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the hotelier
Ed Netzhammer Winter 2011-12
ED NETZHAMMER is regional
vice president for Omni Hotels & Resorts and managing director for the Omni
Hotel Dallas. MPG When I was in high school, I worked as a dishwasher at a Marriott Courtyard in Metairie, Louisiana.
One day I was washing dishes and, in a life-changing moment, my boss asked if I knew how to cook. I said no, and he said, “Ed, you work hard, the servers love to work with you and when you leave it’s always perfectly clean. Congratulations, you’re our new cook.” There were 70 people seated in the restaurant and the cook just walked off of the job. That’s how I got my first promotion.
I got a business degree always thinking that I would go back and run the family business in New Orleans with my mom and dad (school and office supplies). When I finished school, they were smart enough to encourage me to go out and “test my wings,” so, in 1984, I applied for work at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Thinking that it was the world’s toughest job, I told them I didn’t want to go into food & beverage so they put me in housekeeping as an assistant executive housekeeper. Six month later, I told my parents that I loved what I did and not to count on me running the business.
You have opened three Omni Hotels recently – San Diego, Fort Worth and now Dallas. What have you learned from opening these three large hotels? Prior to the opening of San Diego, our company would bring in their GM’s just six months before opening. The director of sales and marketing and a sales team always came first. In San Diego, that was the plan but my wife was seven months pregnant and we didn’t want to take a temporary assignment and then move to San Diego later so Omni decided to put me there two years before the opening.
During those two years, I learned that the things a GM can impact were so much more than Omni or I expected. Every part of the process became a little smoother. I learned that when you are selling “concrete” and none of the finishes are in, the person that is going to book your hotel needs a very high confidence level that you can deliver the dream that you are selling. I would always have a sales manager involved – I don’t get into the nitty-gritty because my sales managers know it would be a disaster – but having the GM in the sales process helps give the meeting planner a genuine feeling that we will deliver.
I also like to open busy. Thirty percent of the hotel employees are tipped. You can hire the best people but if they don’t make any money during the first ninety days, they’re not going to stay.
I find a group with which I have a great relationship and book them for right when we open. In Dallas, that was Freeman Company. They held a 600 person meeting three days after we opened. Seeing Don Freeman, Bob Moore, and their company take that chance with us gave other meeting planners much more confidence with their own booking decisions.
Our sales team has done a great job. We planned on having 102,000 rooms booked for 2012 by the end of this year. We still have 30 days left and have 118,000 rooms contracted for next year and we have 400,000 rooms on the books for future years.
What is the number one thing that you would like meeting planners to know about your new Dallas property? The 1,001-room Omni Dallas is truly authentic to the market we are in. There are over 7,000 pieces of art, all done by local artists, and it’s done in a way that is warm and comfortable. The décor is supported by a committed staff and by technology that makes holding a meeting here as easy as any hotel ever built.
The theme of this issue is “long-term success.” What does that mean to you? Before Omni, I spent 10 years with Starwood Hotels, a public company. I’ve learned that in a public company, Wall Street controls much of your destiny. If your quarterly numbers are not what they expect, they say, “You need to change the way you do business.” Being a privately-held company allows Omni Hotels to be much more agile and able to change things and implement new ideas.
In the long term, we want to intimately get to know what will help make our customers successful. Within our organization, we plan how to implement what we’ve learned and we stay the course – no matter what happens to the economy or on Wall Street.
During these past two difficult years, my direction from Mike Deitemeyer, president of Omni Hotels & Resorts, was to not do anything that would negatively impact the Omni service we provide to our customers. That’s a long-term perspective.
What advice would you like to share with the meeting planners? Our sales people go through specific training to help them understand the purpose of the meeting and to help the planner deliver on that meeting. About three years ago, Omni launched a program called Sensational Meetings. It was designed to help us to help the planner by better understanding their meeting.
Getting everyone to understand the objective of a meeting, what makes that meeting a success and being open to new things is really what I think needs to happen in our industry.
Also, I suggest that meeting planners get to know more about our new event technology center, a collaboration with Freeman, AVT and Omni, that showcases the latest event technology.
What one thing would you like our readers to take away from this interview? When Larry Hagman cut the ribbon on opening day he said, “This is not the same old Dallas anymore!” |
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