Thom Geshay was 17 and a new high school graduate in 1984 when he relocated from Wisconsin to North Carolina. He needed a summer job before starting college, and the trip to his new state would change his life.
The youngest of eight children, Geshay now president and chief executive of Atlanta-based Davidson Hospitality Group, was about to begin his studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he would earn a degree in industrial engineering. He made the move as his father retired to North Carolina to take advantage of lower tuition at the state school, Geshay said.
"The whole way down, my dad is talking, and he's a hard-working Midwest blue-collar guy and keeps peppering me on this long trip about what I'm going to do for the summer," said Geshay. After pulling off the exit in Asheville, North Carolina, before they arrived at their new home, they noticed a Holiday Inn had just opened with a sign: Help Wanted Bell Boy.
"My father says, 'Let's go.' We were supposed to go left to get to our house but turned right into the parking lot," Geshay said. "He sits in the car while I go into the hotel and asks to speak to the manager."
He got the job, and so began a four-decade career in hospitality.
Geshay was a week into his first job when he found the hotel had been sold, and an executive with the new owner, Davidson Hospitality, was at the front desk checking in.
"I am behind the front desk, and I'm checking in with the guy who will be the new regional area manager," he says. "I had no idea who they were, so we just started talking and hit it off."
He stayed at the hotel, taking on tasks including the front desk, food and beverage and even as DJ at the nightclub every summer during his university years.
"Back then night clubs were always in hotels," said Geshay. "I created this revenue management system by turning over the dance floor (with different genres and speeds of music). When people are not dancing, they are drinking. I was always challenged to think about my job as a business. If you are the DJ, it is not just entertaining, but you are responsible for driving revenue."
Sticking with hotels
After graduating he got a job with IBM. Big Blue, as IBM was known, was prestigious, and his dad was beyond proud.
"But you talk about a boring shift. I went from nightclubs to manufacturing facilities," said Geshay, who got a call six months after starting the full-time IBM gig from the gentleman he checked into the Holiday Inn on his first week on that summer job.
Gregg Adams, who would eventually become chief operating officer of Davidson and was a lifelong mentor, offered him a bar manager job, but Geshay wondered how to explain it all to his dad. After all, at IBM, "they called me a director, which sounded better but I took a pay cut," he said with a laugh.
Ironically, Geshay's son started a full-time engineering program at North Carolina State this fall, and Geshay tried to talk him out of it. "It's a tough degree. It's not fun. But one thing it does teach you is critical thinking and problem solving," he said.
What Geshay has come to love about hospitality is that it's not just one business; it is everything from finance, sales and marketing, to restaurants and procurement.
"You can be in hospitality doing a lot of different things, and then at the end of the day, our hotels are a piece of real estate," he says. "Our job is to create value for our owners. But there is also a harmony of everybody being like a family and having one goal of making sure every guest has a great experience, wants to come back, and knowing in some small way we made their day better."
The hardest thing about hospitality might be that the work always continues: "There are very few jobs open 24/7, 365 and, and we are busier when everybody else is off," said Geshay, who has no regrets about that one fluke stop about 40 years ago. That first job taught him that hard work and doing your best means "people will notice and recommend you for something else. More opportunities will open."