From Strategy Glacier to Guest of the Day
No matter the journey, it's humans who make it memorable
There was no celebration, no fanfare, and in fact, not even a memo was sent out when I left the company I had served for 31 years, but we were greeted with warm, welcoming hospitality when we arrived in the city I had left forty years and one week earlier.
Perhaps I shouldn’t say that. Maybe the celebration was held after I left.
For over three decades, I had defended the value of safety and security in a hotel company as it grew from a small regional chain with 25 hotels in Scandinavia, into a global leader with over 1500 hotels in 100+ countries. Every new boss I had said the same thing during our first meeting. “Safety and security are extremely important to me.” That was never backed up with a budget or much in the way of support. Even my long-serving team had to suffer through my home-cooked meals because we didn’t have money to spend on restaurants, let alone lavish retreats to exotic destinations for our annual meeting.
My reason for leaving was simple. I had been asked to fire my direct reports. One of them had been with the company longer than I and was fifteen months from retirement. Another, who had been with the company for over twenty-five years, had a handicap, and the company was reimbursed by the government for most of the salary and benefits package.
There was no way I would fire people who had been so loyal for so many years and were in the situations they were in. Besides, if I left the company, it would save even more money.
I told my boss that in my strategic role, I was like a glacier on a mountain top, from where water flowed into reservoirs below. The department directors were the pumps in the reservoirs. They provided the direct support our hotels needed. With me gone, the support could continue while the company brought in a new strategy glacier. If they left, support would cease.
My resignation was accepted in December 2017. I agreed to stay on for six months, and the company gave me a fair departure package, including a year-long consulting contract. I guess a farewell party or an informational memo to our offices and hotels was too much to ask.
In any case, on July 4, 2018, I handed in my access badge, laptop, and car keys.
My four-decade-long gap year in Europe was about to end.
On July 5, 2018, after 11 wonderful years in Brussels, our belongings were in a container at sea, we checked out of Park Inn by Radisson Brussels Airport, and started our journey to Kelowna, BC, Canada!
We didn’t make it to our destination.
If you’re ever planning to move to the other side of the planet, don’t think you can clear customs at your point of entry in less than an hour. Our connection time was scheduled to be 59 minutes…
At YUL Pierre Elliott Trudeau Aéroport in Montréal, we dutifully declared that not all of our belongings were with us and were promptly sent to secondary screening.
Much of our time in secondary was spent in pleasant conversation with a CBSA agent who had moved to Canada from the US after graduating from high school.
“I haven’t been here for forty years, but I understand your situation. We’re like brothers!”
He also said he didn’t think his Canadian gap year would ever end.
When the paperwork was signed and stamped, he walked us over to an Air Canada transfer desk. The agent there rebooked us via Toronto and said we’d still be able to reach our new hometown, albeit a few hours later than originally scheduled.
Not so fast!
At first, the flight to Toronto was delayed due to weather, putting our connection in jeopardy.
When we finally boarded, it looked like we would make it, but on the way to the runway, a passenger had a medical emergency.
The plane returned to the gate, and any hope we had of making our connection was extinguished. Fortunately, the ill passenger was conscious and chatting with paramedics near the gate when passengers deplaned.
The gate agents gave passengers two choices;
Wait until the plane could be cleared for takeoff again,
Cancel their reservation and contact a transfer desk for alternative arrangements.
We informed the gate personnel that we opted for option 2.
Little did we know YUL airport is a big, long terminal. It was 3.7 million steps (give or take 100,000) from the gate to the transfer desk.
Another thing we didn’t know, but should have guessed, was that with the weather issues, a lot of flights were cancelled or delayed, and forty-seven thousand passengers (give or take a few hundred) were impatiently waiting in line for their alternative arrangements.
Fortunately, I had a Star Alliance Gold Card. The priority line was shorter, and we reached the front of it in about two hours.
The exhausted but still trying to be pleasant agent gave us three choices:
Stay in Montreal,
Fly to Toronto and overnight there, or
Fly to Vancouver.
All three choices meant we wouldn’t arrive in Kelowna until July 6.
“Vancouver is closest. Send us there and, worst case, we can walk the rest of the way to Kelowna.”
“Oh no, it’s too far to walk!” she replied.
Not everyone gets my humour… so I simply thanked her and said we would still choose the Vancouver option.
When I enquired about accommodation, I was informed that ground staff in Vancouver would be happy to help on arrival.
We landed in Vancouver around midnight. All the ground staff were enjoying their post-work pints at a bar in the city. The airport arrival area was a ghost town.
No problem, we’ll get a Friends and Family rate at Radisson Vancouver Airport, I confidently told Kirsten. We had often stayed there when we came on holiday.
Not so fast!
Their best rate online was $529! About eight times more than expected.
We decided to opt for luxury and booked the Fairmont Vancouver Airport. It was right in the terminal and would give us thirty minutes more sleep before our 7 am flight to Kelowna.
Turned out to be a wise decision. For likely the only time ever, a five-star Fairmont was more than $100 cheaper than a Radisson!
At 5:00 am, on July 6, we woke up in the Fairmont YVR where we had checked in four hours earlier. We love Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, but hope we never have to pay $100 per hour in any hotel ever again.
We landed at YLW - Kelowna International Airport shortly after 8:00 am.
Unsurprisingly, our luggage wasn’t on our plane.
“One of your suitcases is in Toronto, one is in Winnipeg, and I’m not yet sure where the others are.”, the honest agent told us. “When we get them, we’ll bring them to your hotel.”
It took a couple of days before our luggage was reunited with us, one bag at a time, but they all arrived.
Our base for the first week was Ramada Kelowna, where we were surprised to be checked in as “Guests of the Day”! Not only was our room ready at 9:30 in the morning, but there was a fruit basket and a greeting in it, too!
We chose the Ramada for three reasons.
It was a short walk to what would become our new home,
It has a hidden gem of a patio that is perfect for a quiet happy hour in the sun, (see pic above) and
It has Maxine DeHart!
Maxine is the Ramada’s sales director, but she’s also a city councillor and a business columnist. She’s busy!
She took us under her wing from Day 1. At breakfast every morning, she’d pass by our table to check in with us and often sat down and had coffee with us. She knew every guest and stopped to chat with almost everyone on her way through the restaurant.
One day, jet lag got the best of us. We slept in and missed breakfast.
At 11:30, the phone rang. It was Maxine.
“I didn’t see you at breakfast! Are you OK? Do you need anything?”
Maxine is a hotelier who cares about her guests and a councillor who cares about her community.
Even today, seven years after we arrived, if we don’t touch base with her, Maxine will call and ask if we’re OK!
A month after we landed in Kelowna, Air Canada surprised us with their own generosity.
A letter from a service-minded representative apologized for the delays both we and our suitcases had experienced upon arrival.
“That’s not a great way to start your lives in a new country!”
The letter included a cheque to cover the cost of our hotel room at YVR and a code for 25% off a future flight!
In hospitality, a thoughtful, empathetic person does more for customer satisfaction and loyalty than an algorithm ever will.
Seven years have flown by!
Thanks for welcoming us, Canada!
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Hi! I’m Paul.
I was born, raised, and currently live in Canada. After high school, I embarked on a gap year in Europe. It lasted four decades. I went to university in Norway and started my hotel career in the basement of a five-star hotel in Oslo. The manager who hired me told me I was too old, too educated, and had too many opinions to be a security guard. He also told me that the only other person who applied for the job didn’t want it.
Thirty years later, I left that same company. It had grown from a small regional hotel chain with twenty-something hotels in Scandinavia to become a large, multi-brand hotel group with over a thousand hotels in almost one hundred countries.
Along the way, I moved from Norway to Denmark to Belgium. Before I left, the company awarded me their highest individual honour for leadership, and security professional peers selected me as the world’s most influential corporate security executive.
I’m a hospitality professional. I’m a security professional. If you ask, I will tell you that security was my job, and hospitality was my business.
Today, I’m an educator and a consultant passionate about hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
In addition to the Always Care Community, I also write for Risk Resiliency’s Keep Travel Safe. If safe, secure hospitality, hotels, and travel are important to you, please subscribe to KTS!
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, the Always Care Community is a newsletter of how life has made me an emigrant, an immigrant, and gifted me experiences I never dreamed possible.
Thanks for reading. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.
Sometimes a poor send off helps you move forward without looking back. So glad the welcome was so much warmer!
What a horrible flight experience! Also, what a crappy send-off. Corporations can be so inhuman, as you've been pointing out.