NASHVILLE, Tennessee—Dan Piotrowski’s career aspirations in the hotel industry were reaffirmed by some good-ol’-fashioned gambler’s luck.
While in high school, he took a 48-hour sojourn to Las Vegas to visit UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration. No stranger to the city—his parents had been vacationing there for years— Piotrowski also brought a roll of nickels to test his luck on the gaming floor. Within hours he had hit a $50 jackpot.
“I’m in,” he thought at the time, “and that was it.”
More than 26 years and 15 properties later, Piotrowski is GM of the new-build Omni Nashville Hotel, which opened September 2013.
It’s been a fruitful career, he said while taking a break from day-to-day operations in the Omni’s bustling lobby. When asked if taking the reins at such a large hotel—the Omni has 800 rooms—proved daunting, Piotrowski doesn’t bat an eye.
He first interned at the 3,174-room former Las Vegas Hilton, which at the time was the largest hotel in the world. Size has been a recurring theme in his career ever since, working in one large, full-service property to the next.
The majority of that experience took place in the Hyatt Hotels Corporation chain, Piotrowski said. Upon graduating college, he worked in the rooms divisions in nine different Hyatt hotels for 15 years.
His first GM gig came at an independent hotel on Hawaii’s Big Island. The opportunity was great, Piotrowski said, but career opportunities were limited, so he touched base with some former Hyatt colleagues, many of whom had moved over to Omni Hotels & Resorts, to test the market.
A director of operations position at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel was the result. The job was a stepping stone for property GM 14 months later.
Piotrowski has been with Omni ever since, working in Los Angeles; New York; Fort Worth, Texas; Dallas; and now Nashville.
New kid on the block
Piotrowski had never been to Nashville before Omni sent him to check out the ground-up construction.
“I learned very early in my career I’m a guest in somebody else’s home, and I’ve got to work hard to understand the culture, the history and what’s important to that community,” he said of acclimating himself to new surroundings. “I’ve just been fortunate enough that they’re embracing me from a leadership perspective. It’s my responsibility to give them all the tools they need to do their job and promote their city.”
There’s a lot to promote these days, the GM said. Nashville has seen a resurgence in recent years driven by strong economic growth and bustling cultural and culinary scenes. Perhaps the biggest physical representation of progress is the city’s 1.2-million-square-foot Music City Center convention center and the Omni hotel next door.
When Piotrowski first arrived on scene, both projects were in the construction phase. Ramping up along with the hotel’s development was difficult, especially as it related to the architectural Rubik’s Cube of fitting together the 800-room hotel into a concurrent expansion of the adjacent Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
The biggest challenge, however, was finding the right people, the GM said—an ongoing task that is still daunting to this day. The hotel was the first new construction in the city for years, meaning there was a dearth of hotel experience in the market. What did exist was largely culled from limited service; 65% of the property’s existing 800 associates had never worked in a full-service hotel, he said.
Piotrowski hires for attitude and personality instead. Skills he can teach, he said, but personality is more difficult to imprint on staff.
The shiny penny
Fortunately for the GM, Nashville’s workforce is awash in personality and pride for its city.
“They’re so proud of their city, and that just shows in everything they do,” he said. “To have those people, many of them born and raised here, … they just wanted to come and be part of their destination.”
That makes selling the Nashville experience all the easier, Piotrowski said. It also will help keep the positive momentum going.
The hotel, which is performing at the top of its competitive set with occupancies exceeding 90%, faces a more crowded road ahead. The city’s recovery has sparked an influx of interest from developers; there are nine hotels under construction and 32 under contract, according to STR, parent company of Hotel News Now.
“You’re not always going to be that shiny new penny, so for us it’s about sustainability,” Piotrowski said. The GM and his sales team are focused on 2015, 2016 and beyond, collaborating with community leaders, the Hall of Fame and other groups and attractions to lock up demand for years to come.
“Economic cycles will happen. We’ve got to protect ourselves. We’ve got to be able to ensure we have base business for all the future years and then continue to take advantage of the branding of Music City from a leisure perspective.”
After all these years, Piotrowski isn’t willing to gamble on the hotel’s future.
“We can’t get caught up in today’s success.”