Floiran Riedel
Aloha,
Happy New Year and all the very best for 2015!
I am looking forward to the next couple of months and working on some very important projects.
It’s been three months in my new role and I want to thank everybody for a very warm welcome. I met a lot of you and look forward to meeting the rest. Mahalo for your feedback, it has definitely helped me to better understand your priorities and how important Hualalai is to all of you.
I also had the opportunity to spend some good time with our Members’ Advisory Board. Their commitment and dedication is truly remarkable and they are a great avenue to hear our Club Members’ perspectives.
One of our goals for 2015 is to streamline our communication to you and provide relevant information about the day-to-day operation as well as a big picture approach from my personal monthly update along with a quarterly update from Patrick Fitzgerald. Please note, these will be published in future Weekly Club Updates.
Regarding the recent merger with Four Seasons, the first priority was to take care of our 1200 employees who deliver an amazing experience here at Hualalai for all of our Members and guests. This was done by building an infrastructure to support our employees through benefits, payroll, 401(k), etc., and to ensure everyone feels supported and connected. With that being achieved, we can now start looking at ways to even further improve the Member and employee experience at Hualalai.
Employee training will play a big role in 2015. We want to make sure all our employees are engaged and aligned with our objectives and continue to deliver the highest level of service. We have already started with management training and will kick-off the employee training mid-February, a very important and time consuming initiative. Although this is a slow process we will see the benefits in the long run. This training will continue throughout 2015.
Our first project is Ke’olu where there is an amazing team and wonderful people in a fantastic location. We have received a lot of feedback and recommendations for improvements. Ke’olu is considered under-utilized so we want to energize the programming for the restaurant, bar, pool and golf areas. Ideas include new menus and themed events to name a few enhancements while moving toward a better Member experience and utilized facility. We are very excited about this project and will see some changes before the end of the first quarter. We will continue to keep you apprised of these changes as they happen, please feel free to provide us with your feedback.
Hualalai has now become one of the biggest Food & Beverage operations in our company with six restaurants, the Trading Company, banquets and in-room dining. In order to help us on the resort side to streamline our processes and work with our teams on training and programming, we have hired a new Assistant Director of Food & Beverage overseeing Ke’olu, Hualalai Grille, Canoe Club and the Residents’ Beach House. His name is Wayne Duprey and he is joining us from the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing, China. Wayne is originally from Boston and brings an extensive F&B background with him. We look forward to Wayne’s arrival to the Big Island of Hawaii in March.
Other projects for this year will include the Trading Company, two additional tennis courts at Paku’i Park (as well as playground improvements) and our comfort stations for the Ke’olu golf course. Most importantly, we know it is not only about these projects but how much we enjoy our time together at Hualalai with our ‘ohana and guests, the Member experience.
I hope this is helpful to better understand our key initiatives in 2015, please feel free to reach out to me anytime you have any questions or suggestions.
Mahalo!
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