WHEN LYNNE DOUGHERTY GRADUATED from the hospitality management program in 1978, she had a clear goal—to become the general manager of a 1,500-room hotel. "I knew there were no women running massive hotels at that time," she recalls, "so I said yes to every opportunity to advance." Saying yes meant moving 14 times in 17 years. It meant calling a hotel home (12 different hotels, actually), lugging her Christmas tree into the freight elevator, and reassuring boyfriends who wanted to know, "Am I supposed to say hello to the bellhop?"
Being a woman may have made achieving her goal more difficult, but she had some other things going in her favor, she says. One advantage was the location of the UNH hospitality program in the Whittemore School of Business (as opposed to a home economics department, for example), which ensured that she got a strong dose of business subjects like marketing, finance and strategic planning. The industry happened to be booming when she graduated, and she was ready to follow her ambition.
"Even though we make a very small footprint in terms of the number of students in the program," says Raymond Goodman, professor and chair of the hospitality management program, "their career track far outweighs the numbers. There may be 30 or 40 students graduating a year, but where they go initially—and where they end up—is amazing."
Dougherty is a perfect example. From UNH, she joined a Sheraton management-training program. At 23, she was named director of human resources at a brand new Sheraton in Charleston, S.C., and was charged with hiring the entire staff for the 350-room hotel. And her responsibilities hardly ended there. On one occasion, she had to evacuate the hotel in response to a bomb threat.
At 26, Dougherty managed a 200-room hotel, and she eventually achieved her goal when she became general manager of a 1,500-room hotel, the Sheraton Washington in Washington, D.C. Today she is senior vice president for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, heading the franchise operations for more than 200 properties, including Westin, Sheraton and Luxury Collection hotels.
The bomb threat in Charleston was just Dougherty's first opportunity to take charge in a crisis. "Once I was living in a hotel when the security guard and front desk clerk called in the middle of the night to tell me a woman was giving birth in the hotel," she says. In addition to birthing the occasional baby, she has also had to crawl on the floor beneath a cloud of smoke to evacuate a hotel during a fire. Even seemingly mundane responsibilities can carry great weight. "If you don't train housekeeping right, you can have illnesses," she explains. "It is life or death stuff."
New technology has made the job of managing a hotel a bit easier. Dougherty was required to live in the hotels she managed because "in those days we didn't have cell phones, BlackBerrys or e-mail. So we had to have a key decision maker in the hotel in case of crisis or challenge." (New alumnae will also find the hospitality management industry more, well, hospitable. Sixty percent of the students in the UNH program today are women, as are nearly half of the managers in the industry.)
Changes in technology haven't changed the fundamental nature of the job, which is all about leadership, according to Dougherty. To be successful requires not only excellent organizational and communication skills—both speaking and listening—but also "creativity and passion," she says. "You have to love what you do."
Making Things Happen
In addition to the "life or death" decisions Dougherty describes, managers shoulder a lot of financial responsibility in an industry that employs 12 million people and produces billions in revenue every year. Sometimes there are less tangible things at stake as well, like the preservation of history, a reputation or the hopes and dreams of many local citizens. All of these came to bear on Tom Varley '80 when he oversaw the reopening of Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, N.H., one of the few remaining grand seaside resorts in the country.
In the 20th century, the hotel had hosted presidents and celebrities, not to mention the negotiators in the peace talks that ended the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. After it closed in 1983, many in the community worked hard to save the landmark hotel from demolition. In 2003, Varley was charged with opening the newly modernized and restored building under the flag of a Marriott Hotel and Resort. This would not be a "soft" opening. Every room was booked for opening night. The ceremonial events would have the attention of the press and even the Japanese government, which was sending a representative.
Several days before the opening, the building hardly seemed ready. The ballroom chandeliers lay in pieces on the floor—thousands of crystals waiting to be hung by hand. There were some 150 laborers still hard at work on the $25 million renovation, while 150 hotel workers were training for opening day. Still, Varley wasn't worried. He knew that, like the chandeliers, everything would come together.
Varley loves the process of opening a hotel, and as vice president in charge of operations for Ocean Properties, Ltd., he has had many opportunities to do so. "Getting involved with all the aspects, the design, layout, hiring people—it's very rewarding," he says. "It's a tremendous amount of work because it's so labor intensive. You're relying on people, not technology. How well you can make it all happen when, behind the scenes, there's chaos—that's exciting."
After graduating from UNH, Varley entered a management-training program with Hyatt Hotels and was later on the team that opened the Hyatt Grand Cypress. In 1984, he joined Ocean Properties, a company that owns 110 properties in the United States and Canada, and became the general manager of what is now the Marriott Delray Beach Hotel.
Even in a hotel's everyday operations, Varley finds plenty of exciting "back-of-the-house" chaos. He cites a recent example at the 161-room Wentworth on a Saturday this past summer. All of the guest and function rooms were booked. There were wedding receptions taking place. And then an old pipe broke outside the building. For 18 hours, the hotel didn't have any water. Not a drop. Bottled water was quickly brought in; employees lugged five gallon bottles so they could wash dishes and prepare food.
"In the back of the house, it was a little frantic," he recalls. "But walking in, no one knew anything. That's how it goes. Every day, it's chaos. But it's positive chaos, positive energy."
It Takes a City
A large hotel, says Paul Kirwin '79, is like a small city, with separate companies that manage the banquet facilities, the restaurants, the spas and the guest rooms. Consider just the check-in process: You pull up, a doorman ushers you in, a bellhop takes your bags, the smiling desk clerk hands you the room key; there's an elevator attendant to shuttle you to your room. So far you've had contact with four different people—and you haven't even unpacked your bags.
"The service a guest receives takes double the effort behind the scenes," says Kirwin, president of Carlson Asia Pacific and Carlson Hotels Asia Pacific. It can easily take 1,000 employees to run a 1,500-room hotel. "A lot of coordination is required above the technical support," he notes, agreeing with Varley and Dougherty. "The key," he says, "is a lot of work done the old-fashioned way, with good communication."
Because of his dual roles, Kirwin spreads his time between developing the companies' business strategies and goals and evaluating their performance. As president of Carlson Hotels Asia Pacific, he works with existing hotel owners and investors as well as with the development team on new hotel projects. The company has 43 locations in 11 countries from Seoul to Sydney, Tahiti to Mumbi, and operates under several brand names including Regent International Hotels, Radisson Hotels and Resorts and Park Plaza. Kirwin oversees all aspects of hotel operations and has regional offices in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai and New Delhi.
Understanding how different societies do business has been critical to Carlson's success around the world—and to Kirwin's leadership role within Carlson. He gives an example: The limited-service hotels that have gained in popularity in America wouldn't make it in Asia. "There isn't the same profit pressure here in Asia as there is in the U.S. 'Face'—status—is really important to Asians. They very much want service," he says. The Asian culture views serving as a noble and respectable thing to do, he adds. And having a role in creating jobs is also honored.
Some cultural differences present challenges. "The Chinese like as few outside people as possible connected with their hotels and the owner is usually on staff," Kirwin notes. Still, it is gratifying to be doing business in these markets. "Both China and India have more than a billion people; both were previously two of the poorest countries in the world," he says. "And now, history is being made because they're an open market."
The Ups and Downs
The silver yo-yo on Kevin Hanley's desk has been there for more than 15 years. A gift from his wife, it's a reminder that there are ups and downs, and you have to maintain perspective on the unpredictable—not just in the hospitality industry but in life.
Hanley, who graduated in 1978, adopted that philosophy at an early age. When he was only 25, he was scouring the country, looking for hotels to buy for Victor Management. Next he spent seven years running the real estate department for Motel 6, taking the company from a chain of 300 to 3,000 hotels.
Now Hanley serves as chief operating officer and executive vice president for Sunburst Hospitality Corp., a business that owns 30 hotels from California to Florida to Maine, as well as a golf course in Arkansas. The hotels' brands include Comfort Inn and Suites, Holiday Inn Express, Quality Inn and Best Western.
In keeping with the lesson of the yo-yo, Hanley has to keep an eye on the future and be open to change. When he became concerned about the long-term prospects for one of the company's larger properties, a hotel in Arlington, Va., he knew he had to investigate alternatives. Based on his analysis, the company is demolishing a portion of the hotel and building a 252-unit high-rise condominium project.
In another side of the business, however, predictability is good. Within the hotels, most of his focus is on the "front of the house," where staff members connect with the customers. "I feel I add more value assessing our performance from the perspective of a customer," he says. "While I could not quickly check a guest into a hotel these days, I can very quickly tell if a customer is feeling good about their experience checking into our hotels."
To make that happen, he spends his days ensuring a hotel has the right people in the right places and that those people have the training, tools and resources they need to do their jobs. Since the goal here is consistency, he says, the standards need to be clearly communicated and measured.
Searching for Snow Cones
Roughly three-quarters of students in the hospitality program are interested in the lodging sector of the industry, says Raymond Goodman. But food-service management comes in second, including careers in restaurants and chains as well as cafeterias in colleges, corporations and medical facilities. (Other possibilities include work with retirement communities and clubs or companies that develop software for the industry.) Students must complete an 800-hour practicum to get on-the-job experience, and most go into management-training programs after graduation. Foodies like Richard Coraine '82, however, often go through culinary school instead.
Today Coraine is director of operations for the Union Square Hospitality Group, a company that owns and operates a group of highly successful restaurants in Manhattan, including the Union Square Café Tabla, Blue Smoke and the Shake Shack, among others. The company's flagship, the Union Square Café, was ranked first among New York City restaurants in the Zagat Survey for six years in a row.
With the opening of each restaurant—and after, as the menus continue to evolve—Coraine has the pleasant task of seeking out the "best of the best" in terms of recipes and products, by traveling around the country and wandering into restaurants and cafés. Sometimes he knows about the place before he goes, getting a tip from a friend or reading about it in a food magazine. Other times, he leaves it to chance, stopping at places that catch his eye.
"I'm always curious about new ideas where people display excellence," Coraine says, adding he found the best Snow Cone in New Orleans. "The best doughnut is in Westwood, Calif., right by UCLA at Stan's Doughnuts," he says. "Stan Berman has been doing it for 45 years. He is one of my heroes. I don't ask for the recipe but rather spend time with the proprietor and get a sense of how they can make such a great product."
Staying ahead of the competition takes a lot of energy, something he seems to possess in abundance. He starts his day in his office overlooking Union Square Park every morning at 6:30 and reads six newspapers in an hour. On Wednesdays, Coraine checks out the food section online for every major newspaper in the country. Before noon each day, after he's caught up with the news and responded to e-mail and telephone calls from the day before, Coraine stops in at nine restaurants, taking the pulse, he says, of how the operations are doing. Is everybody ready for lunch? Do any regulars have reservations? (If so, he makes a point of dropping by to say hello.)
Coraine also has weekly coaching sessions with the chefs, strategy sessions with managers and staff meetings at each of the eateries. The biggest challenge? Trying to find the best managers. And, of course, enough time to get everything done. Some days, he puts in eight hours; others, it's 12. But rarely does he work six days in a week, and he expects his staff to follow his lead.
"There are people who say that in order to be in the restaurant business, you have to work 80 hours a week. My partners and I don't agree with that. We ask our people to work really hard five days a week then take time off and do something for themselves."
Attitude Readjustment
During his first job out of UNH, Bob Webster '80 was taught that there are never problems, only challenges. While he admits that's "kind of a hokey readjustment to how you look at problems," he's never forgotten it.
Hokey or not, that perspective has been very useful in reflecting on the events of a significant day in 1988. Webster was director of real estate for Ritz-Carlton at the time, having moved into the real-estate side of the business after holding management positions at the Plaza Hotel in New York and Westin Copley Place in Boston. What happened was this: He got fired.
When you're director of real estate, Webster explains, your job is to bring in capital. But in the fall of 1988, the Japanese treaty minister "shut off the spigot," and the market collapsed. Webster was caught in the line of fire. "At the time, it was the worst day in my professional career, and the months that followed as I searched for a new job were not much better," he says. "The ultimate irony in hindsight is that it turned out to be the best day in my life."
How so? Well, first of all, getting fired opened the way to the job he has now—advising hotel broker Hodges Ward Elliott on nearly $800 million worth of hotel deals. Since 1998, he has represented clients in transactions totaling almost $3 billion, and Real Estate Forum Magazine has ranked him the third most productive real estate broker in the country. But he also learned volumes from the experience. With those lessons came a perspective that he is able to share with his staff.
"It was a horrible day. But I tell my boys, what appears as one thing is often something else," he says. "It was relevant not just then but in all of life. That's when I joined my present company, and it's been a phenomenal ride ever since."
Freelancer writer Jody Record '95 is a non-traditional graduate of UNH with a B.A. degree in English and journalism.