Jonathan Tisch, CEO and chairman, Loews Hotels

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels. Hi Jonathan, how are you?

Jonathan Tisch: Good afternoon, good morning, good day. All of the above.

SSR: We’re really excited to have you join us for the podcast. So, let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

JT: So, I actually was born in 1953 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. My family’s hotel business dates back to a few years prior to that in Lakewood, New Jersey, and then by the time I was born in Atlantic City, we had five hotels. The most famous being a property called the Traymore Hotel, which was very well known in the ’50s in Atlantic City. I have all kinds of memories as a very, very young boy of going to the property, standing there when President Eisenhower showed up, and being involved at a very young age with the Miss America Pageant, more as a young boy watching all of the festivities and the pomp and circumstance. There was a nightclub in Atlantic City in those days called the 500 Club. So, as a young kid, I got to go to rehearsals and meet Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, which was kind of cool.

In 1959, our family moved to Miami Beach, because three years earlier my father and uncle had opened the Americana of Bal Harbour, which some viewed as a risky venture, because prior to their development in Bal Harbour, all of the growth had been in South Beach, or in the ’50s, on Collins around the then new Eden Roc and Fontainebleau, and these guys built on 96th Street and Collins Avenue in Bal Harbour, and some thought it was a bit of a crazy idea.

It worked out pretty well, the Americana was incredibly successful, and then when Loews Theaters were purchased by my father and uncle in 1960, that’s when we moved to New York. The rest of my youth was spent in Scarsdale in Westchester Country, a suburb of New York City, and then when I was in my early, early teens, I became the male Eloise and spent the rest of my time living at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. So, I literally spent 15 years growing up in a hotel, which was an incredibly cool experience, led to many stories, most of which I can’t say in this discussion with you, Stacy, but it really was quite interesting, but also informative to live in a hotel and see how everything goes on.

Then I went to school in Boston. I’m a graduate of Tufts University. I spent three years after I left Tufts, and worked as a TV producer/cinematographer/editor for WBZ, which was then the NBC station. So, that was from Spring of ’76 to the summer of ’79. I moved back to New York, and then in January of 1980, started as a sales rep at Loews Hotels. That was some 39 years ago and a little bit has happened since then.

SSR: Just a tad. Did you ever work in the hotels as well growing up or were you just able to live there?

JT: I’ve worked every job in a hotel, starting literally when I was 5 years old, and my cousins, Jim and Andrew, who I run the corporation with, have similar experiences. At various times as a youth, I would get a box so I could look over the front desk and stand on that. I worked in housekeeping, I worked in the bakery at the Americana in Bal Harbour, I have made beds, I have bused tables, I brought luggage to rooms. So, literally every role in a hotel I have done it at some point in my career.

I would say that my first paying job in the industry was when I was 16 years old, and still living in Scarsdale, and I worked behind the front desk of the Americana on Seventh Avenue. Many of your listeners may know that now as the Sheridan on Seventh Avenue. It’s a big hotel, 2,100 rooms, that had been built by my father and uncle. I spent a summer working there, and I used my middle name as my last name on my name badge, so it said, Jonathan Mark.

That would lead to some funny conversations where people were trying to schmooze me and get a free room, or get an upgrade, and they would say things like, ‘I know all three Tisch brothers.’ Well, the only problem with that is there are only two Tisch brothers. My father’s name was Preston Robert and my uncle was Larry. So, they would say, ‘I know Preston, I know Robert, and I know Larry,’ and I would immediately know that they were somebody that was trying to extort us, if you will, and I said, ‘Move on.’

So, I have worked in hotels in every role, and then as you may remember, a couple years ago I had an opportunity to do a show that was on The Learning Channel called, Now Who’s Boss, which was a re-entry into these really important line positions where on camera I was a member of the bell staff, I was in housekeeping, I was a pool server, and the whole notion of the show is to relearn these incredibly important roles in your organization and work side by side with your team members. It was a precursor to what is today Undercover Boss, which I’ve been asked to do many times, but my feeling is there isn’t enough makeup in the world to disguise me, since I know so many of our 10,500 team members.

SSR: That’s amazing. How was it going back to the line and going back to the original jobs that you once did?

JT: The premise of the show and what I experienced were really important, and the idea being that without line team members, the organization simply can’t work. That is especially true in a labor-intensive industry such as lodging. To work side by side with members of the bell staff, to be in housekeeping, to go into the laundry, to be a short order cook, and I talk about this all the time. Our offices are in Midtown Manhattan, I sit there with the five or six people who are direct reports, obviously covering the very important disciplines of finance, operations, human resources. If there are five or six of us that are at the top of the food chain in terms of the organization, that means that there are 10,500 other ladies and gentlemen who every single day are responsible for extending the kind of service that we are proud of at Loews Hotel.

We can make all the decisions we want, we can have all the conversations we want, we can have these grand plans for the company, but because none of us are making beds and none of us are delivering food, it really is a way to think about the organization in a manner that is vitally important, because it is about us ensuring that every guest visit, every time, is not only meeting their expectations, but it’s exceeding their expectations. The way we get that done is through our team members.

SSR: And creating that culture is easier said than done though.

JT: Very much so. It’s all about culture, and I feel third generation of actually day-to-day operational responsibilities for Loews Hotels, going back to when it was Tisch Hotels, but we’ve been in the business for 75 years. Loews Hotels is the founding subsidiary of what is today Loews Corporation. We’re in a bunch of different other kinds of businesses, but it all started in the hotel business. So, to be the keeper of the brand, to have that responsibility of the understanding of why this business works, of how this organization started, and to hopefully have a vision of the future is really important and that comes through culture.

As I just mentioned, we can sit around and talk all we want, but there has to be an ability to have your ideas, your plans, your desires permeate all the way through the organization. So, if I’ve got five direct reports, my five direct reports may have 30 direct reports, those 30 have probably 100 direct reports, and so it’s a long way from me as the CEO to a man or a woman who is dedicated as a member of the bell staff, housekeeping, working in the kitchen, but we need them to understand our vision. We need them to understand how we think about success, what does success look like, what does it mean to us at the senior levels of the organization, and then we need to know, what does success and job satisfaction mean to them?

That’s an important conversation that we try to have with our team members. It’s especially vital in today’s world, because the men and women who are joining the workforce after college, or after they’ve finished their education, they have a lot of choices, and we need to be an employer of choice, and that means creating an environment that people feel comfortable in, that we honor diversity, that we honor their preferences, and that in return, that they’re going to come and do a really great job when they’re on property or in the home office or working in our large operation in Orlando, and they have options.

They want to feel comfortable, they want to feel like you care about them, and they want to work for an organization that shares their values, and that’s incumbent upon us as senior managers to create that environment, but it takes a lot of work, and it goes back to the word you used a moment ago, which is culture. The culture at Loews Hotels is really important, especially when you consider our size. Obviously, you talk about it all the time in your great magazine, but when you look at the biggest names in lodging, Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, InterContinental, Accor, they are many, many times the size of Loews Hotels.

As we sit here today in New York City, we have 24 hotels that are operating, we have five under construction that will open anywhere from the next four months to the next 18 months, we have a few more deals behind that. So, we are really small compared to the big guys, and I have such respect for Chris Nassetta at Hilton, for Mark Hoplamazian at Hyatt, for Arne Sorenson at Marriott, these are really talented CEOs running very, very large worldwide, multinational organizations. But we’re pretty competitive, and one of the reasons I think we are is because of the value system that has been around Loews Hotels since 76 years ago.

SSR: And that was ingrained from you from the start, so it’s amazing that you’ve kept that brand and being the ambassador of it all these years. Going back, at first you didn’t jump directly into the family business. Why did you decide to go the editor/producer route at first?

JT: During my senior year at Tufts I had an opportunity to get an internship at WBZ, as I mentioned. In those days, it was the NBC affiliate, now it’s CBS. I just wanted to do something different. I had a sense that maybe I would go back into the hotel business, but Loews had an affiliation in entertainment through Loews Theaters, which is the film exhibition company that we owned for many, many years, that is obviously how we got the name Loews in the first place. We don’t own that subsidiary anymore. So, I knew a lot about entertainment. My brother had gone to Tufts before me; we never overlapped. When he graduated in 1971, he moved to Los Angeles, and became an incredibly successful film producer. He won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump. So, I got to see a bit of the industry through his eyes.

Through this internship at WBZ, I walked in not knowing anybody, not knowing anything. I was put on a public affair show, and this was just as the TV industry was switching from film to videotape. So, this was the fall of 1975. I became friendly with one of the producers on the show, and he was also the camera person. So, I learned, I taught myself how to shoot film. From there, I evolved into videotape, and then I also learned editing. So, over my one year as an intern, my three years after graduating from Tufts, I was responsible for shooting, editing, producing kid shows, public affairs, and some sports shows.

The irony is that one of the sports shows that I produced was the pregame New England Patriots show, and now knowing the Kraft family and my role as a co-owner of the New York Giants. They did not own the team in those days, and actually the Patriots, when I was thinking of leaving WBZ in the summer of 1979, offered me a job to be the head of public relations for the New England Patriots, and I said, ‘No, I appreciate it.’ The team in those days was owned by the Sullivan family. I said, ‘I’m moving back to New York.’

But I will tell you, and this is one of the things I talk about when I’m on college campuses having conversations with the students, one of the notions that I try to leave with them, is that here you are getting an education, a two-year education, a four-year education, graduate school, whatever it may be, as you start to look for work, you may not get the perfect job for you. That may be the case, but you should take a job, any job, because you learn from every single experience, and you never know what ideas are forming in your head are going to be helpful when you do find the position that you think fits your goals in life.

So, here I was a cinematographer/producer for three years, and I was responsible for putting images on a TV screen. When you look at shooting film, when you look at editing, videotape, there are hundreds of images in every TV show, and it’s done through what’s projected and through editing. So, I think about that today as part of my responsibilities at Loews Hotels is to design our hotels, and I think that the hotel industry is just another form of the entertainment industry. We are presenting an image and the image of our properties are different than some of our incredibly well-thought-out competitors, but the image is each individual hotel.

I liken the editing process to picking fabrics, to picking wallcoverings, to sitting in chairs, which I do for every single Loews Hotel, whether we’re building from scratch or we’re going through a renovation. I touch every fabric, I look at every wallcovering, I sit in every chair. People say, ‘Are you micromanaging?’ and my response is, ‘No, it’s part of my responsibilities the keeper of the brand, and when we’re as small as we are but as unique as we are, each of our hotels has to have a point of view and stand for something.’ So, those years as a TV producer/cinematographer/editor were incredibly helpful to what I do now in terms of design, which is an important element of who we are at Loews Hotels.

SSR: Did you always have some sort of love for design or was that ever ingrained in you from an earlier age?

JT: My mother had a great sense of design, and unfortunately we lost her about a year and a half ago, but until she passed away, she would always ask me about designing the hotels, and I can tell one funny story for a moment. The Regency Hotel, 61st Street and Park Avenue, it’s now 55 years old, as we had discussed a moment ago, I grew up in the hotel. About six years ago, we decided that we needed to close the hotel to do a major renovation. It was at a point in its lifespan that the only way we could accomplish what we needed to in terms of design, to fix some back of the house mechanical issues, was to literally close the hotel. My mother was 85 at the time, and she had been living there for probably 45 years.

One sunny day, we’re going to close right after the holidays, but here we were getting ready. It was the summer. I walk into her suite, her apartment at the Regency, and I said, ‘Mom, I have some news for you. We’re going to close the hotel and you’ve got to move.’ She looks at me, and she says, ‘Oh, that’s nice. That sounds great.’ I said, ‘I guess you’re not really listening. We’re going to close the hotel. We’re going to have 200 construction workers here every day, there quite possible could be no air conditioning in the summer, it could get cold in the winter,’ and in true Jewish mother style, she looks at me and says, ‘Oh, just work around me.’ I said, ‘No, you got to move.”

So, she’s now getting quite upset, I can see. She’s thinking and thinking, and she looks at me and says, ‘Well, can I fire you?’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ Now, one more idea I see coming, she says, ‘Well, don’t I own this company.’ Loews corporation, the parent of Loews Hotels is a public company, I said, ‘You certainly are one of our largest shareholders, but you don’t own the company.’ So, now she’s furious, and as when the proxy came out like six months later, I don’t think she voted for me for reelection. My two cousins had like one percent more votes than I had.

So, I’ve always been interested in design. I got a little bit from her. I’ve always watched design, and once again, as I started to take on more responsibility, and the first hotel that I actually was responsible for building from scratch opened in 1984, which we still have today, which is Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains in Tucson. Gorgeous hotel, 450 rooms. That was the first one that I was responsible for. If it opened in ’84, we probably started working on it in about 1981, 1982.

Through the years, I have been intimately involved in the design. There’s a whole story about how we got Loews Miami Beach, which is quite funny, but that hotel has been incredibly successful. When you look at the evolution of what is today our partnership with Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal in Orlando, where originally we built three hotels, and we thought maybe that was going to be it, now we have six hotels, 6,200 rooms that are up and operating. Six different themes, two different price points, and we also have under construction a third price point, another 1,800 rooms, two more buildings, and when those are done in 18 months we’re going to have 9,000 on the grounds of Universal Studios in Orlando.

So, for me, from a creative standpoint, that’s incredibly exciting, because I’m designing hotels with the same incredibly talented people that designed the Harry Potter ride, designed the Jimmy Fallon ride, designed The Simpsons area. So, that’s really cool, to be able to have that kind of creative conversation to build something that’s incredibly popular and really has attracted the interest of our clientele.

I think what’s assisted me, and really I’ve benefited over the last couple of years, is my incredible wife, who is in the fashion industry, and we go to Paris two or three times a year for the shows, and people say to me, ‘Well, what do you do while she’s at a show?’ I say, ‘It’s quite simple, I go with her’ because I like to see, first of all, fashion through her eyes, because she has an incredible feel for what people are interested in today, but also to be there in terms of the most creative minds, what are they thinking about, what’s the color, what is the way fabrics are brought together?

When you look at the Chanel fabrics, and you look at the Chanel fashion shows at the Grand Palais, they’re incredible examples of creativity and just the ability to see it in terms of what’s going to be in the stores in three, four months, I find very beneficial to me as we think about the design process for Loews Hotels. I’ve had a lot of early influencers in terms of training my eye about what works, what doesn’t work, and I think it’s made our properties stand out from what may be down the street and around the corner, from hotels that are in our competitive set, market by market.

SSR: Ventana, didn’t you just go through a redesign of it as well?

JT: We opened that hotel in ’84, originally it was a management contract. We ended up buying the hotel, so it is 100 percent owned by Loews Hotels, about three years ago, and we did a full renovation, lobby, rooms, meeting space, and that was completed about a year ago. The response has been terrific.

SSR: What was it like to go back to the first hotel that you worked on?

JT: It’s kind of fun, because it really was the first one that I built on my own. I remember, this is 1981, 1982, my job then was to be head of development for Loews Hotels. I had started as a sales rep in 1980 making cold calls on clients. By then, I was put in charge of development. I got on a plane and one of the difficult parts of Tucson is that east of the Mississippi, there are no nonstops, so you have to go through Dallas, you have to go through Atlanta. So, I remember flying to Tucson, meeting the developers, who eventually became our partners in the process, and seeing their ideas for the project.

In those days, my father and uncle were still very involved in the day to day of Loews Corporation, and I came back, and my cousins, who I now run the corporation with, they were starting to take on more responsibility, as was I, and I said, ‘We need to build a hotel in Tucson, Arizona,’ and they all looked at me and said, ‘Where is Tucson, Arizona?’ So, to convince them that this was a project that we needed to associate our name with took a little bit of time, but here we are now. The hotel opened in ’84, so we’re here 35 years later, and we now own it and it’s still a property that we’re very proud of.

But all of these hotels each has their own personality, each has their own sensibility, and clearly they’re in different markets and depending on the market and who’s in the competitive set of our hotels, we are going head-to-head with the biggest names in lodging. The good news, or the really good news, is that we punch above our weight, and the success that our team members contribute to is quite meaningful, and as the growth has continued over the last couple of years, we are an integral part of Loews Corporation and contribute to the bottom line of the corporation. One of the things that my cousins and I talk about all the time is enhancing shareholder value, and I think we are doing that through the continued growth and profitability of Loews Hotels.

SSR: It seems like a big growth time for Loews Hotels with, as you said, five opening up in the  next 18 months, and more on the boards, or in process. I mean, why is now a good time for you, for the company, for the brand?

JT: So, we look at our development really in two different opportunistic growth patterns. We have done very well since Bob and Larry Tisch built the Americana in Bal Harbour in 1956, it was 700 rooms with about 40,000 square feet of meeting space. In 1956, there were only three markets that had hotels that had meeting space, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and here Miami’s starting to grow the Fontainebleau had opened the year before, and in terms of design, going back to, Stacy, for a moment. They hired Morris Lapidus to design this hotel, and it was one of the coolest buildings that I had ever seen.

Sadly, it came down. They sold a bunch of hotels to Sheridan and then it became the Sheridan Bal Harbour, and then that was sold to Related. Related took it down to build what is today the St. Regis across from the Bal Harbour shops. But the history of how they worked with Morris Lapidus, who ended up doing a bunch of hotels for them, was really quite something.

What’s happened over the last couple of years is that we’ve learned from the past as we think about the future. We have done very well with meeting hotels. Although we had no equity interest, we ran Loews Anatole, which is now the Hilton Anatole, as you’re aware. So, that was 1,800 rooms, some monster meeting space. We’ve done very well in Chicago with a meetings hotel. We’ve done very well in Philadelphia with a meetings hotel. Loews Miami Beach, 790 rooms with 45,000 square feet of dedicated meeting space.

As we look to grow, the two areas that make sense to us are continuing to build big boxes with a commensurate amount of meeting space. So, under construction right now we have Loews Kansas City Hotel, 800 rooms, 65,000 square feet of meeting space, directly across the street from the Kansas City Convention Center, connected by a footbridge. That hotel will open in March of 2020. We have other opportunities in terms of, as we call them, the big boxes.

Now, we’ve also been in Orlando for some 22 years now. As I mentioned, we started with three hotels, we currently have six, we’ll soon be at eight, and there may be more after that. What we’ve learned after 22 years in Orlando is about multiple demand generators that will drive people to your destination. It’s hard for us to compete on a central business district hotel, or a suburban property with the mega-giants, because they’ve got so many tools in their toolbox that we don’t have. They’ve got so many pipes coming into the hotel in terms of how to drive business.

So, we have to find unique opportunities, and what we’ve learned after all these years in Orlando is about creating what we call immersive destinations, where once again, there are multiple reasons why people want to come. It’s entertainment, it’s sports, it’s food and beverage, it’s retail. After all these years in Orlando, as we continue to grow, we have had the opportunity to see a lot, and learn a lot. So, the growth now for us in using our learnings is to create more hotels in what we call immersive destinations.

So currently, under construction we have Live! by Loews, the first Live! by Loews, which will be in Arlington, Texas. It is a partnership of Loews hotels, the Cordish Companies who is based in Baltimore and has done a lot in terms of creating energized downtown districts with food and beverage entertainment, and then in Arlington, the Texas Rangers are also our partner. They own the land, they are currently under construction with a new $1 billion baseball stadium that will open in time for the baseball season of 2020, and then this coming August of 2019, we will open the first Live! by Loews.

The name comes from the notion that the Cordish Companies controls the name Live, obviously we control the name Loews, hence Live! by Loews. This will be 320 rooms, about 20,000 square feet of meeting space. Part of Texas Live!, which opened about a year ago, and the partnership in terms of the equity is Loews Hotels, Cordish, and the Texas Rangers. One of the ironic situations for this particular property, which I think is going to inure to our benefit is that we are directly across the parking lot from AT&T Stadium where a team called the Dallas Cowboys play. So once again, as co-owner of the New York Giants, we get to use our NFL connections to work with the Cowboys, and they have been absolutely wonderful in terms of how we’re going to market together, and create some opportunities in that destination.

We’re doing a similar kind of project in St. Louis. Similar in terms of the partnership. This is, once again, Loews Hotels, the Cordish Companies, but in this case the St. Louis Cardinals. Cordish and the Cardinals opened a couple years ago what’s called Ballpark Village. The hotel, which is currently under construction and will open next January. The hotel sits directly across the street from Busch Stadium. It is part of Ballpark Village second phase, which will include office, residential, more food and beverage, and Live! by Loews, and once again, there are multiple reasons people will come to this destination.

The St. Louis Cardinals have the second highest home attendance in Major League Baseball, behind the Dodgers. So, 82 home games a year. Every game sells out and that’s going to create energy for the hotel. Other times of the year we’ve got great meeting space. We will create our own demand. So, once again, we’re excited about these opportunities to do something special with great partners.

I would say, one of the big changes for us has been to think about how we (I’m also co-chairman of the board of the parent companies, so I’m working with my cousin. My cousin Andrew and I are co-chairmen of the board, and my cousin Jim is president and CEO of the parent company), and we’ve really had a chance to think about how we invest in the hotels, and these are unique opportunities with, what we think, will be good returns to Loews Corporation. We are currently using $250 million of Loews equity to build $2 billion worth of hotels.

As you know, from following the industry as you do, there aren’t many companies that are using their own cash to invest in new construction. The big guys, once again, want to be asset light. They are turning fees and that makes sense for them, but when you’re like Marriott, and you have 7,000 hotels, that’s a really well-thought-out strategy. But for us to continue to grow, we’re investing in our future, and we think these are great opportunities.

I mentioned the two in Orlando, the two with Cordish, Loews Kansas City Hotel, which we’re working with a developer in Kansas City, and then we’ve got a few projects that we haven’t announced yet that we’re equally excited about, and the ability to design these hotels, once again, in Orlando working with their creative team, headed up by Mark Woodbury, who is the chief creative officer of Universal. I mean, Mark and his team are doing Harry Potter, and so that’s really exciting for me.

Then, these other really talented firms that we’re working with, both in terms of architecture and interior design, is really, I think, what makes us a little bit different than our competition. I think it is one of the demand generators that people like about Loews Hotels whether it’s on the group side or the transient side, and I think that will help us grow for many, many years to come.

SSR: Design is such a major factor of your hotels, how do you pick the right collaborators, and what’s that process like for you, since you are so involved?

JT: It certainly depends as we look at who is going to be working with us in terms of architecture and interior design. If there is a partnership, we obviously include our partners in that conversation. Oftentimes, we’ll get into a project and the developer, our partner has already hired an architectural firm or an interior design firm, and I feel like I pretty much can work with anybody. I have strong opinions, but I think they’re based in 35 years of knowledge of what a hotel should look like and how it should operate. So, oftentimes, we will come in, and they will say, ‘This is the firm we’re using in the terms of the architecture. This is who we’re using in terms of our interior design,’ and I say, ‘Great,’ and we’ve done some amazing work.

When it’s a project that we are starting really from a blank piece of paper, and we need to make some decisions, I take into consideration the location, what we’re trying to create, what it should look like, what it should stand for, and having now built 12 hotels in my career, there are firms that I think are right for certain projects and that relates to the architecture and the interior design. There are firms that I like working with, and certainly they have created some great spaces for us, and so whether we’re starting from scratch you got to make the decision, do we go back to one of these firms that we have some history with or do we reach out and try to bring in somebody new?

There was a firm that sent me their lookbook, and I was sitting at my desk and this big colorful tome ends up, and I’m going through the pictures, and I’m thinking, ‘This work is kind of interesting.’ I didn’t know anything about them, and I’m not even sure that they had done hotels. They had done some department stores, they had done some residential, and three or four months later, I’m talking with the folks at Universal about our sixth hotel, which is called Aventura, which opened last August, and we’re talking about who should design it, and as we talked through the themes and what we wanted the building to look like, feel like, I said, ‘This firm sent me a book and I want to go back and see it, but I think that they might be right for this project.’

So, I sent the book to Mark Woodbury and his team in Orlando, our partners at Universal, and we ended up hiring the firm. They had just literally sent me a book saying, ‘Dear Mr. Tisch, we know that you design and build hotels, please consider us.’ So, it was an interesting process, but I like remembering what I see in terms of good design, and I and it goes back to never understanding that my TV career would help my hotel career. You just never know. I like seeing things.

I have, I guess, corrupted my wife, if you will, that when we go to cities we go to look at new hotels. So, she now is understanding of what it means to walk in, and how you walk into ballrooms, and you walk through restaurants, and you even go to some guest floors, and if you see a housekeeping cart you stick your head in, see what the room looks like. She appreciates what I can learn from seeing as many hotels as I can. But that all helps me define and understand the design process for us as we’re either renovating or building something from scratch.

SSR: Along the same line, are there things that designers do that either drive you nuts during design processes or are there things that you see in hotels that are your biggest pet peeves?

JT: So Stacy, the one thing that I don’t get that makes me crazy, absolutely drives me insane, uncomfortable chairs. Somebody designed it, and they look, hopefully I’m not offending any of your advertisers, but I just don’t get it. Did anybody sit in this chair? Yeah, it looks really nice, but have you bothered to put your rear end in it and can you sit up straight? Can you lean back? Does it have enough support? Is it going to work in a hotel restaurant where the chair gets pulled in and out many times? Does it have the proper structure so it doesn’t break after three months on the job? I don’t get it. So, that is my pet peeve, is uncomfortable seating. So, as crazy as it sounds, when we’re building a new hotel, the manufacturers that we work with, will send a chair to New York or I will go see a model room, which obviously I do, because being part of the team that designed it, I’m going to go to the model room presentation, and I sit in every single chair.

Other things that make me crazy I think are fairly common in today’s world. You don’t want to get on your hands and knees to plug in your four devices. You want good air conditioning. You want good wifi. You want quiet. So, those are basics that I think people look for today, and there are design mistakes that give me a headache. I’ve walked in many hotels, and there are so many influences in terms of contemporary and sort of old themes, and I  look around, and I go, ‘This really doesn’t work.’

We’re big believers in less is more, don’t ungapatchka things up, as we say in Yiddish. Don’t overcomplicate matters. Don’t take every idea that you ever had and put it into the lobby. Just calm yourself down, relax, and that view should be reflected in your hotel. I am not a fan of bad design, nor I don’t think anybody is, but also by just looking around, and getting as much experience as you can by seeing what people are doing in terms of good design can help you protect yourself from bad design.

SSR: Very well said. You’ve had so many successes over your career, has there any been any missteps along the way, or mistakes, since we all learn, I think, as much, if not more, from your mistakes, as you do your successes, that have stuck with you, or you keep in the back of your mind?

JT: So, one of our rules in my wife and kids life, and I think that we have certainly been able to have the folks at Loews Hotels understand, is that stuff happens. Stuff’s going to happen. Not every stay is going to be perfect. Not every experience with your kids is going to go like you hoped, we certainly know that as parents. Stuff happens. Then, it’s all about the recovery. So, how do you learn from that experience. If you’re talking about something not going well with a guest, with a group, with a meeting planner, how do you recover? It also works in your life, and if there’s something going on in your family, stuff happens. How do you recover?

We try to take these moments where things might not have worked out, and turn them into positives, and even teachable moments. So, over the years, I would be frustrated when the industry in the ’90s was going through a downturn, and my father and uncle, and God bless them, because I wouldn’t be sitting here on Madison Avenue in our offices if it wasn’t for their vision, their wisdom, their discipline, their diligence, their intelligence, but there were years where I would suggest that we should buy hotels, because the industry was going through a rough patch, and values were down.

It didn’t happen, and I think there are hotels that I could think back upon that would’ve been great Loews Hotels today, but one of the things we learn from them is that you don’t look back. Stuff’s going to go wrong, you’re going to make mistakes, but continue to look forward. So, I’ve been frustrated about properties that I think would’ve been incredible in our portfolio that are not with us today. In terms of design, sometimes I will walk into a hotel after a renovation, or a new construction, and I’ll go, ‘What were you thinking?’ but I think that that happens to everybody. So, you can fix it when you renovate, or immediately, and there are all kinds of instances that we have learned from our mistakes.

In terms of what has worked, and worked well, I must say that the process going back starting in 1994, when the City of Miami Beach came out with a request for proposals to build a convention center hotel on a piece of land that they owned on 16th Street and Collins Avenue, as well as the St. Moritz Hotel, which originally opened in 1927, it had been empty for 10 years, when they sent out the RFP, and we responded to that, there was not a sense that we could ever, as a very small company back in ’94, we would ever end up with that hotel.

So, here we are in 2019, the hotel has been open for more than 20 years, and Loews Miami Beach has, fortunately for us, been incredibly successful. So, I think back about the process of us filling out the RFP, of making a presentation to the City of Miami Beach, the two years that I was literally in Miami every month for two years meeting with all of the interested parties, and the story that is still told today, some 25 years later from when we made our presentation, or 22 years later, is the City said to all of the companies involved, and there were really big names that were presenting, and in 1995, ’96, whenever we made the presentation, we probably had 10 hotels.

I was trying to think at the time, I should say, ‘What are we going to do that will leave a lasting impression to the commission put together by the mayor, who was going to make a recommendation to the city council. What can we do that will be a little bit different?’ So, I was thinking back to my years as a TV producer, and I said, ‘We should end with a video,’ and the city had said to us, said to all nine companies that had responded to the RFP, ‘You each get one hour. In that hour you have to show us how you’re going to be our partner in terms of operations, sales and marketing, how you’re going to finance the hotel, what’s the hotel going to look like in terms of the interior design?’

This is in South Beach, a very historically sensitive neighborhood because of the Art Deco influences. ‘You have one hour to make your presentation.’ I’m thinking, ‘We need to end with something really strong to show that we care.’ So, I come up with this idea, and this is right around the time of the Winter Olympics being in Lillehammer, Norway, and David Letterman who was on CBS at the time, had sent his mother for his show to do interviews in Lillehammer, Norway, about how this global event came to this teeny tiny town in Norway, and what did people think? So, here you have Mrs. Letterman with a microphone walking up and down the streets of Lillehammer Norway.

I come back to one of our planning meetings, and I say, ‘I have a great idea. We’re going to send Joan Tisch, my mother, to Miami Beach to ask her what it would mean for the Tisch family and Loews Hotels to come back to Miami Beach.’ Because they had sold the Americana to become the Sheridan in 1972, what it would it be like 20 years later for the family to come back. Everybody said, ‘Great idea. She’s your mother, you deal with this,’ and so meeting after meeting, the presentation was in June. It’s now May, the presentation’s in about six weeks, and they say to me, ‘So, how’s that video going with your mother?’ This is our team, and I said, ‘Well, it hasn’t quite happened yet because I’m afraid to ask her.’ I said, ‘but, believe it or not, I have another idea.’ They said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘I’m going to dress up like my mother, and I’m going to do the interviews. I will go in drag, and do the interviews of men and women in South Beach.’ They said, ‘You’re crazy, but it’s your company.’

So, sure enough, about two weeks later, I am in total drag, I am in a wig, I am in a skirt, I have makeup on, I had Sally Hansen press-on nails, and I spent the day walking up and down the streets of South Beach saying, ‘Loews Hotels wants to build on 16th and Collins, what do you think about that?’ So, we did the interviews. I did not get arrested, fortunately. And in South Beach I actually fit right in. So, we edited that down to a  three minute video, and we’re now in Miami Beach, it’s the night before the presentation. By pulling names out of a hat, we were first. We knew that the next day there were going to be 500, 600 people in the convention center in Miami, that all the press were going to cover it. Once again, we’re first.

The night before, we’re rehearsing, and I’d invited my father down for the historical context of the Tisch family possibly coming back to Miami Beach. So, we’re there, it’s 1 in the morning, we’re going through the last rehearsal, we knew we had to be on time. Charlotte St. Martin, who is a former head of sales and marketing for Loews Hotels, who now runs the Broadway League. Charlotte is from Texas, she has a very deep Texas drawl. She sets up the video, she says, ‘Our chairman’s mother came down a few weeks ago,’ and we’re at rehearsal, we show the video, we’re all very happy, we’ll get three hours sleep.

The video ends, and my father, who is seeing it for the first time, looks at me and says, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘That’s the end of our presentation.’ He said, ‘You’re in drag.’ I said, ‘Oh, I am fully aware of that.’ I said, ‘I’m representing your wife, my mother.’ He said, ‘You can’t show that.’ I said, ‘No, no, you don’t understand, I’m showing it.’ I said, ‘I am chairman and CEO of this company, I am showing it.’ So, he was a bit horrified.

Next morning comes, we go through 57 minutes of our presentation, we are right on time, we get every point that we wanted to get, there are 500 people in the convention center in Miami. Charlotte St. Martin sets up our video. She says, ‘Our chairman’s mother came down a few weeks ago because this could possibly be the return of the Tisch family and Loews Hotels to South Beach, and we have a video to show you.’ Video starts, for the first minute there is not one person laughing. I am truly seeing my life pass in front of me. Not one person laughs. After about 90 seconds, people got that it was me, and by that point everybody is hysterical.

We went on to win the vote of the Commission that was making recommendations to the City Council. We won the vote nine nothing. We then took the next year and a half to negotiate our deal. The hotel has been open a little bit more than 20 years, and to this day people in South Beach still call it Jon’s mom. They said, ‘Do you still have the dress? Have you worn it recently?’ I said, ‘No, I have not put the dress back on.’ I think I could find it if I need to, but there’s a story in all this, and it’s about creativity and it’s about how you use creativity to overcome problems.

We were much smaller than anybody else, we had less assets in terms of Loews Hotels as an entity than anybody else, and we came up with a creative solution to a challenge, and fortunately it worked, and the hotel has been incredibly successful. It is known around the world, and in terms of design, about three years ago, we started a $50 million renovation of a hotel that had been open at the time about 16 years. We literally closed in the summer that the renovation started because the noise and drilling. We closed for about six weeks in the summer. We kept all of our team members. I think of 700 team members maybe 10 left. The rest came back after we were closed, and the renovation has been viewed as incredibly successful. It changed the whole tenor of the hotel.

The reason we spent $50 million on a hotel that hadn’t been open that long was we saw the competition coming to South Beach, there are new hotels opening literally every week, and we wanted to remain one of the dominant properties in the marketplace. So, we made the decision to spend $50 million and it has worked out really well.

SSR: So, the question is, are there photos of you in the dress?

JT: I know where the video is.

SSR: We need to show that at some point.

JT: I think if somebody worked really hard they could find it on YouTube, but it’s not as easy to find as one would think, but I think it’s on YouTube.

SSR: I really love the point of using creativity to overcome challenges. Do you also ask, just for all the designers and architects listening to the pod, do you ask that too in presentations? What have you seen that designers have done to win you over in terms of what you expect from them?

JT: I think in terms of how I relate to the design firms that we invite in for presentations, some of which we have worked with in the past, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes we do bring in firms that I’ve read about or I’ve experienced their work. They’ve got to understand my involvement. They’ve got to understand that we are a corporation that is owned by shareholders, and so we have standards in terms of purchasing, we have standards in terms of quality, we have standards in terms of contracts that we think are very important to us. So, they’ve got to be able to work in this environment, this is not done haphazardly or without guardrails, and that they’ve got to make it easy. It goes back to less is more. Don’t overcomplicate things. Don’t get carried away.

I think the firms that I find I’m drawn to also are very creative, and that there’s input from the senior management of the design firm, as well as the project manager, and that they’ve got to be able to understand our standards, and how we look at design and that we all are going to get along through the process. It is not an easy process. When you are starting from scratch, it’s two years sometimes of design before you put a shovel in the ground, and then going through the whole model room and the changes that are inherent in a model room.

I will say that sometimes my secret weapon is bringing my wife to the model rooms, because she has the most amazing eye, and she has caught things that I quite candidly missed. So, her knowledge has really benefited me in terms of reviewing the process, and seeing what works and what doesn’t work. But I think there are so many talented firms in the industry. There are so many that we’ve worked with, there are so many that I would like to work with, and I think that the industry has evolved, the industry has matured in terms of design. People get to know about it because of publications like yours that are reporting on what talented men and women are doing every day with new properties, or renovations, and I think that’s very exciting.

This industry has grown so much. Travel and tourism, largest industry in the world, and largest employer in the world, and the industry has gotten incredibly mature. How I like to think of it, is the difference between the business of hotels has changed dramatically over the last 25, 30 years. You’ve now got all these companies like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, or C-Corps, they’re traded on stock exchange, you’ve got REITs, you’ve got private equity, you’ve got sovereign wealth funds, you’ve got very wealthy families that want to invest in hotels, and having chaired the NYU Hospitality and Investment Conference, this will be my 27th year as the chair. When I started 27 years ago we had 600 attendees, this year when the conference happens in six weeks, we’ll have 2,700 attendees.

The business of hotels has changed a lot. It is a very sophisticated industry that is driven by various financial models. So, that’s the business of hotels. What hasn’t changed since the first time somebody used some kind of currency, maybe it was a rock, to stay somewhere, is the hotel business. And why that hasn’t changed is because the basic premise of a hotel is to ensure that the people that are staying with you, who have left the safety and security of their own home, remain very much loyal to you, and as I said earlier, you as the hotel company, you’re not meeting their expectations, you’re exceeding their expectations.

It goes back to talking about the men and women of Loews Hotels. They’re the ones who ensure the success of every stay, every time, and that’s the hotel business. It’s about treating people, different constituencies, your guests and your team members, treating them with respect, treating them with understanding, ensuring that they feel that they get value, or else they’re going to go some place else. That’s the hotel business, which hasn’t changed in thousands and thousands of years.

SSR: Well, there’s so much more we can talk about, but I feel like this is a perfect place to stop our conversation. I  really have enjoyed every minute, and thank you so much for being a part of it.

JT: Great questions, and I could talk about this forever.

SSR: I know we can do another one. We can do part two.

JT: Part deux, but thank you, Stacy, because you guys get design, and every month you put so many ideas out there that I find myself ripping pages out about wallcoverings, about hopefully comfortable chairs, and so thank you for your contributions to the notion of good design in the lodging industry.

SSR: Well, thank you. We appreciate it.