Managing America’s Largest Summer-Only Resort: David Jurcak’s Mackinac Island Story

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspoti and today’s guest is David Jurczak. He is the president of Grand Hotel, an iconic hospitality landmark on Mackinac Island founded in 1887. Known for its unique blend of historical charm and modern luxury.

Grand Hotel offers guests beautiful accommodations, memorable dining experiences, and a variety of recreational activities. Under David’s leadership, the hotel continues its tradition of excellence, drawing visitors from across the globe. He has guided the property toward new growth initiatives and continues to uphold its renowned commitment to exceptional service. David has more than three decades of experience in hospitality.

having held key roles at Omni, Hotels and Resorts, and Ambridge Hospitality before joining Grand Hotel in 2021. He has successfully managed operations in multiple states, improving a guest satisfaction and business growth, and he even finds time to serve his community as a volunteer firefighter in both Michigan and Virginia. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, President of Grand Hotel, David Jersak. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

David Jurcak (02:10)
Well, thank you for the invitation.

Anthony Codispoti (02:12)
So David, you’ve been in the hotel and hospitality industry for decades now. How did you first get your start?

David Jurcak (02:18)
Well, it was kind of a mistake or by accident. took a summer job out of college before I went to grad school. I thought I’d take a cap year. My dad worked for Japan Airlines, and so he thought great opportunity for me to be his flight attendant. I didn’t think the travel would be great, so I went down the street and planned at a hotel, and 35 years later, I have the opportunity to talk to you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:43)
So a lot happened in between. What was it in that first job that kind of hooked you on it?

David Jurcak (02:44)
Yeah.

Well, you know, I, I love the idea that every day is different. Every day is a challenge. Every day I met somebody new. ⁓ That hotel, was the Weston Crown Center in Kansas City, gave me the opportunity to, to grow real quick. mean, it was every six months for the four and half years I worked there, I had another opportunity. And so, you know, I saw ⁓ growth in this industry that my friends weren’t seeing in the industries they worked in. I never expected I’d be here for 35 years.

mind you, ⁓ but it just got into my soul that, don’t think I could ever do anything else but what I’m doing today.

Anthony Codispoti (03:24)
Why do you love it so much?

David Jurcak (03:26)
Again, today, just like it was 35 years ago, I meet somebody new every day. I talk to somebody new every day. I learn something about myself. I learn something about where I work every day. And so every day I get to grow a little bit. ⁓ And then the business is challenging. It’s ⁓ really hands on. It’s not, you my mom, you know, ran a division in her business and she went to a cubicle every day and took a stack of papers every day and went through it every day. And I could tell her

six months from now, this is about what you’re gonna do on this Wednesday. Whereas today, to me, I have no idea what I’m gonna do in about an hour and a half when this interview is over. It could be something completely different, something that I had no idea was gonna come. But it’s a great part of our business.

Anthony Codispoti (04:12)
Prior to finding your way to Grand Hotel, David, what would you consider to be the most formidable stop for you along your career path and what did you learn?

David Jurcak (04:22)
Well, early on in my career, someone gave me the opportunity to work in housekeeping. I went to our number two of the hotel, 725 room hotel, and I said, you know what? I think I want to try this housekeeping job that you have available as a supervisor. And she was like, why would you go to housekeeping? Why do you want to go to housekeeping? I said, I think it’d be a great way to learn about business and a great way to learn about people and dealing with people. So I took a small career path in housekeeping.

I remember my friends used to tell me, what do you do clean rooms? And I’m like, well, no, I, you know, I two and a half, three years out of college, you know, I had over 110 people on my staff. I had a three and a half million dollar labor payroll. Um, I was running a small business inside a large business at a very young age. And so to me, that gave, that opened the doors to a lot of things for me in my career, not only to open the doors because other opportunities, but it really opened my eyes to what the real business was of operating a hotel.

that at the end of the day, I hate to put it to minimal inputs, at the end of the day, we are a manufacturer of clean guest rooms. So you need a room attendant and you need a dishwasher every single day to run your hotel. Because if you don’t have clean dishes and plates and you don’t have clean rooms, you don’t start. And so I had that opportunity to work in that department and kind of open my eyes to what a hotel is all about, the business side of

Anthony Codispoti (05:46)
And this was something that you sought out. How did you kind of have that foresight to know that there were so many valuable lessons for you to learn by? Because like you’re saying, your friends are like, what are you doing cleaning rooms all day? Like, like there’s like a little bit of like an ego slide from, know, that kind of a role from the outside looking in.

David Jurcak (06:05)
And a lot of it was I wanted to grow. I said, you know, if I’m going to take an opportunity in this place, give me another opportunity. And unfortunately, there’s a good side to this and a bad side of this is that, you know, I wanted to grow and I wanted to move every six months or anytime somebody gave me another opportunity, I took it. And, I learned what I possibly can learn in that so I can, know, stack that knowledge onto the next position. And I continue to grow and continue to move to the next position. And part of that was

for me just to want to win. I needed to move on and progress my career as quickly as I could.

Anthony Codispoti (06:43)
So how did the opportunity at Grand Hotel come about?

David Jurcak (06:47)
Well, know, so I, you know, 30 years into the business, I know a lot of people, I’m a lot of friends with a lot of people. moved, I ran hotels, I ran America’s first resort, the Homestead in Virginia. That hotel was, or resort was built in 1766, 10 years before the country was formed. So the United States is going to celebrate 250 years ago, 250 years next year. The Homestead celebrated their 250, 10 years ago while I was there.

So I love old hotels. love historic hotels. I worked in one in St. Louis, my first GM job, a smaller operation. There’s just more stories to tell. And so when I did that and I kind of moved on and I took this corporate job with Ambridge, which I loved, I loved my job, know, everything about my job in that role. Loved the company, I loved my job. And so people said, would you ever go back to a hotel? I said, no, I don’t want to go back to hotels. just, I’m fine where I’m at. And they kept pushing. said, okay, there’s eight hotels in the United States I’d go work at.

just kind of fun. There’s eight hotels I had to go work at. One of them was this hotel, Grand Hotel, because it was historic. was unique. was iconic. And if I was going to leave a job that I really loved, I needed to go to another job that I would really love. And this was one of them. Fortunate for me, know, it’s again, it’s on Mackinac Island, horse and carriage. It’s an iconic hotel. We’re in our 139th season, 138th year. Then we’ve been open.

Anthony Codispoti (08:02)
Why was this on that short list?

David Jurcak (08:15)
You know, it’s got a thousand stories. It’s seasonal. Unlike any hotel you’re really going to find in United States, especially in large hotel, we are the largest seasonal hotel in the world or summer hotel in the world. We’re only open from the first Friday of May to the fourth Saturday of October. And then we close. So we close the hotel down. We’ve opened and closed the hotel 139 times. Well, really not. We’re going to close the hotel for 139 times.

Anthony Codispoti (08:28)
What does that mean that you’re seasonal or you’re summer?

David Jurcak (08:44)
139 time in two weeks. But then the hotel shuts down and you go, you know, you continue to work and you plan and you refocus what we’re going to do next year. You go out and recruit people and then you reopen the hotel. That’s like anywhere else. And so that as well as all the other iconic nature of it and historic nature of it, you know, put that on the top of the list.

Anthony Codispoti (09:04)
So let’s sort of paint the picture for our listeners who aren’t familiar. Mackinac Island, northern tip of Michigan. And so the reason that you guys close every year is because it’s just hard to get to. And it’s so cold up there. The lake freezes over. And the only way to get there would be, what, like a snowmobile or skis or?

David Jurcak (09:12)
Yes.

Well,

yeah, in the winter, there’s three ways to get there. Ferry until the ice forms and then shuts down the ferry. You can fly up. The plane goes. It’s about a three and a half minute flight that gets to the island. But sometimes that doesn’t work. And then if the ice freezes enough, there’s an opportunity to ride a snowmobile across the lake to the place. However, we are a wood frame structure built, I don’t know if you know this, we were built in 1887 in 93 days. So we’re a wood frame structure.

on top of a hill off the Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. ⁓ There really does have a lot of insulation in it. ⁓ So we couldn’t keep water running. couldn’t heat it. And so you close it. It’s kind of like the Shining, but a little different.

Anthony Codispoti (10:14)
That’s creepy. Yeah. And that’s an incredible part of the story, right? The structure was built back in 1887, like you said, in 93 days during the dead of winter when the lake was frozen. I don’t even understand, first of all, how that was possible. And then second of all, like, why was that even the goal? Why was the project undertaken in that way?

David Jurcak (10:15)
Definitely not screwed.

So back in the late 1800s, ⁓ it was really the new rich. So it’s not, when I say the new rich, there were rich people, like the Vanderbilt’s rich, the Rockefellers rich. The people that we cater to are their children. So they were the first formation of wealthy children or wealthy people, second generation in the United States. They wanted to get out of dirty cities, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland.

And they wanted to go to places. so railroads, we used to bring them places. They would get on a railroad and they would go three or four days to a destination. And the railroads got smart to that and said, hey, you know what? Not only can we make money on the way there and the way back, let’s build these hotels. And we’ll at the end of the line and they’ll stay there. know, a la Grand Hotel in 1887, the Del Coronado in San Diego in 1888, the Homestead in Virginia, the Greenbrier in West Virginia.

All these big hotels, ⁓ wood frame structures, were built by railroads. And they were built quickly, cheaply, and never meant to last. ⁓ In the turn of the century between 1800 and 1900, there were 1,200 wood framed hotels, greater than 200 rooms, and there’s 12 left. And so it’s a special group of hotels that are there, but that’s what they did. They used to come to this hotel for two months a year in the summer.

Anthony Codispoti (11:57)
Wow.

David Jurcak (12:06)
Get away from the dirty cities and get fresh air. Sit out on the porch, the world’s longest front porch, 660 feet, overlooking Lake Michigan and Lake Huron and get those clear ⁓ breezes and fresh air.

Anthony Codispoti (12:21)
So.

trying to better understand this place because it sounds incredible. ⁓ was the initial owner builder of this hotel then one of the railroads?

David Jurcak (12:26)
You

railroads and a steamship line.

Anthony Codispoti (12:37)
Okay. And so and they wanted to get this up quickly just because hey, the season’s coming and we want this to be open and ready for the next season.

David Jurcak (12:44)
July and August is when usually people came. We were open July 10, 1887. We’re supposed to be July 7, 1887. On a Thursday, we opened on a Sunday. He missed it by three days. The funny thing about here is Charles Skasky was our builder. He’s an incredible builder. And just the foresight and just the magnitude of putting all this together to make it build it and then get it done in 93 days is amazing. But about halfway through, up in northern Michigan, in the

Anthony Codispoti (12:52)
That’s pretty good.

David Jurcak (13:12)
early part of the latter part of the winter, early part of the spring, he had to go higher, upward of 600 men to come live on this island for 90 days and build a hotel. Well, not a lot of people were out there that wanted to do it. So he paid double wages. And so he advertised double wages. Well, you know, I couldn’t swing hammer. You know, I could probably know I could probably hammer a nail, but that’s about it. But if double wages were being offered, I think I raised my hand. Well, he found out about halfway through that there were a lot of me’s there.

And so he called back to the ownership group funded by the two railroads in the steamship line and said, listen, if you want this thing open in 90 days, you’re going to accept it as is. It might not be plumb and be square, but it will stand the test of time. And I stand by it. And today, 138 years later, we’re standing here on the edge of this cliff overlooking Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

But you look at the building, and you can see inside. a lot of things are little cattywampus around there. Not everything is square, not everything is plumb, but it’s all stayed in place. This hotel, between winter and summer, moves about 2 and 1 to 3 inches a year, expands and contracts. And so he built a good one. He built a good one.

Anthony Codispoti (14:12)
Is that right?

Fascinating.

So what is the upkeep on this place like?

David Jurcak (14:31)
⁓ You wouldn’t. It’s like crazy. So again, would. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (14:35)
I imagine I mean you guys right there on the lake, you know, lots

of cold weather exposed to the elements old structure.

David Jurcak (14:41)
So just think about a wood-framed house. We don’t have siding on the building. It’s wood. Sitting on this lake, getting rainstorms, getting parallel rain coming into the building, hitting it for 138 years. ⁓ We’re going through now, we’re going into year four of a five-year restoration project of the 660-foot front porch. And that is taking down all the columns, refinishing the columns back to their historic nature, putting them back up.

Um, sanding all the paint down off the building, repainting it back white, redoing the floor and putting back a wood planked porch on the, on the porch. You know, one would think you could do that, you know, in in a year. And fortunately on our Island, you can only do it five months at a time. You can only do it when we’re closed. So there’s no scaffolding on the building. Like you would see in a restoration project in Washington, DC, we get five months every season, every off season and the dead of winter. I don’t know if you’ve.

We’ve read it back of a paint can, but you’re not supposed to paint in cold weather. Well, we have to put sheeting around the building and then heat it inside the sheeting inside this little shelter just to put paint on the building. So it’s open in April or late April, early May.

Anthony Codispoti (15:55)
So all the upkeep, the big projects anyways, that’s all taking place when the hotel is closed for the winter.

David Jurcak (16:03)
Yeah, so we run in the season 94 % occupancy. So we don’t take rooms out of order to do a renovation during the season. Everything we do, other than upkeep, general maintenance or something breaks and we got to fix it really quick. Other than that, everything takes place from the Monday of our close. We start tearing things down until a week before we open in May.

Anthony Codispoti (16:27)
Wow. And tell us about the customer experience. mean, you’re saying you cater to the kids of, you know, the the Vanderbilts and the Commodores and the Rockefellers. Is still the case like still super luxury today?

David Jurcak (16:38)
No,

not necessarily, not necessarily to that extreme wealth. What I what I really love about this hotel and I love about historic hotels is because they become generational. know, the gentleman I met, one of the first people I met here in 21 introduced myself. His grandfather actually went to my college, which is a really tiny school in Kansas City, Missouri. But he’s been coming here for 70 years.

70 years he’s been coming here. As a kid, as a 12 year old, came his first time. He’s brought his kids, now his great grandchildren are coming with him, generational, into a point where there is a connection, personal connection, spiritual connection between them, these visitors that come here every year, and the hotel, and our team members. We have team members, we have a team member this year that celebrated his 60th, six zero seasons at this hotel.

We had our gala the other night. We have a 45-year team member. We have a 40-year team member. Now remember, when I say 40-year, I only mean six months at a time. So they go do something else for six months, and they continue to come back year after year after year, taking care of our guests that come back year after year after year. And there’s about 30 % of our guests that come for the first time. Some come because it’s a bucket list, because they saw Somewhere in Time, a movie with Christopher Reeve and

and Jane Seymour or people that find out about Grand Hotel through our marketing efforts or through history lessons or a friend. they make the pilgrimage up to upper peninsula of Michigan and get on a ferry, 18 minute ferry, and they come over and then, know, cars disappear and they jump on the back of it, jump in a horse and carriage. are no cars on this island, none.

Anthony Codispoti (18:29)
What do mean cars disappear? People take the car over on the ferry, right?

David Jurcak (18:36)
122 years, we have been car free on this island. ⁓ The only motorized vehicles on the island are the ⁓ fire engines and ⁓ ambulance. And we have one police vehicle. That only goes out when it absolutely has to, like to transport somebody or something like that. Otherwise, it’s a horse and carriage and everything. Anything and everything that moves 365 days a year moves via horse and carriage.

or a box or an Amazon box or whatever it is, it’s coming out of horse encourage. Pulled by a percher on or it’s another type of draft horse up the hill.

Anthony Codispoti (19:18)
So when I’m on the island, I’m either getting around by my own two feet, horse and carriage, or probably bicycles on the island as well. But no motorized scooters, no Ubers, no cars.

David Jurcak (19:24)
and a bicycle. That’s it.

No, absolutely not. No.

No. We always named two of our horses. So we have three what we call buses, which is a big carriage. We always named two of the horses Uber and Lyft. But ⁓ we chose to use two other names.

Anthony Codispoti (19:44)
⁓ Okay, so when I’m there at the hotel, aside from sort of the the horse and buggy and no cars, do I feel like I’m stepping back in time? Like, what, what am I experiencing? What am I engaging with there?

David Jurcak (19:58)
And 10 out 10 people I asked this question to when they come across the come across on the ferry, they see Grand Hotel, see the island. Kind of that weight kind of continues, you know, that stress or all that kind of goes away. that happens in a lot of places you get off, get out of your Uber at a beautiful resort. Kind of that relaxation hits you right here. It’s a different feeling because all that noise goes away and all that stress goes away. You know, I get to live in an environment that doesn’t have a vehicle for seven months of the year. And I can tell you.

It is an incredible experience to take that speed out of your life. And so when we walk or we’re, know, the horse and carriage is slower than walking in some cases. But that means I have to see you face to face when you’re walking up the sidewalk. That means, uh, guests actually say hello to each other. People say hello to each other. People, you know, getting conversations, people will actually stop and take a photo for a couple or a family that wants another backdrop. And they’ll be glad to do it because everything has slowed down.

There is no, I gotta run out to my car real quick and jump in my car and go five miles across town in order to get lunch and come back before. Those things don’t happen. And so when you take that out of your life, if it’s for two days or seven months, it changes. you.

Anthony Codispoti (21:14)
⁓ Explain what the themes are at Grand Hotel and give us an example.

David Jurcak (21:19)
So we have ⁓ themed weekends. have the Somewhere in Time weekend, which we just had, which was the 35th year that they actually did the fan club. A group comes to the ⁓ Grand Hotel. We do superheroes and princesses weekend, where we have superheroes and princesses. And the kids get to go through Academy. And so they get to learn to be a superhero. They get to dine with the princesses. And they have an incredible experience. And we have wine weekends. We have distillers weekends. We have history weekends.

This weekend is one of our favorite. It’s year four of an event we call Quirk and Fork. Our master sommelier, Elizabeth Schweitzer, is the eighth woman in the world ever to reach the level of master sommelier. And so we wanted to do something special for her. And so 35 years ago, when I was in the business first in the business, I would walk through a kitchen and I would never see a woman, no females in the kitchen. Then eventually there was a female cook and stuff like that. And now we have incredible female chefs.

and business owners that run their own restaurants and standing. So Cork and Fork is a celebration of women in hospitality or women in culinary, excuse me. And so this year, normally we, in the first three years, we brought six chefs in. This year we have seven. So we have seven chefs and Elizabeth, they create an eight course meal paired with wines, all made by or run by women from all over the world. And Elizabeth does that. It’s a weekend celebration of women.

and how they have impacted our industry.

Anthony Codispoti (22:49)
That’s really cool. I know that Grand Hotel really prides itself on the exceptional service that you provide. Can you paint a colorful picture for us by giving a specific example of a time where your staff really wowed some?

David Jurcak (23:06)
So I’ll take that question a little differently. ⁓ We offer our saying personalized customer service. our staff, we have staff from 34 different countries around the world, 25 states across the United States that come here. We recruit worldwide in order to bring people here to work for the six months. The things that wow me in the hospitality industry. So if you were to come to my hotel and another hotel and we offer you great service and

And you thank me and shake my hand. said, your staff did a great job and you go on your way. You know, it’s proud. You’re proud as a general manager of things like that. What changes that or what brings that to not only the next level, which brings it to a total sphere of level. It’s when a family is in the dining room that has had the same server for 30 years that the children are showing me children that are older, 30 year old children are showing me the photo of their server holding them.

as a small child, now holding their kid as a small child. And the thrill that they get that they communicate with that server in the off season, some people will actually, before they even get their key, will go find their room attendant, their server, their bellman, not theirs, but people that have touched their lives and their family’s lives. And they go seek them out to give them a hug. And our team members will say, welcome home. And they have this cherished moment.

And then they go and they experience the rest of their time. But there’s that connection that only comes from incredible service initially, right? That first service that that person gave, that server, that Bellman, that Roomin, that first service is the one that catapulted it to 30 years later of always seeking out that individual to come back to. That service that you don’t get unless you’re at a historic hotel or you’re at some type of building that.

that caters to the people in a different way. You’re not going to find that, you know, the guy from IBM is not walking into, you know, it is Tuesday through Thursday, stay at the same hotel in Chicago, you know, 20 years later, going to look for the bellman that, you know, they checked in 30 years ago, that just doesn’t happen. Here, they become part of the family.

Anthony Codispoti (25:08)
really cool.

Okay, so I want to explore more of the way that you guys staff the hotels, because this is pretty interesting. ⁓ Right? You’re only open several months out of the year, then people, your team, they leave, they find employment somewhere else, they’re doing something, and a lot of them come back. So that’s like one really interesting component. But then I also want you to explain what an H2P, H2B visa is, and how you approach

David Jurcak (25:30)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (25:54)
this staffing and you mentioned that you’ve got people from dozens of countries. Help us understand what’s going on.

David Jurcak (26:00)
So the uniqueness about us is that when you work at Grand Hotel or anywhere in the other properties on Mackinac Island, you have to relocate here. We have some people that commute, but you got to commute on a ferry. It just becomes very cumbersome. So you have to leave like I do. I leave my home. My wife comes up here with me, but we leave our family and friends and everything back in Virginia, and we come here for seven months. So there aren’t a lot of people in the United States that want to give up their entire livelihood to come up here and be a server.

over the summer just so they know that they’re going to be unemployed again in November and go back to their place. Because there’s jobs everywhere across the United States. Why would I move to Mackinac Island when I can just get a job as a server in Nashville? Why don’t I need to move up there? So that’s a difficult way to recruit. But although we recruit domestically, have 25 states across the United States of team members that are here. But H2B and J1. So H2B, I’ll go to H2B first. H2B is a

a temporary visa, work visa, for someone outside the United States as a visiting foreign worker to come to the United States and work for a six month period, seasonal period. Department of Labor, we apply to the Department of Labor. Department of Labor says, yes, you are a seasonal hotel. Yes, there isn’t enough employment in your general area. We’ll give you a visa or the opportunity to get a visa to do that. Once we get those, we go into a lottery. There are 33,000 visas that are issued.

to all industries. We’re talking about carpenters, meat packers, carnivals, outdoor carnivals, landscaping, hospitality, all industries, 33,000 visas. Last year, 160,000 applicants for those 33,000 visas. So that goes into a lottery. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not. If you’re lucky, you get to bring people from outside the country back in. And they can come work, and they work for us for six months.

If you’re unlucky, those people that come into the country can stay for three years into the country, but they have to move jobs every six months. So we can recruit someone on it, which is called Extension that comes back. So we are, from the day we close, two weeks, even now before we close, we are recruiting for next year to get people here. J-1 is another visa, but those are kids that are in college and other parts of the world that are coming here for an internship or a study abroad.

opportunity. And by study abroad, mean, study the inner workings of hotel, and they come here for that. But there more trainees than H2B.

Anthony Codispoti (28:39)
This may be a bizarre question, but has there ever been any thought as you guys are doing all these capital improvements to the hotel to start equipping it so that it could be open in the winter? You guys could stay open year round and maybe not have to deal with so much ⁓ staff turnover.

David Jurcak (29:02)
Could but we’d have to heat a hundred thirty eight year old building We have to winterize it and plumbing all the changes there. I just don’t think the value of it one It’s a 388 room hotel and I don’t know if you get demand to get enough people across over here and do that Infrastructure on the island is limited in the winter as well Most of the restaurants and bars are closed as well because of staffing levels. So

really that the island in the winter is geared around the people that live here. It’s an absolutely wonderful island. I want to take a step back real quick. So we talk about hospitality and people come to the island, the state grand hotel, or maybe another hotel or visit the island for a day. This is the residence of about 550 Mackinac Islanders that live here year round. It’s their home. They have a school here. School children are great.

And they live here and this is where they work. we don’t really open and close the island. The island works, is open all the time because it’s an island of residents. But in the winter, most of those places close. And so there’s really to bring, if you were to come over here in January outside of being ridiculously cold, there isn’t much else to do.

Anthony Codispoti (30:20)
Why do you think so many of your workers, your employees come back every year?

David Jurcak (30:28)
I think it’s the experience. think that, you know, after you’ve been here for a few years, you become, and you know, sometimes it’s people use team or family too loosely. ⁓ I like calling it a team. ⁓ There’s not a lot of family members that leave. a team, you know, there’s kind of can leave or come back. ⁓ I think they love being around the people that they live and work with. So we live and work with everybody for six months. So we have housing, we have 52 buildings that house

our 730 team members in the summer. So you might be in a dormitory, you might be in an old hotel, you might be in a duplex, you might be in an apartment. ⁓ But we feed 730 team members three meals a day. We eat in the same cafeteria together. We play bingo on certain nights. We watch movies on certain nights. Then we put up a movie screen at either one of the dorms or on the golf course. There’s no movie theater on the island. ⁓ But we kind of hang out together. We enjoy each other’s company.

the uniqueness of having people from all over the world, like I mentioned earlier in my conversation, I get to meet people from all over the world. We have a large population of Jamaicans. I get to your chicken on a regular basis. A large population of Filipinos, a large population of Mexicans and Central Americans. And it’s just this ⁓ incredible ⁓ ethnic diverse community that seems to come together.

We don’t complain against each other. You don’t see this bickering or anything like that. We all just kind of get together and everything kind of works for the six months. And so people want to come back to that.

Anthony Codispoti (32:06)
So that was actually going to be my question. I mean, when you’re working together and living together, right? I even if you really like the people that you work with, when you don’t get a break, you know, you’re kind of going back into the same living space together as well. Does that create some friction, some dynamics there that you have to kind of manage?

David Jurcak (32:27)
yeah, I mean, you might not like your roommate or not room, you might not like your roommate. It’s like going to college, right? You might not like your roommate. ⁓ Other reason why we’re probably not 12 months a year is because I don’t know if we could pull it off for 12 months, six months to get a little bit. gets about the end of it in about six months. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (32:44)
And so the living

arrangement is like a college dorm. Like if I’m working there, I’ve got a roommate. Is there an en suite bathroom or is there like a shared bathroom for the floor? How does that work?

David Jurcak (32:55)
It all depends on what building you live in. A lot of them have, you know, the two people live on this side, bathroom in the middle, two people on that side, like a dorm room. We have a few handful of shared bath facilities ⁓ from old hotels that we have purchased in the past. ⁓ Just kind of a lot of different spaces that we put people

Anthony Codispoti (33:18)
So here’s a part we haven’t explored yet that I’ve never run a hotel, ⁓ but I have to imagine it’s a fair bit of work to shut it down, right? You’re winterizing it, prepping it, closing things down, locking things up, whatever it is you have to do. And then several months later, you’re kind of undoing all of that and reopening it again. Talk to me about how both of those processes were.

David Jurcak (33:46)
So it takes about a month to open. It takes about six days to close. I asked, we bought this hotel in the end of 2019 from a family that owned it since 1933. And I jokingly asked the, who is our chairman emeritus, who’s the gentleman that sold it to us. I said, Dan, it’s amazing how quickly they close. And he says, it’s amazing what you can get done when you’re motivated. So.

Everybody’s ready to go to their winter job or go back home. But we start cleaning. We’re already cleaning a lot of different areas. We’re dwindling down our food supplies. One of my favorite night of season, not because it’s the last night of season, because that’s not my favorite night. My favorite night is first day of the season. But one of the favorite nights, our main dining room seats about 800 people. We feed people breakfast, lunch, and dinner in there. The only dinner buffet we do

is the Sunday after we close. We close the last Saturday. We stay open for one more day. Historically, this is what the hotel has done, is they burn off and cook everything that’s every perishable item left. And it goes into a buffet that night in the dining room. So my first year I went up there and I grabbed a couple cool things, ⁓ different food. And I sat back down. My wife and I are enjoying it. I said, I’m gonna go back and get some more of that. And I went back and it was gone. I said, where’s that? And the chef’s like, well, it’s gone.

We already cooked all that. This is the new, this is the pork. You’re have to eat this until that’s out. And so it’s just a fun experience. We all sit together. ⁓ There’s a lot of people. It’s the only night that we are not in formal attire, ⁓ not by formal. We have a dress code after 6.30 in the hotel. ⁓ Gentlemen? Yes. No, everybody. Gentlemen are required to wear a coat and tie to be in the, what we call the parlor in our dining.

Anthony Codispoti (35:33)
Is it ⁓

David Jurcak (35:42)
So if you’re going to go dine, you have to be in an evening attire ⁓ every night, every day of the season at 6.30, with exception of that last Sunday. You can dine in the dining room in jeans and a t-shirt.

Anthony Codispoti (35:58)
⁓ So that’s interesting. Are there other parts of the experience that are maybe a little more buttoned up or formal?

David Jurcak (36:05)
So we are historic and iconic. So we live a lot of our lives in the history and traditions that this hotel has had. So from 1887, the first dinners that were served in the hotel, again, to very wealthy young people, they were already dressed. We would find that women would change six to eight times a day back then, more so because they were in big wool clothing sitting outside in the middle of summer.

They always were dressed and they are always, you know, they’re proper. They are showing off. Well, that continued to go through and even into the 40s and 50s when gentlemen would wear a tie to a baseball game. You look at those old pictures, right? So we never really had to talk about dress code until probably the late 50s, early 60s, mid 60s, where everybody started to get a little more casual leisure suits, you know, losing the tie, wearing the turtleneck, that kind of thing. But this hotel said, no, we were going to live in the traditions we lived in all of our

since we’ve come up. we started creating this dress code. And even more so now than ever before, and I think it’s going to continue to move in that direction too, is that we don’t dress to go to work anymore. We don’t dress to go to church anymore. We don’t dress to go anything anymore. And in some cases, it’s really casual and dumbed down the way people dress to go do things. And so here, we just want to take a step back. Not only it’s not.

that say that we’re gonna be historic and so we’re gonna make you wear a coat and tie. He says that that’s who we are. That’s who we’ve been since 1887. There’s no reason to change what we do. We run 94 % accuracy. There’s people that come to our property and love dressing up and dressing their kids up. They probably get their only photo of the year that the kids are dressed up and they’re out on the front porch and they’re having a great time. And so what ends up happening, you’ll have a two hour, hour 40, two hour dinner. It’s a five course meal served every night.

You come back out, you relax in the parlor again, you have a cup of coffee, you listen to the harpist. And then at 9.30, you go into the terrace room, as we’ve been doing since 1894, and you go dancing. You dance to the Grand Hotel Orchestra until about 11 o’clock, and then you retire for the evening. That is what we have been doing since the late 1890s. Yeah, not like the Philharmonic.

Anthony Codispoti (38:25)
It’s an orchestra. That’s that’s who I’m dancing to or

David Jurcak (38:32)
But it’s a Grand Hotel Orchestra. So it’s a six-piece band. got a little horn section. got a stand-up bass player. got a singer. It’s probably a more polished. ⁓ I hate to say this, but you’ll get it. It’s more polished than, let’s say, a wedding band. ⁓ We’re not playing all the wedding tunes. But there’s people that are out there dancing, ballroom dancing type dancing. There’s kids out there dancing with their grandma or grandpa for the first time.

⁓ It’s absolute magic ⁓ what we see. And so again, we have been doing that and people have been loving it for 139 seasons.

Anthony Codispoti (39:12)
I’m glad we kind of went down that little road. didn’t, uh, until you started explaining that really appreciate or understand, um, the, element of that tradition that takes place there that you guys are still tied into from the 18 eighties. Is there anything else we haven’t touched on that would kind of fit into that? We do things the old fashioned way kind of theme.

David Jurcak (39:35)
Well…

So the porch, this is one of the things. Well, let’s talk about music. the orchestra is a big deal. But we have more live music and more musicians than any other resort in the Great Lakes. And that was a tradition that was in 1894 by Mr. Rutherford Hayes, who was the second proprietor of the hotel. So the hotel originally was never owned by the proprietor. Oliver Plank was the first person to kind of lease the property from the owner so that he can run it.

He lasted about three years and then J. Rutherford Hayes came in. He said, I’ve got to change this space to create something that’s exciting and culturally different for those people that are looking for culturally different, the rich children of the wealthy coming up here. And so he said, I’m going go out and hire the greatest musicians in the Great Lakes. And so he stole for the summer, not stole, went out and hired some of the greatest musicians out of orchestras.

in the Great Lakes, go to Cleveland and hire somebody on their orchestra. Chicago, Milwaukee, and they brought them all up here. And so back then he said, I want to have more live musicians than any hit resort in the Great Lakes. And we still do that today. So you’ll hear from a harpist to a pianist to ⁓ jazz musicians to the band that plays at music dinner every night, the harpist that plays at tea every afternoon.

The only place that I have ever been probably will never ever be during our July 4th carnival where we have bounce houses and face painting and kids running around with cotton candy. There’s a jazz trio playing off to the side. It’s again, you have to see it to believe it. It’s absolute magic that occurs here.

Anthony Codispoti (41:24)
It

sounds like a fun mix of new and old, right? The bounce houses and the old orchestra. ⁓ And speaking of old, ⁓ our nation has a birthday coming up next year. Talk to me about the importance of that and why you’re so excited at the Grand Hotel.

David Jurcak (41:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there are spots to be when you travel, if you’re a historian or a lover of our nation and you want to celebrate the 250th. I was around in 1976 when we did the, was a young kid, the bicentennial was great. There’s big parties, people went everywhere. I think more people are going to travel this summer than maybe any summer since the bicentennial. I think people are going to search out history and

one search on history and find that. But I think people want to come to Mackerel Island or will want to come to Mackerel Island for the escape of what happens everywhere else. I love our country. I love everything about it. And we’re going through some tough times right now and that everybody sees I die. So where can I go and where can I escape that gives me another somewhere else to kind of feel ⁓ with my family about America and all that. And I’m going tell you there is not another spot. And I’ve traveled a lot in this country.

There is not another spot that is more conducive to that than Mecklen Island and Grand Hotel. We’re going to celebrate the 250th. We’re going have bunting on the building. If you’ve seen our building, it’s 660 feet long. It’s white, you know, with the red, white and blue on it. We fly the American flag. have 10 huge American flags off the front of it. One on top. We have flags on all of our buildings. ⁓ But it’s going be special to be here in the 250th. Our culmination and a pinnacle of our season is always the July 4th weekend.

It’s an old fashioned July 4th weekend where again, bounce houses, jazz bands, at the pool, ⁓ sitting on the front porch, majestic front porch, watching beautiful fireworks being shot off on a barge in the middle of ⁓ Lake Huron. It’s unlike nothing else. And then just listening to the horses walk down the street. All the things that are special around this island are going to really

kind of bloom in the 250th.

Anthony Codispoti (43:42)
How far in advance do you accept reservations?

David Jurcak (43:47)
We are now open for the first time ever. We have our entire next season open. So you can book reservations all the way through ⁓ closing of next year for the first time.

Anthony Codispoti (43:59)
And how was it done before?

David Jurcak (44:00)
⁓ Normally we’d open up in the fall for the following season ⁓ and open all of our dates up at that point.

Anthony Codispoti (44:07)
And so people can do that just by going to grandhotel.com.

David Jurcak (44:11)
Grandhotel.com, there’s two real reasons to come to the Grand Hotel. One, you pick your date. My family always vacations the third week of June, second week of August, whatever that might be. You can go on any date. The other one is what experience might I want to participate in. Do we want to go to a wine weekend? Do we want to go to a superheroes weekend? Do we want to go to a history weekend? Do we want to go to whatever that weekend might be? And then there’s an experience attached to that. There’s package elements that go along with it. It might be a reception on Front Porch.

might be different history tours or other things you can do. So there’s two real reasons to come to the hotel. But you got to come. It’s not an if. It’s just a when. When can I make that trip to Mackinac Island?

Anthony Codispoti (44:49)
Either way, you gotta be here.

So we’ve talked a lot about how you guys spend a lot of time in the off season ⁓ getting the property ⁓ back up to code, back up to speed, all the sort of upkeep that’s involved. Are there any projects that take place in which you are expanding or adding new structures or functions or features that kind of add to what’s already there?

David Jurcak (45:24)
There is, and so we’ll go back to, you we only can do work five months of the season. And so we are, as America is celebrating their 100th, or excuse me, 250th, we are gonna start celebrating next year our 140th season. Our owner has made a commitment to us to fund all of the improvements, which would be renovations and restorations of the entire building and all of our structures, everything that we own, by the time we hit our 150th, so in the next 10 years.

And some people say, wow, it’s 10 years. Anybody could do that. Well, we only have 50 months to do it. So five months at a time. And so think about re-engaging a general contractor to come in every year at the end of October, work five months, and then they go away and then they come back. That’s hard enough. ⁓ But we have big, property. We are going to start going into renovating our guest rooms. We renovated our parlor, our main dining room, one of our bars, another bar a year ago.

We renovated all of our exterior restaurants. We’ve restored and rebuilt our pool. We’re doing a five-year restoration of the facade. We have spent over the last four and half years $100 million in restoration and renovation projects since we’ve bought the property. Our owner is dedicated and committed to maintaining this iconic hotel for generations to come and understands that

Some of these properties are money pits. There’s a reason why most of them are gone. It’s because they didn’t have the money or the wherewithal for the upkeep. And our owner’s committed to saying, you know what? We have a long-term opportunity here. We have a long-term hold. have a long-term value on this property. We need to commit to the money now. ⁓ And we have a big anniversary coming up, 150 years, in 10 years. And so we’re going get all of it done.

Anthony Codispoti (47:16)
So obviously there’s a lot of focus on doing the rehab, the renovations of the guest rooms and different parts of the property. Is there ever any thought about adding on to more guest rooms or?

David Jurcak (47:28)
So

now that the hotel has been added onto over the years, the last ⁓ two large renovations were what’s called the Millennium Wing. It was built in 2000. And then the cupola suites, the of the suites that are on the top of the hotel, were built ⁓ in 13, 14, 15. ⁓ So the building and the foundation and the structure of the building can’t withhold any additional height ⁓ than what we have. ⁓ There is no more land to go out or left or right.

⁓ We love what we have right now. ⁓ have thousands of people that love what we have right now. Grand Hotel is a jewel of Michigan and we don’t want to take that away. We don’t want to feel this obligation of adding another 100 rooms. We love what we’ve got right now. We just need to go inside and fix the things that need to be fixed.

Anthony Codispoti (48:19)
Let’s take a little bit of a left turn here, David, and I would like to explore a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether it’s personal or professional. How’d you get through it? What’d you learn?

David Jurcak (48:33)
Well, I’ll give you two, one we all went through. COVID was devastating for our industry. A lot of hotels get shut down. There was a lot of displaced people. A lot of people left our industry that probably will never come back. Struggle. In my job, I never stopped traveling. was actually, that was probably the good thing about COVID. I kind of flew private, not American. I was like the only person on these flights. And that was tough. And that was tough on the industry. It made us all better for what we’re doing today.

But so I’ll go back to 35 years ago when I got into the business and this idea that you’ve got to move up, you’ve got to excel, and you’ve got to exceed. So I became a general manager eight years to the day that I was hired on in my first job as a front desk agent. Which people said, well, that’s pretty amazing. You did that in a rather expeditious fashion.

And I would say it, and I love my children to death and I’m glad they still love me. But that was it. mean, there’s people when you work in the industry that we work in and work the hours that we work, we work every Christmas, we work every Thanksgiving, we work every Mother’s Day, we work every Easter. We were always at work. When the kids have a soccer game, we’ve got a banquet going on that we have to be there or they’re doing a recital and dad can’t make it because something’s going on.

And I hate to say this, but dad had a choice and I did. you know, ⁓ but as I said earlier, good and bad, there was every six months where you go find another job or find another career path and move up. ⁓ There was collateral damage along the way. You know, would I have done it differently? Probably. ⁓ I don’t think I’d be where I am today if I didn’t, but maybe I would be. I don’t know. But my children love me. They’re special kids. ⁓ have a 26 year old and a 21 year old.

They still miss dad. They come and visit me. I visit them in the off season. And it’s great, but I missed a lot of part of their lives. So when you have young people that are coming up today, you just got to think about that. What do you want to look back when you’re 58 years old? I just turned 58 the other day. What do you want when you turn back and look back? What relationships do you want to have that you’ve either broken or lost or walked away from over those 35 years?

Anthony Codispoti (50:57)
Why do you think you were so fortunate to keep or maybe later on develop really close relationships with your kids given that you had to miss so many of those things?

David Jurcak (51:10)
I think they always knew I loved them. I always knew I was committed to them and that in my mind, what I was doing was better for them, that I was going to provide better for them or I was giving them what they wanted to get. And that was weird because that’s not how I grew up. I didn’t grow up poor or needing something from my dad or my mom. So that was weird. So it wasn’t like this idea that I came from a commerce background, so I’m going to work really hard so my kids don’t live a different life than I lived.

⁓ My kids lived a better life than I lived, but absent their father in a lot of cases. ⁓ But I think along the way, you know, they always knew I loved them. They always knew that if I could be there, I would be there. And it was a special occasion when it was.

Anthony Codispoti (51:56)
What advice would you have for others who are looking to advance slash excel in the hospitality field?

David Jurcak (52:07)
one, I think you have to understand what everybody does. And I think that early on in my career, I got to do a lot of jobs and move up quickly, but I did a lot of jobs. So I told you said earlier that I stacked knowledge on top of the other knowledge that I had. So I can walk around in this hotel. And even when I became a general manager, I would like when I came a general manager of my first resort, I went and worked in the golf department and mowed greens, ⁓ know, ⁓ raked bunkers for a week.

I said, I just want to know what you guys do. I don’t, can’t sit there and tell you this is what you need to do unless I know what you do. And that’s probably maybe how I’m wired. ⁓ I’ve never been a massage therapist, so that’s probably a good idea. ⁓ but I’ve virtually done every other job that’s in this hotel, ⁓ that, know, at some point I, there’s, there’s no way they could sit there and say, you don’t know what I do now. I don’t know what you do here necessarily, cause I don’t do your job every day here.

But I have a pretty good indication of what you do. And so I can relate to them. when they have an issue, I can understand why they have an issue. And I think that’s what some people think that they can skip. ⁓ But everybody will understand ⁓ or call you out as a quote unquote fraud at some point in your career because you think ⁓ you know, but you don’t.

Anthony Codispoti (53:33)
What’s your superpower David?

David Jurcak (53:37)
I am very competitive and I love to win. And there’s things where people ask me all the time, they’re like, what motivational, do you read motivational books? And I don’t read motivational books. I run, my wife and I have run marathons. So when we train, we listen to books and I don’t normally listen to those things. What I do listen to are coaches. So like a Nick Saban or

Coach Wooden, he coached UCLA basketball years ago and how they motivate people and the people on their teams to do things that are beyond their skill ⁓ and challenge them to do that and motivate them through difficulties, whether it be a losing streak or a winning streak and keep that motivation alive. Those are the things that benefit that I believe benefit me today is because you’ve got to motivate people in this short season. We don’t have.

We don’t have a month to turn it around. don’t have two months to put a plan together. We’re open 176 days every year. so, like right now it’s raining. So some of our outdoor restaurants are not, we’re losing money. No one’s sitting outside restaurants. We lose that. So if it rains three days in our summer, three days in July, we’ve got to figure out a way to make that up. And so what do we do to motivate people? How do people get motivated?

I have to understand what motivates you. It’s not me rah rah. It might be doing census. It might be through recognition. It might be through advancement. It might be a bunch of other things, but you’ve got to figure out one, how to motivate people in order to do work that’s beyond their limits. And two, really hold people accountable to make sure they do that. That everybody has a responsibility to everybody else. That, you know, you’re the right guard. I’m the left tackle. We all both have the same responsibility, but not the same responsibility. We both have our responsibility.

of making that play run. So I listened to a lot of coaches. was a college athlete, high school little athletes and coaches were very influential in my life. And so I ⁓ continue that. ⁓ I played football in college, ran track in college, and then ⁓ most sports growing up. Anything and everything. Got on a bike and went to play. That my dad, yeah. So you know the…

Anthony Codispoti (55:44)
What sport did you play?

Is that where the competitive spirit came from?

David Jurcak (56:00)
The idea that it’s not that you have to win. It was early in my career, early in my life. There wasn’t an option. So you had to win. Today, winning is different. There’s a difference in winning of what today is.

Anthony Codispoti (56:13)
What the?

What does that look like? What does winning mean today?

David Jurcak (56:21)
⁓

That’s a great day. And you can feel it in a hotel and you can feel it. Like there’s days that I know that we changed people’s lives, ⁓ impacted their lives. I can walk down the front porch and talk to people and see our staff interact with people. And I can know that today we did it right. We were successful today. And it’s beyond P &L. Obviously, I can see how much money we made today. ⁓ And we made good money today.

And some of our team members are making good tips today. That would lead me to believe we’re offering good service. But it’s just that the enthusiasm or the face that people have or the excitement they have to be at Grand Hotel. And you walk around, you’re like, that’s a win. Today’s a win.

Anthony Codispoti (57:13)
You mentioned an interesting scenario. know, hey, if it rains three days in a row, our outdoor restaurants, they’re losing out on money. We need to figure out how to make up for that. In that specific example, what might be some of your options?

David Jurcak (57:27)
So two years ago, we put together a program called Rainy Day Program. So I run resorts quite a bit. So have you ever been at a resort where it rained? Yeah. And what do do?

Anthony Codispoti (57:37)
Sit in the hotel room.

David Jurcak (57:39)
Yeah, because the hotel hasn’t provided you opportunity to escape from the hotel room. So we put a whole nother programming plan in place. So when it rains, if it’s raining on a Tuesday, there’s a Bloody Mary and Mimosa bar in our lobby. Because if I come down and I’m going to breakfast and someone’s going to say, do you want a big, I mean, they’re big too. They’re like, mean, they’re huge. They’re like, why wouldn’t I want one? Of course I would. We do bingo. do trivia. do things for the kids.

Because we don’t want you to go to your room. We don’t want you to turn that TV on. And I wish that we didn’t have TVs in the rooms. What I like about this hotel, and I saw it at the homestead too, is you just don’t see a lot of people on their phones. You don’t see a lot of kids on their phones. And it’s not because there’s a lot of stuff to do. There’s people that are just sitting on the front porch, and the phones aren’t there because they’re just talking to each other. And they’re looking at what’s going on around them.

They’re exploring and reading pictures up on the wall of different history that we have all throughout the hotel. They’re going to a history lesson with our historian. And you see eight, 10, 12, 15 year old kids in a history lecture. I come on. And he’s great. He’s funny and he’s awesome. And you learn a lot of stuff. But they’re ready to go. mean, they just kind of fall into this overall experience.

Anthony Codispoti (59:01)
So if people, you you’ve got cell phone access, right? People can still have their phones and do all the mindless scrolling. You’ve got TVs in the room. Like those things are still accessible to people. They haven’t been taken away. Why do you think people are less attached to them when they’re there at Grand Hotel?

David Jurcak (59:20)
⁓

Because I think it’s the surroundings and the surrounding is part of the experience. If you’ve ever seen Somewhere in Time, you should watch it. It’s a great movie. It was filmed here. And one of the things that the owner at the time said, if you’re going to film here in the middle of our season, I want the hotel to play a role. And the hotel is actually kind of a character in the movie. And so you are now in a living, breathing, historical landmark of walking around and we have

We have pictures with old ⁓ presidents that have visited here, celebrities that have visited here, just people that were hanging out on the porch in 1901 listening to an orchestra playing or a band playing. So here there’s more around you than just furniture. There’s history around you. There’s a harpist playing in the distance.

piano player that’s playing there, you’re having tea, and there’s something that flows every minute, pretty much every minute of the day, that we have some other either programming, a tradition, a ritual, something is happening throughout your course of your day, because we want, number one, we want you to be busy. We want you to be able to say when you leave, man, I did so much at Grand Hotel, or man, I sat on that porch all day long, rocking in that rocking chair, the most peaceful experience I ever had.

I had a couple cocktails, had a great lunch, but I could have done so, I could have done all those other things, but I chose not to because I just want to have a little alone time, know, with my wife or my husband or kids. You have all those opportunities to do that.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:06)
Favorite podcast or book?

David Jurcak (1:01:11)
I would say so that so I became I told you I became a general manager eight years to the day that I started as a front desk agent. June 8, 1990, I started in June 8, 1998. I became a general manager in St. Louis and in the airport going to St. Louis from Houston to St. Louis. There was a book called Worst to First and it was by Gordon Bethune who

⁓ Reimagined Continental Airlines back then. It had gone through bankruptcy seven times. My father was in the airline industry, worked 30 years at Japan Airlines in the airline industry. And it just, for some reason, just caught my eye. And so I took that book and I read it as my probably since college. ⁓ The first book I read cover to cover and I just dug into it. then I put a roadmap together for my first hotel from

that the ideas and strategies of that book, which kind of led me through my first three hotels is what the roadmap would be. The one core principle that Gordon Bethune had that Davidson has as a a core value is greatness requires risk. He said your decisions must must or probably will. If you’re going to be great or if you’re going to make changes, you have to take some risk. You have to be you have to be confident in the decisions you’re going to make. You can’t bring this airline out from.

bankruptcy for the seventh time, just doing the same thing. And so to a kid that probably, not probably, definitely shouldn’t have been in that role, I needed to figure out that I was going to be confident. I wanted to win in everything I did. That book said, go out there and be strong and be confident in the decisions that you make. And that propelled me. And that was my first job, first GM job. other than the vice president job I held for short period of time, I’ve been at GM since 1998.

From a 91 room hotel, that was a 91 room hotel. I’ve been 1,100 room hotel, resorts, virtually all the different protocols in full service.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:14)
I just got one more question for you David, but before I ask it I want to do a few housekeeping items here ⁓ Anybody that wants to get in touch with David directly? He’s been so kind as to provide his email address D jursec D. you are C a K at Grand Hotel comm and obviously their website to learn more see the pictures see some videos It’s amazing. It does feel like a step back in time Grand Hotel comm also where you can make

⁓ reservations now immediately starting, you know, for next year. Also as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to addbackbenefits.com. And finally, if you take just a moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. So last question, David, you and I reconnect.

one year from today and you’re super excited you are celebrating something big. What’s that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from

David Jurcak (1:04:17)
⁓

I would say simply roughly 220,000 people walked in and out our front door and had an experience ⁓ during the independence celebration of our nation like no other.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:38)
I love it. We’ll check back in to see how that went. I want some pictures and videos. David Jurczak from Grand Hotel, want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.

David Jurcak (1:04:49)
Thank you. Thank you.