183 - Suite Spot: Road Trip - AC Hotel by Marriott Orlando Downtown

The Suite Spot takes a trip to central Florida to visit the incredible AC Hotel Orlando Downtown, part of the Kolter Hospitality portfolio. The Regional Director of Food & Beverage at Kolter, Robert Mason, joins the Suite Spot to discuss:

• Seasonal Menus
• F&B in the Guest Experience
• How Kolter Hospitality is Shaping F&B
• The Importance of a Social Presence for a Hotel Property

Be sure to tune in to catch the whole episode.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, continuing our series of the Suite Spot Road Trip into the summer a little bit coming into the fall. I’m here with right down the road from our Travel Media Group headquarters, I-4. I know you probably hear that and think might be a long way away. I-4 can be congested sometimes, but not too bad of a drive here. We’re gonna talk about that today. I’m here with Robert Mason, Regional Director of Food and Beverage at Kolter Hospitality. Robert, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. Hey, thanks for having me. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about your property today. We’re gonna talk a lot about the portfolio and your job here as the Food and Beverage Director, but I do want to get to, as it is, tradition here on the Suite Spot, get to know a little bit about your background and what led you to Kolter Hospitality.

Robert Mason:
Wow. So I’ve been 42 years in food and beverage. It’s all I’ve ever done. It’s all I know. I started in the culinary side. I worked all the way up to executive chef. I actually studied under a master chef in San Francisco Bay Area and, had a really fun journey through culinary for about two decades. And about 15 years ago, I made the transition to the dark side, as I say, got into the front of house operations. and it’s been a great journey. Work brought me to Orlando. In San Fransico, I was kind of a small fish in a big pond, but here I’m kind of, was kind of a big fish in a small pond, so to speak. Yeah, but Orlando has certainly grown and developed over the last 20 years that I’ve been here. And just having fun. And this opportunity actually came up right in the middle of COVID. I came from a much larger property down in South Orlando. And the reason I took this job was couple full first, you know, I like the company culture. I liked the fact that the Skybar had so much to offer. I saw the potential right away. And it’s a smaller, easier to manage kind of thing ’cause everything’s in one place as opposed to a big sprawling resort with 15 outlets and that kind of thing. But I have stayed with the company because I really do enjoy all the people I get to work with Sarah, I know, you know, Sarah and John from our corporate office and Scott, our president, they just do a wonderful job. And they’re really people first. We’re a really people first company. So I believe in the vision here and that’s why I stay. It’s awesome to hear. And your story resonates coast to coast, but I think it’s a true example of hospitality professionalism. ’cause it’s transferable skills, right? Yeah. You know, you can work at a hotel, whether you’re in food and beverage on one side of the country, and then move all the way to the other, side of the country, like your story. And here you are in Orlando, before we get to talk about your property and this beautiful skybar that we’re in right now,right behind us, I four can throw a rock to the Kia Center, Citrus Bowl right over there. Orlando City Stadium. For those that aren’t familiar, Robert, that might be listening to this podcast, paint a picture of why this is just the perfect intersection and location. You’ve got yourself a great location here.

Robert Mason:
We really do. We really do. So, you know, I always tell people we’re kind of three different operations within one. So during the week we get a lot of the downtown business people, a lot of the movers and shakers in downtown that come here for happy hour, A lot of celebrations. But then we transition on the weekend to really a sports venue before games, after games when the magic are playing. We’re full of magic fans. We’re kind of the go-to spot for magic fans here before and after games, especially when they win. And then of course when there’s events, you know, next week alone we have, I think six concerts in seven days. And so again, we’re kind of the spot that people wanna go to. They see the cutout of the building and they go, wow, that’s really cool up there. And so you could drive by and see that. So we’re right kind of in this intersection, where we’re close to everything. Dr. Phillips is a block away. Kia Center’s a block away. The soccer stadium’s two blocks away, so it’s just kind of right in the middle of all that excitement. And there’s more to come, I don’t know if you know, but downtown right next to the Kia Center, they’re gonna build a whole entertainment venue. A lot of things gonna be going on there. So downtown only continues to grow. It’s funny, mayor Buddy Dyer said 10 years ago that he was gonna make downtown an entertainment destination. And people thought he was crazy. But now it’s actually coming to fruition.

Ryan Embree:
It’s incredible. We see here, we got a concert in just a few hours here at the intersection of I-4 and 408, but also the intersection of so many events, different types of travelers. And here at the AC Skybar, you really get to enjoy it all. And it’s really cool because I’ve seen over the years, I’ve been in Orlando resident now for almost a decade now, you see, start to see the skyline of Orlando. And this building is part of that iconic skyline. When people do drawings or people take photos, it’s very, very cool to see. But you also got a lot of people taking pictures of this incredible view right behind us. Talk to us about this AC Skybar and what guests just absolutely love about it.

Robert Mason:
So, obviously, you can’t go wrong with the view that we have. We get great sunset views 365 days a year. And sometimes, it’s funny, we’ll be empty and then sunset’s 10 minutes away and people will just pile in and, and go along the glass to watch the sunset. And that’s a lot of times what attracts people here. But I think what has continued to elevate our business and has continued to resonate with locals and our hotel guests alike, is not just the great view. That’s great. But it’s really a bonus, right? It’s our craft cocktail program that we’re so proud of. We’re so proud to announce that we’re four years in a row. We’ve been the number one rooftop bar in Orlando. So continue to do that. Our food program and our outstanding service team that just continues to make our guests feel welcome and welcome them back.

Ryan Embree:
Well, congratulations on those accolades. That’s super exciting to hear. I was a bit of factor of being able to enjoy some of that food and beverage and the hospitality that the AC Skybar had. Thank you for that. So generous. And you know, it was absolutely amazing. Got the steak sandwich and the banana old fashioned cocktail part of a seasonal menu. We’re gonna talk about that in a minute. But Robert, we’ve had a lot of conversations with operations people, marketing people, hospitality leaders. A big trend that is sticking with hospitality, especially over the last 10 years, is the impact that food and beverage has on the guest experience. Kolter Hospitality really, really focuses in on that. And you’re a big, obviously a big part of that. Share with us how you bring creativity to that and how it plays a role into the overall guest experience.

Robert Mason:
So I think it’s really a matter of involving the people that make it happen every day. I think there’s a lot of different components to it. Just to kind of digress a little bit. But you know, here at the Sky Bar, one of the things that’s made us successful and that we’ve tried to now carry down some of our other properties is this idea that hotel, restaurants and bars often feel just like that. They feel like a hotel, restaurant and bar. And so when we put this together and we said, what’s the vision for the Skybar? We didn’t wanna be another hotel bar, another hotel restaurant. We really wanted to have our own identity. So it’s everything from how we do our social media to having our own website. And a lot of times people will show up here and they’ll say, wow, I didn’t even know this was in a hotel. A lot of times people think, well, the hotel rooms will help drive food and beverage. We look at it the opposite way. We look at food and beverage as a driver for the hotel rooms, and a lot of times that’s what we see. And so, really just taking what we know sells, right? Staying on top of those trends, reading those periodicals, staying on top of what’s new, what’s hot, what’s coming out, what’s available to us. And really capturing that and then carrying that to our other hotels and our other properties and allowing them to kind of be experienced that and be exposed to some of that. And sometimes they’re not, right. We all get busy in operations. We all get busy in day-to-day. Sometimes they’re not looking at that stuff. Whereas myself and my counterpart Greg McGowan, we’re always looking at that. We’re always talking about new angles on how we can do things and how we can continue to elevate our food and beverage experience. And we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. I’m so excited for what the next five years is gonna bring. Because really our goal is to establish Kolter not only as hotel destinations, but to rea