Josiah: David, thanks for making time to talk. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. I’ve been thinking about you and folks in your community a lot over the past months. And as a starting point, we were talking before we started recording around maybe to start out talking a little bit about what is the role of hospitality in supporting communities through crisis? And before we get into that, I guess, you know, I want to check in with you. How are you doing? How are folks in the community doing, you know, since the hurricane?
David:
Yeah, well, thank you for asking. The answer to that is complex, right? You know, fortunately here in the Boone area, and for those that don’t know Boone, Boone is in the northwest corner of North Carolina. We’re about 90 minutes to the north and west of Charlotte, right in the spot where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina all kind of converge. So beautiful spot in the state. As you can imagine with us being kind of at the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains, it is a picturesque, just absolutely beautiful place to be. And right now, as I look outside my office and see six inches of snow on the ground, we are something for all seasons. So this is an area that is built on hospitality. And for us right now, the answer to the question you asked, as I said, is complex because there’s Dealing with the immediate, which fortunately in this area we are past the immediate physical damage or at least making positive strides in that direction. But this region is so interconnected that we rely heavily on visitors that will maybe come to Asheville and make their way up the Blue Ridge Parkway to here or vice versa or all of the other feeder communities between here and there. are, you know, work off one another. And, you know, there are still routes that are unavailable. There are still plenty of retail businesses and restaurants and hotels that are unavailable. So it is still a very difficult message to share about what is open and accessible in this area, but also knowing, too, that we need people to be a part of this recovery conversation. And, you know, this is a part of the state that our business community has been built on handling volumes of people. and we’re gonna need those people to be a part of the, you know, maybe perhaps the final chapter of this saga, but we need them, and we’re not quite ready for prime time as a region just yet. Now, certain pockets are, certainly, you know, Boone and Blowing Rock have, and Ashe County, the Grandfather Mountain area, Valley Cruces, those areas are all, you know, have been accepting visitors for quite some time, but there are some others that it looks like the storm just happened, and the cameras have gone away, the conversation, has gone away, but the functional reality of today is that we still have quite a bit of work to do here.
Josiah:
I appreciate you sharing that. I appreciate you making time to talk about this because I think this solving or recovering from situations like this takes time, right? And so I want to hear your thoughts specifically around what is the role of the hospitality industry or the hospitality community in helping a community through crisis? What did you see and what do you see now as the opportunity in hospitality?
David:
Yeah, well, I saw initially, you know, so so for for reference, you know, the storm hit here right at the end of September, September 27th. And and that was at the real beginning of our October tourism season. So fortunately, we were relatively low occupancy, broad scope at that point. Now, that was also App State Family Weekend. That would have been a sellout weekend, would have been one of the biggest, you know, for the year for our community. But I saw a group of connected businesses that had a resource that stepped forward with that resource. And in the initial days, there were certain properties that were either damaged and could not have visitors. There were some even here in the Boone area that had damaged multiple floors, that didn’t have all of their inventory available. But they found a way to prioritize, number one, families that needed to relocate. And there were dozens and dozens and dozens in our immediate area. You multiply that over by the region, and you’re talking thousands and thousands of families that needed a place to go. Once the FEMA mechanism got set up and vouchers were made available, these businesses that a lot of times never see a local darken their doors, all of a sudden became home. And they did so in a way that took the edge off. It wasn’t a transaction. It was a greeting at the front desk of, hey, are you doing OK? What is it you need? Your kid needs to catch the bus outside. We’ll make sure that they can do that. It was that extra hand of grace and understanding that we were all going through something catastrophic together. But then here’s an industry that had, as those repairs were made, the right thing at the right time. We were able to get aid workers into the region and utilize some of the cities that maybe weren’t as immediately damaged as hubs to get relief crews out. I had a group of about four hotel GMs in our area that I called at any point in time of the day and said, hey, we’ve got another FEMA worker coming. We’ve got a contractor that needs three rooms. I think our electric cooperative had 450 guest workers in from all over the country, and those phone calls were answered, and they were answered with a yes. It may have met a juggling act behind the scenes, but it got done. And the access to that lodging, especially on the FEMA side, a lot of times, you know, FEMA wouldn’t release a worker until lodging accommodations were solid. And just the quickness. in that and allowing experts to get to our community to help us begin to go through the process. And that started Friday afternoon after the rain stopped, and it continues today. We still have roughly 30 families on FEMA vouchers here in Watauga County. That number grows as you spread out throughout Western North Carolina. But I think the thing that all of those families would say is that they’re not treated like they are something less than when they walk in the door. They are a customer. They are a customer that’s been through a lot. And a lot of times, that interaction is some of the most positive interaction they have during the day. So I don’t want anybody to think that how you approach your staff in dealing with empathy and dealing with some grace and understanding during those times, you can’t measure that result necessarily. But no, it impacts people more than they’ll ever be able to tell you.
Josiah:
I’m so glad you point that out. That is such a good leadership lesson, right? The way that you’re showing up for your staff, the culture that you have in your organization, this is going to ripple on. And this is true, obviously, in good times, but in tragedy, it becomes even more so. I’m just hearing you share what you just shared of You know, people immediately after needing lodging, well, who’s going to be there to welcome them? It’s people that work in hotels likely work. They live in that community, too. So they’re personally probably experiencing the impact of these tragedies, but they’re still having to give. So especially for leaders, this is critical to think about. How do you support the people that are providing this kind of hospitality?
David:
Right. And I’d be remiss to not to not point out the fact that many of those hotels were also housing their own staff. We understand the hierarchy of how people are paid inside a property. And as you could imagine, some of the staff in some of the lower paid positions had some of the most damage. And those hotel operators were the first to reach out to them. I think that’s one of the things maybe I’d like to think this is industry-wide, but it certainly comes up here quite a bit, is that understanding that there is a connectedness amongst the staff. You can’t make the property operate without the staff and the staff being fully bought in and feeling supported. And I saw that countless times here of, hey, as soon as we can get our staff here and assess their needs and make sure they’re taken care of, then yes, we’ll open our doors to whoever needs. to have the doors open. But from an economic standpoint, I mean, you’re talking about being able to provide people jobs. And that was a conversation that happened fairly quickly, too, was, tell us how we can be helpful so we can keep these people employed. Because obviously, in a time where our average daily rates probably quadruple what it normally would be on a snowy Tuesday afternoon, that was obviously revenue that was drifting away. Yet these businesses prioritized keeping their staffs intact. And we had just, I mean, just come through kind of the rocky roads of COVID to really get to a point where I felt like in the fall of 24, this community was about to hit its stride again. So many of those employees had been with those properties for a while, and they just saw their employers stepping up again and saying, hey, you helped me back during COVID, maybe file for unemployment so I could play that game a little bit until it came time to go back to work. Here you are again, making sure that I can get my family out of flood ravaged home conditions, back to work so I can keep the check, so I can continue to help our community respond. That kind of stuff, again, it’s hard to quantify that. That doesn’t show up on a balance sheet, but it sure shows up in humanity, and it shows up in the way that people remember folks down the road. And this community’s always had a long memory like that, and I’m sure many others do too.
Josiah:
It’s such an important point. Some in the hotel industry are struggling with hiring people, struggling with keeping good people in their organization. If you operate this way, as you’ve described, people are going to remember this, right? So this is how you address some of these big problems. You have to operate differently. Now, you mentioned being on the phone constantly with these hotel general managers. I wonder if we could speak a little bit about building resilience. I mean, this is the hard part of tragedies like this. They feel like they come out of nowhere. But what can the hospitality leaders that are listening to this do, in your experience, to prepare themselves for the unexpected? And so they’re in a place where they can serve not only their team members, but their communities, as you’ve just described.
David:
Sure. And I think that that goes with leaning into a skill that the industry has in abundance, and that’s anticipation. Hospitality leaders anticipate the busy times. They anticipate the times where they’re going to have a full house and when it might not be so full and they need to do something else. I would encourage you to find that group of leaders within your community, whether that’s as formal as an emergency operations command, or maybe as informal as your local chamber of commerce or economic development organization, whoever is kind of leading the business voice during those times. let your opportunities be known to them. So that could be something as simple as laundry facilities. That was a big need for us in an area that was out of power for, you know, in some cases, weeks at a time, depending on the location. Laundry facilities, a meeting room that could be utilized for some sort of staging of emergency services. Certainly the hotel rooms immediately come to mind, but there’s so many other things that properties have at their ability, catering. Being able to feed all these massive groups of workers, you know, we have a hotel that’s positioned less than a half a mile from our Watauga County District Office of our electric co-op here. That was the group that I said had, you know, 400 guest workers and well, you know, there were a number of those workers that were staying a half mile away from from the head end, but at this hotel that we’re told basically, hey, you’ve never been here before, and this is not at our best, but we know these places are open to eat. We know we can wash your clothes here. You’ve got specialized gear that, you know, it’s not proper for you to be wet and out in these conditions, so we will help you. leaning into some of those things. So again, that goes back to anticipation, you know, making sure that people in your community are aware of what you’ve got to offer. And then when you’re in that moment, understand that you’re going to be dealing with a lot of people that are just, I’ll call it out of sorts. They’re either in a new place, responding to some of the worst conditions that they may have ever seen, or they have just left their home, everything behind them. And they’re coming to a place that’s got availability and they just don’t know what comes next. your comments and your ease at check-in, you know, you’re letting them take the extra muffin off the continental breakfast, whatever. I think that’s therapeutic for those folks. So just thinking about those things ahead of time and how you might be able to plug in and then when you’re in that moment, just let it be what it is and that’s an opportunity to help.
Josiah:
Well, thank you for sharing that and hoping for all the best for continued recovery in the area. I wonder if we could change gears slightly and talk about what you mentioned a little bit earlier. You talk about the area being so interconnected. And you and I actually got connected just before the hurricane hit from Adams and Bruschi. who I was pulling up my conversation with him, he said he’s worked across the U.S. and he said of all the places he’s worked, he said Boone does the best job of making sure that people kind of know about how cool it is to visit. And I visited several times myself and Boone is incredible. I encourage people if they haven’t been to consider booking a trip there. But he said kind of what you’re doing there, David, in Boone to connect hospitality providers with each other to make the destination more attractive to visit is really remarkable. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit to how you’ve thought about this, because sometimes in hospitality, each general manager of a place thinks very competitively, it’s just my business and I get it, it is a business. But he said that you’re kind of thinking broader and you’re thinking about how do we get people visiting the area and bring money in? How do you do that?
David:
Well, I think, number one, it’s not just me or our organization. You know, I think you’ve got to have a community that’s committed to understanding that it’s bigger than just one visit. And the touch points are different. For me, personally, the first time that I came to Boone was as a seven-year-old kid with my family on a ski trip. We stayed at the Sheraton at the corner of 105 and 321, I’ll never forget that facility. It was, I got like a $7 orange juice downstairs, and then another one, and then another one, and then the breaks were pumped there. But it was an experience, right? It was a high-rise hotel in a mountain town, it snowed afoot, we got stuck, and that was the day at seven years old that I decided I’m gonna attend Appalachian State, that’s where I’m gonna go to school. It was the only school I applied to, it was the only one that I went to. My life came to me from a decision made that day inside that property. That’s one example. You’ve got certainly a magnet of a university here that brings families and students and boyfriends, girlfriends, all those folks to this area for a touchpoint. You know, we’re a 365-day-a-year tourism destination, so we’ve got outdoor activities in all four seasons, and it could be that you are a summer hiker. And now because of an experience you had or a place that you like, you’re thinking, how can I get back there, right? So that is the way that people are coming into a community like this. We have encouraged over time, and again, with ourselves, our TDA, this is an area of the state too where county lines only matter to the politicians. It is very often that somebody will stay in one county and make visits to attractions or destinations in another. So we have worked across county lines to say, hey, you might stay in West Jefferson today, but you’re gonna come and eat two meals in Boone and shop for a while, and then go to Grandfather Mountain to round out a great day. And then from there, you may be leaving to go to Asheville, and that’s gonna have you touch three or four other communities within Western North Carolina. So it’s thinking about how you can extend. You can get more visits, you can get more touch points. Ultimately, that will certainly lead to more dollars and more opportunities for properties to be able to then stand out and figure out why I want to stay at that one rather than the other one. But it’s this idea that it may be your time today, it’s going to be my time tomorrow to bring in the next generation of travelers. And again, in an area that’s not just, it’s not like we’ve got one convention center sitting outside and that’s how people come here. It’s, you know, dozens of reasons. And we’re all uniquely equipped to understand that with all of us being strong and united together, that’s going to lead to more opportunities for those people to visit. So making sure that You know, our attractions know about key events, making sure that our restaurants know about key destinations and where to send people, and that that all kind of filters back to, well, hey, next time you ought to stay here and you’ll be closer to this, that, or the other. That stuff’s all important. And it creates an atmosphere like we’re all coordinated. And certainly there’s still competition. There always will be. But I think that in this area, especially on a normal situation, there’s enough to go around. And by showing a unified effort, we can truly sell the visitor on why this is the best place to be. And you might do that trip differently in the fall versus the winter versus the spring, but you’re going to do it all three times because you had such a great time the first time through.
Josiah:
And what’s cool about what you’re just describing, it’s a pie that can get bigger, right? You get more people aware of what’s going on there. And there’s so much to do in the area. You say, not only I’m going to visit, I’m going to tell my friends, I’m going to tell my brother, you know, all these things. And then you create more demand. But I love your personal story of how this got started. You know, look at you now. You’re there in the community. You’re president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, and I feel like any move always starts with a visit, right? And any kind of big life decision starts with a visit. So it sounds like there are real tangible impacts for people living in the community, which is so exciting to me.
David:
Right. Well, and there are so many people in this community that can tell a similar story, whether it was a Boy Scout camping trip, a trip to one of the ski mountains, a trip to Grandfather Mountain or Tweetsie Railroad. It’s that hook that gets you to a different place. I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, about two hours to the east of here. This was cooler, right? I remember the first time we came up here in the summer. It was about two years after that first ski trip. And I was like, man, this place is unbelievable in the summer. I thought that it was just this one thing. you know, take that forward a few years, I had an opportunity as an undergrad at APT to stay up here for a summer. And that was now in a more of an adult setting, an opportunity to really see the area for what it was. And that even sold it more on, hey, you know, if I have an opportunity to stay here and work and live and raise a family, this would be an awfully cool place to do that. So, and you just never know what that opportunity that you’re providing is going to lead to. You may be hosting the next great leader for your community. You may be hosting the next person that decides to build a restaurant across the street from your property one day. Or you could be hosting the person that opens up a competitive place down the road that’s only going to bring more people here. We have experienced growth in number of beds here in this area, not just in Boone, but starting to see that bleed over to Avery County and Banner Elk right outside Sugar Mountain and leading toward Beach Mountain. That is only going to make our area more accessible. And I think the more that we think about it like that and then begin to build all the suite of reasons why people can engage and how they can engage, I think that’s how the community responds to those opportunities and kind of sets the right tone for all of us to work together.
Josiah:
Excellent. David, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. Yeah, thank you.
