James Dannecker closely followed the development path of the Detroit Foundation Hotel when it opened six years ago. Now, as the hotel's general manager, he said he was drawn to its reputation for true hospitality and as a hub for the city.
The hospitality industry was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which at its height crippled demand for hotels and travel like no other crisis has before. As that demand has recovered over the past three years, Dannecker said, more attention must be paid to other losses the industry suffered as a result — including a general loss of passion for hospitality.
He said one of the biggest challenges the industry faces, and that he faces as a hotel general manager, is "reigniting the passion people have for hospitality."
His strategy for meeting that challenge includes doing more to bring the Detroit community into the hotel by making amenities attractive and accessible to locals as well as guests. One such amenity is a podcast studio, free for the public to use.
The 100-room Detroit Foundation Hotel, which is owned by Elysian Development Group and operated by Aparium Hotel Group, has played a role in bringing more vibrancy to the city since it opened in May 2017.
The city had "been starving for some type of investment ... that could really lean into what is the local community and really highlight what Detroit has to offer," Dannecker said.
A native of Grosse Pointe Woods native, which is a suburb of Detroit, he said that was what intrigued him about the development of the Detroit Foundation Hotel.
He joined Aparium Hotel Group in 2021 as director of task force hotel operations. When Detroit Foundation Hotel's general manager departed, Dannecker filled in as interim general manager. In December 2022, he formally became general manager.
"I was loving being in Detroit, the team, the people, the beauty of the property, so I decided to stay," he said.
In this Q&A, Dannecker gives an inside look at all the gems on property as well as his outlook for the overall industry.
What makes this hotel so unique to Detroit?
The property itself is a gorgeous building. [The architecture in] Detroit overall is very underrated. A very unique factor is we took two buildings and created one. The neighboring building, the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars, was a very well-known and historic restaurant that closed in the early '90s. [Developers] did adaptive reuse and wanted to rebuild Detroit, using Detroit. That's not just through people and providing jobs and training, but it's also with the materials. We worked with a company, Detroit Salvage, that had gone in during the dark days of Detroit and taken artwork and wood [from abandoned buildings]. Our ceiling tiles in the Apparatus Room are all different things from different buildings throughout Detroit, the wood in our headboards are all from Detroit Salvage. It's telling someone a story and it's not right in their face.
Taking that the next step further is making sure we're a place that locals want to come to and be a part of. We're not necessarily just reliant on transient guests coming in and checking out Detroit, [though we have] seen a huge uptick in people doing that. Knowing that we can be a hub for the artistic community, musicians, co-working spaces, it's a wide range of things we try to activate the property with.
There's also a podcast studio in the hotel. Can you share more about that?
Michael Kitchen, a partner for Aparium, that helped put this deal together, wanted to do something [unique at the hotel]. And, at the time, according to him, we were the only hotel that had a podcast studio. We always wanted to be a differentiator in the market. While this could very much be a revenue-generating space, and at times we will sell it to groups as a breakout meeting space, it's primarily complimentary for people of the community to use. WJZD, the local jazz station for the area, comes in and will interview different artists or talk about things that they're putting on. We do a lot of entertainment business. They go in and use that space, take a photo, so some of it's free marketing for us but also free marketing exposure for the community.
What is the most underestimated challenge in hospitality today?
Reigniting the passion people have for hospitality. I think people [left the industry] out of necessity because wherever they were a barista or server closed because of the circumstance.
If you're going to be successful, you've got to have some type of element of passion to really get to where you want to be. [We need to] show people how impactful it is, not only to the lives of people that they're providing services to but also them internally, how rewarding it was at the end of the day to know they made a positive impact in someone's life.
What are some other obstacles for 2023?
We had a successful 2022. We're really leaning into that, setting ourselves up for growth from a base standpoint for early on in this year as we're outpacing what we did last year. We've been more savvy and strategic.
Just an overall headwind, I think, is the lack of predictability. It's hard to strategize, forecast, budget and look at some of these things. Specifically, when we look at our booking window, we look at how long they're historically booking out. Some companies would book three, six, 12 months out. Now, you're seeing that happen sometimes three days, three weeks [out]; it's almost not much out.
Things are very much still changing and evolving, not just from an economy standpoint, but really just the way people [are traveling]. We have to be proactive but very reactive at the same time.
How optimistic are you about demand mix in first and second quarter?
We feel very strong overall [for first quarter]. We've seen the business travel return. I wouldn't say we have a concern anywhere, overall, and I think [second quarter] we're even more excited about the timing of events and what we're bringing on.
What really always kicks summer off is the Movement Music Festival, which is pretty much in our backyard. Then, the following weekend is the Grand Prix of Detroit. They are moving it to Detroit proper; one of the final turns is right by the hotel. We already did a lot of business with companies coming in for Grand Prix and we're seeing even more interest now [that the race] is right in Detroit proper.
We are budgeting and forecasting for growth on top of the great growth in 2022 that we saw.