MIAMI BEACH, Florida—In a place like Miami, things tend to be more lavish, more opulent, more over the top. So much so that travelers to the sun-soaked city leave their inhibitions at the door. It’s a place where the phrase “you only live once” is not an ironic platitude but a genuine sentiment—a motto to live by in South Beach.
And no one takes this more seriously than the president and COO of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach.
“To this day, what I’m a big believer in is the DNA of this resort is all about entertainment, and that’s what we reintroduced,” explained Phil Goldfarb.
Goldfarb’s former employer Turnberry Associates bought the resort in 2005 and invested $600 million in a remodel that brought the hotel back to its former glory by refocusing priorities on entertainment.
From the two nightclubs—LIV and Arkadia—housed in the hotel to BleauLive, the resort’s entertainment platform that merges vacation experiences with performances by top artists, and the soon-to-be built amphitheater on the front lawn for concerts, entertainment is a serious industry.
But the hotel has always been a haven for celebrities and entertainers to congregate.
Built in 1954, the history of the resort almost overshadows its lavish amenities. The set of “Goldfinger” and “The Bodyguard” and former home to Frank Sinatra, the iconic hotel is part of the pop culture zeitgeist.
“There’s only one Fontainebleau,” Goldfarb quipped. “It’s one of the most successful resorts in the country, if not the world.”
The pervasive iconic atmosphere of the hotel is absorbed in the employees who “subscribe to our passion,” Goldfarb explained.
“We’re a very passionate, young, aggressive group of people. There are 100 applicants for every position no matter what the position. Everyone wants to work at this hotel, and we are fortunate to pick and choose the very finest,” he said. “You go home and look in the mirror, and you’re able to tell your family and friends ‘I work at the Fontainebleau, and there’s only one in the world.’”
Journey to the Fontainebleau
Offering opulence and serving guests’ needs have always been a part of Goldfarb’s life.
As a child in Long Island, New York, Goldfarb and his twin brother were used to entertaining his parents’ friends, often playing the role of bartender and housekeepers, cleaning up after the party disbanded.
From then on he was hooked, choosing to spend his summers as a teenager working at a large 3,000-room Catskill mountain resort. While there, he acquired a taste for luxury from watching and admiring the resort’s managing director, a debonair “suave guy with silky, silver hair” who was always wearing Armani suits. “And I thought I’d love to aspire to be a guy like that. And that inspired my interest in the hotel industry.”
“If you can make a living doing this, it certainly beats the alternative,” he said.
After attending Florida International University’s School of Hospitality Management, where he currently presides as vice chairman of the school’s industry board, Goldfarb moved up the hospitality ladder, working at select-service and full-service hotels until he found his home at the Fontainebleau.
“I feel like the mayor of a city,” he said about running the 1,504-room* resort, which is open 24 hours per day, has 11 kitchens, a warehouse with dry goods, a fish farm, a butcher shop where they butcher their own meat and a “liquor storage facility as big as Costco,” he said.
As “mayor,” Goldfarb oversees 35 different businesses run by 100 security personnel, 75 engineers, 300 to 400 housekeeping staff, 12 VPs on executive committees, who themselves run their own small army of staff.
It’s a reverse pyramid, he said. “I’m at the bottom and my team members are at the very top.”
Staff satisfaction
Goldfarb makes it his mission to interact with the staff every day, ensuring their happiness will beget the happiness of its guests. To do this, he had to shake the foundation.
When he first arrived three years ago, he wanted to make a big splash at the property, so he surveyed the employees to get their opinion on the hotel.
“It wasn’t that they weren’t paid enough. It wasn’t that they didn’t like their jobs. They didn’t like the food in the dining facility,” he said.
So he remodeled the whole dining experience. First, by bringing in a designer who would decorate the dining room to reflect the Fontainebleau’s past and its present—half of the dining hall is black and white with pictures of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Pressley, while the other parallel’s the resort’s current renaissance as a one-stop entertainment hotspot, festooned with glitter, sparkles and pictures of Lady Gaga. Finally, the culinary team committed to creating great food for every meal, offering healthy food options, a soft-serve ice cream machine, a Panini station and gourmet salad bars.
It’s not all food and fun. Goldfarb also instituted a retirement benefits program for employees and implemented the president’s roundtable. Every month, he sits down with a random group of 20 employees without managers or supervisors to get to know what’s going on in their lives.
“They learn from me what’s going on, and I learn a lot of things from them,” he said. “It’s a simple formula. Take great care of your team, give them the resources they need to do a great job and make sure they know what a ‘wow’ experience is all about.”
*Correction, 19 April 2013: The original article misstated that the Fontainebleau was 1,600 rooms.