And so that's kind of become our culture
in the last couple of years.
And we've been really fortunate that we've just had great team
after great team after great team
and people who really love being here.
And when the guests come in, that's what they feel.
They feel like they're a part of something.
Like I was saying to you when I was cleaning up vomit
all those years ago,
and I decided this is the job that I wanna have.
That was because I was like 23
and most of that team were like 18 to 21 years old.
And nobody earned any money.
And all of them had a crazy pride in what they did.
They had a crazy pride in working for the flying pig
and flying that flag.
Yeah, yeah.
And that was really captivating for me.
It was like no reason for you guys to love doing this
except for the actual doing it itself.
So when you combine that with actually having a budget
and being able to pay people
and being part of this big nonprofit organization,
you can really create a nice atmosphere.
And that was my key mission from the moment that I started.
And obviously we're still on that road,
but we've made a lot of really nice steps
and it's been lovely.
Hello friends and travelers.
Thanks for listening.
You are riding along on the Hostile Road Trip podcast.
Our mission is to spread awareness
of the true hostile experience in the Americas
and share stories from the fascinating hosts
who create those unique facilities.
I'm your host, Jimmy Black,
joined alongside co-founder
of International Travelers House, Bobby Dyer.
Each session, we sit down with hostile operators
or travel influencers to hear about their road success,
discuss trending hostile topics,
and close with tips for travelers
who are seeking to have the ultimate experience
when visiting each destination.
You can't afford to miss this trip.
Now fasten your seat belts and let's hit the road.
["The Hostile Road Trip"]
Welcome back to the Hostile Road Trip podcast.
We are very honored to have Alfie McKenzie,
one of the newest members of the Naha
North American House Association Board members,
newly elected, congratulations.
Also joining me, Robert Dyer,
also a newly elected board member of Naha,
just a lot of talent and reputation and status
on this episode.
And also our first ever Canadian episode,
we had always wanted to do the original format
of doing the Hostile Road Trip on the road in Canada,
but you know, pandemics and things like that,
obviously have slowed us down.
But here we are, first ever Canadian episode.
I can't think of anyone else better to be doing it with
than the legend we know as Alfie, H.I. Whistler.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Thank you, Bobby.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, great to be here, guys.
All right.
So, you know, as we always do, you know,
we'll obviously jump into a lot more about H.I. Whistler,
H.I. General, you know, we'll talk a bit about Naha.
But to start off with, we always like to hear about
your personal journey of hostiling
and how Alfie got into hostel management, you know,
and how you found yourself doing this as a career.
So, you know, kick it off with that story.
How did that happen for you?
Absolutely.
Well, I've worked in nine different hostels
in four different countries over the last decade.
And it wasn't really something like most people
had plans to do.
I was going to Holland to do my master's degree
in philosophy at the time.
And I had worked in a hostel briefly before that
on a front desk for a couple of months.
And they used a PMS that I was pretty good with
and pretty familiar with.
And I went to stay at this hostel when I moved to Holland
and I was broke.
I had about 200 pounds and no clue how I was going to make
it work at all.
So I went to stay at this hostel and they were using
the same PMS that I used to use.
I was running out of money and I started to kind of knock
on the door and say, hey, do you need a volunteer?
Because I really needed to volunteer.
I had no idea what I was going to do next.
And yeah, so I ended up starting out volunteering for them
as in the beginning as a night cleaner.
And I would help like some of the guys on the bar
and the reception learn how to use the PMS
every now and again.
And yeah, I started out cleaning up vomit
in a party hostel in Holland.
And somewhere between cleaning up vomit
and setting up the breakfast every night,
some weird part of my brain was like, do you know what?
I think I just want to do this.
If I can somehow make a career out of this
and get past the vomit stuff and start like running the bar
and running the reception, that would be awesome.
So a few months into that gig,
I ended up being like the volunteer bar manager
and that was amazing.
We didn't have really much budget to make things happen
or anything like that, but it was a sweet challenge.
We had a lot of really wonderful people,
a lot of different wonderful teams.
And I really just fell in love with like trying
to make crazy parties and events happen in the bar
with just like bits of cardboard and paint and shit
that was left over from years ago.
And we did all of these amazing events and amazing parties.
Like we had locals in, it was a small town called Nordwijk
on the West coast of Holland.
And it was awesome when I fell in love
and I started to think like,
if I could do this bar manager gig for a while,
then that'd be really sweet experience
to try and do it elsewhere in the future.
So I did that for a little bit.
I moved out and became like a permanent bar manager,
a member of staff.
And then my next move was to Costa Rica.
I ran a front desk in Costa Rica for like four months
and that was also awesome.
And then my plan was to move to Canada.
So I went back to Holland and moved to Amsterdam
to do like a six month gig as an advanced manager
for this huge new hostel called Vya that just opened.
And so-
Vya?
Vya Hostels, V-I-A.
Oh, okay.
I was doing that and that was crazy.
That was like my first kind of white collar gig as well.
Like I remember, I was, like I say,
my experience was just getting bits of cardboard together
and making stuff happen from nothing.
And my boss after a couple of weeks was like,
hey, when are you gonna do some office time?
And I was like, what's office time?
So I had a little office time.
Tell me about it.
I was supposed to do all this event scheduling and stuff.
So I had all the time to do that.
And they had a budget.
They were giving me like a few thousand euros a month
to hire musicians and DJs and stuff.
And I had always managed to do that with just beer.
So that was amazing.
And then COVID happened.
So the Canada plan got shelved.
The events all got shelved.
And I ended up working night shift
after a bunch of the pandemic for a different company
in a different like pod hostel with a Mexican restaurant
in the middle of Amsterdam.
And one day that company, they owned Dirty Nellies,
it's a big Irish pub slash hostel in Amsterdam.
Still wasn't open, like quite a way after the pandemic.
And I said to the owner, look,
I've got all this experience.
I've done events, I've done bars, I've done reception.
I'm looking for the next step.
You don't have to pay me anything extra,
but I would love it if you'd give me the opportunity
to go and open Nellies.
And it was a bit of a ballsy move.
And the most surprising thing was the guy was like,
all right, and just gave me the keys,
told me the budget for it.
Wow.
And yeah, the first few days of doing it,
I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing right now.
I don't know.
Realized that the hard way.
Like pulling it on the run.
Absolutely, pulling cobwebs off printers and computers.
The best bit of that story was the first day
that the key system wasn't working
and we couldn't get it working.
We had no idea what to do,
but we'd already opened up on all the OTAs and stuff.
We were like, oh no.
No, no.
We have like five seconds coming today.
So there was this huge bucket full of like old fobs.
And we went through every single fob, every single door
to see what was working for where.
And we found exactly six fobs.
So one for us.
And all of them were managers fobs though.
So they opened the whole hostel.
And we just told the guests that it was for that room.
Just your key here.
Exactly.
And we just got really lucky that none of them figured it out.
And then a couple of days later,
we figured the rest out and got open properly.
And then finally I could move to Canada.
And when I could move to Canada,
I worked in a hotel in the Yukon for a little bit
and just missed hostels very quickly.
Applied for a gig as a general manager with HI in Vancouver.
Went and did that for a year and loved it.
And then the Whistler opportunity came up
and I came up to Whistler and just fell in love.
I was supposed to cover for like two months.
Yeah.
And then I ended up being here ever since.
It's been two years
and we're looking forward to the next few as well.
It's been fantastic.
That's awesome.
And I love, you know, a lot of the times
the hostel story or a journey for someone starts
in that moment of desperation, like you're talking about
or that situation of desperation of like, wow,
like I really need to volunteer here because if I don't
I'm gonna be out on the street in a few nights
by my calculations, if my arithmetic is correct.
So I love hearing about those types of stories
because it's not often that an industry, you know,
has that type of reputation or possibility where it's like,
well, I was really at my last options
or a point of desperation.
So I had to try this.
And then by doing so and in trying that,
you found what you love doing
and what you wanted to do as a career.
And I think that's a, you know, such a cool story
but not an uncommon one in the hostel industry.
And that's why I always, you know, people are sometimes
hesitant with especially work exchange members of like,
well, you know, they seem like a nice person, but gosh,
they're only doing it because they're desperate
or because they need to or their situation dictates.
And I understand that to an extent
but there are the diamonds in the rough like yourself
where, you know, hey, you know, you know,
they might not know it yet,
but this moment of desperation or that they're, you know,
they're trying this out because of that
might lead to something much bigger down the road.
So I think that's so cool that that's how you started
and you've weaved your way through so many different hostels
and found yourself out there at the HI Whistler
which is such a staple in the HI Canadian operation.
But just so listeners can understand
because there's always even at conferences
amongst hostel industry people
who have been in the industry for years,
they still don't understand how HI works, you know,
and how the format and the structure is
and independent operations and affiliates and HI USA,
HI Canada, so give us just a little bit of a breakdown
of like, what is HI Canada and like,
how does that all work?
Yeah, so the first thing to say is HI Canada
is a nonprofit organization.
That was the main reason that I'd wanted to work for them
for many years, actually.
I actually applied for just like a supervisor position
at Whistler years ago when I didn't have the visa
or anything like that.
Because I really loved working in hostels, of course.
And after many years in Amsterdam,
got a little bit tired of working
for people who didn't really care or understand
about the hostels that they owned very much
and always having to fight for everything
and feeling like I wanted to do what I did
for more of a good cause.
And HI's mission essentially is to make sure
that hostels still exist and to make sure
that travel remains affordable for young people
in the area in which they operate.
So there's hundreds of cool HI organizations.
They go under slightly different names.
In Holland, it's Stay OK.
In the UK and other countries, it's YHA.
Obviously you have HI USA as well.
And we're all part of the same network.
We have the same quality assurance program as well,
which is international.
But we are also all around
independent nonprofit organizations.
So with the hostels that I've worked for in HI,
I started out at Jericho Beach Hostel in Vancouver,
which has just turned 52 years old.
It's an army barracks, which was originally occupied by,
well, originally it was the army.
And then it was a nunnery briefly, I believe.
And then it was occupied by hippies for a really long time.
And there was a legendary riot.
You can Google the Battle of Jericho.
There was a riot in 1969,
which erupted when the police tried to evict
these hippies during the Summer of Love from Jericho Beach.
And if you go and stay there now,
you'll be quite amazed how the vibe is still
pretty much exactly the same as it would have been in 1969.
And the beautiful thing of working in a place like that,
or working here in HI, Wissler,
is just that, like I say,
you're doing it for essentially a good cause.
We all have this shared value of trying to make sure
that places can remain affordable.
Obviously you have to compete with the market
that you're in, but we compete in a way where we try
so hard to be the bottom line and to make sure
that people, young people, can come and travel
to a place like Wissler, which is not cheap,
which is often super expensive,
especially for accommodation.
And we look after them and we house them.
And not only that, but we create a community.
We create a vibe and that takes everybody on board.
It's the management, it's the staff,
and it's the guests and the local community.
And we make partnerships with people in the local area,
all over Canada.
If you stay at HI, Wissler,
you'll get discounts with HI, Wissler,
with Wissler businesses that are in the local area.
And just exactly the same if you're in Vancouver
or if you're going to go on mid-property in Halifax
or if you go into the Banff location,
you get the hostel, you get the cheap accommodation,
you get the community,
and you also get a lot of really decent discounts
in the local area and around Canada in general.
So that's why I really wanted to work for HI
and why I love them as an organization.
The thing that really fascinates me a lot of the time
is people don't know that we're a nonprofit organization.
And if you don't know that,
then it's very normal to kind of assume
that it's a big corporate brand.
And so that's a really big part of my day-to-day in the job,
is trying to make sure,
especially in the local community,
that people understand the power of the organization
and that people understand that we are a nonprofit
and that we do it for a really solid reason.
I was talking to a really lovely lady called Jackie
who runs the Whistler Community Services Society
a couple of weeks ago.
So we just got a new liquor license for our patio cafe.
And she-
Oh!
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
And- Yeah!
Oh, that's so nice.
I'm really glad that that's on offer.
And I said, yeah, well, you know, we're a nonprofit
and it's really important
was that we become a community space.
It's obviously a big part of it is making sure
that we remain affordable
and that we hit our targets year on year
so that we can thrive and survive.
But a big part of it as well is just,
there was nothing like that in the area,
exactly where our hostel is for the community.
And she was like,
I never knew that you're a nonprofit organization.
And then she runs the biggest community services
organization in town.
So yeah, that's our mission.
And we need to do more for sure
to try and flag that flag.
Absolutely.
Bob, you had something to add there?
Yeah, with, you said you worked at nine hostels
before you landed there.
What is something that you felt like was amazing
at the hostels that you wanted to bring?
Like what, you must, you got a lot of experience,
probably worked at good hostels, bad hostels.
What you see is like the magic that was like,
this is what it takes to be a great hostel.
And I'm gonna take that, put that in my pocket
and set it up in Whistler.
Yeah, well, the first thing when I came to Whistler,
it was a completely different proposition
from any of the hostels that I've worked at.
Usually I come into a hostel
and the issues are kind of organizational
and structural training, PMS, operational kind of concerns.
And the community and the vibe and all that kind of stuff
is kind of already ticking.
When I came to Whistler, I got really, really, really lucky,
especially because it was my first
proper general management gig,
just completely by myself up here running it.
And the gentleman that I inherited the job from
had done a fantastic job in terms of running it
as a really sustainable, successful business.
So there was a lot to learn from in that,
but I could see straight away that there was a lot of room
for improvement in terms of just our atmosphere
and our community output.
So the first thing honestly was the liquor license.
It seemed like low-hanging fruit to me
that we had this really tiny cafe,
which had a really tiny liquor license.
We could legally serve 12 people in this very tiny space
right in front of the service area,
and which is basically useless,
because when you have a hostel of over 100 people
in the winter, and you can only serve 12 of them a beer,
nobody's gonna do it.
You can maybe serve one group,
and then you get this weird situation where
the 13th person walks into the bar,
you go, oh, hey, buddy, no, sorry,
I need you to walk back over that line,
because there's already 12 beers in play right here.
So that was the first thing,
and that was a huge education,
working with the whole bureaucracy
of the liquor planning sort of system here in BC and Canada.
It took a very long time.
I had to get architects to bring up plans,
and this building, HI Whistler,
was built for the Winter Olympics in 2010,
and it was part of the athletes' housing.
So I had to ring up the original architects
that had built it for the Olympic Committee
to get him to do a tiny job
of just redrawing the same thing that he drew
four years ago and just sign off on it again
and say, yes, you can have a patio here,
because we already did have a patio,
it just wasn't licensed.
And then I also got really lucky,
and also a little bit of nice karma.
There's a gentleman who lives in the same neighborhood as me,
and I have a parking space that I don't use at the moment,
because I don't have a car,
and he was just a nice guy who lived close to me,
and he didn't have a parking space,
but he did have a car.
I offered him our parking space,
and about six months later,
when I finally sent off the liquor application
to the local municipality,
I got a call straight away,
like, is that Alfie that lives in the RISE?
And I was like, yeah, and he was like,
hey, it's your boy.
So the guy that I had sorted out with the parking space
is actually the guy who was overseeing
our liquor planning application.
So that was amazing.
And yeah, it came through pretty quickly.
And then we introduced a draft beer system,
we completely renovated the patio,
and we've been putting on all kinds of new events
over the last year or so.
And really, more than that,
it's about the recruitment culture for me.
When I came in, my managers were very diligent and efficient
at getting a team together at the right time,
and getting people who are very skilled and experienced.
And I kind of changed the tack a little bit
when I came in and said that experience and skill
is really not as important as getting people
who want to work in a hostel.
So every single interview that we do,
the first question, why do you want to work for us?
That's a deal breaker.
And you get a lot of people who say,
well, I just want to live in Western and ski for the season.
And your job came up.
And then it's like, okay, well,
now you're gonna have to have a really good interview
from here to get-
To win it back.
Yeah, exactly.
And if you get somebody who has no idea what they're doing,
maybe they're 19, they've never worked a job before
in their lives, but they're like,
I stayed with you guys this summer, and I loved it.
And I've been around a few hostels in Europe or whatever.
And I just really, I want to be a part
of that kind of community and see, and it's like, done.
You can train and you can develop people
when they have that willingness.
Sure, yeah.
And so that's kind of become our culture
in the last couple of years.
And we've been really fortunate that we've just had great team
after great team after great team,
and people who really love being here.
And when the guests come in, that's what they feel.
They feel like they're a part of something.
Like I was saying to you, when I was cleaning up vomit
all those years ago, and I decided this is the job
that I want to have, that was because I was like 23.
And most of that team were like 18 to 21 years old,
and nobody earned any money.
And all of them had a crazy pride in what they did.
They had a crazy pride in working for the flying pig
and flying that flag.
Yeah, yeah.
And that was really captivating for me.
It was like, no reason for you guys to love doing this
except for the actual doing it itself.
So when you combine that with actually having a budget
and being able to pay people
and being part of this big nonprofit organization,
you can really create a nice atmosphere.
And that was my key mission from the moment that I started.
And obviously we're still on that road,
but we've made a lot of really nice steps
and it's been lovely.
Wow.
That's great.
And I love the, you know, I often use it,
I switch it up a bit.
It's a classic old saying, if you walk up to three of you guys
and you ask the first one, what are you doing?
He says, I'm laying bricks.
You ask the second guy, what are you doing?
I'm building a wall.
He asks the third guy, what are you doing?
I'm building a church.
They're all doing the same thing,
but they're all looking at it in a very different way.
I've always used the shitter for hostels in that way of like,
if you have one of those days
and you're cleaning a bunch of shitters
or you're flipping a bunch of bunk beds,
like I never looked at it as I'm cleaning the shitter
or flipping the bunk bed.
I'm like, oh man, I'm running the best hostel in the city.
That's what I'm doing.
You know, I don't know.
I'm not cleaning shitters.
It's how you look at it.
And then if you get people that can have that same mindset
and you build a team like that,
then that really sets that special sauce in the culture.
Yeah, let's put this shit together.
Yeah, and then it is really profound
and you put it in a good way of like,
the flying pig's a great example of like,
you're looking at all these kids
that are working their asses off,
taking it super seriously,
having a very high pride and value in their work,
and they're not getting paid.
And I've always found that very fascinating to, you know,
money a lot of times can throw a wrench
in that type of culture, in that type of, you know, vibe.
And some people look at it and they're like,
I don't know what the fuck's going on,
but the person who is looking at it in that way of like,
I'm not laying bricks, I'm building a church,
you know, that type of thing,
that is very contagious
and it draws the right type of people in.
It also keeps the wrong type of people out too.
So I think that's great that you've built that up there,
you know, HI Whistler.
Now, one thing that I was really interested in
when we were hanging out at the conference
and just talking about, you know, your experience at HI,
and you've touched on a little bit here with budgets,
but it does seem like, you know,
correct me if I'm wrong,
I always felt like it would be a very corporate structure,
like you said, in like a lot of policies, procedures,
but it seems like they pretty much just give you a budget
and let you run with it
and give you a lot of creative freedom
and a lot of operational freedom.
Would you say that that's true?
Yeah, I'd say that's really accurate.
It's a little bit of a mixture of the two.
We do have a really strong, solid upper management
who are all very skilled and very experienced,
A, in what they do,
whether it's HR or marketing or membership strategy,
but also all of them have their own traveling stories
and experiences and are all in it for the right reason.
So there's times where we might disagree
with each other on strategy, sometimes a lot of times,
but at the end of the day,
it's not like when you disagree with your boss
and trying to show him like,
we need more money for this thing
because it's going to make it better.
It's you're disagreeing with each other
because you both have pretty much the same vision
and the same goals.
And so when you hash it out,
you come up with a plan that's almost always compromised
between everybody's vision.
And so you finish your work day
and there's not that kind of stress
or you don't feel like you're not being seen
or not being valued
because you know that everybody's coming from a good place.
It's not like anybody's trying to pocket the money somewhere.
We're all just earning a salary
and doing the best that we can do.
But when it comes to actually running the hostel,
yeah, it's been quite,
especially in the early days,
it was quite a surprise to me
how much freedom we do get as general managers
to basically be entrepreneurs in our local area.
We have check-ins and we make sure that we keep
the senior management team up to date
with everything that we're doing.
But we go to them with the vision that we want to create.
The patio is a fantastic example
because I can see in the past other jobs that I've worked at
and it's quite a big project
and it's quite a crazy amount of vision
that we put into it,
just the management team here at the hostel.
We wanted to have a very specific kind of patio
that looked a certain way, that felt a certain way.
We wanted to get local beer in from the brewery.
We needed to introduce a draft system.
And all of that was a lot of money, a lot of time
and a lot of work.
And generally the whole time,
my bosses would just like, okay, tell me more
and how is that gonna work
and how is this gonna be successful?
And if I can show them that strategy and that vision,
A, we can get it done
and B, they can lend their expertise and experience
to telling me how to do it better.
Like Rianne that you met at the conference as well.
Oh, I loved her, yeah.
We all love Rianne,
who was running part of the Vancouver hostels, still is.
She has a wealth of experience in F&B
and project management in general.
So like just that, I can tap into that.
We were coming up with this project
and I said to my bosses,
I really want Rianne to be a part of this
because as much as I know what I wanna do,
I know that having somebody with that amount of experience
to come in and tell me, okay, I see what you wanna do,
here's why you don't wanna do it this way
or even just tiny things
that like your oven should be here
so that your thing over here will work better
and your staff can move around more easily
and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, so it works out really well
where you really get the freedom to do things
however you want to do things.
But you also, if you just take a little bit of a humble pill,
you can also listen to a wealth of experience and expertise
from everybody else who have different skill sets,
different levels of experience,
but the same goal and the same vision.
So it works really well.
I was saying, Bob Jire, something to add to that?
How long did it take the construction process?
So the patio was always there.
That was the crazy thing
that it wasn't kind of done way back when.
And what we changed was mostly the furniture.
So we had literally the same furniture
from the Olympics.
We got rid of all of that.
We put in some really nice wooden picnic tables.
I have quite a close connection
with the local brewery that's down the road,
mostly because I like to go to the local brewery
that's down the road.
And so we were able to get a kind of exclusivity contract
with them and their beer.
That also meant that we got like their umbrellas,
we got their glasses, their pictures,
all that kind of stuff.
And we love those guys.
So we're really happy to have that partnership
and kind of sell their local product
to people who come through.
We got couches out of the front.
We had these really old, but really good heaters
that again were from the Olympics,
but just hadn't worked for a really long time.
So we got contractors in to look at that
and then they got fixed and they're working
and they're like insanely hot,
which is gonna be interesting in winter
to see how far they go.
Yeah, so it wasn't so much of a construction project,
it's more of a renovation.
And the draft system, which was really challenging,
but really fun to figure out,
because I worked on a bar for a long time,
but never installed one.
We just got a kind of big kegerator
that goes at the end of the cafe bar.
We got rid of some old stuff to make space for it
and set it up and it took about a full eight hours
because my maintenance guy was on vacation
and my cafe manager was on his day off.
And I just, we had the beer, we had the system.
And I was like, I wanna have a beer afterwards.
And you're thirsty.
Yeah, exactly.
So I spent eight hours trying to get it to work
and kept coming into all kinds of little problems
because I'd never done that before
and kept calling Oog, who's my friend,
who's the bar manager at the brewery.
And just like, he's working,
trying to run a full shift at the brewery.
And I'm like, Oog, okay, the beer's coming out,
but it's not fizzy or whatever, all little tiny problems.
And yeah, and then I nearly gave up.
And I was like, we were so close, but nothing was happening.
And I was like, I'm sure it's just a little problem.
I'm just gonna leave it for today, go to the lake,
chill out with my friends.
And then I went to the bus stop and I was like, no.
And I went back and carried on working on it.
Just straightened everything out a little bit,
literally like all the pipes and stuff.
And then the beer started flowing.
And I've never cheered that much in my entire life
for this whole picture.
There's a picture of me just like tears coming out
of my eyes with this picture of beer.
That was a two year dream of getting beer
in that cafe on draft.
And that was the final step.
That's a unique feeling, even though I had a bar.
And like when you're, it's a beautiful feeling,
a dangerous feeling when you start pouring yourself
your own beers from your own tap.
It was like heaven, drinking those beers.
Looking back on the process of doing construction
as a lot of hostels wanna put in bars or enhance their bars.
What is something you can reflect on
and kind of learn from that process
that you'd maybe do different
or glad you did a certain way?
I would say the main thing is I probably could have
and should have leaned on my local business friends earlier.
I kind of, I mean, I was still, especially at the beginning
I was really new to town.
So I didn't really have as many connections yet.
And I was kind of begging my boss to make me the licensee
so that I could just do everything myself.
And that took a while, but eventually that happened.
And then, yeah, when I became the licensee
it was just like, well, there you go.
And I realized I didn't, that I had to do so much research
and I was going through all the steps
and thinking if I just go through all the steps
and figure out exactly what I've got to do
each step of the way, it'll be fine.
But there's a bunch of unknown unknowns that come along
which only later talking to like the guys at brewery
cause they actually got a new patio recently as well.
They're like, oh, we could have told you that
that you would have had a problem with that.
Yeah.
And a lot of giggling at like when I'm like,
yeah, I'm pretty sure we're going to get this license now.
I'll apply for it.
It'll probably take a couple of weeks.
And they're like,
Pfft.
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
But also just like keep trucking.
That's the main thing.
If there are unknown unknowns,
just keep pushing the envelope.
And those unknown unknowns will slowly become
at least known unknowns.
And you'll-
It's like Don Rundsfeld.
I'm not a reptile.
But two things that really want to apply.
I think it's awesome that HI creates that environment
where they're letting you run with it.
But then there's that element of,
the momentum is contagious
and that positive attitude is contagious
when you surround yourself with people
that are wanting to see you succeed
and giving you the opportunity to succeed.
And I think that's awesome that they've created
that type of environment where it's very easy for people
to like, oh, I tried to do that and turn that patio
into something years ago and it didn't work.
So you can't do it either.
You can get a lot of that in businesses
and corporate structure.
One thing I've always noticed is the team,
as we've grown in size at ICH,
when I see the team working together to push each other,
like, hey, that's a great idea.
And what if you tried this?
And then the other person's like, oh my God,
that's an awesome amendment to that idea
or a little change or deviation.
And now that just brought this idea to mind
and then someone else pitches in,
then you should try this.
And now that collective, that collaborative idea,
like you said, because everyone's going for the same goal
if you've got a good culture like that, right?
On the flip side, you can really tell
that a place isn't doing good when someone comes up
with a really cool idea and people are pissed off about it.
That's bad.
That's bad news bears.
Whenever I see that, I'm like, oh boy,
we're gonna all sit on the magic carpet
and talk about our feelings here for a little bit.
Because we should be excited that our teammate
or our coworker or our peer just came up
with a bang busters idea
and how could we maybe even make that better?
And then if that is that person,
this is also super important.
And as you said, asking for help, using your network,
using other people's experiences,
because good people like to see other people
do good in business.
Successful people like to see other people do successful.
The really good business people.
And they're out there and surround yourself
with those types of people and then ask and listen.
And you'll get so much advice that can save you time
and pain yourself of learning from their mistakes.
But so many people, especially when they're on a run
with a good idea, they get selfish with the idea.
And they don't, this is my idea, it's my patio.
But screw you with that idea about putting the draft
over there in the back of your head,
you're like, shit, that's a really good idea.
You know, but if you're willing to take that learning curve
and for me years ago when that happened,
that was such a profound thing for me of like,
more so going into the room of like,
hey, I had this idea last night.
What is everyone thinking?
Does anyone have anyone,
anything to add to that that could make it better?
And then just watching that process run.
That's a beautiful thing.
And that's how you get those big projects done.
Because you need the collective, you need the effort.
And closing on that, when you hit those bumps in the road
or, oh, wow, this is another thing I didn't think of.
And there was so much more to it than I,
that's when you've got to almost put the pedal
to the metal a little bit more.
So many people just stop.
Oh, well, it was a great idea,
but they said I had to move the window 16 inches
so come out.
I think that's great that,
you could do a case study on that for people of like,
here's the idea, here's what we have to go through,
here's how long it took.
But look at this beautiful end.
It doesn't the beer taste so much better, you know?
Yeah, man.
When you go through those battles.
That's the thing.
And it comes back to the same thing
of having that pride in what you do.
And if you can have that filter down from the top
all the way to the bottom and have that humility,
which kind of has to come from the manager
or the management or the structure
a lot of the time as well.
Top down, yeah.
In order to allow that culture to ride.
But it's also, it's a very simple thing to implement.
And then you can kind of just let the ball run.
Like, so sure, if I disagree with my management team,
my departmental managers here at HI Whistler,
I sort of reserve the right to veto decisions
every now and again.
But in two years of doing this, I never have.
Like, we always discuss it
and we always come up with an idea together.
And if one of my guys comes up with a better idea than me
or comes up with something that's really gonna work,
like I just get excited.
Excited, yes.
Yeah, because as well, I wanna see them do well
and I wanna see them develop and grow.
It's also a really big part of HI in general
is creating those success stories
and identifying young talented people
who maybe don't have the experience,
but you can see that with a bit of guidance,
they will do something amazing with that experience
once you give it to them.
So like the patio has been incredible
just as a crucible of all of that stuff,
because it took me, it took my F&B manager, Harry,
it took my maintenance manager, Ray,
and it took a lot of work,
especially in the kind of months
when we were preparing to open,
we all did it way too many hours
trying to get that thing done.
And in the end, when we did get it done,
we could sit on our patio that we envisioned
and created and made happen together.
And that we all developed as people
and as professionals through doing that project as well.
Oh yeah.
And that gets done and we're better
and this place is better.
And it's a lovely thing, really, really cool.
Yeah, and when you come out the other side,
you're so much better of an operator for it,
because you've gone through that process,
the highs and lows, two steps forward, one step back.
So I think that's just such a cool story
that you should be proud of.
But don't be shy to pat yourself in the back
and take credit for it while you still have control.
Maybe a nice like King Henry VIII type portrait of Alfie
on his butt.
A nice bust, something simple that will be there forever.
Over my dead.
Yeah, yeah.
Who's that right behind the bar?
Oh, hello, Alfie.
Yeah, I try every now and again.
Yeah.
Yeah, all right.
So that's awesome.
And I can't wait to try out this patio and HI Whistler.
And before, tell us a bit about HI Whistler
before I wanna ask a little bit about the Naha.
Like what is Whistler like?
Is it, you've got your seasons are dramatically changing.
Like what do you do throughout the seasons?
It's obviously a big ski and snowboarding town,
which everyone knows.
So what do you do in the summer?
In the summer, basically the mountain is the whole thing.
And it's actually two mountains in Whistler.
We have Blackcomb Mountain and Whistler Mountain.
And they are both unbelievably huge and vast.
So the resort side of the mountain is huge.
Like for example, my F&B manager, Harry,
he's lived here nearly four years
and he's still not done like all of the runs in the resorts.
And we've got quite a few to go,
cause it's just, it's vast.
And that's just kind of the resort front face
inside of the mountain.
Then you have the back country.
And when you do your avalanche training
and all that kind of stuff,
you just have this incredible never-ending world
to go and explore.
And then a bunch of other mountains in the area,
little known trails and lakes that are in volcanoes
and just all kinds of stuff that you can go and do.
It's really quite spectacular as an activity destination.
And then in the summer, it becomes a biking metropolis.
And for the same reasons.
So they will close one of the mountains
a little bit longer than the other one.
One of the mountains will open up
right at the beginning of summer,
usually around May time.
And then everyone can go mountain biking.
And it's a lot of the same runs,
the same terrain as you would have been skiing on
or snowboarding on.
So it's kind of a really funny thing.
You go up the lift in the middle of December
and everything's absolutely covered in snow.
It's a power day.
Everyone's skiing and snowboarding.
And then you go up the same lift six months later
and everyone's biking and it's all green and brown
and still beautiful, but completely different proposition.
And then, yeah, so both of the mountains eventually open
and you can mountain bike all summer
on both of the mountains.
And then they close and then they open again in the winter
for the skiing and the snowboarding.
And outside of that, like I say,
there's so many trails and mountains just in the area.
Just here at the hostel,
we're a little bit outside of the village,
but our back of the hostel looks out onto Mount Sprout,
which is a really beautiful mountain.
And if you don't live in this area,
it's one that a lot of people don't know about.
But you can hike up there.
A lot of people don't.
So you're usually by yourself when you get up there.
It's a pretty high track, not super long, but pretty steep.
And then you get up there and there's two lakes
that are just on the top of this fricking mountain.
It's like a natural infinity pool.
It's just, it's awesome.
And just all kinds of stuff like that.
I've only been here two years.
So I'm still discovering stuff all of the time.
And the list of things that I wanna go and do and explore
just gets longer and longer.
I was always a beach bum and a city boy.
And I love being a fish out of water here
because the fun just never stops.
I'm constantly challenging myself to do something
that I've never done before.
I had never snowboarded before I came to Whistler.
I had never done hikes that are that huge and vast
before I came to Whistler.
I never camped in the winter before I came to Whistler
or made a fire in the middle of the snow,
all these kinds of things.
And I just fall in love every time
because my comfort zone has always been
to be outside of my comfort zone.
And if I'm not ready, I get freaked out and I need to move.
So Whistler is really the first place in a while
where I can see myself being here for a hot minute
because it's never ending.
There's stuff to explore and to achieve on a personal level.
So it's really a year around town.
We have, the fall season is a little bit more challenging
because it's a town full of adrenaline junkies, right?
So everyone's been mountain biking all summer
and doing all this kind of crazy shit
and partying and whatever.
And then the temperature drops a little bit,
but it doesn't drop quite enough.
And the snow is coming for like six to eight weeks.
And everyone's like, they can't go on the mountain anymore
because everyone's got to do all the work.
So people get itchy.
And that's the only weird time in Whistler
where you have to get a little bit inventive and creative.
But like for me, we're less than two hours drive away
from Vancouver.
So you can always go and party
and do a couple of amazing gigs and events
and all that kind of stuff down in the city as well,
or still go on all of the hikes
that are available in the local area.
And then it's really, it's just six to eight weeks
and then the mountain opens again for snowboarding.
And then it's cowabunga for the whole winter season.
Wow.
We have a mountain,
we operate in a mountain town in Big Bear.
So we're familiar with how that works.
Beautiful hostel.
Distinct seasons.
I was gonna say, do you guys cater to a lot of groups there
or a lot of group business and focus on getting more groups?
Or how do you focus on filling your occupancy
kind of being in a more remote, not a major,
you're in a major mountain town,
but still a destination.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think there's really a sweet spot
for the amount of group business that you wanna have.
Like when I first came into Whistler,
we were in the middle of just
in a gut-bustingly amazing snow season.
It was super busy.
And probably if you were being really cold and hot
from a business perspective,
you wouldn't have needed any group business
for that whole season
because you could have just sold every bed individually
one by one.
But it really, really, really helps as a forecasting tool,
I find, to make sure that you have a certain amount
of group business.
You have a certain amount of business on the books
where you can look at December six months in advance
and go, okay, well, we know we're at least making
this bottom line of revenue
because we have these groups coming in.
And then how much do we wanna sell bed by bed?
I had like two extremes.
My first winter season was crazy busy like that.
And I kind of thought maybe we can pull back
on some of the group business that we did
and maybe give less rooms to some of like
our long-term contracts and all that kind of stuff
in order to like have an even better season next year.
And so I did in some ways,
and it was a really hard lesson
because then the snow just didn't come.
And those groups were very happy
that they had not taken up more rooms and more beds from us
because nobody wanted to come at certain parts of the season
because there's no snow.
It's still an amazing place to come.
You can always ski in snowboards through the winter,
but like, especially Christmas, for example,
we had no snow on Christmas.
So why are you gonna go and stay in this magical
winter resort town when there's no snow?
Like it doesn't make any sense.
And we did manage to sell out for Christmas,
but we had to get really inventive and really creative.
And that was a huge lesson for me
in terms of pricing strategy that really opened my eyes
to trying to be a lot more proactive.
And in general, try and shift the balance
to being way more proactive
and way less reactive in general.
If you're proactive in a general sense,
then when it does come to your high season,
you don't really need to be reactive
because you have the right amount of beds
for the right amount of people,
and then you can sell them for the right price
and hit all the targets that you wanna hit
in our case for the good of the network.
But yeah, so that's been a huge education for me
in my first two years running this business.
And this year, like for example,
even though with forecasting, it's looking like such wood,
it could be a really good snow season.
I'm definitely making sure that we have a decent amount
of group business on the books.
And also maintaining those relationships
with people who run those groups.
And they will know that you gave them a sweet deal this year
and that year and whatever.
And so you can work together
because usually when you're having a crappy season,
they're having a crappy season too.
And you can knock heads together
and try and figure out a way to drum up some business
for each other.
So yeah, it's been really important for us.
That's great.
Yeah, it's amazing when it snows, it fills up.
I love when you get the phone call and they're like,
is it gonna be snowing on December 13th?
And you're like.
I'm like.
It's brilliant.
Do you have to do the group business
or does HI corporate or the sales team
take care of all the group business?
I take over most of the group business.
We have larger contracts that I kind of network around.
They travel trade stuff.
That is mostly out of my hands,
but I at least get to negotiate the rate
that they're gonna get at the start of the budget year.
So if our group's manager says he wants to sell them beds
for $40 a piece, I can push back and be like,
okay, well, I understand why you wanna do that.
They're a great group and we wanna keep them on board,
but we probably need to go a little bit higher than that
because of little tiny things that I maybe understand
a little bit more just from being on the ground
in this town in particular.
And it's always a nice conversation.
And we always end up coming up with something
that we both think is the right thing.
But when it comes to individual groups,
I personally take over all of those
because a lot of the time it's just too important
to let go.
It's too important to kind of,
to get the price too low or too high at any time,
especially when it's like six months out
and you're looking at the winter.
And if it's a group that they're just coming to Whistler,
they're not interested in other parts of Canada,
then I really need to sell our product.
And I know specifically the target that I'm trying to hit
and how far away I am from that
because of this project and that project
and maintenance costs and whatever.
So individual groups I do handle.
That's nice.
Yeah, with the big bear groups,
when we have those repeat groups,
I'm always thinking to myself,
how do I get this guy to put down half payment
for next year, same week, before he leaves right now,
so you can just keep them locked in and build around them.
But as we're running out of time here now,
I do wanna touch base and again,
congratulate you on your recent
Naha Board Member Association approval.
I once again failed my drug test
and I'll have to wait till next year.
Either that or Joe Gill blackballed me again.
I don't know.
It's open for debate.
But what is your board member seat?
Give us a little bit of details about this.
Like what department were you put your head up?
Tell us about Naha.
I guess that's all to be sort of detailed
in the coming weeks.
We're having our first board meeting next month
or this month, sorry, 12th of September.
Oh, okay.
And we're coming to the board meeting
with our own idea of what we would like
to be really involved in.
Personally, I wanna contribute as much as I possibly can
with my experience and out of the kind of options for me,
I think my experience would be lent more
to the conference side of things.
Just having an event organizer
and an events planner in the past.
But I'm willing to contribute in any way possible.
And it's really exciting
that it's just such a young organization.
I went to that conference,
not really knowing what to expect at all.
And I was just super flabbergasted and impressed
by the appetite of everyone in the room to collaborate,
to work together and the real,
the recognition of pretty much to a man,
everybody I met that what works for one person
is gonna work for us all.
And that we do have this, it's a unique industry
where we really have a hugely shared interest.
And yeah, seeing the appetite from everyone
and also seeing that there was no specific agenda
of like what it's gonna be.
It was really a case of trying to figure out
from the owners and the managers, what do you want it to be?
What would be a good association for everybody
and what would be good for the network in general?
There was a lot of input on that.
And I'm excited to see what that resulted in
and contributes to kind of defining the direction
going forward as a board.
That is so true.
And hat off to Jim Kennan and the pumpkin brew guys,
Jay and Frankie for really just hitting it out of the park.
And I think that they did it in the perfect way
of that kind of reverse engineering it by,
what do you want it to be?
What are you looking for?
And being very inclusive with everyone
and that gravitated everyone.
And I think that they separated themselves
from some other attempts at putting together this group.
And I love how they included Canada and Mexico
and really excited about the conference being down in Mexico
and this coming April.
So all you listeners out there,
make sure you stay tuned for when that exact location
and dates in Mexico will be.
But I'm sure it'll just be another amazing time.
And congratulations to you on the board member assignment.
I'm sure you called your mother right away to let her know.
Yeah.
You know.
I did send her a message.
I did.
Yeah.
And I hope that you get the committee assignment
that you're looking for.
And I know that you'll do a great job
and Bob will do a great job as well.
And keep on rocking out that association
because I think it's got amazing momentum.
Yeah.
It's super exciting.
Obviously seeing that Bobby was on the team as well
was really cool.
And I'm really looking forward to it, man.
Even if I don't get the specific committee role
that I'm looking for,
I'd still will be excited to contribute
to any angle of it going forwards.
When I was sat in that room,
like going back to those days
when I was cleaning up the vomit
and I was a volunteer night shift,
working a decade ago,
I really, I was sat there thinking like,
this is just exactly where I need to be right now.
And everything I did up until this point got me here.
And I'm so grateful to be in this room
collaborating with these people
to try and figure out how we can make a robust,
really exciting, really awesome hostel industry
for business owners and for the industry,
but also of course for the travelers
and for the backpackers that are coming through
and to create this really exciting proposition
of a hostaling network in North America,
which people in Europe,
like from my own experience,
we're really ignorant towards hostels in America.
Like I stayed at your guys properties
in Southern California.
I stayed at the Green Tortoise
with those guys in Seattle
and obviously stayed at the Bunken Brew
and Jim's Portland Hostel in Oregon.
And it was just such an eye-opener this last year
going towards those hostels
and being like, holy shit, these are real hostels,
like really, real, real hostels with a real vibe,
real community, real spirit.
And I feel like I'm in the perfect place
and I'm gonna be here on this continent
for as long as I can do the work for this whole thing.
There you go.
Thank you.
Fuck yeah, fuck yeah, I'll be, love it.
Well, hey, thanks so much for joining us
and so much exciting stuff for you,
you know, with your location and the improvements
and the Naha board and looking forward to seeing you
in April and you know that you always have
a standing invitation to our company manager retreat,
the Josh Retreat Music Festival every May and October.
Oh, thank you for that next one.
I'm looking forward to it.
You're always welcome to come get it weird
with us in the desert.
Beautiful.
Oh, man, thanks so much.
God bless.
Thank you guys.
Thank you.