Opening a high-end hotel has its share of challenges, and as the owners and management company of Tulsa’s renewed Mayo Hotel have found, it often comes down to fine tuning its quality of service.
The Mayo Hotel, just now in its eighth month of operation, has had its share of changeover in personnel, and the owners and management company think they have found the key to bringing the historic luxury hotel into its first year as a leader in customer satisfaction in the Tulsa market.
The Mayo has brought a Tulsa native, trained in some of the best service-oriented hotel operations in the nation, on board as its new general manager.
Jeannene Glenn, most recently general manger of the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, was hired in late April to head up The Mayo’s staff and quality of service.
“There are a lot of employees involved in a hotel, and a lot of training,” said Macy Snyder, co-owner of The Mayo. “We have seen tremendous improvement literally over the last two months, and we are excited to have a local person running the hotel.
“The best part of it is we have a whole new team over there, and a big chunk of them are locals. Tulsa is a unique place, and it takes some local blood in there in order to understand how to make The Mayo Hotel work in Tulsa.”
Glenn, a graduate of Bishop Kelley High School and the University of Kansas, started in the lodging industry at a historic hotel in Lawrence, Kan., and moved on to Sheraton hotels in Kansas City, Mo., and Los Angeles. She transitioned into the boutique hotel business with the Redondo Beach Portofino and moved through the ranks of several high-end hotels, including the Rosewood Hotels in Dallas, eventually returning to the Portofino as hotel manager then general manager. A move to Tulsa to be closer to family coincided with the opening of the GM position at The Mayo.
“I couldn’t be more delighted to be here at The Mayo,” she said. “It’s a hotel, growing up here, that you knew about and heard about. With my management style, we want to continue to build on the great history of The Mayo and its reputation as the meeting place for business or social events and provide a consistent wonderful guest experience in all facets.”
She said her priority is the service experience for guests.
“It’s your reputation, and it’s the word of mouth,” Glenn said. “We want to be the hotel that everyone thinks of first when you want to send a friend or family or colleague. We want to be the finest hotel in the state, and we have a wonderful backdrop for that.”
Drake Leddy, chairman and CEO of San Antonio-based hotel development and management company Presidian, which manages The Mayo, said satisfaction reports in the early months of the hotel’s opening pointed out weaknesses in the quality of service.
He said staff training to a higher level of customer service and changes in staff have The Mayo getting close to the level of quality service his company demands.
“I think, by this fall, we will be pretty much there,” Leddy said. “We have gone through a fairly major changeover of personnel from the ones we started with to the ones that are there today. Of our department heads, we probably changed half or so. But that’s not unusual in a startup. We have traded up in every move we made. We are very rapidly getting to a point where we are a choice — if you have business downtown, that’s where you want to stay.”
Managing a portfolio that includes the Doubletree Club Dallas, Homewood Suites Austin, Marriott Visalia, Hilton President Kansas City, Hilton Garden Inn Houston and The Ocean Club Biloxi, Leddy is used to the demands of ramping up a hotel opening.
“Opening a hotel is sort of like playing a gin rummy hand,” he said. “You have to sort out and make sure you have people who can work together like a run in a gin rummy hand, and you are always looking to improve your hand.”
Leddy said Glenn’s experience and credentials will be key to fine-tuning the hotel’s quality of service.
“We were very fortunate to hire her,” he said.
