How Our Hotels Become Community Pillars, Delighting Neighbors and Guests Alike - Caitlin Ornitz, Champagne Hospitality

Caitlin: There are many, many people involved in hospitality to make it work. So, for example, imagine the community. The hotel has to belong within the community for it to feel authentic. A lot of people throw around words like sense of place and authenticity. And there's not much substance behind it unless you really focus on the idea that we actually belong in a community because we've been there for a long time. We know many people within the community, we make an effort to strengthen those relationships. We have many, many local guests who come and stay at the hotel or eat at the hotel. We have menus focused just on locals that are like secret menus for them. We do lots of outreach. We do events for example, women in champagne, we did an event just with a bunch of women vintners in champagne. There's this genuine sense that the hotels belong within the communities they need. And that's what creates authenticity. That's what creates this idea of sense of place, you really become like a landmark and a destination in yourself within a region when you have that. And then there are other aspects to that you can have belonging with the environment. So sustainability is very important to us. It is absolutely obvious to everybody when it's not centered in your beginning discussions. So It's very obvious when you don't consider that flooding is a real problem in your area and you haven't mitigated ways to resolve it. It's also central to us to work with architects on new design projects to think about how the wind can be captured to reduce the amount of air conditioning you need. There's a level of belonging and integration in a biophilic way that is also important. And so there are many, many ways it shows up. When I think of what hospitality is to me, it's being honest with yourself about you're really doing this for other people and to make sure their experiences are as good as they can be and that they really have this experience where everything comes together to really feel like you belong. This is very important to know about Champagne Hospitality. Every property has its own identity. So, we're not necessarily a brand of properties. We have individual assets that are the leading within a community. They have their own standing within that community, their own connection to that community. If we take even the example in Champagne, Royal Champagne is a leading property in Champagne. It's a place where lots of locals come to. And we also have a champagne house Leclerc Briant in Champagne. And there's lots of momentum around that.

Josiah: This is an interesting point, though, because I feel like people talk about making strong brands in communities. And then I see many of those people that are talking about it are also trying to make the corporate brand or the holding company a strong brand as well. And I haven't seen a lot of examples of that done really well because it feels like, inherently, there's going to be trade-offs. It feels like you've intentionally not reduced the kind of overall visibility, but you're not leading with kind of Champagne Hospitality as a brand. It seems you're very property brand-forward.

Caitlin: Well, definitely. And I think it's the way not many people are able to do that because of how their company structure is set up.

Josiah: Tell me more about that.

Caitlin: Many companies have to focus on just creating a management company. That is inherently like how you create a management company to be more valuable by having a brand because then you have some sort of tangible extra that you're adding to these. Like if you go out and you manage somebody else's property, you have some type of value add to that. If you're somebody like us, where we're an owner and an operator, we're able to say, well, actually, in this luxury segment, we're not just trying to increase the value of our company, we're really trying to increase the value of also these assets and make sure that they're being run in the most valuable way for the consumers in that community that go to them. And so we are just really lucky, frankly, that we're able to focus on what we think actually matters to our guests, rather than corporate priorities.

Josiah: I wonder if we could maybe use one of your properties, we could talk about any of them. But can you walk me through what that has looked like practically in some of those relationships that have been developed? And how do you move beyond those traits? It feels like everybody's saying this and very few can execute on it.

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