MY SECOND DECADE (1969-1979)
The confidence, the gain of job security, the fascination, the new friends, the huge opportunities,
CURACAO
From the lush countryside and gentle beaches of Jamaica, we were introduced to the dry, rocky, arid island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, some 35 km from the coast of Venezuela. The Curacao Hilton is a stylish property on the rocky ocean coast on Piscadera Bay, a brief drive from the picturesque capital of Willemstad, a shoppers' paradise, entered over the wooden, floating, openable Queen Emma bridge.
My ninth job with Hilton was my first experience at a location at which I could not understand either of the two official languages. Dutch was pure but difficult, actually impossible. Papiamento was musical but unintelligible, a Creole blend of African, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, and Arawak Indian. However everyone speaks both English and Dutch. The predominant market driver for this hotel and others on the island was gambling and the casinos were humming with junkets organized from the US on a weekly basis. This market also drove a thriving entertainment scene with entertainers brought in from New York and Las Vegas weekly.
Charming John Scarne, Co-Owner of the Casino with Bud Sweet, was a well-known 'card manipulator', special advisor to the Mafia and the US Government, at the same time and author of the book, 'The Odds Against Me', apparently found on the shelves of every Casino Managers' Office in the world and he was also banned from playing in every casino in the world. He was a fascinating companion every night in the casino where my wife played and I observed in an official capacity.
Anecdote. One of our most memorable experiences while here was an opportunity to ride on a Dutch built prototype of a 'boxboat', built by a local Dutchman for the Dutch Navy. It was a rough wooden box for the pilot and about 4 passengers. The box was about eight feet long and five feet wide with sides of maybe eighteen inches. A small table in the middle contained a bone china tea set with an ornate teapot and four delicate cups and saucers, Strapped onto each side of the box were two huge steel tubes of about twelve feet long and a diametre of about eighteen inches.... with a pointed end in front and a flat back-end. The roughly constructed frame attached both sides held the box several feet above the water. Two huge outboard motors were bolted to the back of the box with propellers with extendable shafts. We headed out to the open sea, the torpedoes travelling below the surface, the box suspended high above the undulating waves, the tea was poured and not a drop was spilled. As we went into more serious waves, the box was winched up and the torpedo tubes continued to pierce through the water ignoring the waves. We returned to the hotel dock after an hour of travelling through huge waves on one straight plane. Not a drop of tea was spilled.
My ten year career with Hilton came crashing down while I was attending a senior management course in Montreal at the Hilton International Career Development Institute at the Queen Elizabeth when Peter Howard, the GM in Curacao was transferred to Bogota Colombia and was replaced by Georg Engelhart who decided to bring his whole team from the Athens Hilton and fired the whole team in Curacao, without cause. My career with Hilton was over, days before my first ever vacation to London for my sister's wedding. My severance pay was about $600.
The VP Human Resources for Hilton later told me that this would never be allowed in future.
Lesson learned 50 years later. On processing a request for a State Pension from the UK, then a EU partner, my service in Curacao needed to be verified by the Dutch authorities to get a much needed credit. However the Curacao authorities had destroyed all records for the 1960s to the 90s. No strings could be pulled, no influence was recognized, those records were destroyed. Gggrrrr!!
CANADA
After attending my sister's wedding in London one week later, my now very pregnant wife and I started looking for the right opportunity and accepted a post with an old friend, Jurgen Bartels of Gabriel Management back in Canada. Jumping on the Polish Ocean Line's Stefan Batory, a voyage that was the most reasonable method of travelling at that time ......with a car, although not the most comfortable on the rough ocean crossing, 'we' being six months pregnant at the time. The rough crossing to Montreal from Tilbury took an extra three days and my wife and our 'son-to-be' stayed together............. while she tended her sick husband!!
My first job with Gabriel Management was at the Mont Gabriel Lodge as Assistant Manager, a 45' drive north of Montreal. It was a short assignment but a very welcome one at a difficult time. We returned to Canada pregnant, dragging a Fiat 850 from Curacao to London to Montreal. The property was and still is a successful ski destination for Montreal families that enjoy skiing a short 45' drive from the city whether for a weekend or an evening of night skiing. Summertime golf nearby and excellent corporate meeting room space rounded out the offerings and it remains successful to this day. Similar to other well located destinations, its success has been solidified by the sale of a great real-estate collection of Chalets and Villas.
Anecdote. I learned a lot at every assignment and no less at this assignment. The engineer had perfected the new art of man-made snow and I learned as much as I could, mostly after dark and sometimes after midnight. I also learned the delicate balance of profitability in this great ski area that showed black ink for the season only if the skiing started in November. I also learned that skiiers have huge appetites at the buffet and energetic creativity on the dance floor!
While still living in Montreal, the daily trip to Gabriel was an easy 45' drive and amazingly our Fiat 850 was a wizard in snow and on ice, a skill definitely not learned in tropical Curacao where she was bought!! Fifty years later, we still regret having sold her..........replacing her with a chunky Thunderbird.........that drove like a heavy overweight wrestler but benefitting from its front wheel drive.
Having previously lived and worked in Quebec, my French was relatively fluent and my Canadian French accent was acceptable. I loved , and still do to this date, the ability of most Quebecers, whether francophone or anglo, to switch effortlessly between the two languages, sometime in the middle of a sentence and sometimes for just one word.
My second job with Gabriel was as General Manager of the iconic Algonquin Hotel in St Andrews New Brunswick, a 200 room classic originally built in the latter part of the nineteenth century with an 18 hole Golf Course designed by the team from St Andrews Scotland. Basically a 100-day resort that opens in the Spring and closes after Labour Day, it was a challenge to operate both from a staffing perspective and from a revenue standpoint. The solution that we, actually I, proposed to New Brunswick's Premier Richard Hatfield was to adopt it as a Hotel School in the Winter and morph into a Resort in the Summer was accepted although in reality the property was winterized and now operates year round under Marriott's Autograph Collection, albeit still with some challenges in the winter season.
As a 100 day resort, it opened in about April and closed in September enjoying the youthfulness and excesses that a student workforce provided every summer. The 100 days however was insufficient to make ends meet and the idea to winterize it was not new nor was it obvious that winter would attract sufficient business to allow any black ink. The idea was hatched to turn it into a Hotel School in winter with some of the students remaining for the summer.
Anecdote. Before opening I was asked by the locals if I played golf. I had learned as a youth but had not played very much since. I said 'Yes, sort of'. In the week before we opened our 18 hole course, I dusted off my old wooden' clubs and snuck out to play a round alone. The course is spectacular with sweeping ocean-view vistas from many tees. I teed up half way through on a par-three hole with a magnificent raised tee and a green way below me. I selected an eight iron. It was a hot early spring day. I had of course seen no-one because it was closed. I lined up and swung, connecting quite well. It rose ......in slow motion as I recall...... and landed softly about two feet beyond the hole spinning back slowly and dropping in......for a hole in one!! Applause erupted from behind me in the trees and bushes where three or four of the locals who had asked me if I played golf, were hidden. I did not live that down nor did I play much golf after that. My reputation however was intact!
Anecdote. Shortly after our opening, while sipping tea on the magnificent balcony overlooking the front lawns and the sweeping driveway that curled around the front lawn to the canopied front entrance, we all admired the arrival of a sleek silver, aluminum Classic Airstream pulled by a proud American family as they arrived to check in. As it approached the front entrance and its ancient wooden and tiled canopy, it did not slow down or park in the spaces provided for registration, he drove through slowly and in what seemed like slow motion, the canopy mounted the Airstream and ripped itself clear of its Tudor anchor and crashed in pieces around him.
It was cleaned up and fixed tentatively while a new model was designed and built........to new sizing standards.
My third job with Gabriel at the end of the Summer was as VP Operations of Gabriel Management so we returned to Montreal with our one year old son to this new position that included a number of hotels and several restaurant operations, my first experience at multi-unit operations and a second year of oversight of the Algonquin, albeit with a new, personally chosen GM, my assistant in the previous season.
My predecessor as VP Operations had become a close friend over the years, in fact it started before I left for Jamaica. Jurgen Bartels was destined to make history in the industry and later to become successively President of Westin Hotels, Carlson/Radisson and later with Starwood and then Meridien Hotels. In the meantime he had become VP Operations of Commonwealth Holiday Inns of Canada (CHIC), Holiday Inns' largest franchisee and he called to bring me in to open the largest Holiday Inn in the World, the 700 room Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown.
My first job with CHIC was as Assistant Innkeeper at the Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown. Prominently located next to Toronto's City Hall, it opened to great fanfare and immediate success with a crack team of professionals that delivered a high level of quality throughout. La Ronde the rooftop restaurant was Canada's first revolving restaurant under the expert leadership of Maitre d'Hotel, Emilio Calderon, a colourful, handsome Spaniard whose skills in selecting the best candidates for all positions and then personally training, leading, guiding them all to great success.
Out of the blue, as I recall, I was asked to interview for a position with Four Seasons Hotels and was interviewed by Ian Munro, EVP Four Seasons and Georg Schwab VP Western Canada. I was hired as General Manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Calgary which included management of the operations of the Calgary Convention Centre.
The company, known at that time as Inn on the Park and headquartered at the Toronto property of the same name had a total of four properties of which two were Five Star properties.....the Inn on the Park (Toronto & London) and two small three-star properties, the Four Seasons on Jarvis Street Toronto, a low-rise property in the centre of Toronto's red-light district .......and a small Ramada Hotel east of Toronto. The decision to launch a group with the Four Seasons name based on its questionable reputation was never questioned........ or ever a factor.
My first job with Four Seasons was to familiarise myself with the architectural plans for the hotel that was under construction. The review involved the detailed planning of the facilities that included such minutiae as the size and shape of the cafe and restaurant tables, the width of the table mats, the height of the seats of the chairs and their position under the tables to ensure comfort for seating and eating. Not a centimetre was left to chance. With responsibility for a 3,000 seat banquet room in the Convention Centre, we drew up the requirements for holloware and flatware that included my design of a one-piece, stackable 'supreme' dish for seafood/shrimp cocktails to replace the standard supply that consisted of three interlocking pieces that did not stack. The item was not patented and WESTIN Hotels was quick to order several thousand from the same supplier. Our work during this phase at the headquarters of the company touched on similar work for the new Four Seasons hotels in Vancouver, Edmonton and Paris.
My real job with Four Seasons, now re-branded as a Marriott Hotel, started a few months later when we moved to Calgary with our three year old son. I walked the hotel building daily from top to bottom as the construction and fit-out continued. We interviewed potential department heads and managers and gladly accepted talented managers and employees from our sister property, the Inn on the Park Toronto. Training programs were assembled and perfected and administered as the days counted down to the September 15th 1974 Opening, two and a half years after we had opened the Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown. A handful of those department heads had joined us in Calgary. Two or three events were planned for the opening to include an employee champagne breakfast for about 200 employees and departments heads, a VIP lunch for about 50 and a huge Reception for about 3,000.
Anecdote. In preparation for these events, our star Pastry Chef Gunther Engels had prepared thousands of delicate Petit Fours and special desserts for the various events while the City Engineers were attaching the water supply valves to start the registers in a small cubicle of a room no larger than 8'X8'. Unknown to anyone was the fact that the joint sleeves were reversed in error and the larger supply tube fed into the smaller receiver tube forcing the pipes apart and the cubicle to flood, the water pressure breaking the walls of the first room and a secondary area plus the bakery and the pastry shop. The water escaped at full volume then flooded the main ballroom in which the 100% wool Ming carpet, custom woven in China flooded and rose gradually up the exquisite panelled walls of the ballroom.
DISASTER. We all had 3 sleepless days before the event and all hands were ON DECK albeit under water.
Seventy two hours later, the ballroom had been rescued, the Petit Fours replicated by the Inn on the Park Toronto and flown out, the carpet was vacuumed and blown dry by a battery of gas heaters and the panelling restored by an army of wood specialists. Waiters and waitresses were trained in French Service, heretofore unheard of in Calgary, and my stackable, silver-plated supreme dishes were stacked and loaded with the first 3,000 appetisers for the opening banquet.
The launch was a huge success and the battle began to gain a fair share of the Calgary market, largely dominated by Denis Forestal GM at the Calgary Inn for so may years, now renamed the Westin! The next two years went like a flash as we gradually changed the image of 7th Avenue from a decrepit, ugly back street to a respectable five-star, vibrant destination and the new headquarters of the famous Calgary Stampede's Party Central!!
After a great four years, a new GM was brought in by a new VP who arrived with his whole team of department heads and we all headed out to find new green pastures, again.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Three interviews later having declined opportunities in Toronto (Harbour Castle), Mexico and a couple of other locations, we accepted a position of General Manager at the Hotel Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic a newly built, Oscar de la Renta designed, Gulf & Western Hotel.
This first job in Latin America was at the Hotel Santo Domingo was a massive change in style, in substance, culturally and linguistically. My Spanish was non-existent but my French helped. Within six months, I was getting by, in ten months I was fluent-ish! I understood everything and made myself understood. The first challenge was to host the Miss Universe Pageant, a six-month process of planning, programming, preparation and promises. I brought some Spanish speaking comrades from Toronto to assist in the training of the restaurant staff and a former Chef from Mexico....German. We became the favourites of the Diplomatic Corps and hosted the most honourable presidents from all around Latin America, and some that were not so honourable. None however were as impressive or eye catching as the 70-80 contestants for the Miss Universe Pageant.
Anecdote. John Kennedy Junior became a regular at the hotel and requisitioned the VIP limousine (or the company helicopter) to get to our sister property as Casa de Campo in La Romana. He was single at the time and I am sworn to secrecy so the rest comes with me to my grave!
Anecdote Israeli illusionist and a Miss Universe Judge, Uri Geller became a great friend and we dined most nights together as he carried out his amazing feats that included fixing clocks and watches of thousands of TV viewers holding their broken clocks and watches in front of their TV sets while Uri did his magic and most famously bending spoons.
Anecdote. My prowess on the hotel's tennis courts did not last long. I had prided myself for years amongst friends and hotel guests but I was to lose my prowess in a matter of minutes at the hand of the company's travelling 'Celebrity Pro', Aussie Davis Cup player, winner of the 1970 US Pro
Championship, coach of both Federer and Lendl.........left hander...... Tony Roche. We were to play an exhibition match and Tony agreed to play right-handed. My recollection is not very clear but I do not remember winning one point.
The inevitable changing of the guard came after a couple of glorious years when the hotel President was fired and we both left for greener pastures with a host of happy memories of a couple of hundred of wonderful fellow employee colleagues.
Within three weeks back in Montreal, we were invited to an interview with Hyatt International in Chicago for a position as GM at their new property in San Salvador, El Salvador in a hotel that was designed and built in six months by the government of the day to host a convention that had been invited to the country, and that Hyatt had agreed to staff, equip and open in six months. Three months had elapsed to find me so I got on the next flight to Central America.
EL SALVADOR
My good fortune was that the convention for which the hotel was built cancelled their event because of 'civil unrest' in Salvador and they went elsewhere. We still had three months or else under our contract to buy the operating supplies and equipment, hire the management team, find and train the employees and open the property. I went to Mexico for the uniforms and Collins Avenue in Miami for the supplies!! The Hyatt team were fantastic, fun and the whole experience was splendiferous.
This second job in Latin America at the Hyatt Presidente San Salvador was a joy and a threat. The joy was the people and the place. The threat was the political unrest and the risk of life for anything that included the Salvadorean government and the Americans. The hotel was owned by the government and Hyatt is an American company, a double whammy! I was provided with a remote control car starter to avoid a potential car bomb and my German diplomat tennis partner and I went to the tennis club each day.............. by a different route, as prescribed for most expatriates.
Anecdote. A few months in to my assignment, my secretary announced the arrival of two government agents who she suspected were undercover police who were here to meet with me. She advised me to accept the 'invitation'. It did not take long. They showed me a crumpled piece of paper with two names on it. One was the name of the Swiss diplomat who had been assassinated a few days prior and the second name was mine. They recommended that my family and I who were resident in the hotel, change rooms every night and exercise special precautions in our movements to avoid or reduce the possibility of a kidnapping or assassination.
During our first year there we picked up another management contract down on the Pacific Coast and we opened the Hyatt Tesoro Beach. In the pre-opening days I walked down to the deserted beach to test out my Browning semi-automatic pistol that I had been given by our Maintenance Manager. Taking up a stance epitomized by Miami Vice actors, with two hands on this tiny semi-automatic gun, I pulled the trigger and blood erupted out of my thumb joint. I was certain that the pistol had back-fired. I wandered nonchalantly back through the not-yet-open lobby to the GM's office. 'Got a Kleenex?' I asked. I wrapped my bleeding hand and made light conversation about the opening date. I later realised that the semi-automatic action slides the loader backwards and that the gun is actually designed (for a woman) to be held in one hand, not two.
Anecdote. A call from our SVP Operations in Chicago came in to ask me if I knew the Miss Universe Executives from my time in Santo Domingo. I confirmed that I did. I was told the Pageant was headquartered in the Hyatt Regency Acapulco flagship hotel in Mexico and that Miss Universe were threatening to pull it out. Could I take over the management of the hotel and the coordination with Miss Universe executives because the current VP Mexico could not handle the situation? Without hesitation we accepted the challenge.
I left Salvador for Acapulco leaving my dear wife and our 9 year-old son in Salvador to finish the school year. I never did find out if the company had taken out kidnap insurance for us while there.....nor did I ask!!
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