Author: innfreehotels

Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association Recognizes Innisfree Hotels Founder and CEO

On Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016, Founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels Julian MacQueen will be celebrated by the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association with its highest honor – the Hotelier Hall of Fame Award – during the FRLA Installation & Awards Gala at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla.

The Hall of Fame Award recognizes an industry professional with a personal record of achievement over at least 20 years, attainment of career distinctions and distinguished service to the industry, community, charitable organizations and family.

MacQueen got his start in hospitality at the age of 15, as a busboy at a beachside hotel. He never left the industry. Since its founding in 1985, Innisfree Hotels has built a strong portfolio of beachfront hotels, restaurants and spas along the Gulf Coast of Florida, most recently expanding to own and manage hotels in Michigan and Vermont. With a current total of more than 2,400 hotel rooms and 1,200 employees, the Northwest Florida based company is expected to grow by 50 percent over the next three years.

“To be recognized at this level celebrates Innisfree as a whole,” MacQueen says. “This is a collective award that I accept on behalf of my wife and my family and the amazing people at Innisfree.”

One hallmark of Innisfree Hotels is the culture MacQueen has created, both for employees and guests. With a mission of making ‘fun, memorable experiences,’ the Innisfree team is dedicated to providing the highest level of customer service. The company is also deeply rooted in the community, formally establishing a Corporate Social Responsibility program called The Hive in 2015.

Projects of significance to The Hive include the adoption of the Pensacola-based Dixon School of the Arts, the building and funding of the Independence for the Blind of Northwest Florida Training Center, the creation of From the Ground Up Community Garden and the naming of the MacQueen School of Hospitality at the University of West Florida.

When MacQueen and his wife, Kim, started Innisfree Hotels, they did so with the lofty goal of connecting their work to the service of mankind, a perfect fit for the hospitality industry. Over the past 30 years, the MacQueens have strived to create a culture where people come to work to do more than make a bed or serve a drink – they come to change people’s lives.

“I think that’s resonated with the people at Innisfree – holding each other up, giving back to the community, serving our guests,” MacQueen says. “I often say people are going to come into our hotels and have an experience – our job is to make that a positive one.”

– Ashley Kahn Salley
Lead Storyteller, Innisfree Hotels

Flagler Awards 2016

The in-house digital marketing agency of Innisfree Hotels, was honored with a Florida Tourism Award from VISIT FLORIDA during its annual Governor’s Conference on September 7, 2016.

Named for Henry Flagler, a key figure in the state’s industrial development, the Flagler Awards recognize outstanding tourism marketing in Florida. Annually, the awards honor the individuals and organizations who help maintain and improve Florida’s position as one of the world’s most popular travel destinations.

Jillian Glenn, Director of Social & Creative Strategy, and Rachel Hogue, Director of Content Production, traveled to Orlando to attend the conference.

The team won the Bronze Flagler Award for its popular Tag & Release campaign at Pensacola Beach restaurant Red Fish Blue Fish. Guests are encouraged to snap photos at the ‘best backyard on the beach,’ then tag them with the restaurant’s hashtag and share them on social media.

“I am so proud of our team from our in-house agency! What a great story of brains over bucks for our little container restaurant, Red Fish Blue Fish,” says Julian MacQueen, founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels. “Check out who they were competing with in the category of Social Media Marketing in a state that leads the nation in tourism.”

The in-house marketing team’s entry was up against major players with much larger budgets, including Silver Award winner The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel for the Song & Chance 2 Video Contest and top Henry Award winner The Florida Aquarium for the Lightning’s Drive for The Stanley Cup.

The total budget for the Tag & Release campaign was $2,315. Total cost of Facebook ads was only $20.

The Tag & Release social media campaign garnered more than 1,643 total campaign submissions and generated nearly 9,000 new Facebook Likes for the Red Fish Blue Fish Facebook page through owned, earned and paid efforts.

“I’m extremely proud of our team and of the accomplishments we’ve been able to achieve this year,” Glenn says. “We’re a small agency, producing work while we sleep, so it feels good to be recognized.”

– Ashley Kahn Salley
Lead Storyteller, Innisfree Hotels

By Mike Nixon, President 

As president of a successful and growing hotel company, my deep thoughts are generally centered around the idea of hospitality and servant leadership – welcoming people into our homes.

My oldest son asked me one day how what I do for a living makes a difference in the world.

He said: “Dad, you’re just making money … you’re not making a difference. This is what’s wrong with America.”

Number One: He was wrong. I enjoy wholeheartedly what I do. I do make a difference.

That is evidenced in the fact that a former housekeeper who hasn’t worked for me in 20 years stays in touch with me regularly to update me on what’s going on in her life. If that employee was missing something in her life and I filled that for her, that’s hospitality. Maybe I’m the father she never had, and she’s sharing her accomplishments with me. That’s pretty special.

I’ll hear from others who say, “You gave me a chance when I didn’t have any experience. I became what I am today because of that chance.”

That’s just on the employee side.

On the guest side, we’re doing this daily with people we don’t even know … with complete strangers.

This is the spirit I want to instill in everyone who works with me at Innisfree.

Often, what we do is not tangible. It’s spiritual, I guess, for lack of a better word. It becomes almost ethereal, because we’re providing experiences that change lives. If we keep that first and foremost, the rest of it usually flows.

I do know that hospitality is not for everyone. Not everyone has that same drive, and what they need to do is to build an engine, or balance somebody’s financial statement, or put a building together – and there are jobs for those people.

Their lives are affected by the hospitality folks. There’s a place for everybody.

Hospitality is more of a vocation than an occupation. You are called to do it.

I say that because nobody in their right mind would work for what might be considered substandard pay, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Even Walmart closes twice a year. But we don’t. Every other business on the planet closes, except us.

So who do we hire? It’s somebody who brings that spirit with them, not necessarily someone with experience. It’s someone who believes all people are good and deserve to be treated like human beings. If we can get that, lots of those other skills are really easy to teach.

In general, we’re doing basic math. We’re doing very simple writing. We’re saying please and thank you. In the hospitality industry, the skills we require for completion of tasks are really quite basic.

Yet, those people skills so often are things you really can’t teach. We have to figure out really early on if employees possess these skills or not.

There are different management styles. One you will often see is management by fear and intimidation. We don’t want managers like that. It’s a very effective style by which businesses can be highly profitable, but we don’t condone it.

We want our managers to lead with nurturing and collaboration, encouragement and coaching. We want all of our managers to be like that. Not most of them, but all.

I bet you didn’t know that most of the corporate leaders at Innisfree are not formally educated in the field of hospitality.

For me, working in hotels paid for college. When I got to the point that I was graduating from school (with a degree in Russian, married with one small child and another on the way) I could have used my degree to go work for the CIA or any other governmental agency.

Or, I could stay in the hotel business.

As a 22-year-old, was I going to abandon my degree, the four years I put in, and not use it? You bet I was. The calling to serve in hospitality was much greater than any loss I might have felt.

I have very few regrets to this day. I don’t dwell on it, and I have enjoyed using my degree speaking Russian with employees and guests.

(There’s great shock value, and it’s a pretty good party trick.)

Bottom line: Hospitality is a calling. If you feel called to the industry, Innisfree Hotels may be the place for you.

– As told to Ashley Kahn Salley, Lead Storyteller

MacQueen Alumni Center, University of South Alabama

After accepting a $2 million gift from distinguished alumnus Julian MacQueen ’73, Founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels and his wife, Kim MacQueen, the University of South Alabama will name its new Alumni Center in their honor. The Julian and Kim MacQueen Alumni Center is expected to open in 2018.

The Center will serve as a campus ‘home’ for visiting alumni while providing visibility for the alumni association to current students, according to Karen Edwards, Director of Alumni Relations and Executive Director of the National Alumni Association at USA.

“The new facility will be located in the heart of campus – our students will be going by that building every day,” Edwards says. “Because it will house facilities for meetings of student organizations, they will be integrated into the association with the hope they’ll stay engaged and involved as they become alumni.”

The MacQueens certainly have stayed engaged. When USA asked for their help with the project, they recognized the impact it would have on the young university.  

“Without them, this project would not have gotten off the ground. The naming gift is critical,” Edwards adds. “They were all in, right from the beginning. It has been a pure pleasure seeing the joy on their faces when we talk about the project and we see the renderings. Julian’s expertise has been so insightful.”

After graduating from high school with the second lowest GPA in his class, MacQueen was not accepted to the University of Alabama – where many, many extended family members had studied before him. (At the time, his family had the largest number of attendees of any other family at Alabama.)

MacQueen applied to South Alabama, and was admitted with the provision he would get his grades up.

“When I began school at USA, I was a terrible student,” he says. “So it’s ironic that I would be the big contributor for the Alumni Center.”

A self-described hippie who didn’t wear shoes and wore his hair down to his shoulders, MacQueen’s grades did improve – and he graduated and qualified for the Master’s Program.

“Ultimately I figured it out,” he says. “Psychology was my school, and it was a great one. I think it gave me a lot of the education I needed to make it in life, so this is a way of giving back.”

The University is also where MacQueen learned about the Baha’i Faith, in an experimental college where students were encouraged to take courses in non-credit subjects.

In many ways, MacQueen says, this gift honors The Faith that has shaped his life.

“All of that came as a result of attending South Alabama. It really opened my eyes to the philosophies of the world and broke me out of my cultural bounds,” he shares. “I think university took me outside of my limited world view and allowed me to investigate different cultures and religions, and the Baha’i Faith has been a pivotal part of my life ever since.”

Much of the corporate culture at Innisfree Hotels, the hotel company MacQueen would go on to found in 1984, is based upon Baha’i principles and virtues.

The naming gift to build the alumni center was made on the condition that USA will continue to be a learning center that encourages the investigation of truth. Edwards notes the principles that inspired MacQueen as a student will be incorporated into the design of the building.

A bronze plaque in recognition of the gift will also bear the following Baha’i scripture:

Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgement, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression. Let integrity and uprightness distinguished all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.

Bahá’u’lláh

“That was the impetus for me,” MacQueen says. “It wasn’t to put our name on a building.”

The University hopes to break ground in 2017 and to open the Julian and Kim MacQueen Alumni Center the following year.

– Ashley Kahn Salley
Lead Storyteller, Innisfree Hotels

New Hotels Under Development and Construction Will Lead to $100 Million Investment in Coastal Community

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, Innisfree Hotels took over ownership and operations of the Hotel Indigo located at 1223 Boulevard of the Arts in Sarasota, Fla.

The Indigo brand aligns well with Innisfree’s mission to create fun and memorable experiences for guests. Because no two Hotel Indigo properties are alike, guests can expect an authentic experience throughout every aspect of their stay. Nestled in the historic Rosemary district, the Sarasota hotel features work by local artists and furniture sourced from local artisans.

“We love the Sarasota market and culture,” says Julian MacQueen, founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels. “The Hotel Indigo has a reputation of tremendous community support, and our plan is to build on its award-winning past performance.”

Located within walking distance of Downtown Sarasota and minutes from the beach, the hotel features:

• 95 Modern and Stylish Guest Rooms and Suites
• On-site H2O Bistro offering Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
• Hot and Cold Spa-Inspired Wading Pools on Beautiful Outdoor Patio
• Business Center
• On-site Health and Fitness Center
• Free Parking
• Complimentary Wi-Fi
• 1,200 Sq. Ft. Meeting and Event Space

Once the new Sarasota hotels have opened, Innisfree Hotels will have more than 400 rooms in the destination, 300 of which will be new inventory.

“With the purchase of the Indigo Hotel, the Embassy Suites by Hilton under construction and the Hampton Inn and Suites under development, Innisfree and its partners will have more than $100 million invested in this community,” MacQueen states.

– Ashley Kahn Salley
Lead Storyteller, Innisfree Hotels

A Reflection from Jason Nicholson, Vice President of Innisfree Hotels

The Best Western Premier Tides Hotel was slated to open in the middle of May 2016. Through a series of problems at the beginning of the project and scheduling challenges with subcontractors, the hotel project ran long – and The Tides finally opened on July 8, 2016.

The week following the Fourth of July holiday, it became evident that we needed to help the subcontractors along. Director of Development Rich Chism communicated with me that he needed support. He pulled in his entire development team, and we pulled together an executive crew. Even Innisfree’s founder and CEO Julian MacQueen and former president Harlan Butler came on board.

We worked the week preceding the holiday and were very effective at preparing the guest rooms and as much of the public areas as we had access to, so that once we obtained the Certificate of Occupancy we would not have to wait for those spaces to be prepped in order to rent the rooms.

The week following the holiday, Julian became very impatient with the performance of key and critical subcontractors. It was looking like we would again be delayed in opening the hotel.

We were already almost two months late, and now the work was potentially holding up our C.O. Upon learning of this, Julian had conversations with key subcontractor owners, explaining they were potentially in the way of us opening the hotel and asking what we could do. He obtained commitments to push through to the finish.

Julian spent most of that final week on site, meeting with inspectors, building officials and key subcontractors. He also pitched in to do hard physical work, setting the example for others.

At one point a few days away from opening, Julian announced:

“This is no longer a construction site … this is a hotel!”

He began asking all subcontractors to move their tools and materials out of the building and onto their trucks. He asked that all equipment not in use be moved to the laydown area as soon as possible. As contractors saw the operations group moving in, they were motivated to finish and move out.

But on Wednesday night, Julian noticed the work was still not moving at a pace that would allow us to finish by Friday in time to open the hotel.

So on Thursday, July 7, Julian came armed with another crew to support the activities of the first. That Thursday was impressive.

Julian showed up early in the morning and began working one-on-one with the contractors. He worked with them hand-in-hand, explaining what needed to be finished in order to get our C.O.

Whenever it appeared as though the crew was wandering off, Julian would pull them back. He even ate lunch on the swing stage attached to the building, so the crew could not leave the property.

The heat index was 107 at the peak of Thursday afternoon, and he never came inside.

At 7:30, when he left for dinner, Julian said:

“I want to go eat, but I haven’t had enough yet … I’m coming back.”

What impressed me the most is that Julian stayed outside working from early in the morning until way past dinner in oppressive heat – sweating bullets, picking up garbage, sweeping, moving tools and redirecting contractors.

Julian motivated the construction team such that they did finish on time. He built relationships with inspectors and made personal commitments to them. Had Julian not been there, we would likely not have been ready to open.

Our CEO and founder, the owner of our company was out there … in the heat, doing the grunt work, the dirty, bloody-handed grunt work to get that hotel open.

It was totally motivating to me.

This is a textbook case of leading by example, not asking someone to do something you are not willing to do yourself. And standing behind it. He put in more hours and sweat and energy than any other person on the job site.

For many of us, we saw Julian in a different way that week. It created a whole new level of respect.

We’re folks who don’t mind getting our hands dirty, but Julian worked harder than anyone. He could have been flying, sailing, sitting at his Hilton … getting a massage at one of his spas.

But instead, he was outside working.

The Tides would not have opened when it did if Julian MacQueen had not been there.

That is true leadership at its finest.

– As told to Ashley Kahn Salley
Lead Storyteller, Innisfree Hotels

Best Western Premier, Tides Hotel Marks Grand Opening

The tide has come in.

On July 8, 2016, Innisfree Hotels opened the Best Western Premier Tides Hotel in Orange Beach, Ala., welcoming visitors to a fresh new experience in the Gulfside resort town.

The Tides Hotel is an intimate beachfront property of only 86 rooms, each appointed in modern, stylish decor with a nod to the natural wonders of Coastal Alabama. Driftwood and shades of blue are cornerstones of the hotel design, which features grand views of the Gulf of Mexico from its central lobby.

“I grew up on these shores,” says Julian MacQueen, founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels. “Our newest Orange Beach hotel offers a unique opportunity to show guests the incredible beauty of Coastal Alabama and its warm Southern hospitality.”

The Best Western Premier Tides Hotel joins Innisfree’s three existing Orange Beach Gulf front properties, including the Hampton Inn & Suites, Hilton Garden Inn and Holiday Inn Express. The new hotel is a welcome addition to Orange Beach accommodations, as most lodging options are condominium developments.

The Tides Hotel was developed to offer guests a unique, locally inspired experience, immersing visitors in the culture and beauty of the coastal Southern United States.

“The Best Western Premier flag has given us the opportunity to offer high-quality accommodations with authentic, local charm,” MacQueen says. “This is more than a hotel. It’s an experience, and we’re eager to see how guests respond.”

Located in the center of Orange Beach, the 7-story Best Western Premier, Tides Hotel offers these surprising amenities:

• 86 Stylish and Comfortable Guest Rooms
• Gulf Front Balconies
• Beachfront Pool & Hot Tub
• Free Breakfast
• Grab and Go Deli
• Free ‘Rocket-Fast’ Wi-Fi
• Free Beach Cruiser Rentals
• Seasonal Turn Down Service
• On-site Activities for Adults & Children
• Giant Beach Towels
• Fire Pit
• Seasonally Heated Pool
• Free 100% Covered Parking
• On-Site Ice for Coolers
• Community Grills
• Unique Gift Shop
• Business Center
• Fitness Center
• Guest Laundry

Rich Chism, director of development for Innisfree Hotels, says the Best Western Premier Tides Hotel will give guests to Orange Beach an entirely new perspective of the community and its varied offerings.

“Whether here with family or friends, for relaxation or recreation, The Tides is a place for creating memories worth sharing,” Chism states. “Unexpected extras like beach yoga and healthy food choices provide added value to an already extraordinary stay.”

Katie Clark will serve as General Manager of the Best Western Premier Tides Hotel. Clark has been with Innisfree Hotels since 2012. According to Regional Director of Operations Gabe DiCianni, when Innisfree took over operations of a hotel where Clark was working, the leadership team found her with a multimeter in her hands troubleshooting an AC unit.

“Needless to say, we were highly impressed,” DiCianni says.

Lance Hackleman, Assistant General Manager, started as a desk clerk for Innisfree before his promotion to sales assistant and again to front office manager – most recently serving as a task force manager in new acquisitions for the company.

“Both Katie and Lance are very smart young leaders and are the future of Innisfree Hotels,” says DiCianni.

HNL Construction, LLC, a wholly owned construction company of Innisfree Hotels, served as General Contractor and Ard Contracting of Birmingham, Ala. as structural contractor for the project, with SMP Architecture as architect and interior design by Adrian Caradine Contract Design of Memphis, Tenn. Financing for the project was provided by Trustmark National Bank.