Vaughn Davis, general manager of the 178-room Dream Hollywood, sees the Los Angeles neighborhood through several different lenses.
Davis, who leads his on-property staff, is also a member of the board of directors for the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. He holds the dual roles of treasurer and member of the board of directors at the Hollywood Partnership.
Additionally, Davis volunteers for the Hollywood Food Coalition and Hollywood 4WRD, a coalition for creating systemic change to address homelessness in Hollywood.
His main focus through sitting on various boards is the beautification of Hollywood, and Los Angeles as a whole, which all ties back to the experience his staff and guests at Dream Hollywood have.
Davis joined the property in 2019, with previous experience as director of guest services at Dream Downtown in New York City from 2013 to 2015.
As part of an HNN series focused on hotel general managers, Davis talked about community involvement, lessons learned during the past year and expectations for a demand rebound.
With so many disruptions from the pandemic, what gave you and your team the motivation to meet the needs of guests as demand began to return?
For us, we are inward seeking, focused on understanding the psychological effects of the pandemic on travel. [We] are motivated and driven to offer an experience to get [guests] out of the funk ... and give them a way of hope.
The industry has fluctuated over the past year. At what point will you and your team feel as if it has fully reached the ramp-up period?
I believe we are already on the mend. We have leads flowing in — we actually had to hire a director of group and entertainment to come and help with the requests we are receiving.
We are seeing groups already, [albeit] smaller than we're used to. The Super Bowl is right around the corner, which will be a major indicator as to how the market has rebounded.
Another major indicator, too, is the boarders reopening, once we see a resurgence of international travel.
In addition to serving as general manager of Dream Hollywood, you also serve on several tourism boards. In what ways are you using your positions to elevate tourism in Hollywood?
The main focus is the beautification of Hollywood — directly with the Hollywood Partnership, that is the focus — but for all the other boards is about the beautification of Los Angeles. How can we, with all the opportunities that Los Angeles presents, as one unit come together. With the unhoused crisis as No. 1 ... creating this program to best directly heal the unhoused individuals from an internal-looking perspective in hopes of addressing mental health issues, providing housing for them and jobs for them — and that will in turn help Los Angeles tourism in a way that can't be measured.
And infrastructure upgrades, looking into lighting, experiences and programming, bringing my experience from New York City with the meatpacking district and understanding that we curated the travelers' experience in New York. [We're] bringing that mindset here to California, creating little pockets of well-curated environments for our tourists. That affects hotels directly, because when tourists come to Hollywood, they're going to see a refined and finished product.
Working with all of those partners on those boards, collectively, we have a vision for revamping and developing Hollywood and ultimately all of Los Angeles. When the Super Bowl rolls around, people will arrive and see a completely different product than they saw a few years ago.
How does the team at Dream Hollywood get involved within the community?
We volunteer. We work with the Hollywood Food Coalition to create a flow for feeding the unhoused during the pandemic on Thanksgiving. Then, we had a delivery program where, [with] the leftover food, we drove around and dropped it off at some of the unhoused communities that exist. My team is highly involved in all the initiatives.
It's not just about one building, it's about the community as a whole. We [launched] a clean-safe program and guest experience program, where there are ambassadors walking around Hollywood, connecting with tourists and the unhoused, making sure they know where the best experiences are and walking them to the locations. We are constantly keeping our streets clean, we added hundreds of new receptacles, making sure that we are removing any type of graffiti, adding new plants, string lights — it's such a collective effort.
What we do in the hotel, we expanded to tackle Los Angeles. My guests are impacted by what happens outside the hotel as well. One of the things that makes us unique is we're able to expand our guest experience outside of our hotel. We have a great relationship with all the restaurants in the community.
What I have learned from my background as a director of guest services is there are so many tools that are available at your disposal outside of the property, which can enhance the guest experience holistically. It's great for guests to see everything that's here on property, but to be able to expand outside of your building, that is the secret sauce that makes our guest experience unique.
The industry is battling a shortage of hourly, front-line workers. How are you helping your teams overcome that challenge and avoid burnout as best as possible?
By the tail end of the pandemic, we proactively identified team members that had a deep root in the department, either at our property or other [Dream Hotel Group] properties. They were trusted sources and confidantes for the other team members that reported to them.
And then of course staying in touch with our team members; keeping them engaged throughout the process when they were home, furloughed or laid off, [providing] that constant communication from our CEO as well as our vice president of human resources.
Some of the ways we've been able to counteract burnout ... we added Alfred, who is a robot. Alfred helps with some of the monotonous day-to-day tasks that were laborious and helps the team now to be free to go above and beyond. They can now connect with guests for extended periods of time without feeling rushed. Another way that we counteract burnout, [if] team members work extra hours of overtime, we're happy to award them with extra time off.
[Additionally,] we partnered with a mobile massage company [to] give our housekeeping department complimentary massages on our rooftop at our cabanas during days we're not as busy.
California reopened a few weeks ago. How has the bookings pace at your hotel changed since then?
We're still seeing the majority leisure, with a little uptick in bleisure from some of our major corporate accounts. But the booking window is still pretty tight. We're seeing about a two- to four-day booking window, and I don't anticipate that we'll see that change until we get out of this current state of uncertainty with the delta variant.
Which lessons learned have helped you become a better, more versatile general manager this past year?
We look at everything in the moment, for the moment. One of the biggest things that we can take away from this is how resilient human beings are. No matter what we're faced with, if we have the mindset to win and overcome and persevere, we will. That's what we constantly discuss with our team members.
And we learned to be more financially responsible during the pandemic. There were a lot of decisions that had to be made in hopes of improving net operating income and keeping the hotel alive. Now we're seeing some of the fruits of those decisions in this environment, with the uptick in gross sales in our food and beverage outlets and top line revenue from our rooms.
It's very important to identify people that were still operating in this COVID environment, are beyond involved in their operating efficiencies. There were a variety of events thrown at operators that made them stronger. The ones that survived are the ones that are really going to help the industry go forward.