How We Created A Thriving Hotel by Embedding Ourselves In Our Community - Chris Luersen, The Eddy

00:00 Josiah What does it take to get so deeply connected to your community that you attract talented, engaged people to your teams and drive more business from both the local community and your loyal following of guests because of your connection to your surroundings? Well, stick around because today I'm really excited to share with you my conversation with the general manager of the Eddy Hotel, Chris Luersen. Now, The Eddy might sound familiar because a little while back we spoke to Tom Luersen about this hotel.

00:27 Tom When you come to Hotel Eddy, you know, you're in Golden, Colorado. The arch on the wall in the private dining room is a local artist. It's on a consignment wall that changes every three months. And it's all from Golden. They have a story. Golden is famous for a beer called Coors. And the plant is right there. So there's a relationship and a storyboard about Coors at our hotel. We don't have a relationship with them. We're just telling them a story. So that is that sense of place.

00:56 Josiah Today, you get to listen in on my conversation with Chris about the details of what this looks like and how they do it.

Chris, thanks for giving me a tour of the property. I've been really excited to visit this hotel. Spoke to Tom Luersen a couple of months ago now and we'll link to it in the show notes. But thinking about how CoralTree thinks about being indigenous in his words in local communities. And so I have a couple of friends that moved from San Francisco to Golden. I had the chance to come here this week and I was like, I got to see Chris at The Eddy. I got to see the property. It was really cool walking around and seeing what you and the team have built here.

01:50 Chris Yeah, well, I appreciate you coming out here first. And I read and watched the interview with Tom and I looked at it again today to get my notes ready for this conversation. He did a really great job of speaking to The Eddy and how we have found a home here and kind of built that around the community and its history. Fun fact for the day, Jolly Rancher came from Golden - it was literally a rancher here and he was really happy guy and then became known as The Jolly Rancher and then got out of farming and started doing this kind of candy so there are lots of little notes like that. Obviously, Coors Brewery in that connection that we have here they're celebrating 150 years their big celebration is actually next week on the 28th I believe they're going to start that But rich in history here, even though it's this small, very tight-knit community, they are definitely involved in the history and making sure that everyone comes in here as a new partner or new building or new company understands that. And I think from our ownership to our management company in CoralTree, We've done a really good job and the little touches, right? We're sitting in a guest room now and I noticed you saw the little circle room number outside. You'll see a lot of that theme throughout our property because it is a nod to the coal mining days. Those were coal mining tags and designed off of that. So, our room keys are circular. They're wooden, circular RFID keys, all in theme with that coal mining tag. So, the story is, in the coal mining days, you would go and clock in, and your number would be up on the wall on a hook, and you'd have two keys, and you'd take one. You'd go into the coal mine, you'd do your work, and at five o'clock when it was time to punch out, you would hang that key up the manager, or whatever that position was, would then make sure all the keys had two. If someone only had one, they knew there was someone still in the coal mine. No man left behind type of philosophy and from a safety perspective, of course, and we've really adopted that. So you see a lot of those themes, our adventure wall downstairs that kind of lays out all the things for us of the circular tags on them as well to note the day and what's happening, not just here, but what's happening at Golden. Right? So you'll see, of course, all of the events that we're going to do for our guests and for the groups coming in house. But then it's going to show the farmers markets on Saturday and a Red Rock show what's coming up. And a lot of our philosophy here at the Yeti is we want you to enjoy your time here, but we also want you to go out, like get off the property! Of course, dine with us, eat and drink, but go explore. That's why we have our bikes. We have mountain bikes and e-bikes available to our guests to go Take this Clear Creek Trail and go downtown, grab a bite, come back, or be a little more adventurous and go take that mountain bike up to the mountains and see how far you can go and come back.

04:29 Josiah I love it. I want to talk about place because it's something that just seems such a recurring theme. Hearing you talk, and visiting the property, I feel sometimes what happens for people who are unfamiliar with an area, they look at the broad metro area as all one. So this is all essentially Denver, right? When people think that way, maybe as travelers, what are they missing?

04:48 Chris Yeah, and I think part of what brought us to Colorado too outside of family was, you know, it gave us all the things we would like to do, right? The rivers, the lakes, just the hiking. We enjoyed our hiking and getting out. I think The Eddy is the prime example of being close to downtown Denver. You're 20 minutes to downtown, 40 minutes to the airport. But when you get here, it's quiet, it's secluded, and you're right at the foothills. You're right at this intersection here. You head up to Black Hawk and then you can get up into the mountains. And that's really, I think, one of our best features is we give you the best of both worlds, right? If you want to come in and go to downtown, great. If you want to go in and get away and then go hike Clear Creek or get up into the mountains, you can do that too.

05:31 Josiah I love it. I want to get more into the hospitality side of this, but just staying kind of at a pretty high level, one thing that stood out to me as I drove down here and we were walking around is noticing the couple buildings surrounding the hotel, right? There's an apartment building next door and I'm curious how you think about, you know, you're running this place. I think general managers are almost like the mayor of their space and it's a gathering place for not only these buildings in this couple area, but for Golden at large? And how do you think about what hotels and your restaurant, your bar can offer as a gathering place for the community? What are the opportunities there?

06:02 Chris Yeah, it's a great question and I think we were almost designed with that in mind a little bit. When we were coming up with the concepts and the designs around what this was going to look like, we described the taproom, the restaurant, and our very small little lobby area as the living room of Golden, right? We wanted to be open and accessible to everybody, right? We wanted our neighbors next door, which are a lot of School of Mines students, to elderly people that live in this building too that we're just looking to downsize. And we wanted everyone to be able to get here and get something off of the menu that was going to quench their thirst or their appetite for the right price and feel welcomed, right? And you witnessed a little bit, but our bartenders and as we're just getting ready to open right now, but They know these people by first name. They see them walk in the door and they start their drink. That's what we want it to be. And I don't think there's a lot of that in Golden. We knew that was our opportunity to capitalize on that. And we've built this beautiful building and we're the newest property in the area. And it allows us to capture a lot of different markets and a lot of different personnel and people that are looking for different things. They get the business traveler who might not want to be in downtown Denver, right? And they're looking for something different. They don't want a Marriott. They want something a little custom and independent and that's what we are. And quiet, right? And then come in, they can do a couple of hours of work, then they can go hit the trails and come back and then grab a beer and do all those things. That was really how it was concepted, yeah.

07:32 Josiah I love this notion of being sort of a living room for the neighborhood. And I think in walking around here in some of the things that you showed me, the sense of place stands out in all these little details, the stories that you're able to tell around that. Part of me, though, is still a little bit skeptical in the sense that place and placemaking feels like a marketing or a branding exercise. For you, why does it matter? Is it essentially a marketing exercise or do you think there's something more there?

07:56 Chris I think there's something more. I mean, there's definitely some marketing into it, right? I think we'd be remiss not to hit on that, but it is what we focus on and it is important to us because there are other options, right? And I've experienced some of those options and I know the lack what you walk away with and that feeling when you don't have that experience and the placemaking behind it. You know, again, these hotels may be independent that we compete against. I've stayed there again, and I just don't get that feeling, right? It's a little different. And we talked a little bit about it on our tour about our bricks. right? We do these custom bricks for specifically our wedding couples that decide to choose us as a place as you recently got married and how important that decision is. Not only the person that you're marrying but the place where you're doing it. It's a big decision and we want it to be the most memorable experience they can have it's a tough decision as we know to do that. And so, we've created these custom bricks with their names on it and the date. They'll take one with them. And then, you know, we're in the process where our front drive, we're going to implement those bricks ours. And so, it's really cemented in history, right? So, every time they come back here, they can look at that brick and hopefully have a positive experience to look back on. That's the goal.

09:07 Josiah Which is a really cool opportunity. I think about kind of these hotels serve as the backdrop or the stage for all these moments in life. And sometimes they're happy, sometimes it's sad, you know, if there's something going on, but there's all these peak moments. And I love the wedding example where actually a couple weekends ago I was at the place my wife and I got married and we go back there. It's almost like a pilgrimage and we re-imagine that. It's so cool to think about creating a permanent memento while you're on property because you know they'll be back.

09:32 Chris Yeah. Yeah. And we certainly hope they will. We welcome them back for their anniversary. We try to get them back here. But for the most part, even the couples that we get married here, they're a particular group of people as well. They like this outdoor feel. They like doing something a little different. They aren't looking to have a 200-person event. It is more family-centered and smaller and unique. We've had weddings from 10 people to probably 85-90 people here. It's a wide variety, but most of them are very casual, which is great from our perspective. We like a casual bride and groom or groom and groom or bride and bride. We want that couple to be willing to work with us and we want to work with them. And so they love all the tiny touches that we can do. And they love the brick, of course. And we did an amenity for one of the couples that we had a really personal connection with. They were rushing a wedding to get through it so that the bride's mother could attend because she was terminally ill. Unfortunately, she was not able to attend that day due to her health, but so we did these really great backpacking bags that were custom to them and a bride and groom and because that's what they like to do. That's why they chose us. They like to hike and they've come here after a hike and had a beer and they said, look, this is what we want to be at because we've been here before and we've experienced the service and those little touches. So we try to do little things like that to separate us because any wedding couple or VIP is going to get some sort of bottle of champagne and some mixed nuts or something. We really try to do things different.

11:00 Josiah And the backpack example is a good one because it's both authentic to the place and what you're looking to offer in listening to you talk. I wonder if all this is more integrated and people maybe should get less hung up on. Is this a marketing thing or not? Because the way that we communicate what we do could also affect how I feel about a place, how I show up at a place. Right. And so maybe that guest experience is actually very connected to both how you communicate what you do and how you think about designing the guest experience, the amenities, the offerings you have on property as well.

11:28 Chris Yeah, I mean, to me, it's about the individual, right? And that is a big task to try and undertake to say, I'm going to do something that fits every individual person, but it's a good goal to have, right? And so, we try to reach out to every guest prior to they get here. What's bringing them into town? Why'd they choose us? How did they find us? And then we try to customize that experience to the best of our ability. I'm not saying every single guest that comes in here we're able to do this crazy experience for, but in general, 99% of them feel we've valued them and they valued their time here and we've made some sort of connection. Being a 49 room hotel, our goal is to be on a first name basis with a lot of these people, whether they're here one night, two nights, three nights. We have some great, great front desk members, guest service agents that are far better than I am at what they do in recognizing these people and saying, hey, how was the Red Rock show last night? And how was your bike ride? Did you hit Cafe 13 for breakfast or did you get a mimosa there? And all the referrals that they do, because they truly act as an ambassador of the hotel, but they're an ambassador of Golden too.

12:33 Josiah I want to talk a little bit about another aspect of placemaking that you referred to earlier in our conversation of, I think it was the adventure board, where you said you'd want people to enjoy the property, but you also want them to get out. And my question for you is, how do you think about participating as a member of the community? Because my understanding is you are promoting other businesses that others might say you compete with, but it feels like it's in service of being a member of the community. How are you thinking about that?

12:58 Chris Yeah, I mean, the community aspect here is so important from the team members that live here to our ownership that has an office here in Golden, and they are heavily involved. And from a cultural standpoint, and one of those values is our community involvement. We want to be an active participant in our surroundings, right? We want to have those good relationships. We do lots of different things. This last weekend, this two-mile stretch of highway, our names up on the sign there, we've adopted that two-mile stretch and we clean it up every quarter. So there were four or five of us out there on a Saturday morning and cleaned up two miles of highway. My hands and back were hurting me after that. We walked away feeling like, okay, we did something really good. And for the community and for us, and they're going to see that. We go to participate in Oktoberfest this Saturday, right? Our food truck's going to be down there. I think they sell between 3,000 and 5,000 tickets on a Saturday. It's going to be a busy and a very long day for us, but it is a major event here in Golden, and we want to be a participant in that.

14:01 Josiah How do you get started with that? Because all of these things are a lot of work. And I imagine each of these things that you described take a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of people. But how do you get started? Because Golden isn't a huge, huge community, but there's a lot of businesses. And where do you begin this kind of journey?

14:15 Chris It's a great question. And coming in here, starting here in February, the team that was in place had done a really good job thus far. So for me walking in, I'm candidly set up for success, right? So our sales director attends the chamber meetings. She's a part of Golden Young Professionals that we just hosted their event last night. We go to a marketing committee meeting, you know, and we leaned into our ownership, too, that already had a really good foundation into that. It's about staying consistent with it, though.

14:43 Josiah Interesting. I want to hear that more on that consistency piece. But what you mentioned here is really interesting, where it's not just you in the community or your sales director. It sounds like there's a lot of different people that do encourage your team members to go out there, get involved personally in these different organizations.

14:57 Chris Yeah, I think that's kind of part of what set this up for success and makes it quote-unquote easy for me to jump in and get involved because they've involved themselves, right? I spoke about Sheila a little bit earlier. Her involvement in this community and her dedication to sustainability gets us involved in a lot of different things. Those connections in spiral and then you make other connections. So, for the Oktoberfest, you know, we purchased tickets and they're like, guys, go attend, right? Meet some of these people. go with Nicole to a chamber meeting, see what it's like, right? And what can we get involved on? Because there's constantly things changing. There can be politics involved and things like that. But we want everyone to feel encouraged to be a part of that. And if they come back and they're like, well, this is going to cost some money. Okay, well, let's look at it. It might be worth the investment if you can go do that and you want to dedicate your time to that. And we can get some partnerships from it or it's just a feel good thing too. That's just as important to us.

15:53 Josiah It definitely is. I'm curious if you could speak a little bit to some of the other benefits. I think, you know, both seeing direct business and in the feel good nature of it. But let's say people love the idea of place. They're bought in. They want to get more engaged in their communities. You've been at this for some time. Your team has been at it for some time. What would you say are some of the business benefits you've seen on this sort of approach to hospitality?

16:13 Chris Yeah, I mean, pure revenue in a sense. The connections that our sales director has been able to make at some of these meetings, you know, to host some of these events. We've had a member of, I believe it was the marketing committee, get married here, right? Or have a rehearsal dinner here. We try to be a good partner. We'll try to work with you, get a discount or do something like that. But in general, they're selecting us because they know we do a good job. And we've made that really great relationship and partnership and commitment to their organization. And they're going to help us. And that goes from fire departments to police and anything that was directly related to this community, we try to help with. And it does come back to us. And I think whether it's a lunch, we do a lot of business lunches here and happy hours that come over here. Our partnership with the School of Mines is phenomenal. They're a huge part of this community. Their football program has been getting better and better. So that drives in a lot more attention. And we just did a great exchange with them. for some advertising. So we're going to advertise over at the football games and we get announced as a sponsor. And we did a trade for some food and beverage credit that they come and host their VIPs, coaches, whomever it may be, players, things like that. And so I love to see them because now I come see them. They have a great time. But usually they've kind of utilized it almost as their get togethers internally. I think they originally thought it might be a hosting experience, but for them, they're like, let's just go grab a drink. It's on the Eddie, essentially, you know, it's our trade credit. And so they're here having a drink and then we go and connect with them and Checking on how football's going, how's the recruiting going?

17:42 Josiah It all comes back to that living room concept, right? It does. Yeah. I love it. Is there anything else on your mind with regards to place making?

17:49 Chris You know, we're just over two years. We're still new. We came out real hot when we started. We were the new thing. So everyone came and experienced us. How do we stay there? There's going to be new hotels are going to get built here, new restaurants, things like that. They're going to happen. How do we remain constant and continue to be the living room? Because someone's going to want to do a living room, right? Someone's going to want to try to do that.

18:11 Josiah Does that come back to the nature of how you think about these partnerships? Some of them that you're describing, even with the art, it sounds like, where that is an opportunity to constantly reinvent yourself and stay fresh, where it's not like we did this. It's well designed, but it's not just that. It sounds like there's kind of these constant collaborations that allow you to stay fresh.

18:28 Chris Yeah, from our art, like you mentioned with foothills, regularly changing that out so it's fresh and it's new and it's different and it's seasonal and it's themed and just trying to stay current as well. And all of the different packages we can offer, right? One just came across that we are going to do is an overnight waxing of your skis. So, as we approach our winter season, you want to come with us, you drop your skis off, ski valet essentially, they come pick them up, they do the wax, they tune them up for you, you take them up to the mountains. Something like that, that I want a guest to come here and be like, dang, that's cool. Like I would have never thought to even consider like I take mine up into the mountains and then I got to wait two hours before I go hit the slopes to get my skis waxed or whatever. I can do that in advance and there's no inconvenience to me. We want everything to be convenient here, right? Whether it's from the bikes. go downtown, parking, all of these little things, we want it to be as convenient for guests and then be creative. Whether it's ski waxing, our Red Rocks transportation going to shows, which is a big one for us, knowing that we're only 15 minutes away from one of the best outdoor venues in the country, we get a lot of that attention. And so we try to get people enthused about that. We'll hand out ponchos on rainy nights, right? Because Red Rocks doesn't cancel a lot of shows. If you've seen the news from later this year with that hailstorm, that was about one of the few ones that they've had to cancel. Rain or shine a little bit there they go, so we try to make it convenient for them.

19:58 Josiah That's a poncho idea that's branded.

20:01 Chris They are, yeah.

20:02 Josiah It's amazing. It's amazing. I feel like talk about kind of, you know, living out these ideals of taking care of people in a very practical way.

20:08 Chris It's incredible. Yeah. You know, our water bottles, right? Just little things. I'm trying to do things differently, right? I talked a little bit about our plastic water situation. What can I, you know, is it a Nalgene? Is it a, those, they now have like these kind of packages that almost look like they would fit in a camelback type deal. Is it something cool like that that you just grab, you attach to your belt loop or your backpack and you head out and you've got your water and it's reusable, it's sustainable and you might take it with you, right? Our retail wall downstairs I think is, it's one of my favorite things because it's unique, right? You don't go to a lot of hotels these days where you can buy retail, right? And you can get a super comfy pair of sweats and sweatshirt and our Colorado weather It changes in a heartbeat. So people come here and they pack for the summer and they're like, you know, it's 50 degrees and I'm from Florida. I need a sweatshirt. I need a jacket. I need these things. So again, how can we be a one stop shop and be convenient for everybody?

21:00 Josiah I love it. I want to go see that now. So yeah, let's go do that. Thanks for taking some time to record. I really appreciate you sharing your story and what you're doing here. I encourage everyone to check this out.

21:09 Chris Appreciate coming out here. Thanks, Chris.