At first it's a bit hard to fathom just how far an exclusive resort property in California's picturesque Carmel Valley, where nightly room rates start at $225 and top out at $825, must have fallen off its game before it could then earn recognition as "U.S. Comeback Hotel of the Year" from a leading travel publication.
Mike Oprish, General Manager of the Quail Lodge Resort & Golf Club, laughs when asked just how bad things had to get to put his property in position to earn the comeback award from Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report at the end of 2003. And he makes it clear that this was hardly a case of Quail Lodge sinking to the level of Fawlty Towers.
But the fact that his club won the award does speak, he says, to how even the most prestigious property can lose focus or begin to take its stature for granted–and also to how taking the right steps to identify and correct where you're falling short can have a dramatic impact, even in settings that are already breathtaking.
Regaining the Luster
"It's not that it was ever bad here," Oprish asserts. "But we had been a Mobil five-star property through the '70s and '80s, and in the early '90s we did lose a star in our rating. Then there were several changes of ownership, and after the last one [in 2002] there was recognition by the new group that we needed to reposition ourselves and find ways to take things back up a notch."
That process began with a hard look at whether Quail Lodge still retained the qualities that had made it so unique when it first opened in 1964. And while the lodge itself may have been in the most prominent position to influence the perceptions of the public (and travel magazines), Oprish says management was equally, if not more, concerned with assessing whether the private side of its operations (through memberships in the Golf Club at Quail Lodge) was still delivering in full on the special promises offered by the property and its facilities.
"Both for the lodge and the club, what made this place unique from the start was that it had a sense of place, and there was nothing 'cookie-cutter' about it," Oprish says. "[The lodge] started out as an artists' lodge and has always been purposely positioned as a boutique resort [with less than 100 rooms], in 'sleepy Carmel.'
"The club was always supposed to have that sense of place as well," he adds. "But our [evaluation] showed that we had really fallen off on that side. Pretty much everywhere you looked, members were at best only able to use the facilities on an equal status with guests and local residents, and in some cases they were losing out altogether. The clubhouse was dual-use, sometimes the restaurant was only operational [for members] if it wasn't being used for a meeting, the locker rooms were undersized, and the pro shop was actually probably more tourist-driven than run to serve member needs.
"Overall," says Oprish, "there were just a lot of quirky things that didn't make sense about the way we were operating the property for the people who had made a substantial commitment to us by members."
Saving the Stepchildren
Finding these shortfalls caused great concern for Quail Lodge's new management, from a number of standpoints–first and foremost of which was the nature of the club competition they were facing. "This is a local area that is saturated with high-end golf courses, including new and very exclusive Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicklaus properties," says Oprish. "Overall, new clubs [on the Monterrey Peninsula] have taken on about 1,200 members in the past five years. Just maintaining [an existing club's membership] with that kind of competition is a challenge."
At the same time, there was a sense of a real failure to meet the club's obligations to its own membership. "We actually have a handful of members who have not only been with us for all 40 years, but have been passionately involved with the club for all of that time, and that's unique for clubs around here," Oprish says. "They saw all the other clubs that were coming on stream, and it was tough for them to hear people who were joining other places pound their chests about how great those clubs were.
"Here, all they had seen was a bunch of different management and ownership administrations come and go–but nothing else had changed," Oprish adds. "Our members truly felt like the 'club stepchildren' of the Peninsula, and with good reason."
Look What We Bought You
But after discovering how the Quail Lodge members had been neglected, their new parents (Valley Resort Management, which also operates the nearby Bernardus Lodge) wasted no time in taking the steps needed to more than make it up to them–and in fact, came pretty close to completely spoiling them in the process. Plans were set in motion for a full, $25 million facelift of the property, with a complete renovation of the clubhouse at the center of the project.
"Renovation" is actually a very misleading term for what was done, says Op-rish. "It was as massive a transformation as you can get without completely knocking down the building," he says, "We took it down to a shell and completely rebuilt everything inside."
"Set in motion" is also somewhat misleading, because once the decision was made to proceed, Quail Lodge had its new clubhouse in remarkably short order. "From the approval of the financing until we reopened the doors, it was all done inside of a year," says Oprish. "We completely closed the clubhouse right after the 2002 Christmas holidays, and reopened by the end of June the next year."
Free-Flowing Exchanges
Quail Lodge's primary partner in the project, AXIS Architecture + Design of San Francisco, was given a very specific charge for the clubhouse makeover: While maintaining the original structure's charm and character, and utilizing its existing architectural forms, the inside of the building needed to be designed to hold a new restaurant, banquet kitchen, pro shop, member lounge, wellness center, and patio space–all in a way that would create a more effective separation between how guests and clubhouse members would use the facility.
To most efficiently meet these objectives in the tight project timeframe, AXIS broke the project down into five distinct themes (see sidebar). Because of the strict timetable, principals for AXIS also took the lead in partnering with county planning officials and building inspectors to expedite the permitting processes needed to keep the project moving forward.
The entire project was executed "incredibly smoothly, especially given the short window," Oprish reports. "We [Valley Resort Manage-ment] went into it as hoteliers and resort operators who knew what we wanted to accomplish, but really didn't have any idea in the beginning if and how we could do it. But by bringing together a lot of talented people and having a lot of great conversations about the best ways to make things flow, both inside and out, we pulled it off."
And the results? "The members are incredibly excited about all the changes, and that's of course the most important thing," says Oprish. "From a management perspective, it certainly looks like the investment will earn us a good return, too.
"Today, we're at 250 members, with only a handful of people on the sell list," he reports. "Before the renovation, we were at 240 members, with probably 30 people who were looking to sell.
"Again, in the intensely competitive club environment we're facing here, just maintaining your membership should be considered a success," Oprish feels. "We're doing more than that, with interest among other potential members continuing to come in, as word circulates ab
out what we've done here."
Word of (3,000) Mouths
Later this year, many more people will see Quail Lodge's new look in person, as the club hosts two huge events–a sports car show during which 120 vintage race cars will be parked on the club's driving range, and a tomato festival, held in conjunction with Sunset magazine, to celebrate that vegetable's importance to central California. Each event will bring 3,000 "incredibly influential and discerning people" to the property, Oprish says–yet with the expanded capabilities of the new clubhouse and its kitchen, he expects that catering to all of the food and beverage occasions tied to each event will be "no problem."
Being able to serve events of this magnitude without a hitch is a major plus for any club. And for Quail Lodge, it also means that the club is now in position to ensure some very rewarding "comebacks" of its own.
In just seven months, the 40-year-old Quail Lodge clubhouse was subjected to what its GM called "as massive a transformation as you can get without completely knocking down the building." When the dust settled, members of the property's Resort & Golf Club had much more private and comfortable places to eat, drink, swim or just bask by the fireplace.
Before the renovation, fitness options at Quail Lodge were relatively nonexistent, and the pool could be seen by non-members who did not have pool privileges. Now a "holistic" fitness approach includes a full-service spa, and landscaping keeps the onlookers out. C&RB
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.