LODGING spoke with PM Hotel Group President Joe Bojanowski on a Friday afternoon, as he was wrapping up the past week and planning for the next one before taking off for the weekend “at a decent hour.” This, he said, was business as usual for the entire team at PM Hotel Group, where he is leading the company’s growth and diversification and seeking to instill an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for innovation and technology. Describing his “selfish motive” for the end-of-week push, he said, “By properly planning and finishing up everything on Friday, we can all recharge and come back ready to go on Monday.”
Early Career at DoubleTree
The career path Bojanowski described also went largely as planned, especially after he committed to a future in the hospitality industry, which he was introduced to via a marketing internship at DoubleTree Hotel & Resorts in Phoenix, where he was pursuing a business administration degree at the University of Arizona.
Bojanowski intended to head home to the D.C. area upon graduation, which happened to dovetail nicely with the company’s management takeover of a 600-plus-room hotel there. He was offered and accepted a position as manager of the hotel’s various F&B outlets. “There I was totally immersed in the F&B side of the business for the first time, everything from a fine dining restaurant to a members-only club.” He was learning a lot, but said, “Unlike my counterparts in the rooms division, I was also working on every holiday.”
It was to get out of F&B and into the rooms division that he applied for the first of many transfers within DoubleTree, gradually fashioning a strategy for advancing in an industry he’d come to enjoy.
“As I was getting transferred, I realized I was good at the hospitality business. I enjoyed the people side, and saw the opportunity that was there. I was fortunate to be around people who mentored and guided me. I thought by modeling the behavior of the successful people I was meeting, I, too, could achieve success like theirs,” he noted.
Among those mentors were two who impressed upon him the importance of understanding the business he was in, and the best way to achieve his goals within it. Noel Motus, then-new F&B director in that very first job, drove home the reality that the hospitality business was in fact a business that needed to be profitable. “As F&B outlets manager, I was focused on delivering a great food product and great service, but it wasn’t until Noel had me prepare a daily P&L for every outlet that I realized that everything we were doing was meant to drive revenue, which, with proper management of staff and operations, would drive profit,” he said. The second mentor, a now-deceased DoubleTree vice president, “literally drove me to Rhode Island.” He went on to tell Bojanowski, “I think you’ve got a lot of potential and that this business is right for you, but you need to see other areas of country and get exposure to all facets of the business.”
His transfer to a Newport, Rhode Island resort exposed him to a largely seasonal property with high room rates, and with it, high guest expectations, especially in the summer. Next came a move to Columbus, Ohio, a university market where the rooms division accounted for most of the revenue. When he took a transfer to South Florida, “a different type of resort and business environment,” he was engaged to be married and hoped his fiancé, also in the industry but still in D.C., would join him there. “There was the beach and the beauty, and I thought it would be awesome to stay down here for the rest of our lives.”
Instead, his future wife Pia introduced him to Dave Pollin and Greg Miller, two of the founders of PM Hotel Group, which in 1997 “was really just a startup with one hotel.” Based on his operational experience in hotels, they hired him in operations, PM Hospitality Strategies, placing him on a brand-new professional trajectory.
“With DoubleTree, I learned about the business while moving around from property to property—some small, some large, some resorts, urban business meeting spaces—but when I joined PM in 1997, we were developing a lot of hotels, so, for the first time, I got exposure to the deals. While my title remained EVP of operations, PM Hospitality Strategies, I began leading new builds and was involved in nearly everything—architecture, interior design, permitting brand relationships, and brand negotiations. I was also handling the openings of properties mainly in the East Coast, which involved managing operating supplies and inventories and hiring a staff,” he said.
In 2007, he was named president of PM Hospitality Strategies, Asia Pacific, managing a major project in China, and living in Beijing City. He returned to D.C. in 2010 to serve first as president of Hospitality Strategies and then, in 2011, president of the Hotel Group.
Presidential Goals
Bojanowski described the “strategic growth”—including via mergers—that is now the goal of PM Hotel Group. He commented on the company’s ability to carefully select partners that complement its portfolio and conform to the company’s vision and overall growth objectives. “Because we are a privately held company, PM Hotel Group is not subject to pressure from external investors or external owners,” he said.
Among those mergers, he cited Paramount Hotel Group, which added 12 branded hotels. “Paramount has a geographic footprint in the Midwest and Maine that worked well with our big presence on the East Coast and, to some degree, on the West Coast,” he said.
He also described how the company’s acquisition of Modus Hotels supported PM’s desire to expand into the lifestyle segment while also adding talent to the organization and enabling the creation of the lifestyle and luxury group MODUS by PM Hotel Group.
Lessons to Take Away
Not to leave the impression that the “success story” he described during that August interview was without its challenges, Bojanowski mentioned one he faced that is common among people who take pride in and are amply rewarded for their individual achievements: empowering others to achieve.
“When I was growing in my career, I learned what I could do well and to work to the high standard I set for myself. But, as I advanced, I needed to learn how to maintain that standard while getting the work done through other people, which was a pretty steep learning curve for me,” he noted.
What he called “both my biggest challenge and biggest opportunity,” he finally determined, “was understanding that the role of leaders/executives is less on execution and more on strategy, structure, and resources.” The reward for getting it right, he said, is “having an organization of people moving in the same direction, aligned around a common vision and set of goals and direction.”
His conclusion? “It was hard for me, but I’ve come to understand that I need to depend on others for my success. It’s about supporting people in a way that allows them to achieve things, being flexible and adaptable to their different style, and understanding that it is the diversity of those styles and thoughts and visions that is actually what brings strength to a team and an outcome.”
Enhancing Visibility: Recognition Links Performance With Opportunity
PM Hotel Group President Joseph Bojanowski has had a fortunate career by nearly anyone’s measure. There were people who helped him and travel that expanded his horizons, but most of all, there was the work well done that he believes made every opportunity a stepping-stone to the next one.
That is the basis of his mantra, of sorts: “Performance will always intersect with opportunity.”
However, he added, in his own career, being “seen” was a crucial element that linked his performance and opportunity.
“It was because there were people at the executive level of the company that knew who I was and what I was doing that I believed if I kept performing well, it would create opportunity,” said Bojanowski.
Knowing this, he said, the main purpose of his own travel to PM’s different properties now is to be among those who recognize the performance of his team members. “It’s a keen focus of mine and the executive team,” he said.
