cars, do I feel like I'm
19:57
stepping back in time? Like what, what, what am I
20:00
experiencing? What am I engaging with there?
20:02
And 10 out of 10 people I ask this question through when they
20:05
come across the come across on the ferry and they see Grand
20:08
Hotel, see the island kind of wait kind of continues.
20:12
You know, that stress or all that kind of goes away and that
20:14
that happens in a lot of places. You get off of get out of your
20:17
Uber at a, at a beautiful resort, kind of that relaxation
20:20
hits you right here. It's a, it's a different feeling
20:23
because all that noise goes away and all that stress goes away.
20:27
You know, I, I get to live in an environment that doesn't have a
20:29
vehicle for seven months of the year.
20:30
And I can tell you it is an incredible experience to take
20:34
that speed out of your life. And so when we walk or we're,
20:38
you know, the horse and carriage is, is slower than walking in
20:41
some cases, but that means I have to see you face to face
20:45
when you're walking at the sidewalk.
20:46
That means guests actually say hello to each other, people say
20:50
hello to each other, people, you know, getting conversations.
20:52
People actually stop and take a photo for a couple or a family
20:56
that wants to another backdrop and they'll be glad to do it
20:59
because everything is slowed down.
21:02
There is no, I got to run out to my car real quick and jump in my
21:04
car and go 5 miles across town in order to get lunch and come
21:07
back before you. You just, those things don't
21:10
happen. And so when you take that out of
21:13
your life, if it's for two days or seven months, it changes.
21:16
It changes you. Explain what the themes are at
21:21
Grand Hotel and give us an example.
21:23
So we have themed weekends. We have, you know, the summer
21:27
and time weekend, which we just had, which was the 35th year
21:30
that they actually did the fan club.
21:32
A group comes to the Grand Hotel.
21:35
We do Superheroes and Princesses weekend where we have
21:39
superheroes and princesses and the kids get to go through
21:41
Academy and so they get to learn to be a superhero.
21:44
They get to dine with the princesses and they have an
21:47
incredible experience. And we have wine weekends, we
21:50
have distillers weekends, we have history weekends.
21:52
This weekend is one of our favorite.
21:54
It's Year 4 of an event we call Cork and Fork.
21:59
Our master Samye Elizabeth Schweitzer is the eighth woman
22:02
in the world ever to reach the level of Master Some.
22:05
And so we want to do something special for her.
22:08
And so 35 years ago, when I was in the business, first in the
22:10
business, I would walk through a kitchen.
22:12
I would never see a woman. No, no females in the kitchen.
22:15
You know, then, then eventually there was a female cook and
22:17
stuff like that. And now we have incredible
22:20
female chefs and business owners that run their own restaurants
22:23
and standing. So Cork and Fork is a
22:25
celebration of women in hospitality or women in
22:28
culinary. Excuse me.
22:29
And so this year, normally we, we in the first three years we,
22:33
we brought 6 chefs in. This year we have 7.
22:36
So we have 7 chefs. And Elizabeth, they create an 8
22:39
course meal paired with wines all made by or run by women from
22:45
all over the world. And Elizabeth does that.
22:47
It's a it's a weekend celebration of women and and how
22:51
they have impacted our industry. That's really cool.
22:54
I know that Grand Hotel really prides itself on the exceptional
22:58
service that you provide. Can you paint a colorful picture
23:04
for us by giving a specific example of the time when your
23:07
staff really wowed somebody? So I'm going to take it, I'll
23:12
take that question a little differently.
23:15
We, we offer our saying personalized customer service
23:17
and and our staff. We, we have staff from 34
23:20
different countries around the world, 25 states across the
23:23
United States that come here. We recruit worldwide in order to
23:27
bring people here to work for the six months, the things that
23:31
that that wow me and the hospitality industry.
23:35
So if you would have come to my hotel and another hotel and, and
23:37
we offer you a great service and, and you, you thank me and
23:40
shake my hand. You said your staff did a great
23:42
job and you go on your way. You know, it's proud.
23:45
You know, you're proud as a gentleman of things like that.
23:48
What changes that or what brings that to not only the next level,
23:51
which brings it to a total sphere of level.
23:55
It's when a family is in the dining room that has had the
23:57
same server for 30 years that the children are showing me.
24:02
Children that are older, 30 year old children are showing me the
24:06
photo of their server holding them as a small child, now
24:10
holding their kid as a small child and the thrill that they
24:14
get that they communicate with that server in the offseason.
24:18
Some people will actually, before they even get their key,
24:21
will go find their room attendant, their server, their,
24:25
you know, their bellman, not theirs, but you know, people
24:28
that did have touched their lives and their families lives.
24:30
And they go seek them out to give them a hug and, and, and
24:34
our, our team members will say, welcome home, you know, and they
24:36
have this cherished moment. And then, and then they go on,
24:39
you know, they go and they, they experience the rest of their,
24:41
their time. But there's a connection that
24:45
only comes from incredible service initially, right?
24:47
That first service that that person gave that server, that
24:51
Bellman, that room attend, that first service is the one that
24:53
catapulted it to 30 years later of always seeking out that
24:59
individual to come back to. That's, that is that service
25:03
that you don't get unless you're at a historic hotel or, or
25:05
you're at, you know, some type of, of a building that that
25:08
caters to the people in a different way.
25:12
It's not, you're not, you're not going to find that, you know,
25:14
the guy from IB Ms. not walking into, you know, in his Tuesday
25:17
through Thursday stay at the same hotel in Chicago, you know,
25:21
20 years later going to look for the bellman that, you know, they
25:23
checked him in 30 years ago. That just that doesn't happen
25:26
here. They become part of the family.
25:29
OK, So I want to explore more of the way that you guys staff the
25:33
hotels because this is going to be interesting, right?
25:37
You're only open several months out of the year.
25:39
Then people your, your team, they leave, they find employment
25:43
somewhere else, they're doing some and, and a lot of them come
25:46
back. So that's like one really
25:48
interesting component. But then I also want you to
25:51
explain what an H2PH2B visa is and how you approach this
25:58
staffing. And you mentioned that you got
26:00
people from dozens of countries. Help us understand what's going
26:03
on. Well, the uniqueness about us is
26:06
that when you work at Grand Hotel or anywhere in the other
26:09
properties on Mackinac Island, you have to relocate here.
26:13
We have some people that commute, but you got to commute
26:15
on a ferry. It just becomes very cumbersome.
26:17
So you have to leave like I do. I leave my home.
26:21
My wife comes up here with me, but we leave our family and and
26:23
friends and everything back in Virginia and we come here for
26:25
seven months. So there aren't a lot of people
26:29
in the United States that want to give up their entire
26:31
livelihood to come up here and be a server over the summer just
26:35
so they know that they're going to be unemployed again in
26:37
November and go back to their place because there's jobs
26:41
everywhere across the United States.
26:43
Why would I move to Mackinac Island when I can just get a job
26:45
as a server in Nashville? Why do why do I need to move up
26:48
there? So that's a difficult way to
26:50
recruit. But although we recruit
26:51
domestically, there are 25 states across the United States
26:53
of team members that are here, but H2B and J1.
26:57
So H2B, I'll go to JH2B first. H2B is, is a temporary visa,
27:03
work visa for someone outside the United States as a visiting
27:07
foreign worker to to come to the United States and work for six
27:11
month period, seasonal period. Department of Labor.
27:13
We, we apply to the Department of Labor.
27:15
Department of Labor says, yes, you are seasonal hotel.
27:18
Yes, there isn't enough employment in your general area.
27:21
We'll give you a visa or the opportunity to get a visa to
27:24
give you that. We once we get those, we go into
27:27
a lottery. There are 33,000 visas that are
27:30
issued to all industries. We're talking about carpenters,
27:34
meat Packers, carnivals, outdoor carnivals, landscaping,
27:40
hospitality, all industries. 33,000 visas last year 160,000
27:45
applicants for those 33,000 visas.
27:48
So that goes into a lottery. Sometimes you're you're lucky,
27:53
sometimes you're not. If you're lucky, you get to
27:55
bring people from outside the country back in and they can
27:58
come work and they work for us for six months.
28:01
If you're unlucky, those people that come in the country can
28:04
stay for for three years into the country but they have to
28:07
move jobs every six months. So why we can recruit someone on
28:11
it, what's called extension that comes back.
28:13
So we are from the day we close in two weeks.
28:15
Even now before we close, we are recruiting for next year to get
28:19
people here. J1 is another visa, but those
28:22
are kids that are in College in other parts of the the world
28:27
that are coming here for an internship or a study abroad
28:31
opportunity. And by study abroad, I mean
28:34
study the the the inner workings of the hotel and they come here
28:38
for that. But there are more trainees than
28:41
H2B. This may be a bizarre question,
28:44
but has there ever been any thought as you guys are doing
28:48
all these capital improvements to the hotel to start equipping
28:55
it so that it could be open in the winter, You guys could stay
28:58
open year round and maybe not have to deal with so much staff
29:02
turnover? Could, but we'd have to heat 138
29:08
year old building. We have to winterize it and
29:12
plumbing all the changes there. I just don't think the value of
29:15
it 1 it's a 388 room hotel. I don't know if you get demand
29:19
to get enough people across over here and do that.
29:22
Infrastructure on the island is limited in the winter as well.
29:26
Most of the restaurants and and bars are closed as well because
29:29
of staffing levels. So really that the island in the
29:33
winter is geared around the people that live here.
29:37
It's a absolutely wonderful island.
29:39
I want to take a step back real quick.
29:40
So we talk about hospitality and people come to the island to
29:43
State Grand Hotel or maybe another hotel or visit the the
29:46
island for a day. This is the, the residence of
29:49
about 550 Mackinac Islanders that live here year round.
29:55
It's their home. They have a school here, school
29:58
children are great and they live here and, and this is where they
30:02
work. So we don't really open and
30:04
close the island. The island works.
30:07
It's open all the time because it's a, it's an island of
30:09
residence. But in the winter, most of those
30:13
places close. And so there's really to bring,
30:16
you know, if you were to come over here in January, outside it
30:19
being ridiculously cold, there isn't much else to do.
30:24
Why do you think so many of your workers, your employees, come
30:30
back every year? I think it's the experience.
30:33
I think that, you know, after you've been here for a few
30:35
years, you, you'll become and you know that sometimes it's
30:39
people use team or, or family too loosely.
30:43
I like calling A-Team. There's not a lot of family
30:46
members that leave. So A-Team, the others kind of
30:48
can leave or come back. I think they love being around
30:52
the people that they live and work with.
30:53
So we live and work with everybody for six months.
30:57
So we have housing. We have 52 buildings that house
31:00
our 730 team members in the summer.
31:03
So you might be in a dormitory, you might be in an old hotel,
31:05
you might be in a duplex, you might be in an apartment.
31:09
But we we feed 730 team members three meals a day.
31:12
We eat in the same cafeteria together.
31:14
We play bingo on on certain nights.
31:15
We watch movies on certain nights that we put up a movie
31:18
theater or movie screen at either one of the dorms or on
31:22
the golf course. There's no movie theater on the
31:24
island, but we kind of hang out together.
31:26
We enjoy each other's company. The, the, the uniqueness of
31:30
having people from all over the world, like I mentioned earlier
31:33
in my conversation, I get to meet people from all over the
31:36
world. You know, I, I, you know, we
31:38
have a large population of Jamaicans.
31:40
I get to eat your chicken on a regular basis, a large
31:44
population of Filipinos, a large population of, of Mexicans and,
31:48
and Central Americans. And it's just this incredible
31:54
ethnic, you know, diverse community that seems to come
31:57
together and we don't we don't complain against each other.
32:01
You, you don't see this, you know, bickering or anything like
32:04
that. We all just kind of get together
32:05
and everything kind of works for the six months.
32:07
And so people want to come back to that.
32:10
So that was actually going to be my question.
32:12
I mean, when you're working together and living together,
32:16
right? I mean, even if you really like
32:18
the people that you work with, when you don't get a break, you
32:21
know, you're, you're kind of going back into the same living
32:24
space together as well. Does that create some friction,
32:28
some dynamics there that you have to kind of manage?
32:30
Oh yeah. I mean, you might not like your
32:32
roommates on it or not roommates on it.
32:34
You might not like your roommate.
32:35
It's like going to college, right?
32:36
You might not like your roommate.
32:40
Other reason why we're probably not 12 months a year is because
32:42
I don't know if we could pull it off for 12 months.
32:44
Six months you get a little bit. It gets about the end of it in
32:47
about 6 months. And so the living arrangement it
32:50
like like a college dorm, like if I'm working there, I've got a
32:53
a roommate. Is there an en suite bathroom or
32:56
is there like a a shared bathroom for the floor?
32:58
How does that work? It it all depends in, in what
33:00
building you live in. A lot of them have, you know,
33:02
the the two people live on this side bed bathroom in the middle,
33:05
two people on that side like a like a dorm room.
33:08
We have, we have a few handful of beer bath facilities from old
33:14
hotels that we we have purchased in the past just to kind of, you
33:19
know, a lot of different spaces that we put people.
33:22
So here's a part we haven't explored yet that I've never run
33:27
a hotel, but I have to imagine it's a fair bit of work to shut
33:33
it down, right? You're winterizing it, prepping
33:36
it, closing things down, locking things up, whatever it is you
33:39
have to do. And then several months later
33:42
you're kind of undoing all of that and reopening it again.
33:47
Talk to me about how both of those processes work.
33:50
So it takes about a month to open, it takes about 6 days to
33:57
close. And I asked, we bought this
34:01
hotel in the end of 2019 from a family that owned it since 1933.
34:05
And I and I jokingly asked The Who is our chairman emeritus was
34:09
the gentleman sold to us? I said, Dan what?
34:12
It's amazing how quickly they close and he says it's amazing
34:15
what you can get done when you're motivated.
34:18
So everybody's ready to go to the winter and job or go back
34:21
home, but we start cleaning. We're already cleaning a lot of
34:25
different areas. We're dwindling down our food
34:28
supplies. One of the my favorite night of
34:31
the season, not not because it's the last night of the season,
34:33
because that's not my favorite night.
34:34
My favorite night is the first day of the season, but one of
34:38
the favorite nights. Our main dining room seats about
34:40
800 people. We feed people breakfast, lunch
34:43
and dinner in there. The only dinner buffet we do is
34:47
the Sunday after we close. We close the last Saturday.
34:50
We stay open for one more day. Historically, this is what the
34:54
the hotel has done is they burn off and cook everything that's
34:58
every perishable item left and it goes into a buffet that night
35:02
in the dining room. So my first year I went up there
35:05
and I, I grabbed a couple cool things that are, you know,
35:09
different food. And I sat back down.
35:10
My wife and I are enjoying it. And so I'm going to go back and
35:12
get some more of that. And I went back and was gone.
35:14
I said, where, where's that? And the chef's like, well, it's
35:16
gone. We already cooked all that.
35:19
This is the new, this is the pork.
35:21
You're going to have to eat this until that's out.
35:23
And so it's just a fun experience.
35:25
We all sit together that there's a lot of people.
35:29
It's the only night that we are not in formal attire.
35:33
Not by formal. We have a dress code after 6:30
35:36
in the hotel. Is that for everybody or just
35:38
the stuff? No, everybody, gentlemen are are
35:41
required to wear a coat and tie to be in the what we call the
35:45
parlor in our dining. So if you're going to go dine,
35:48
you have to be in a evening attire every night, every day of
35:52
the season at 6:30, with the exception of the last, that last
35:56
Sunday, you can dine in the dining room in a, you know,
36:00
jeans and AT shirt. So that's interesting.
36:03
Are there other parts of the experience that are maybe a
36:06
little more buttoned up or formal?
36:09
So we, we are historic and iconic.
36:13
So we, we, we have a lot of our lives in the history and
36:16
traditions in this hotel has had.
36:18
So from 1887, the first dinners that were served in the hotel
36:23
again to very wealthy young people, they're already dressed.
36:27
We would find that women would change 6 to 8 times a day back
36:32
then, more so because they're in big wool, you know, clothing
36:36
sitting on outside in the middle of summer.
36:39
But they always were dressed and they were always, you know,
36:42
they're proper. They were showing off.
36:44
Well, that continued to go through and even into the 40s
36:47
and 50s when gentlemen would wear a tie to a baseball game.
36:49
You look at those old pictures, right?
36:51
So we never really had a talk about dress code until probably
36:55
the late 50s, early 60s, mid 60s, where everybody start to
36:59
get a little more casual leisure suits, you know, losing the tie,
37:04
wearing the turtleneck, that kind of thing.
37:06
But this hotel said, no, we were only in the traditions we lived
37:09
in all of our since we've come up.
37:11
So we started creating this dress code.
37:13
And Even so, more so now than than ever before.
37:16
And I think it's going to continue to move in that
37:18
direction too, is that, you know, we don't dress to go to
37:21
work anymore. We don't dress to go to church
37:23
anymore. We don't dress to go anything
37:24
anymore, right? So, and in some cases it's
37:28
really casual and dumbed down the way people dress to go do
37:32
things. And so here we just want to take
37:34
a step back, you know, not only it's not Klitsche that say that
37:38
we're going to be historic and so we're going to make you wear
37:40
a coat and tie. It says that that's who we are.
37:43
That's who we've been since 1887.
37:45
There's no reason to change what we do.
37:47
We run 94%. I can see there's people that
37:49
that come to our property and love dressing up and dressing
37:53
their kids up. They probably get their only
37:55
photo of the year that the kids are dressed up and they're on on
37:59
the front porch and they're having a great time.
38:01
And, and So what ends up happening?
38:02
You go have a 2 hour hour, 42 hour dinner.
38:05
It's a 5 course meal served every night.
38:07
You come back out, you you relax in the parlor again.
38:10
You have a cup of coffee. You listen to the harpist.
38:12
And then at 9:30 you go into the Terrace Room, as we've been
38:16
doing since 1894, and you go dancing.
38:21
You danced to the Grand Hotel Orchestra till about 11:00 and
38:24
then you retired for the evening.
38:25
That is what we have been doing since the late 1890s.
38:29
It's an orchestra. That's that's who I'm dancing to
38:31
or. Yeah, not a not a, you know,
38:32
you're not like a the Philharmonic, but it's a Grand
38:36
Hotel orchestra. So it's, it's a six piece, you
38:38
know, band. You got a little horn section.
38:40
You got, you know, bass, stand up bass player.
38:42
You got a singer. It's, it's probably a more
38:45
polished, I hate to say this, that's it, but you'll get it.
38:49
It's more polished than like let's say a wedding band, you
38:55
know, we're not playing all the, the wedding tunes, but there's
38:58
people that are out there dancing, ballroom dancing type
39:01
dancing. There's kids out there dancing
39:02
with their grandma or grandpa for the, you know, for the first
39:05
time. It's, it's absolute magic what
39:09
you see. And so again, we have been doing
39:11
that and people have been loving it for 138, 139 seasons.
39:16
I'm glad we kind of went down that little Rd.
39:18
I didn't until you started explaining that really
39:21
appreciate or understand the the element of that tradition that
39:27
that takes place there that you guys are still tied into from
39:30
the 1880s. Is there anything else we
39:32
haven't touched on that would kind of fit into that?
39:35
We do things the old fashioned way, kind of theme.
39:39
Well, so the porch, this is one of things, well, let's talk
39:44
about music. So, you know, the orchestra is a
39:46
big deal, but we have more live music and more musicians than
39:51
any other resort in the Great Lakes.
39:52
And that was a tradition. That was in 1894 by Mr.
39:58
Rutherford Hayes, who was the 2nd proprietor of the hotel.
40:01
So the hotel originally was never owned by the proprietor.
40:06
Oliver Plank was the first person.
40:07
He kind of leased the property from the owner so that he can
40:10
run it. He lasted about three years.
40:12
And then J Rutherford Hayes came in.
40:15
He said, I've got to change this space to create something that's
40:19
exciting and culturally different for those people that
40:22
are are looking for culturally different than rich children of
40:26
the wealthy coming up here. And so he he said, I'm going to
40:29
go out and hire the greatest musicians in the Great Lakes.
40:33
And so he stole for the summer that stole went out, hired some
40:37
of the greatest musicians out of orchestras in the Great Lakes.
40:41
Go to Cleveland and and and and you know, hire somebody on their
40:45
their orchestra, Chicago, Milwaukee, and they brought them
40:48
all up here. And so back then he said, I want
40:50
to have more live musicians than any get resort in Great Lakes.
40:53
And we still do that today. So you'll hear from a harpist to
40:57
a pianist to jazz musicians to the, the, the band that plays at
41:03
music every dinner every night, the harpist that plays at T
41:07
every afternoon. The, you know, the only place
41:10
that I have ever been probably will never, ever be during our
41:14
winter, our July 4th carnival where we have bounce houses and
41:17
face painting and kids running around with cotton candy.
41:20
There's a jazz trio playing off to the side.
41:24
It's again, you have to see it to believe it.
41:26
It's absolute magic that would curse here.
41:28
It's a, it sounds like a fun mix of new and old, right?
41:31
The bounce houses and the, the old, the old orchestra.
41:36
And Speaking of old, our nation has a birthday coming up next
41:40
year. Talk to me about the importance
41:42
of that and why you're so excited at the Grand Hotel.
41:45
So I, you know, there are spots to be when you travel if, if
41:50
you're a historian or, or a lover of our nation and, and you
41:53
want to celebrate the 250th, you know, you know, I was around in
41:57
1976 when we did the, I was a young kid.
42:00
The bicentennial was great. You know, there's big parties,
42:02
people went everywhere. I think more people are going to
42:04
travel this summer than maybe any summer since the
42:08
bicentennial. I think people are going to
42:10
search out history and, and, and one, search out history and find
42:16
that. But I think people want to come
42:19
to Macro Island or want to come to Macro Island for the escape
42:22
of what happens everywhere else. You know, I love our country.
42:26
I love everything about it. And we're going through some
42:28
tough times right now and that everybody sees eye to eye.
42:30
So where can I go and where can I escape?
42:33
It gives me another somewhere else to kind of feel with my
42:38
family about America and all that.
42:39
And I'm going to tell you there is not another spot and I've
42:43
traveled a lot in this country. There is a not another spot that
42:46
is more conducive to that than Mackinac Island and Grand Hotel.
42:49
We're going to celebrate the 250th.
42:51
We're going to have bunting on the building.
42:53
If you've seen our building at 660 feet long, it's white, you
42:58
know, with the red, white and blue on it.
42:59
We fly the American flag. We have 10 huge American flags
43:01
off the front of it, one on top. We have flags on all of our
43:04
buildings. But it's going to be special to
43:07
be here in the 250th, our culmination and a pinnacle of
43:11
our season. As always, the July 4th weekend.
43:13
It's an old fashioned July 4th weekend where again, bounce
43:17
houses, jazz bands, music or, you know, movies at the pool,
43:22
you know, sitting on the front porch, majestic front porch
43:25
watching beautiful fireworks being shot off on a barge in the
43:29
middle of Lake Huron. It's, you know, unlike nothing
43:34
else. And then just listening to the,
43:35
you know, the horses, you know, walk down the street and, you
43:39
know, all the things that are special around this island are
43:41
going to really kind of bloom in the 200 and. 50th How far in
43:47
advance do you accept reservations?
43:51
We are now open for for the first time ever, we have our
43:54
entire next season open so you can book reservations all the
43:58
way through closing of next year for the first time.
44:03
And how was it done before? Normally we'd open up in the
44:06
fall for the following season and open all of our dates up at
44:10
that point. And so people can do that just
44:12
by going to grandhotel.com. Grandhotel.com There's two real
44:16
reasons to come to the Grand Hotel 1 You pick your date,
44:19
right. I, my family always vacations
44:21
the third week of June 4th, you know, second week of August,
44:24
whatever that might be. You can go on any date.
44:27
The other one is what experience might I want to participate in?
44:30
You know, do we want to go to a wine weekend?
44:31
Do we want to go to a superheroes weekend?
44:33
Do we want to go to a history weekend?
44:34
Do we want to go to, you know, whatever that weekend might be
44:38
And then that there's an experience attached to that.
44:40
There's package elements that go along with it might be reception
44:43
on the front porch might be hit different history tours or other
44:46
other things you can do. So there's two real reasons to
44:49
come to the to the hotel. But you got to come, you got to,
44:53
you know, it's either way you got to be there.
44:54
If it's just a win, when do when does when do I got to?
44:58
When can I make that trip to Nakum Island?
45:01
So we've talked a lot about how you guys spend a lot of time in
45:06
the offseason getting the property back up to code, back
45:10
up to speed, you know, all the sort of upkeep that's involved.
45:14
Are there any projects that take place in which you are expanding
45:19
or adding new structures or functions or features that that
45:25
that kind of add to what's already there?
45:28
There is and so we'll go back to, you know, we only can do
45:31
work five months of the season. And so we are as America is
45:35
celebrating their hundred and or excuse me, 250th, we are going
45:38
to start celebrating next year, our 140th season.
45:43
Our owner has made a commitment to us to fund all of the
45:47
improvements, which would be renovations and restorations of
45:50
the entire building and all of our structures, everything that
45:53
we own by the time we hit our 150th.
45:56
So in the next 10 years. And some people say, well, it's
45:58
10 years, anybody can do that. Well, we only have 50 months to
46:02
do it. So five months at a time.
46:05
And so think about re engaging a general contractor to come in
46:09
every year at in the end of October, work five months and
46:13
then they go away and then they come back.
46:15
That's hard enough. But we have big, big property.
46:19
We are going to start going into renovating our guest rooms.
46:22
We renovated our parlor, our main dining room, one of our
46:24
bars, another bar a year ago. We renovated all of our exterior
46:29
restaurants. We've restored and rebuilt our
46:34
pool. We're doing a five year
46:36
restoration of the facade. We have spent over the last 4
46:40
1/2 years, $100 million in restoration, renovation projects
46:45
since we've bought the property. Our owners dedicated committed
46:48
to, to maintaining this iconic hotel for generations to come
46:53
and understands that, you know, some of these properties are
46:56
money pits. There's a reason why most of
46:58
them are gone because they didn't have, you know, the, the
47:01
money or the wherewithal to, to, for the upkeep And our owners
47:05
committed to say, you know what, we have a long term opportunity
47:07
here. We have a long term whole.
47:09
We have a long term value on this property.
47:11
We need to commit to the money now and we have a big
47:15
anniversary coming up, 150 years, 10 years, and so we're
47:18
going to get all of it done. So obviously there's a lot of
47:22
focus on doing the the rehab, the renovations of the guest
47:26
rooms in different parts of the property.
47:28
Is there ever any thought about adding on to more guest rooms
47:33
or? Now that the hotel has been
47:35
added on to over the years, the last two large renovations were
47:40
what's called the Millennium Wing was built in 2000 and then
47:43
the Cupola suites were the suites that are on the top of
47:45
the hotel were built in 131415. So the building and the
47:52
foundation and the structure of the building can't withhold any
47:55
additional height than what we have.
47:59
There is no more land to go out or left or right.
48:02
We love what we have right now. We have thousands of people that
48:07
love what we have right now. You know, Grand Hotel is a jewel
48:10
of, of Michigan and, and we, you know, we don't want to take that
48:13
away and we don't want to feel this obligation of, of adding
48:16
another 100 rooms. We, we love what we've got right
48:18
now. We just need to go inside, you
48:20
know, and fix the things that need to be fixed.
48:24
Let's take a little bit of a left turn here.
48:27
David and I would like to explore a serious challenge that
48:31
you've overcome in your life. There's personal or professional
48:35
How'd you get through it? What'd you learn?
48:38
Well, I'll give you 2 One, we all went through COVID was, was
48:41
devastating for our industry and we had a lot of hotels get shut
48:44
down. There was a lot of displaced
48:46
people, a lot of people left our industry that probably will
48:48
never come back. Struggle, You know, in my, in my
48:52
job, I never stopped traveling. It was actually, that was
48:55
probably the good thing about COVID.
48:56
I, I kind of flew private on American, you know, I was like
48:59
the only person on these flights and that was tough and that was
49:03
tough in the industry. It, it made us all better for
49:05
what we're doing today. But so I'll go back to, you
49:10
know, 35 years ago when I got into the business and, and this
49:12
idea that, you know, you've got to move up, you've got to,
49:16
you've got to excel and you've got to exceed.
49:19
So I became a general manager 88 years to the day that I was
49:23
hired on in my first job as a front desk agent, which people
49:27
are said, you know, that's, that's pretty amazing.
49:29
That's, that's, that was, you know, you did that in a rather
49:31
expeditious fashion. And, and I would say it and I
49:35
love my children to death and, and I'm glad they still love me,
49:38
but that was it. I mean, there, there was people
49:40
when you, when you work in the industry that we work in and
49:43
work the hours that we worked. You know, we work every
49:46
Christmas, work every Thanksgiving, work every
49:48
Mother's Day, work every Easter. We were, we, we're always at
49:51
work. You know, when the kids have a
49:54
soccer game, you know, we've got a banquet going on that we have
49:57
to be there or, you know, they're, they're doing a recital
50:00
and, and dad can't make it because something's going on.
50:02
And, and I hate to say this, but dad had a choice and I did.
50:06
And, you know, but as I said earlier, good and bad, there was
50:10
every six months where you go find another job or find another
50:13
career, career path and move up. There was collateral damage
50:16
along the way. You know, when I have done it
50:19
differently, probably, I don't think I'd be where I am today if
50:23
I didn't, but maybe I would be. I don't know.
50:25
But my children love me. They're special kids.
50:29
I have a 26 year old and a 21 year old.
50:32
They still miss dad. They come and visit me.
50:35
I visit them in the offseason and it's great.
50:38
But I missed a lot of part of their lives.
50:41
So when you have young people that are coming up today, you
50:45
just got to think about that. What do, what do you want to
50:47
look back when you're 58 years old?
50:49
I just turned 58 the other day. What do you want when you turn
50:52
back and look back? Do you want to, you know, what
50:54
relationships do you want to have that you've either broken
50:57
or lost or walked away from over those 35 years?
51:00
Why do you think you were so fortunate to keep, or maybe
51:05
later on develop really close relationships with your kids,
51:09
given that you know you had to miss so many of those things?
51:14
I think they always knew I loved them and I always knew I was
51:16
committed to them and that in my mind what I was doing was better
51:20
for them. That, you know, I was going to
51:22
provide better for them, or I was giving them what they wanted
51:24
to get. And that was weird because
51:27
that's not how I grew up. I didn't grow up, you know, poor
51:30
or, or needing something for my dad or my mom.
51:34
So that was weird. So it wasn't like this idea
51:36
that, you know, I came from a impoverished background.
51:39
So I, I'm going to work really hard so my kids don't live a
51:41
different life than I lived. You know, my kids lived a better
51:46
life than I lived, but absent their father in, in a lot of
51:49
cases. But I think along the way, you
51:53
know, they always knew I loved them.
51:55
They always knew that if I could be there, I'd be there and it
51:59
was a special occasion when I was.
52:02
What advice would you have for others who are looking to
52:05
advance slash excel in the hospitality field?
52:12
One, I think you have to understand what everybody does
52:16
and it and I think that early on in my career I got to do a lot
52:20
of jobs and move up quickly, but I did a lot of jobs.
52:22
So I told you, you said earlier and I stacked knowledge on top
52:25
of the other knowledge that I had so I can walk around in this
52:28
hotel. And even when I became a general
52:30
manager, I would like when I became a general manager in my
52:33
first resort, I went and worked in the golf department and mowed
52:37
dreams, you know, rake the bunkers for a week.
52:41
As I said, I just want to know what you guys do.
52:43
I, I don't, I can't sit there and tell you this is what you
52:45
need to do unless I know what you do.
52:47
And that's probably maybe how I'm wired.
52:51
I've never been a massage therapist, so that's probably a
52:54
good idea. But I've virtually done every
52:57
other job that's in this hotel that, you know, at some point I,
53:03
I, I, there's, there's nobody that could sit there and say,
53:05
you don't know what I do. Now, I don't know what you do
53:07
here necessarily because I don't do your job every day here, but
53:10
I have a pretty good indication of what you do.
53:13
And so I can relate to them and I can, you know, when, when they
53:16
have an issue, I can understand why they have an issue.
53:20
And I think that's what some people think that they can skip.
53:26
But everybody will understand or call you out as a quote UN quote
53:30
fraud at some point in your career because you just you,
53:34
you, you think you know, but you don't know.
53:38
What's your superpower, David? I am very competitive and, and I
53:44
love to win. And you know, there's, there's
53:48
things where people ask me all the time.
53:50
They're like, what motivational do you read motivational books?
53:53
And I don't read motivational books.
53:54
I, I run, my wife and I have run marathons.
53:57
And so when we train, we listen to books and I don't normally
54:00
listen to to those things. What I do listen to are coaches.
54:05
So like a Nick Saban or coach Wooden coach UCLA basketball
54:11
years ago and how they motivate people and the people on their
54:15
teams to do things that are beyond their skill and challenge
54:21
them to do that and motivate them through difficulties,
54:24
whether it be a losing streak or or a winning streak and keep
54:27
that motivation alive. Those are the things that
54:30
benefit that I believe benefit me today is because you've got
54:33
to motivate people in this short season.
54:35
We don't have we don't have a month to turn it around.
54:38
We don't have, you know, two months to put a plan together.
54:41
We're we're open 176 days every year.
54:44
And so, you know, if, if you like, right now it's raining.
54:49
So some of our outdoor restaurants are not, we're
54:53
losing money, you know, when sitting outside restaurants,
54:55
when we lose that. So if it rains three days in our
54:57
summer, three days in July, we got to figure out a way to make
55:00
that up. And So what are we doing to
55:02
motivate people? How do people get motivated?
55:05
I have to understand what motivates you.
55:06
It's not me rah rah. It might be through incentives,
55:09
it might be through recognition, it might be through advancement.
55:12
It might be a bunch of other things, but you've got to figure
55:15
out, one, how to motivate people in order to do work that's
55:17
beyond their limits. And two, really hold people
55:21
accountable to make sure they do that, that everybody has a
55:23
responsibility to everybody else, that, you know, you're the
55:27
right guard, I'm the left tackle.
55:29
We all both have the same responsibility, but not the same
55:32
responsibility. We both have our responsibility
55:35
of making, you know, that play run.
55:37
So I listen to a lot of coaches. I was a college athlete in high
55:41
school. Little quick athletes and
55:43
coaches were very influential in my life and so I what?
55:49
Did you play? I played football in college,
55:52
ran track in college and then most sports growing up.
55:57
Anything and everything is. That where the competitive
55:59
spirit came from. That my dad, yeah.
56:03
So you know, the, the idea that you know, it's not that you have
56:09
to win. It was early in my career or
56:12
early in my life, There wasn't, there wasn't an option.
56:15
So you had to win today. Winning is today.
56:18
Winning is different. It there's a difference in
56:20
winning of what today is. And what does that look like?
56:23
What is winning mean today? That's a great day and you and
56:29
you can feel it in a in a hotel and you can feel it like there's
56:33
days that I know that we changed people's lives, impacted their
56:38
lives. I, I can walk down the front
56:42
porch and, and talk to people and, and I can see our staff
56:44
interact with people and, and I can know that today we did it
56:47
right. We, we were successful today and
56:49
it's, it's beyond PNL. Obviously the I can see how much
56:52
money we made today. And if we made good money today
56:56
and our and our and some of our team members are making good
56:59
tips today, that would lead me to believe we're off in good
57:03
service. But it's just that the, the,
57:06
the, the enthusiasm or, or the, the face that people have or
57:10
the, the excitement they have to be at Grand Hotel.
57:14
And you walk around, you're like, that's a win.
57:15
Today's a win. You mentioned an interesting
57:19
scenario. You know, hey, if it rains three
57:21
days in a row or outdoor restaurants, they're losing out
57:23
of money. We need to figure out how to
57:25
make up for that. In that specific example, what
57:29
might be some of your options? So two years ago, we put
57:32
together a program called Rainy Day Program.
57:34
So I run resorts quite a bit. So if you've ever been at a
57:37
resort where it rained, yeah. And what do you do?
57:41
Sit in the hotel room. Yeah, because the because the
57:44
hotel hasn't provided you an opportunity to escape from the
57:46
hotel room. So we put a whole nother
57:48
programming plan in place. So when it rains, if it's
57:52
raining on a Tuesday, there's a Bloody Mary and mimosa bar in
57:55
our lobby. Because you know, if I come down
57:58
and I'm going to breakfast and someone's going to say, do you
58:00
want a big, I mean, they're big too.
58:02
They're like, I mean, they're huge.
58:04
They're like, why wouldn't I want one?
58:06
Of course I would. We do bingo, we do trivia.
58:09
We do, we do things for the kids because we we want, we don't
58:14
want you to go to your room. We don't want you to turn that
58:15
TV on. And I wish that we didn't have
58:17
TV's in the rooms. What I like about this hotel,
58:21
and I saw it at the Homestead too, is you just don't see a lot
58:24
of people on their phones. You don't see a lot of kids on
58:27
their phones. And it's not because there's a
58:29
lot of stuff to do. You know, there's people that
58:31
are just sitting on the front porch and the phones aren't
58:35
there because they're just talking to each other and
58:37
they're, and they're looking at what's going on around them and,
58:39
and, or they're, you know, they're, they're exploring and
58:43
reading pictures up on the wall of different history that we
58:45
have all throughout the hotel. They're going to a history
58:47
lesson with our historian and you see 8101215 year old kids in
58:53
a history lecture. I mean, come on.
58:55
I mean that. And he's, he's great.
58:56
He's he's funny and he's awesome.
58:58
You learn a lot of stuff, but they're ready to go and that's
59:01
they, they just kind of fall into this overall experience.
59:05
So if people, you know, you've got cell phone access right
59:09
there, people can still have their phones and do all the
59:12
mindless scrolling. You've got TV's in the room.
59:16
Like those things are still accessible to people.
59:18
They haven't been taken away. Why do you think people are less
59:21
attached to them when they're there at Grand Hotel?
59:26
Because I think it's the the surroundings and the, the the
59:29
surrounding as part of the experience.
59:32
If you've ever seen Somewhere in Time, you should watch it.
59:34
It's a great movie. It was filmed here.
59:38
And one of the things that the owner at the time said, if
59:40
you're going to film here in the middle of our season, I want the
59:44
hotel to play a role. And the hotel is actually kind
59:48
of a character in the movie. And so you are now in a living,
59:51
breathing historical landmark of walking around.
59:54
And we have we have pictures with old, you know, you know,
1:00:00
presents that I visited here, you know, celebrities that I
1:00:03
visited here, just just people that, you know, were hanging out
1:00:06
on the porch in, you know, 19 O one listening to, you know, an
1:00:11
orchestra playing or a band playing.
1:00:15
So here there's there's more around you than just furniture.
1:00:20
There's there's history around you, there's a harpist playing
1:00:22
in the distance, there's a piano player that's playing there.
1:00:25
You're having T and there's something that flows every
1:00:28
minute, pretty much every minute of the day that we have some
1:00:31
other either programming, a tradition, A ritual, something
1:00:36
is happening throughout your course of your day because we
1:00:38
want number one, we want you to be busy.
1:00:40
We want you to be able to say when you leave.
1:00:42
Man, I did so much at Grand Hotel or man, I sat on that
1:00:46
porch all day long rocking in that rocking chair.
1:00:50
The most peaceful experience I ever had.
1:00:52
I had a couple cocktails and a great lunch, but I could have
1:00:55
done so I could have done all those other things, but I chose
1:00:58
not to because I just wanted to have, I just want to have alone,
1:01:01
alone time, you know, with my, my wife or my husband or, or
1:01:05
kids it you have all those opportunities to do that.
1:01:10
Favorite podcast or book I would say.
1:01:17
So that, so I, I became, I told you I became a general manager 8
1:01:20
years to the day that I started as a front desk agent, June 8th,
1:01:24
1990. I started in June 8th, 1998.
1:01:27
I became a general manager in Saint Louis in the airport going
1:01:33
to Saint Louis from Houston to Saint Louis.
1:01:36
There was a book called Worst to 1st and it was by Gordon Bethune
1:01:40
who reimagined Continental Airlines back then.
1:01:44
It it had gone through bankruptcy 7 times.
1:01:47
My father was in the airline industry, worked 30 years in
1:01:49
Japan Airlines and the airline industry.
1:01:51
And it just for some reason just caught my eye.
1:01:55
And so I took that book and I read it as my probably since
1:01:59
college, the first book I read cover to cover and I just dug
1:02:04
into it and, and that I, I put a road map together for my first
1:02:09
hotel from the the ideas and strategies of that book, which
1:02:12
kind of led me through my first three hotels is what the road
1:02:15
map would be. The one core principle that
1:02:18
Gordon Bethune had that Davidson has as a as a core value is
1:02:23
greatness requires risk. He said your decisions must,
1:02:28
must or probably will. If you're going to be great or
1:02:31
if you're going to make changes, you have to take some risks.
1:02:33
You have to be, you have to be confident in the decisions
1:02:36
you're going to make. You can't bring this airline out
1:02:38
from bankruptcy for the 7th time just doing the same thing.
1:02:43
And so to a kid that probably not probably definitely
1:02:48
shouldn't have been in that role, I needed to figure out
1:02:51
that I was going to be confident.
1:02:52
I wanted to win in everything I did.
1:02:54
That book said go out there and be strong and be confident in
1:02:56
the decisions that you make. And that propelled me.
1:02:59
And that was, you know, my first job, first GM job.
1:03:02
And you know, I other than the Vice President job I held for a
1:03:05
short period of time, I've been at GM since 1998 from a 91 room
1:03:11
hotel that was a 91 room hotel of an 1100 room hotel resorts
1:03:15
virtually all the different verticals in full service.
1:03:19
I just got one more question for you, David.
1:03:21
But before I ask it, I want to do a few housekeeping items
1:03:23
here. Anybody that wants to get in
1:03:26
touch with David directly, he's been so kind as to provide his
1:03:29
e-mail address, djurcakdjurcak@grandhotel.com
1:03:36
and obviously their website to learn more, see the pictures,
1:03:40
see some videos. It's amazing.
1:03:41
It does feel like a step back in time.
1:03:43
Grandhotel.com also where you can make reservations now
1:03:48
immediately starting, you know, for next year.
1:03:52
Also as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to
1:03:55
benefits that won't hurt them financially and carries a
1:03:59
financial upside for the company, reach out to add back
1:04:01
benefits.com. And finally, if you take just a
1:04:04
moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast
1:04:07
app, you'll always hold a special place in my heart.
1:04:10
So last question, David, you and I reconnect one year from today
1:04:14
and you're super excited. You are celebrating something
1:04:17
big. What's that big thing you hope
1:04:19
to be celebrating one year from now?
1:04:26
I would say simply a roughly 220,000 people walked in and out
1:04:33
our front door and had an experience during the
1:04:37
independence celebration of our nation like no other.
1:04:42
I love it. We'll check back in to see how
1:04:44
that went. I want some pictures and videos.
1:04:47
David Jersack from Grand Hotel. I want to be the first to thank
1:04:49
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:04:52
I really appreciate it. Thank you, folks.
1:04:55
That's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:04:58
Thanks for learning with us today.