305 keys at Hollywood and Vine. DELPHINE Eatery & Bar. The Living Room. WET Deck. Station Hollywood. Drai's. 28,000 square feet of event space. The W brand promise — Whatever, Whenever — is an operating standard that lives or dies in cross-departmental execution. The GM sets the vision. The Director of Operations makes it real every day. Here's the operator's record.
See Role Alignment →The Operator
U.S. News #1 Hotel in Iowa, two years running. Business of the Year in nine months. 25% RevPAR growth. 40+ associates mentored into management. $1M+ in activation-driven incremental revenue. Five F&B outlets repositioned and relaunched across two properties.
As Regional Director of Operations across a $250M, 521-key, 500+ associate portfolio — spanning Marriott Autograph and independent properties — I drove 6% portfolio-wide TRevPAR growth and a 24% leadership retention increase by designing career pathing for 20 managers. As GM at The Warrior Hotel (Marriott Autograph Collection), I repositioned three F&B outlets, led a 156-person team through a $10M operation, and earned #1 Hotel in Iowa within a year — sustained two consecutive years — plus AAA Four Diamond status.
W Hollywood has DELPHINE, the Living Room, WET Deck, Station Hollywood, Drai's, 28K sq ft of event space, and the entire weight of Hollywood Boulevard pulling at the door. The W brand's promise — Whatever / Whenever — is an operating standard, not a slogan. It's the kind of cross-functional discipline I've spent a decade building. Below is a taste of how I'd approach this role.
Role Alignment
The Director of Operations role centers on five mandates — profitability, revenue, operations leadership, guest experience, and HR discipline. Here's how the record lines up against each.
F&B Leadership
W Hollywood runs on its outlets. DELPHINE, the Living Room, WET Deck, Station Hollywood, Drai's — each one a distinct identity that has to operate with cohesive standards. Here's the comparable track record.
Repositioned and relaunched three underperforming F&B outlets — steakhouse, rooftop bar, and bowling lounge. Rebuilt every team, every menu, every operational system. Three distinct service cultures under one roof, sharing standards but holding their own identities. The rooftop became the city's social anchor. F&B became the property's strongest community asset. $200K in auxiliary F&B spend from the relaunch alone.
Rebuilt the three-meal restaurant and cocktail lounge. Launched a sold-out murder mystery dinner at 40% profit margins — 100 guests in costume, blue uplighting, period cocktails, fully produced theatrical experience. Orchestrated the property's first Culinary Olympics — teams competing across prep stations with chef judges. Grew banquet revenue $300K; improved wedding profitability 30%.
The Operating Priorities
Director of Operations is the role that turns brand vision into daily reality. These are four operating priorities mapped to W Hollywood — each one informed by a comparable challenge already executed.
The W mantra is a service standard, not a slogan. Making it real means Front Office, Engineering, Housekeeping, F&B, and Recreation operating off shared SOPs, shared communication rhythms, and shared accountability. Daily ops huddles, real-time service recovery loops, and visible department-head ownership. The job is to remove the friction between guest request and guest fulfillment.
DELPHINE, the Living Room, WET Deck, Station Hollywood, Drai's, plus banquets and in-room dining. Each with a distinct identity but unified standards: cost-of-goods discipline, labor model integrity, beverage program coherence, and consistent service ladders. The goal is identity sharpened, margin protected, guest experience never inconsistent regardless of which outlet they're sitting in.
At a 24/7 lifestyle property, the team is the brand. Guests don't experience the architecture — they experience the bartender, the front desk agent, the bellhop. Built mentorship and career pathing infrastructure before: 40+ associates promoted to management, 24% retention improvement on leadership benches, engagement scores up 27 points. That same playbook applied to W Hollywood means a leadership pipeline that holds, even in LA's competitive labor market.
Hollywood's calendar is the property's calendar. Awards season, festival weekends, summer pool culture, premiere parties, music industry rhythm. A tiered activation calendar — signature series, monthly tentpoles, seasonal anchors — that fills DELPHINE on Tuesdays, packs WET Deck through Q2 and Q3, and turns the Living Room into a destination after hours. Same compounding system that produced $1M+ in activation-driven revenue at prior properties.
The Programming
This is how I'd program W Hollywood's activation calendar in lockstep with marketing and the GM. Twelve months, each built around Hollywood's actual rhythm — awards season, music industry, festival weekends, premiere parties — and the F&B outlets that anchor this property. Every theme ties a tentpole moment, outlet activations, a rooms package, an industry partner, and a team recognition beat. Nothing exists in isolation.
Vibe: Hollywood awards season opens. "Golden Globes Watch" at the Living Room with champagne service. "Critics' Picks" cocktail menu at DELPHINE. Industry-rate room blocks for talent agencies. WET Deck heated for evening cocktails.
Vibe: Grammys week is the property's biggest week of Q1. Pre-Grammy industry parties at the Living Room. After-party programming through the night. Music label rate blocks. "Sound Check" cocktail series at DELPHINE.
Vibe: Oscars week. Day-of viewing brunch at DELPHINE. "Best Picture" tasting menu. Living Room watch party with red carpet ladders. Production company rate blocks. SXSW industry overflow demand.
Vibe: Coachella weekends 1 & 2 drive massive transient demand. Festival pre/post packages. Late checkout protocols. Stagecoach the following weekend. WET Deck soft-opens with festival recovery brunches.
Vibe: WET Deck opens for full season. DJ residency launch with weekly programming. "First Friday" cocktail series at the Living Room. Cinco de Mayo at DELPHINE. Mother's Day brunch tentpole.
Vibe: LA Pride. WET Deck Pride takeover with rotating DJs. DELPHINE Pride brunch series. Industry partnerships across West Hollywood. "Summer Solstice" longest-day rooftop programming.
Vibe: Peak pool culture. "Fourth on the WET Deck" headline event. Comic-Con SD overflow rate strategy. Late-night pool series. "Stars & Stripes" cocktail menu at DELPHINE.
Vibe: Summer movie premiere season. "Premiere After-Party" packages for studios. Late-summer pool series at WET Deck. Industry partner programming. DELPHINE chef collaboration series.
Vibe: Fall TV season kickoff. Primetime Emmys week. Network and streamer rate blocks. Watch party at the Living Room. LA Phil opening night packages. Fall menu launch at DELPHINE.
Vibe: Halloween in Hollywood is its own genre. DELPHINE costume night. The Living Room masquerade. WET Deck Halloween bash. Themed cocktail program across all outlets. Rooms-package tie-ins.
Vibe: Friendsgiving at DELPHINE — ticketed dinner series. AFI Fest hospitality programming. Black Friday rooms-package launch. Team appreciation week aligned to Thanksgiving stretch.
Vibe: Holiday season. The Living Room "12 Nights" cocktail series. Industry holiday party hosting at scale across 28K sq ft of event space. NYE on WET Deck — the year's biggest revenue night, planned six months in advance.
Proof of Work
In 2024, I took the GM role at Hotel Julien Dubuque — Iowa's oldest hotel — while simultaneously retained as a Regional Director of Operations for a $250M, 521-key portfolio across four properties: The Warrior, Hotel St. Louis, Hotel Blackhawk, and The Current Iowa. This is the closest analog to W Hollywood's scope and complexity in my record.
The Team: Transitioned from day-to-day GM execution at one property to coaching General Managers across the portfolio — serving as a liaison between ownership and staff, building the culture infrastructure that would sustain without me on site every day.
The Guest: Engineered 22 F&B and community-activating events designed to manufacture demand rather than capture it — experiences that gave guests a reason to come back before they'd left.
The Friction: Bridged the gap between ownership and operations across 750,000 sq ft of combined real estate — finalizing budgets, protecting partnerships, clearing the path for four leadership teams to execute consistently.
The Asset: 6% TRevPAR increase across the consulting portfolio. 24% leadership retention increase via career pathing for 20 managers. Simultaneously drove Hotel Julien to "Business of the Year" in nine months.
The Warrior Hotel was a restored icon — Marriott's Autograph Collection, stunning architecture. The opportunity was to turn it into a benchmark.
The Team: Every department aligned around one shared goal. Culture and performance moved together — not as competing priorities, but as the same thing.
The Guest: Guest satisfaction rose 20 points. Recovery programs transformed feedback into loyalty. Guests didn't just return — they advocated.
The Friction: Labor forecasting tied tightly to occupancy. Menu engineering balancing quality with cost. Cross-departmental systems that let people do their best work without fighting the operation.
The Asset: RevPAR lifted 25%. RGI increased 19.6%. Named Top Hotel in Iowa by U.S. News & World Report — 2024 and 2025. AAA Four Diamond status (2023–2025).
The Warrior Hotel reopened in 2020 — mid-pandemic — and spent two years without a community identity. No local following. No neighborhood connection. When I arrived as AGM in 2022, the building was beautiful. The relationship with its city was nonexistent.
The Team: Gave the team ownership of the relaunch. Every department hosted their own ribbon cutting — spa, restaurant, rooftop bar. The team became the face of the property.
The Guest: Reframed the question. We didn't ask how do we get guests? We asked how do we become part of this place? Six weeks of community events turned opening weekend into opening season.
The Friction: Removed every barrier to community access. No gatekeeping, no VIP-only events. Open doors. Free tours. The hotel belonged to the city before it belonged to travelers.
The Asset: 2,000+ people walked through the property in six weeks. Five local press stories. City council began hosting delegations. Community buy-in became the foundation for every dollar that came after.
Activations compound when they're systematic. Not a wine dinner here, a holiday party there — a tiered calendar where each event feeds the next.
The Team: Gave the team creative ownership over signature events. When housekeeping designs the holiday party and the bar team creates the cocktail series, they're invested in the outcome — not executing someone else's idea.
The Guest: Three tiers: signature series (weekly recurring), tentpole moments (monthly), and anchor events (seasonal). Guests returned not because we asked them to — but because they knew what was coming next.
The Friction: Built repeatable systems — templates, vendor relationships, marketing cadences — so every activation didn't start at zero. The system ran itself.
The Asset: $1M+ in activation-driven revenue from 2022–present. Shifted perception from we're here if you need us to you need to be here for this.
Hospitality's retention crisis isn't about pay. It's about meaning. People leave because they don't feel seen, don't see a future, and don't believe their work matters.
The Team: Built the crucible. Multi-layered recognition — monthly, weekly, daily. Career pathing infrastructure. High-potential identification. Mentorship tracks. An environment where people fall in love with the challenge of becoming who they're capable of being.
The Guest: Stable teams mean consistent service. Consistency is what high-net-worth and industry guests notice first — and it's the thing that can't be faked.
The Friction: Removed the obstacles that make people leave — unclear expectations, invisible growth paths, leaders who don't listen. Poured into the cup so the cup could pour into the guest.
The Asset: 40+ associates mentored to management. 24% leadership retention increase. Engagement scores jumped 27 points.
Leadership Philosophy
A lifestyle hotel is only as good as the operations behind it. Operations are only as good as the team. The team is only as good as how it's led. The Director of Operations role exists at the intersection of all four.
At a 24/7 lifestyle property, guests don't experience the architecture. They experience the bartender, the front desk agent, the bellhop, the housekeeper. Every department head reports to the same standard: hire for energy, train for excellence, retain through purpose. The Director of Operations owns the discipline that makes that possible across every shift, every department, every day.
Hollywood Boulevard guests have unlimited choice. What separates W Hollywood is the brand promise that the answer is always yes. Translating that promise into operational reality is a Director of Operations problem — SOPs that empower frontline staff, decision-rights pushed to the lowest competent level, and feedback loops that close in hours, not weeks.
The Director of Operations is the GM's amplifier. The GM sets the brand vision and works the external arena — ownership, brand, community, talent. The Director of Operations turns that vision into a daily operating reality across every department, surfaces what the GM needs to know without making it the GM's problem, and makes the GM look prepared every time. That's the relationship.
I treat every property as if it were my own. Labor model integrity. Cost-of-goods discipline. Margin protection at the outlet level. P&L review cadences that catch drift before it becomes a deficit. Profitability builds trust with ownership. Trust earns continued investment. Continued investment is how a great hotel stays great.
Build the team that delivers the standard. Let the standard define the guest experience. Let the experience drive profitability. Let the profitability earn ownership's trust. That's the sequence — and it's the sequence I've executed at every property I've led.
Lead with Heart
Award-winning teams don't happen by accident. They happen when leaders invest in the employee experience with the same intention they bring to the guest experience. People who feel genuinely developed, challenged, and valued don't just deliver luxury — they embody it.
Every team member keeps a structured gratitude journal — a daily practice that shifts mindset from task completion to ownership and purpose. It sounds simple. It's transformative. Teams that practice gratitude operate with more patience, more empathy, and more resilience under pressure. The guest feels the difference even if they can't name it.
A structured mentorship program built on curriculum that mirrors high-end MBA programs — leadership development, financial literacy, strategic thinking, and communication. Every associate has a development pathway that extends beyond their current role. The message: we're not just investing in your performance here. We're investing in who you're becoming.
No two team members get the same development plan, because no two people have the same ambitions. Individualized growth tracks designed around each person's goals, strengths, and areas of opportunity. The result is the kind of leadership pipeline a 24/7 lifestyle property like W Hollywood requires.
Whatever the brand promises.
Whenever the asset demands.
That's the job.