The importance of building the right hospitality culture took center stage at ALIS (Americas Lodging Investment Summit) yesterday as both owner/operator and brand executives alike detailed their respective strategies and best practices.
In a session entitled “Boardroom Outlook: People & Culture,” Sloan Dean, CEO, Remington Hospitality, explained how the Dallas-based company—which operates some 120 hotels— emphasized the overall employee experience as he cited a tried-and-true formula.
“It’s really as simple as what Mr. Marriott said, ‘take care of the associate and the associate will take care of the guest and the rest will take care of itself.’ As a large third-party hotel management company the secret sauce is our people and I think hiring high-culture, high service-oriented people attracts other people like that. I always say culture happens through you not to you,” he said.
Dean further emphasized the impact of having “dedicated, paid training for every single position” since he took over the reins of the company some 7 years ago.
“We have training programs that are not only integral to the individual job, but then we also having career pathing. So we launched a year ago a program called Up, where we have first-time supervisors and/or first-time managers that aspire to become a general manager. We’re developing them so that they’re not only ready for the job today they are ready for the job tomorrow. We also have a learning management system that’s plugged into LinkedIn learning and having that integrated with on-the-job training is really, really vital. However, it simply starts with if you hire the right person and you invest in them then they will deliver great service to the customer,” he said.
Zack Gharib, president, Red Roof, and John Cohlan, CEO, Margaritaville, offered the brand perspective. In a nod to the company’s existing culture, Gharib—who took over the reins of the franchisor roughly a year ago—described the company’s recent efforts not as a change of culture but an elevation of what they already had.
“I’m a strong believer in a strong culture. if you want to achieve success it has to start from within the company and the organization and that is why you need a strong culture. I came here and said ‘what can we do to deliver that culture? We gathered all the employees and we asked them what does strong culture mean to you? What’s important to you, what are the core values that resemble you? We determined what everybody really wants the culture to be and we built the culture statement from the bottom up. So we had the buy-in in the culture that we delivered from day one,” he said.
Gharib noted that the company’s core values spell out HABITS: hospitality, adaptability, belonging, impact, trust, and success.
“It’s something that we do when we recognize employees and when we’re talking to hotels. Everything is based on those 6 letters of our habits and that’s what really drives us on a daily basis and that’s how we keep it alive every day,” he said.
John Conlan, CEO, Margaritaville, touted the brand’s unique niche. “The brand is based on the culture and everything we do remains true to that,” he said.
Conlan further added, “In terms of the day to day what’s nice about it and important is there’s a genuine feeling that while all businesses exist to run efficiently and generate a profit there is slightly a sense of the higher good in what we do because everybody really believes they’re performing a valuable service, which is to provide that time of escape in everybody’s lives. So what has made us very successful is that everyone who works at Margaritaville believes that they’re actually providing a valuable service to the
customer.”
Jim Merkel, CEO, Rockbridge, noted the company recently underwent a rebranding designed to make sure “everybody knew who we were and why we did it. We focused really hard on that rebranding and I think that it’s resonated and people that are coming in know our purpose and what we do.”
Merkel added, “We’re obviously working hard to make sure that people are building their careers and that we’re creating opportunities for upward mobility in the hotels and we’re recognizing that growth.”
