by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
For the past 20-plus years, new Adam’s Mark Hotel general manager Don Dickhens has lived in two of the planet’s most diverse, exotic cities.
As a general manager for Pan-Pacific Hotels & Resorts, Dickhens’ last three zip codes have been in San Francisco, Honolulu and San Francisco, again. Two thriving, yet opposite, metropolitan areas that in no way resemble Jacksonville. Then again, Dickhens has yet to even see much of Jacksonville.
Last week, Dickhens took over the hotel from Irving Kass and as of Friday afternoon, he had yet to set foot outside the place. Even when he came to town three weeks ago to check out the hotel, Dickhens saw little of Jacksonville outside of the airport and I-95.
“I flew in one night and nobody knew me,” said Dickhens. “I made a reservation, checked in and walked around the hotel.”
The overnight stay actually had a dual purpose. Adam’s Mark got to interview Dickhens one last time — it had already recruited him from Pan-Pacific — but it also allowed Dickhens to essentially interview the hotel he was considering leading. Dickhens’ anonymity allowed him to look, listen and learn. What he saw was enough to convince him that the Adam’s Mark was the challenge he was looking for.
After years of skipping around the Pacific Rim for Pan-Pacific (a Japanese-owned, Singapore-based chain of 19 hotels), running successful hotels and resurrecting others, Dickhens has opted for the more sedate atmosphere of Jacksonville. And, while he probably could have stayed with Pan-Pacific as long as he wanted, Dickhens came to Adam’s Mark because it represented one of the things about the hotel industry he enjoys the most.
“It was time to leave Pan-Pacific because the challenge was no longer there,” said Dickhens. “They were making changes, there was no money for development and it got boring.
“This [Adam’s Mark] is a real challenge. I have a track record of turning properties around.”
Dickhens’ last salvage job was a 330-room hotel in San Francisco. The hotel was bought by Pan-Pacific from John Portman, the architect who built it for $110 million. According to Dickhens, the hotel simply wasn’t being marketed properly. And then disaster struck in 1989, literally, in the form on an earthquake that postponed the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s and had lasting repercussions on the Bay area tourism industry.
“The city just died,” said Dickhens. “Hotel rates were down, it was a new hotel and they had hired a manager that was already retired. After a year the president called me and asked what I could do.
“They had a negative gross operating profit of $3-4 million.”
Over the next two years, Dickhens reorganized the sales team and effort. He realized that the hotel was marketing itself to the wrong demographic and eventually discovered a majority of their potential customers were actually in New York City.
“We put a full-time sales person in New York and today the hotel is making $10 million a year in profit,” said Dickhens.
While the situation with the Adam’s Mark isn’t that dire, the first year’s numbers aren’t impressive. Two things, a discrimination suit against the chain and the Sept. 11 terrorist bombings, have played significant roles in the hotel’s struggles.
“It was not a good year to open a hotel,” said Dickhens.
However, both Dickhens and sales manager Laura Cagan agreed that Adam’s Mark has put the lawsuit in the past and will now focus on the hotel’s real issue — that of being a relatively unknown, small hotel chain.
“We are up against Hilton, Marriott and Sheraton,” said Dickhens. “We have to play like we are an individual hotel, which means we have to do everything better than the chain operators.”
Everything includes all aspects of the hotel business from marketing to room service. Cagan said she finds that many companies don’t know what the Adam’s Mark has to offer. She conceded that a large convention can cost a company “mega amounts of money” but Cagan says Adam’s Mark can offer corporations everything all under one roof.
“Our goal is to convince people to come here,” said Cagan. “We have over 110,000 square feet of meeting space. We’ve got enough space to hold groups of almost any size.”
Dickhens said the hotel’s top amenity is the hotel itself and its location.
“The physical property here is incredible, there’s no question about that,” said Dickhens. “What we have to do is provide better service and go out and ask for the business. But, the number one thing is service.”
According to Dickhens, the Jacksonville Adam’s Mark is the third most important hotel in the nationwide chain. Dallas (1,842 rooms) and Denver (1,225 rooms) are by far the chain’s two biggest and most important hotels. Because it’s new and struggling, the Jacksonville Adam’s Mark has been targeted by corporate executives. The fact that the hotel will serve as the media center for the 2005 Super Bowl, which Jacksonville will host, only intensifies the need for a quick turnaround.
With the Super Bowl just three years away, Dickhens will focus on the immediate and his primary goal of making the Adam’s Mark the top hotel in Jacksonville. Certainly, the Adam’s Mark will be the center of attention the first week of February in 2005, but Dickhens wants his hotel to achieve local success long before the NFL title game comes to town.
“I like the challenge of taking a hotel like this and making it the No. 1 hotel in the city,” said Dickhens.
Speaking of the city, Dickhens vowed to get out last weekend and look around the area he now calls home. He’s got a company car he’s never seen and about 850 square miles of Jacksonville he’s never seen. Like his hotel, he plans to change that soon.