In December 2012, North Kihei’s Maui Sunseeker LGBT Resort was featured on Travel Channel’s hit show, Hotel Impossible. While reality makeover shows often lead to either great success or swift failure for many businesses, especially on an island where the coconut express often brings news faster than Facebook, we’re happy to report that the Sunseeker survived the storm, and then some.
We recently sat down with Owner Chuck Spence, along with General Manager Michael Waddell, to chat about the advantages and disadvantages of being featured on an internationally recognized reality show and how it has affected their hotel business on Maui.
One of the most obvious advantages of being featured on Hotel Impossible is the esteemed advice and expertise from host Anthony Melchiorri, who has over 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry and comes engrained with an expectation for quality from those fortunate enough to work in the same industry.
During the episode, Anthony arrives to find the level of hotel maintenance, in addition to the delegation of duties between the owner and general manager, less than acceptable for travelers seeking comfort and relaxation in island paradise. While his criticism of the hotel’s appearance and management is predictably harsh throughout the episode – think of a less foul-mouthed but similarly outraged Gordon Ramsay – Spence and Waddell voluntarily invited him because they knew they needed his help to turn the business around before it was too late.
“Before the show, we were actually a bit confrontational and maybe did not have as much respect for each other’s positions. After the show, and even during the filming, I was able to be more direct with him. Today, two years down the road, we share a lot of interaction about the business, about strategy, about staff and about each other,” says Waddell.
Anthony also brought light to another important issue – while Maui Sunseeker caters to LGBT travelers, it’s also important to widen the market to heterosexuals, who continue to make up a giant portion of the 2+ million travelers to Maui each year. By changing the marketing strategy to be more inclusive of open-minded heterosexual visitors, business could easily increase by 10 to 15%, enough to make a huge difference in the hotel’s annual profit.
“We market ourselves as a primary LGBT resort but we welcome all awesome adults. We do not discriminate. We are not and have never positioned ourselves as the typical gay hotel. We are all about our guests having the Maui experience, and if Sunseeker is part of that experience, all the better. Our guests are our Ohana; we treat everyone like family. That is one of the guiding principles of our business model. Guests are more than a room number. They have names and we try to remember them,” says Waddell.
This article was shared by Kelsey Kay Love and was originally posted on Maui Goodness.
