The Power of Niche Expertise: David Sangree’s Hotel and Waterpark Appraisal Success

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 Cotaspodi and today’s guest is David Sangry, president and owner of Hotel and Leisure Advisors, founded in 2005 and headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. This hospitality consulting firm specializes in appraisals, feasibility studies,

and impact analysis for hotels, resorts, and water parks. They emphasize personalized attention from experienced professionals and have conducted over 4,000 studies across North America and internationally. David has been a hospitality consultant since 1987, holding the MAI designation from the Appraisal Institute and is a certified public accountant. Before starting hotel and leisure advisors,

He served as Director of Hospitality Consulting at US Realty Consultants and volunteered with the US Peace Corps in Malawi. His expertise in water parks and hotels has led to significant recognition, including induction into the World Water Park Association Hall of Fame in 2022. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits

that are both great for your team of workers and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your hotel employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money into your employees’ pockets. And the companies, too. 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 Hotel and Leisure Advisors, David Sangry. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

David Sangree (02:10)
Thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:12)
So David, you’ve been in the hospitality industry for a long time. What first drew you in?

David Sangree (02:20)
You know, when I was growing up, my mother particularly loved to travel. And each year, on our February vacation, we would get to go to someplace that was a bit unusual. We went to Venezuela one year, to Puerto Rico, to… At that time, it just wasn’t quite as common. So I love to just follow along with these trips and help plan where we would travel to and visit.

When I got into high school, I had my first jobs working at different restaurants, at the Donut Man in Holliston, Massachusetts, at the Craigville Beach snack bar in Cape Cod. And so when it came time to apply to college, my parents said, well, maybe you should think of Cornell. They have this hotel school. And we went to visit Cornell, and I just, my eyes were open wide, and I thought, this is so interesting.

that I could go to college and study this type of material. And I was lucky to get in because Cornell is a very hard school to get in. And the rest is kind of history. Unlike many people who kind of switch careers a lot, I’ve stayed with this, my hospitality focus my entire time since then, just because it’s really such a fascinating industry.

Anthony Codispoti (03:41)
What is it about it that appeals so much to you?

David Sangree (03:45)
Well, because I’m just an explorer by nature and I’m also an analyst by nature, so I’ve always been interested in what things are there to see there, why do people go there, and what things would I enjoy seeing. I’m kind of a history buff and I’ve always enjoyed visiting different places and experiencing and seeing what the history is there, but also enjoy different…

physical things like swimming and biking and going to the beach and different things that many tourists enjoy doing. So it’s just always been something that has been a favorite activity of mine. So it’s been a joy to be able to combine my work life with my personal interest to do them both at the same time.

Anthony Codispoti (04:32)
That’s fun when they meld together like that, isn’t it? So early in your career, you held some different leadership positions at US Realty Consultants and you were working on appraisals and studies for hotels and resorts. Can you think of a particularly memorable project there that really influenced your leadership approach today?

David Sangree (04:35)
Yes.

Yes, so ⁓ I started when I graduated from college, I worked for Weston Hotels and then I worked for PKF, which is a national hospitality consulting firm. And then I was with US Realty Consultants for much longer. And my favorite assignment from US Realty Consultants was I was working, ⁓ I had been doing a lot of hotel studies and

bit of studies on other types of commercial real estate. But a client called me and said they were thinking of developing an indoor water park resort in Sandusky, Ohio. And I had never heard of an indoor water park resort and they at that time there were just a couple of them in the Wisconsin Dalles. But I was certainly up to the challenge and said yes I would like to do the study. So they

we got hired to do the study and as part of it my little boy at that time was two years old and this was in 1999. so we, the three of us, 1998, the three of us flew up to Wisconsin and we stayed at what was then called the Great Bear Lodge, which is now the Great Wolf Lodge. And this was just an incredibly themed unique resort property that has this large indoor water park with

this Northwoods, Wisconsin theming. And I thought, wow, this is really interesting. And it was, you could just see the joy in the children and my own son who was really too little at that time to go do any of the rides, but he still enjoyed the water and the play. They had a little area for the toddlers. So when I came and did the field work for that assignment that involved interviewing all the hotels in Sandusky.

and to ask, we like to try to gather data from the different hotels as to what is their performance levels and what’s their opinion of this new hotel project. And everybody that I met told me this would never work because Sandusky was a place that people only came when Cedar Point was open. And when Cedar Point, which is one of the world’s best amusement parks, when Cedar Point’s closed, no one has any reason to come to Sandusky. So, ⁓

I did my research and made a number of comparisons with the Wisconsin Dells and realized that yes, this could really work here. So our study came in favorable for the project and the client decided to build the project. And the first years of that opening were incredibly successful.

And it’s just, it’s really a pleasure for me to be able to do a study and find out that you’re not only accurate, but you are better more than accurate, you know, that your results have been true. But then after that, of course, the Kalahari opened up and Castaway Bay opened up and Sandusky has now become much more of a year-round tourist destination. And all because of the study that we started doing, you know,

Obviously somebody else couldn’t do it too, but our study helped get that process started. So that has been a big effect on my career.

Anthony Codispoti (08:09)
So why would those hotels want to share their data with you?

David Sangree (08:14)
Well, every hotel that’s built usually has some sort of a study done. most people in the hotel industry are aware of this and they don’t share all of their data, but what we’re asking about is their hotel occupancy and ADR. And this is information that they do share typically with STR, which is a national service that gets data from all of the big brands and puts together these reports.

that give the average occupancy in ADR for the different lodging markets all over the country. So what we’re asking is individual performance figures, which some people don’t want to share, but others are willing to give you a range and some are willing to give you the actual numbers. But at the same time, we’d like to just get their opinions on different projects we’re studying.

Anthony Codispoti (09:03)
What is the individual project information that some people share? What’s the difference between that and the average daily rate? Like they’re telling you like everybody, like one, not obviously their names, but this person paid $120 a night, this person paid 150.

David Sangree (09:11)
for us.

No, they’re telling us what is their annual occupancy for the past three years. That’s what we’re trying to get. So, you know, a hotel typically averages around 65 % occupancy. but every hotel is different. So we’re trying to find out for that, your, for this individual hotel, what is the annual occupancy that that hotel achieved over the past three years? And then we have a model that we’ve set up where we put in all of these numbers and it…

it helps us in coming up with what kind of rational projections can we make for a new project in

Anthony Codispoti (09:55)
And what was the data specifically that you saw in that study that said, ⁓ think Sandesky, Ohio is a great place for an indoor water park.

David Sangree (10:04)
Well, Sandusky, Ohio was very much like Wisconsin Dells in that during the summer, the occupancy levels were very high. They were running over 80 % and in some weeks over 90%. Well, in the wintertime, they were running in the 20 to 40 % occupancy. In Wisconsin Dells, this was very similar. Prior to the opening of the water park resorts or the non-water park resorts were running in this exact pattern.

in the summer they were doing very well because Wisconsin Dells has a lot of exciting things to do in the summer while in the winter there was nobody coming. ⁓ So there is this very, and both markets have major cities that they’re attracting demand from, Chicago going to the Dells and Milwaukee and Madison while Sandusky was Cleveland, Detroit and Columbus.

So there was just many similarities that we were able to identify between the two markets that gave us ⁓ credence to come up with our projection.

Anthony Codispoti (11:08)
And so when that first water park was open in Sandusky, were some people using the water park, but staying at one of the other hotels?

David Sangree (11:18)
No, their policy in the first five to ten years was you had to stay there to use the water park. And that was actually a very good policy because when you stay at the resort and use the water park you have a better feeling of the amenities versus going out to your car and changing and going to someplace else. Now many of these have changed their policy. They do allow day passes but at that time they were not allowed.

Anthony Codispoti (11:45)
Okay. All right. So now at some point in your career, you took two years to serve in the Peace Corps ⁓ in Malawi. What was behind that decision? Seems like a bit of a left turn.

David Sangree (11:59)
Yes, so I moved to Chicago after graduation and worked at the Weston Hotel and I had met my wife there and we were married and then I had, we were married for three years and during the, before we met, I mean when we first met and when we were married I had told her that, you I would just love to join the Peace Corps.

and this is something that I had always had as a dream to go live in another country and see what life was like there. And she luckily was on board before we were married, so it wasn’t a total shock to her. But we applied a year or two after we got married and then went after we had been in Chicago for five years. And they sent us to Malawi, which is a country in southern Africa that I had was not.

not been aware of, but it was just a wonderful place. It’s a very poor country, but the people there are just the, they call themselves the warm heart of Africa, and it’s truly the people there were the nicest and friendliest people despite the economic challenges that they face. And I got to, my position was working with their national credit union system, setting up ⁓ credit unions and training bookkeepers. So I’m a…

As you mentioned, I’m a CPA as well as the MAI. so I traveled around the southern part of the country. had a motorcycle. I’d go visit different credit unions, give little speeches about why they should be saving their money and how to take out a loan rationally and ⁓ do audits of the books of different people. And it was just a fascinating time to get to see an entirely, totally different culture than…

America and also see that this is really influenced by whole life since then just because one knows that when we try to focus our charitable giving on projects in Malawi because we know that there’s such a need there.

Anthony Codispoti (14:08)
Say more about what you continue to do today with Malawi and your charitable contributions.

David Sangree (14:13)
Yes, so I’m currently on the board of the University of Livingstonia, which is a university in Malawi that is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and it is ⁓ working to try to educate more people there to go to college. Very few people in Malawi get to go to college. It’s a much, much smaller portion of people than in America. And so our goal with this foundation is to raise money

to help people go to school and the average scholarship is about, it costs about $2,000 a year to go to the college so the costs there are much lower just because the whole economic system there is so much more challenged. So we are raising funds for not only scholarships for students because there is such a challenge to pay to go to school but also to try to improve the infrastructure of the university and

they are building a whole new campus. They’re renaming a campus in the capital city of Lilongwe that we’ve been helping them fund. But obviously it needs a lot more funds. So that has been a diversion for me to continue to be part of my Malawi experience, but really helping ⁓ this university grow.

Anthony Codispoti (15:34)
If some of our listeners are interested in learning more about this, participating or contributing, where could they go?

David Sangree (15:41)
They can go to the website under the University of Livingstonia Foundation and there’s a great website we have that describes the college and there’s a place to donate there and there’s a way to reach out as well. So, appreciate the mention.

Anthony Codispoti (15:57)
How did the experience that you had in Malawi influence your perspective on hospitality?

David Sangree (16:06)
Yeah, well, this it really has the, you working in Malawi and work what I do today are not really at all the same. But the experience of traveling the globe and getting to see the hotels and resorts that are in Malawi itself, but then on the way home from Malawi, we spend a couple months going around the world, getting to visit multiple countries.

and seeing different hotels and resorts and different places. At that time, of course, we were on a strict, pretty much of a strict budget. So we could only go in the lobby of the fancier hotels to see what they would look like. But we didn’t get to stay there. ⁓ still, it really was an eye opener for me to get to see this fancy Sheraton in India and the cool hotels in Nairobi.

just being in the Peace Corps, I was able to experience people from just all different classes of life and that has been with me the rest of my life. When you grow up in America in a certain environment, you have a certain outlook on life and when you go to live in a place like Malawi, your outlook dramatically expands and that I think has helped me a lot with my career in total.

Anthony Codispoti (17:29)
bigger worldview, right? Yeah. So how ultimately did the idea to start your own consulting firm come about,

David Sangree (17:31)
Yes.

Well, I had been at US Realty, I had joined US Realty Consultants in 1992 and was with them until 2005, so quite a long time. But I had decided that I was pretty much getting all my own business and that clients were calling me for studies related to the hospitality industry. And I really wanted a firm that had the word hotel in it instead of just…

commercial real estate appraisal firm. So ⁓ I decided to leave them in 2005 and start my own firm and my wife joined me in helping me set this up. And we called it Hotel and Leisure Advisors, which was exactly what I wanted to be advising on, those areas. And ⁓ luckily then from pretty much day one, people started calling me.

and saying, know, hey, can you help me with this project or that project? And it has been, it’s 20 years later, I’m still doing the same thing and people are still calling. So that has been a…

Anthony Codispoti (18:51)
When you say from day one, people were calling, how is that possible? Is it just because of the relationships that you’d had with your former employers? People knew you, then they heard that you went out on your own? Or did you have some kind of marketing effort so that the first day you open your doors, people are seeing your ads somewhere?

David Sangree (19:02)
Yeah.

No, it was very much a personal relationship. the, because I had, as of 2005, I was, had been a speaker, I had been pretty well known in the water park segment. So there is an annual conference that has been put out by the World Water Park Association that I had been speaking at for a few years previous to this decision. And had been

gotten to know a lot of the players in the water park resort segment as well as the general hotel segment. when I went on my own, did like a number of press releases had gone out about the new company and then people started reaching out to me saying, hey, we’d like you to do a study for this project or that project. So they were the personal relationship.

Anthony Codispoti (20:04)
Okay, so help us better understand the extent of the services that you offer. People are hiring you to do studies like we’ve heard about the water park. Hey, we’re thinking about opening up a new facility here. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? What else are you guys providing?

David Sangree (20:21)
Yes, so I’m an MAI appraiser. So banks are required to have an appraisal done on all of their real estate holdings every so often, every year or a couple of years. So we get hired by many banks to do appraisals of different hotels and resorts. We also do the feasibility studies where we are hired to

help a client. A client has a dream. They have a dream to build a hotel or a water park or an amusement park. And they’ll call us and say, you know, I have this dream and I’d really like to do this. But they need to have a document that can justify, is this financially viable and what kind of attendance and hotel occupancy and average pricing and revenues and expenses would this generate? So,

We are, I’m an expert in this area and our firm is an expert in this area. And we get hired to do these types of studies all over the country as well as bit internationally to help clients of take their dream and put it on paper as to what the financial metrics would be for that project. And then we also do economic impact studies where a project

is there’s a budget for a project, but how much economic impact would that project have on a community? So for that one, we’re hired either by a municipality or by a developer, and we calculate how much tax revenue and how much jobs and economic output would be created by this new attraction or new hotel. And the numbers, one is only surprised at how much economic output can be created and

Each of the studies that we do that has been then built, I’m always amazed that you can actually see the economic impact in motion. And Sandusky is the classic example. It’s been over 20 years now since it’s become a water park resort destination. And just the growth that’s occurred there because of those resorts is amazing.

Anthony Codispoti (22:37)
goes into that economic impact number. Because whether it’s a hotel or I don’t know, a commercial office building or a stadium, I often see that number referenced and the numbers seem just unbelievable. ⁓ And I know that there’s other things, like with the stadium example, clearly they’re not just talking about the ticket sales and the merch sales that happen in the stadium. They’re talking about things that sort of happen, you know, out around side. how do you, what goes into that and how do you calculate it?

David Sangree (23:07)
Yes, so when you’re doing an economic impact study, there’s the direct impact and the indirect impact. So the direct impact is the spending by the facility itself. So the hotel would, hotel guests would stay there, they’d be spending money, so that’s part of it. And then the hotel spends money when it buys the food to prepare to make the meals or hires the housekeeper or has the front desk clerk.

while the indirect is really where the numbers start getting bigger. So every time that hotel spends the money to buy the food, that food provider then spends money to get it from the farm, or they have staff who accumulate the things to drive it over to the hotel. And then those guests who stay at your hotel, they’re not spending all of their money at the hotel.

they’re spending money in the community going to different events like maybe there’s a concert or maybe there’s a football game. So they’re going to spend money at those events. So those have to be accounted for. So there’s a system of multipliers that we utilize published by the US Department of Commerce and they have a different set of multipliers for every county in America. in Canada, there’s a similar service called by Statistics Canada.

So we utilize these multipliers in coming up with, we have a specialized methodology to come up with economic impact for hotels and leisure attractions.

Anthony Codispoti (24:41)
do hotel employees’ salaries get factored into that calculation?

David Sangree (24:46)
Yes,

so payroll is a key number as does the construction costs related to building the project.

Anthony Codispoti (24:53)
So there maybe there’s two numbers is it sort of the initial economic impact because that would be like construction would be wrapped into that and then like the annual ongoing impact number that’s expected.

David Sangree (25:04)
Yes, that’s exactly it. There’s the construction impact and then every year there’ll be impact from the operation of the resort. And then there’s generally a lot of tax revenues created from that economic impact. And what many municipalities will do is they’ll utilize the figures from our studies to help determine, you know, can we help this resort out? ⁓ Like we did a big study in the Kalahari Resort in Allen in…

Round Rock, Texas. So Kalahari is a large resort, indoor water park resort company, and they proposed to build a 900-room resort in Round Rock, Texas, which is just near Austin. And they had us do the feasibility study and the economic impact study, and they showed this to the city, and the city recognized that this would really have a massive impact on their community, and they should be helpful to them.

and they offered to build the convention center for the resort because they recognized that this would be a great, you know, we can get a convention center that will be paid for by the sales tax generated by the resort and Kalahari is just going to bring in so much more attention and visitors to our community and, you they were just thrilled by this. So that’s where our studies can be used by the community to help them.

Anthony Codispoti (26:29)
So these economic impact studies, they’re projections, right? And you’re basing them off of these multipliers from data sources that you mentioned. Is there the ability to two, three, four years later go back and review actual data to see how close the projection got to reality?

David Sangree (26:50)
There’s definitely, we try to do that with our studies where we go, well first of all, not all of our studies get built. So there’s only a portion of the studies that actually get built. But of the ones that get built, we are always trying to look back and see how accurate were our numbers. So it’s easy for us to, not easy, but we can more easily look at how our occupancy ADR and financial results compared to the actual

of the property. The economic impact numbers are a little bit more difficult because then you have a number of stores and attractions and community benefits you’re trying to calculate. So then we have to be a little more general because it’s hard to match the exact numbers. But we do try when we can.

Anthony Codispoti (27:39)
what do you think is a good percentage of accuracy? If you projected a hundred million dollar impact, are you thinking, hey, we did pretty well if it was 80 million?

David Sangree (27:51)
We generally are trying to be within about 10 percent. Our goal is to be within 10 percent. But we do state right in our engagement letters that we cannot vouch that these numbers, these are estimates that they’re not, we’re not saying that we are going to take responsibility if they’re not right, that we’re doing the best we can. We can’t guarantee that. But we do, our goal is to be within 10

Anthony Codispoti (27:59)
Okay.

Yeah, nobody can guarantee the future.

Hmm. Now, are you mostly getting hired to do studies on new build projects or do people bring you in if they’re thinking about selling their facility or maybe acquiring a new one to help do valuations and future projections?

David Sangree (28:33)
Yes, so we do a number of studies on existing properties and many of those are for either refinancing or for tax appeals. So for refinancing, the bank may hire us to do an appraisal of an existing property to help them determine how much a loan should be. And for tax appeal, ⁓ in every state, pretty much we have a system where

the government assesses a property of a certain value and the property owner has an opportunity to appeal that value and the school board sometimes has an opportunity to appeal that value. So we get hired by both the school boards or the government authorities as well as the property owners when they feel their assessment is inaccurate.

and we are hired to determine what is an appropriate value for that property and then sometimes we have to go to court and testify about that rule.

Anthony Codispoti (29:35)
And is it, you mentioned court, I was gonna ask, is it ⁓ like a mediation thing sometimes? Like, are they ever required to take the valuation that you came up with and use it? is it just like maybe one side hired one firm to analyze the value and then the other side hired a different firm and so now you guys are sort of arguing or discussing your different valuations?

David Sangree (29:59)
Yes, in a normal situation, are hired by one side, the other side may hire somebody else. We go to court and we, you know, there’s either a magistrate or a judge of some kind who listens to both evidence and then makes or in the Ohio Supreme Court, I have appeared before them or my report has gone to them and they’ve had to make a decision about is that my value was more appropriate than the other side.

in a couple different cases.

Anthony Codispoti (30:32)
Okay. What’s ⁓ maybe a key innovation that you guys have brought to the table there at Hotel and Leisure Advisors that differentiates your services from other consultants?

David Sangree (30:45)
Yes, so there is, ⁓ you know, in the hospitality consulting world, there are the big boys that I’ll call them. There is a firm like HVS, CBRE, Newmark, Cushman and Wakefield. And these are firms with hundreds of employees. Our firm, we have 11 employees and offer kind of a niche service where we provide individualized attention.

and a more detailed analysis that includes a more data-driven approach where we are really focused on that project and what does the data show and a more detailed write-up than what some of these large firms are generating, which are a little bit more boilerplate. ⁓ So I think our innovation is just in the water park segment specifically, we are the nation’s leader in terms of we have

more data than any other firm about this segment because it is a pretty small segment. So a firm of our size can kind of be the market leader. But in the hotel segment, there certainly are these other bigger firms that do a much larger volume of reports than we do. And it’s also that when we work with us, that I’m pretty, I am involved in nearly all of the assignments. So we do try to give

But we do have a team approach that we work with studies. We have multiple people who work on different components of the report.

Anthony Codispoti (32:20)
Does your combination of CPA and MAI set you apart? Is that unusual in this space?

David Sangree (32:28)
⁓ There are a number of MAI appraisers in this space, but there are not very many who are both CPAs and MAIs. ⁓ And then I’m also member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, which is a group of hospitality consultants like myself who are all over the world. And there’s about 200 of us in this group. ⁓

They include Samba MAI and CPA type people, but not so many. More of them are architects and lawyers and other types of people. So it is a very, definitely have it’s, our company is quite a niche in the country in that we have ⁓ a niche in this resort financial analysis segment that there aren’t really that many other firms that are doing as much of a niche as we are. There are other firms doing a much broader.

scope of things. We also do broad but we just have this narrow focus.

Anthony Codispoti (33:31)
So David, you and I are recording this interview on October 15th, 2025, and the interview was intentionally delayed for some period of time because of some big news that you wanted to have come out beforehand. What’s the announcement that you have?

David Sangree (33:49)
Yes, so so happy to announce that I have been, I started the firm again with my wife on October 1st, 2005. And on September 30th, 2025, or exactly 20 years later, we went into a partnership with ADCI, which stands for Architectural Design Consulting, Incorporated.

based in Wisconsin. ⁓ They have bought our firm and we are going to continue on as Hotel Leisure Advisors as a subsidiary of them. The combination of the firm now offers clients the opportunity to have the feasibility study done by us and then to have them take over in terms of doing the design and getting the thing actually built.

So it’s going to be a really cool ⁓ way for clients. They don’t have to now leave us when we finish our studies. There’s now this great architectural firm that specialized. They are the world’s leader in indoor water park resort design. They have designed more indoor water park resorts than any other firm in the world. So it’s a really, I’ve been working with them on and off for 20 years on different studies that we have done the study and they’ve done the design.

And when I had hired an investment banker to help me look for a possible partner to merge with so that when I’m ready to retire, I actually could retire. And they were one of the companies we identified and they saw the synergy that I had saw when we reached out to them. So I was really happy that they were interested and after a long process, this just happened.

We just made the formal announcement yesterday.

Anthony Codispoti (35:48)
congratulations. That’s exciting. And so you guys were both experts in the same niche, but different services to that niche, right? You’re doing the feasibility study. They’re helping to design ⁓ the indoor water parks. Prior to the formal partnership, were you guys referring business to each other in an informal way? Did you know each other? Had you spent much time together before you

David Sangree (35:50)
Yes.

Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (36:17)
reached out and secured the investment banker to help you with the process.

David Sangree (36:21)
Yes, I have known them for pretty much the whole time. They’ve been, they have been very active in the water park space. And so I got to know them early on in my water park dealings. Their head office is in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, which is a small community to have an architectural firm with 50, 55 people working there. But they also have an office in Madison, Wisconsin, which of course is the state capital. ⁓

But they, ⁓ so they have been the leader in the water park space for this entire time, having done work for Great Wolf Lodge and Kalahari Resorts and just they opened the, they designed the O’Connor Resort in Oklahoma City and the Cartwright Resort in New York State. So we have done studies on many of these projects that they’ve designed. So we have had a referral relationship and a coworking relationship for many years.

Anthony Codispoti (37:20)
Do they focus exclusively on waterpark design or do they do other types of hotel ⁓ projects from the ground up?

David Sangree (37:31)
Yes, they do architecture for a wide range of commercial work. ⁓ They do regular hotels, all different kinds of brands, as well as they have a division that does schools and churches and ⁓ senior living centers and other types of buildings.

Anthony Codispoti (37:48)
What do you think the future of the indoor waterpark industry looks like?

David Sangree (37:55)
You know, people have been asking me this for a number of years and they’re like, oh, isn’t this going to stop? And people get less interested. But the truth is when you have a small child going to a water park, their eyes just open up. And this has happened. I’ve been observing this now for over 25 years. as an adult, you know, many adults, they get kind of tired of water parks. They’re not going to go on their own. But when you go with a child, the child…

I’ve never almost never met a child who is not excited to be there. So there’s certainly not an opportunity to have water parks. The opportunity is for a steady growth. It’s not that they’re going to blanket the nation, but that people do love going to them and there are definite opportunities for a continued expansion. Particularly as these vendors in the space

keep coming out with some new rides and things that are even more themed and more exciting. They’re ⁓ kind of combining the amusement park trends with the water park trends so that ⁓ the rides feel like they have these water coasters now that make you feel a little bit more like a roller coaster and other types of rides that are better than what was there before.

So when people open a new attraction or they renovate an existing one, they can put in some of these new rides and it kind of creates a whole new experience.

Anthony Codispoti (39:28)
So maybe less like just a traditional sort of like drop down kind of water slide. But I think what you’re saying is like a water slide that almost kind of seems like a roller coaster. Like there’s some ups and downs and loop de loops. Am I thinking of the right things here? Okay.

David Sangree (39:44)
You are thinking the right things, yes. So

they’re still the regular slides because people do like those and they are a bit less expensive to build. But these water coasters, you’re in a raft and the rafts can hold anywhere from two to four people. And you may go up and down a slide, an attraction that can sometimes have big bowls that you spin around in and they just, make them really fun. And so the people do love doing

Anthony Codispoti (40:14)
Are there particular size communities or destinations that seem like they’re a better fit? And here’s part of the reason I ask. I live not far from, uh, from you or from, know, the, the early project that you talked about in Sandusky. I’m in Columbus, Ohio. Uh, Columbus is, I don’t know, 14th largest city in the country. Uh, but when we want to take our kids to a water park, we’re either going to Sandusky or we’re going to the Cincinnati area because we don’t have one. What?

What kind of makes the right location for a facility like this?

David Sangree (40:49)
Yes, well this has, you you do have them in Columbus at Zumbizi Bay, which is an outdoor water park, but you don’t have an indoor. So there were two indoor water parks in the Columbus Market. One was on the east side at Hamilton Road and one was in called the Cherry Valley Lodge and that was in Newark, Ohio. And both of those have closed because they did not do well enough.

Anthony Codispoti (40:55)
An outdoor one, but not an indoor facility.

David Sangree (41:18)
and they were both, they added a water park to an existing hotel. And what the customer found is that the existing hotel was not, it just wasn’t nice enough to justify a vacation. They didn’t spend enough money to make it a destination. So ⁓ the typical water park resorts that do best are those that are in vacation areas, but not too far of a drive.

where people go to there and then the resort is kind of a themed resort that has a lot of activities and a bit of unusualness to it that makes people want to come back again and again. The ones that have opened up about 10 to 15 years ago, there was a group called the Coco Key Resorts and these opened up and they took older franchise hotels and added a water park to them.

And they never did well because the hotels were just a standard room without any theming and nothing interesting about it. And the water park wasn’t that nice either. So the customers maybe went once, but they just didn’t feel like it was worth coming back to. So the successful types of these properties are those that have more theming and more activities for their families.

Anthony Codispoti (42:35)
All right, David, so with all of your contacts, what strings can you pull to bring a facility right here into my backyard in Columbus?

David Sangree (42:42)
Well, we’ll keep that in mind. The Columbus Zoo would be a great location for it because there’s obviously that’s kind of your tourist destination in Columbus. But I’m not aware of anybody proposing one right now, but you certainly could become the client and help them do it.

Anthony Codispoti (42:52)
And they’ve already got quite a bit of land up there, yeah.

little bit outside of my wheelhouse, but I’m intrigued because there’s still the facility on the east side that sits there shuttered, would take some massive renovations to get it up to speed. But all right, well, you and I will talk offline about that because I’ve got two boys, nine and 11. And I can vouch for how excited they get going to one of the water parks in Cincinnati or up in Sandusky. They love it. It’s a great time. ⁓ And so you

David Sangree (43:08)
Yes.

Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (43:29)
Your business did well right out of the gate because you had these speaking engagements. You were known in the space. And is that what just sort of continued to propel the growth of the company? Or have there been other things along the way, certain growth levers or marketing tactics that you guys have tried which have added fuel to the fire?

David Sangree (43:49)
Yes, well, right, we started off and we had four people and during the first five years we grew to 11 people, so a pretty significant growth. we did this by, we didn’t spend a whole lot of money on marketing in terms of advertising. We did a little bit of advertising in different magazines.

but it was more speaking, attending conferences, and doing articles. So we have really focused on doing white paper type articles about the industry and different areas of hotels, resorts, water parks, RV parks, golf courses, to let our potential clients be aware of some key numbers or some key issues that we feel are…

should be, people should be aware of. And these have helped us gain a reputation in the industry for thought leadership that has, I think, expanded our horizon in terms of people calling us and asking for a proposal on different projects. The other thing is just getting, keeping my name out there for different banks. So banks typically hire appraisers based on lists and approved lists.

And I got myself on quite a few lists of banks and we were used by a number of different banks for different appraisal work. And the other piece is hotel companies also have lists of approved feasibility consultants and consultants that they do impact studies with. So I had been on some of those lists and got myself on more. So we are currently on the list of nearly all of the big chains.

So it’s really very targeted marketing effort that we made as we grew because the business was there. But in order to keep the business, we had to keep marketing and reaching out to…

Anthony Codispoti (46:00)
the white papers that you mentioned, how have you distributed those?

David Sangree (46:05)
So, you know, this is the great thing about the internet age is that we have typically published an article and that there are different either print magazines or online news services that one can put the articles in and then we have our own database which we have in our database we have over 6,000 names that we send our articles out to but

when we send them out through these services, they would include like Hotel Online or Hotel News Now or Amusement Daily News or IAPA Daily News, the Amusement Park Association. So these different websites publish a daily news alert and they allow you to put your article in them if it’s a quality enough article. And that’s what we’ve been successful doing.

Anthony Codispoti (47:00)
Okay. David, let’s shift gears for a moment. You know, you’ve had clearly a lot of success. ⁓ know, business coming in the door very early on from the first time that you opened, you know, culminating in a sale just very recently, or partnership ⁓ that gives you, you know, a landing spot for when you’re ready for retirement. But not everything in between is

all rainbows and sunshines, right? There are ups and downs in every business. I’d like to hear about one of those down cycles for you, how you got through it and what you learned coming out the other side.

David Sangree (47:43)
So I’ve with Hotel Leisure Advisors, I’ve gone through two down cycles. And then before that, I went through two additional ones, but I wasn’t the boss at that time. So we’ll focus on the two that I was the boss. And that was in 2008 and nine during the recession and then during COVID. And in both cases, our business, you know, banks need appraisal work all the time, but they tend to

their fee structure is a bit low. And the developers are much more unique projects that require more time and more, they want a little more specialized expertise and they’re willing to pay a little more fair fee for that. So, but when you’re in a major recession and COVID, the developer type clients kind of, they don’t want to spend their money hiring a project because they’re afraid the economy is collapsing.

So in both of these times, business went down. And ⁓ then one has to make a decision, what do you do? And you have your rent, you have your salaries, you’ve kind of people expect a certain amount of money. And so the two were a little different between them. So in the 2008 and nine, this was a more traditional recession, the stock market dropped a lot, our business dropped.

you know, anywhere from somewhere between 15 and 30 percent. And the we had to decide we actually did lay an employee off because we just and then everybody else, we did a bit of a pay cut. And it was a very challenging time when you’re a staff of 11 people and lay off a person. It’s not a pleasant experience because you feel bad for that person and you feel bad for

what the morale that that brings. ⁓ Luckily, that was the only, we only did it with one person and ⁓ we really did a bit, we tried to focus on the marketing and then the economy started improving and people started calling and we got out of it. With the COVID time, we were back to the 11 people and the, when COVID hit, the business

also dropped off and in that first full year we were down 40 percent in our revenues. So that’s a big hit to take. So but the government in this time came out with these different programs which we did go we did enroll in both of them the PPP loan and the ⁓ employee retention credit. So we did not ⁓ lay anybody off this time.

Anthony Codispoti (50:38)
Yeah.

David Sangree (50:39)
and ⁓ people did work a little bit less hours. Everybody kind of cut their schedule by five to 10%, but there was no layoffs. And ⁓ that was, you know, very nice not to lay anybody off. ⁓ So I thought that government program, although there’s certainly portions of it that one could argue was wasteful, but other portions of it I think were very useful for a small business like ours.

So we tried to do more publishing during that time. We tried to create research projects on our own that the staff could work on that we then published the data as kind of a we did a study on every water park in North America as to who was open and closed because a lot of water parks were You know depending on the state they were either they couldn’t open and in other states they were opening but not till late and they had social distancing and there was a lot of things to really track that

So we were calling every single one in the country to try to gather this data. And it wasn’t in my mind as much as that we had to have this data as something for the staff to do to keep us involved in our industry and what was happening as we try, as I knew we were going to get out of this. it was, you know, I had to create enough things for people to do that we could let the industry know that, we were.

We were following them and we were tracking things, but at the same time waiting for the cycle to change that we would get back into the swing of things, which did happen. after that one year it was down so much and then every year since it’s been a recovery. And now we’re back to better than we were in 2019. So that’s good.

Anthony Codispoti (52:26)
So those projects that you found for people to do, you know, during sort of the worst part of COVID, it was nice that you were able to hold on to folks because of the PPP and the ERC ⁓ government money that was available and you’re finding tasks for them to do to keep them busy, active, you know, not just sitting here twiddling our thumbs. Was it more about ⁓ just keeping them busy, keeping them engaged? Was it about reminding the industry that you’re sort of still there or

Did any of the data that you guys collect at the time ultimately become useful for a project?

David Sangree (53:02)
Yeah, it’s a bit of a combination. It wasn’t just busy work. was definitely we were collecting data about hotels and water parks concerning their how COVID impacted them. But the purpose was to then publish. We were publishing a monthly article about the industry and its impact, which we had been doing that level of publishing. in, you know, now we are trying to continue that almost at the same level.

But we did also work to collect additional data for our, we have an internal database of financial statements for different hotels and resorts. And we worked to really collect more data for that database and other databases that we try to keep for our internal use concerning how different property types are performing. were trying to collect more information for those. So was definitely a combination of

trying to build our internal information database as well as help the industry with more relevant information. With COVID, now five years later, what happened with COVID? You just wonder if it could ever happen again that way because with all of the backlash and everything and just the way the shutdowns were so haphazard.

I don’t know that what we learn then is necessarily going to apply again directly, but maybe indirectly gives us a framework of what.

Anthony Codispoti (54:35)
Yeah, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that, between now and the time that you retire that we don’t have, whether it’s COVID trigger, you know, like a pandemic again, or anything that, you know, sparks that kind of decline. But if something were to happen where business slows down significantly again, what lessons might you take from the COVID experience or from the 2008-9 recession to help you guys get through that? Like, how do you think you would approach that a little bit differently?

David Sangree (55:03)
It was just having patience. The key issue is having patience that the services we provide are needed. They are needed by banks, they’re needed by developers, by attorneys. But there may be some group of people that could be affected more so than another. So you have to remind

all of the groups that, you’re here and that you’re available if there is a big downturn. ⁓ Which, know, some of those groups, you know, like currently we are doing less work for banks and more work for developer types, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t do work for banks again. It’s just that’s not what we’re doing currently. ⁓ So it’s sometimes it’s a matter of trying to pivot yourself a bit and or being prepared to pivot to ⁓ a different

group of people who need your services but maybe aren’t currently using you because of whatever reason that they’re just not used to using you at this very moment in time.

Anthony Codispoti (56:08)
So again, recording this in October of 2025, the economy for a lot of folks, there’s cracks in the foundation. A lot of industries have slowed down. What are you guys seeing? What does it look like right now? What do you think sort of the next six to 12 months?

David Sangree (56:26)
Yes, so for the industries we track, there is definitely a bifurcation. You have the wealthier people, and I’m going to pull that at the top 20%, are traveling more than ever and willing to spend more. And the resorts and attractions that cater to them are doing very well. Well, the many water parks in general, particularly outdoor ones, attract

people in the middle or lower middle income levels in addition to some higher income, but they’re not focused on higher income people. And those managers have told me that there’s been, this year was not as good for them because that lower middle income people are struggling more. There’s no more government aid and they have less money to spend on recreational activities like going to a water park. So. ⁓

those resorts are having to pivot a bit. So in terms of our studies, we’re trying to this in, keep factoring this in that many of the projects we study are trying to appeal to a broad range of audience, while a minority of projects we study are focusing on the wealthier people. So it’s making sure that whatever study we’re doing is considering who the target market is and ⁓

what type of ⁓ audience, what is the income level of the audience they’re wanting to get. So that’s just a key ⁓ thing to be thinking about with our studies. Now with our company overall, it’s just being flexible and trying to ⁓ be able, you know, the one thing I’ve always tried to do with our firm is whenever somebody calls with a hospitality type project, a leisure or hospitality,

We don’t just say yes or no immediately. We try to ponder how could we help that client. And ⁓ so we have expanded our services a bit over the years. Originally we were doing focusing on appraisals and feasibility studies. We then added economic impact studies. And now in recent years we’ve added management company and developer analysis to help clients to find a partner developer or a partner management company for their project.

So we’ve tried to, ⁓ when the client has a need, it’s in the industry sector that is our focus, is there an area that we can help?

Anthony Codispoti (58:58)
David, what’s your superpower?

David Sangree (59:02)
That is, you know, I’m an analyst by nature and I have always had a very good ability to look at a set of numbers and very quickly determine what those numbers are telling us. And this involves, you know, when I talk to a hotel and they tell me their occupancy percentage, I’m able to, I’m never that good with names, but I’m very good with numbers.

And the business I’m in is very focused on numbers and what is an appropriate occupancy percentage or what is an appropriate water park attendance for a project. And that’s what my brain is able to remember very well. And that has helped me tremendously in this career and allowed me to be able to work on so many different projects because of that ability to really be able focus on the numbers quickly and efficiently.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:01)
Are you leveraging AI in any way inside your practice yet?

David Sangree (1:00:06)
We are using it a bit. So we subscribe to a firm called Placer and Placer uses AI to track the visitation levels at buildings all over the United States. So they track the cell phones of one third of Americans and ⁓ utilize that data to then

determine how much approximate attendance goes to an amusement park or a hotel or a museum or some other attraction. So we subscribe to them early on and that data has been very valuable in helping us come up with these projections for different projects that we do. Internally, we have tried AI but the numbers are frequently wrong. But the text is, you know,

AI can help you create a paragraph that you can then edit. But when you try to look at numbers from AI, they are almost always wrong. And you cannot rely on that for ⁓ pricing or for revenues or things like that. ⁓ So that’s where I don’t feel like AI is going to take away our business because even though you may be able to start doing more writing with AI, which we’re considering it a little bit, but… ⁓

the numbers themselves are just not accurate. And I don’t see how it ever get accurate because a lot of this data is confidential.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:37)
okay. So if I were to go to chat GPT right now and ask for occupancy rate in the Wisconsin Dells, it’s going to give me numbers and you’re going to look at them and you’re going to look at the real numbers that you know from being in the industry and they’re very different.

David Sangree (1:01:52)
Yes, I mean it may have some number that was published but it does not know, you know, most of the hotels are confidential and those numbers are only the people who share those are only to a qualified person who’s for one specific reason they don’t they don’t want them published in the newspaper or something like that.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:15)
No. What do you do for fun outside of work? Hobbies, special interests.

David Sangree (1:02:22)
So do like to travel, so luckily my wife and I both like to travel, which is one of these things. Every time we go somewhere though, she’s always like, we have to visit some property, because that’s part of one of my assignments may be in the place we’re traveling. But I try to keep those two things separate. But I do keep fit, ⁓ so every day I’ll either go swimming or maybe walk to work. I live about a mile and a half from my office.

⁓ And I do like hiking and biking. I’m the type of person that I just, every day I need to do some kind of physical activity or else I go stir crazy. So I’m usually doing one of those things.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:07)
David, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to knock out a few things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with David, you can find their website at hladvisors.com. There’s a contact us form that you can use to contact the company. And you’ll also find David’s own personal email address there if you want to reach out to him directly. And as a reminder for listeners, 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 us at addbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you take just a moment to leave us a comment or a review on your favorite podcast app, you’ll hold a special place in my heart forever. So last question for you, David, you and I reconnect one year from today, year from now, and you’re celebrating something big. What’s that big thing you hope to be celebrating a year from

David Sangree (1:03:59)
Well, I thought of three things. ⁓ One would be my grandson will be two years old and that will be very exciting. ⁓ Secondly, that this partnership with ADCI, I can report to you as a great success. And thirdly, that the University of Livingstonia has gotten their Lilongwe campus open. So those are the things I’m hoping a year from now may have a.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:23)
All right, we’ll check back in to see how things are going. David Sangry, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

David Sangree (1:04:33)
Thank you very much. appreciate it being here.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:35)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.