#042 - Hospitality Meets Daniel Pedreschi - The Regional Operations Heavy Hitter

This week we move back to hotels in big brand, big hotels and a big role. We got some time with Daniel Pedreschi, Regional Vice President Operations UK for PPHE Hotel Group (www.pphe.com).As always, we get through a lot including early career job titles, big bundles of keys, career catch 22’s, pigeons, refurbs, C&B, choosing your boss, events, awards, busy years, Master Inn Holders, snakes & of course Daniel's excellent career journey so far.Daniel talks us through his story with such energy and passion, it's clear he's doing what he was born to do. and there's also some cracking anecdotes involving pigeons and snakes.Apologies for the sound dropping in the odd place.Enjoy!Show TranscriptionSUMMARY KEYWORDShotel, running, banqueting, opportunity, grosvenor house, manager, general manager, years, people, holders, working, property, key, fantastic, gmSPEAKERSDaniel Pedreschi, Phil StreetPhil Street 00:01Welcome to hospitality meets with me Phil street where we take a light hearted look into the stories and individuals that make up the wonderful world of hospitality. Today's guest is Daniel Pedreschi, Regional Vice President of Operations for the UK at PPHE group. Coming up on today's show... Daniel maps out the two key rules for becoming a successful hotel GM...Daniel Pedreschi 00:23Number one, don't burn the hotel down. And number two, don't pee in the flowerpots.Phil Street 00:29Phil may have missed something in the news... but there's nothing going on in the world And Daniel highlights that even after 25 years in the business, you've never quite seen it all...Daniel Pedreschi 00:38The security guard got a little bit cautious when the guy picked up a snake.Phil Street 00:42All that and so much more as Daniel talks us through his story and journey to date with real energy. This was recorded remotely and some occasional sound loss was experienced. So apologies for that. Don't forget to give us a like and a share. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the next edition of hospitality meets with me Phil Street. Today we go big brand, big hotels, and a big role as we welcome to the show the Regional Vice President of Operations for the UK at PPHE Group. Daniel PedreschiDaniel Pedreschi 01:12Morning, Phil,Phil Street 01:13How are you doing?Daniel Pedreschi 01:14Yeah, very good. Thank you Now all things considered.Phil Street 01:17Yeah. But there's nothing going on in the world is there?Daniel Pedreschi 01:21Depends which radio station you listen toPhil Street 01:24Its true, actually very true. Yeah. Where in the world are you at the moment?Daniel Pedreschi 01:29I'm in sitting this morning in our Park Plaza Victoria. So we've returned to our head office, which is located in the original County Hall buildings just behind the London Eye. And I try and start each morning by just popping into at least one of the properties before I get into the office of bogged down with all the day to dayPhil Street 01:52Very good, Yeah, well, the sun is out today. It's like we're definitely getting an Indian summer at the moment.Daniel Pedreschi 01:59Yeah, most definitely. Thankfully, not as as hot or humid as it had been in August. But it's given us a nice little reminder.Phil Street 02:08Yeah, absolutely. Before we head into darkness anyway. Great. Well, as I mentioned in the little preamble, at the beginning, you've you've got certainly on the face of it something of a big role. But I'm guessing you didn't just arrive there must be a bit of a journey and a story to have gotten you there. So perhaps you could take us all the way back to the beginning. And just give us a walkthrough of your, your life so far, you don't have to start at birth, I should say that.Daniel Pedreschi 02:39Listen, I think it's been one of the great things about the whole of the lockdown, his people have become very, very creative in terms of their writing, they're reaching out and linking in and one of the things I've seen and all these great LinkedIn, you know, posts that people have put, and of course, other services are available. You know, people saying, you know, I've never been in the industry, 20 years, I've been at 25 years, they talk about how they started in their small local hotel, and local pub up washing all of that without any real desire to make catering or hotel keeping their profession and then become infected. And I'm guilty of all of the above.Phil Street 03:20Right?Daniel Pedreschi 03:21I started at the age of 15, basically, because I wanted to go on a holiday. And my mom said, Okay, if you want to go on the holiday go out and earn the money for it. So I knocked on the door of my local hotel, which is marine Hotel in Sutton and Dublin. And I started off with the glorious titled and what was called a lounge boy,Phil Street 03:45That conjures up some images...Daniel Pedreschi 03:47You're involved in table service, serving that. And then if you're on the early shift, it would involve stopping the bar cleaning the fires, resetting the farmer. And at one stage, the GM and the exec chefs, we said you seem to enjoy this. And would you ever consider doing it for a career? And at that stage, to be perfectly honest, I'd never thought about hotel keeping as a career, I had to look into it. And I thought Actually, you know what, I think this is right. So I went into the Dublin college a catering as it was then. And I did business studies and Hotel Management. And that really kind of set me on the on the route and fully embedded me, you know, into the industry. So at that stage, then I had to great, do great placements. My first placement I went to America, and I worked in food service there. I got my first exposure. So I work in the laundry department there as well during the summer, came back did my second year. And then I was recruited in Dublin for what was then the London Tara, which was owned by Aer Lingus. So that was in 1987. And that really was the foundation placement for me. So I'd worked in a 30 bed and then suddenly arrive in this 850 bedroom, hotel occupancy, mid 90s amazing leadership of Owen Dillon. That was the year he won, or during my placement period, he won hotelier of the year, we had, I think, two acorn winners, we have the executive housekeeper the Year award. So really, really dynamic property. Love that so much. I asked if I could come back on a management placement scheme. And they said, they didn't have one, they only had schemes for one year, you know, released from college to come back, I went up, I wrote out my own one year training plan. So before I left, I went to HR and knocked on the door and just said, oh, by the way, I said, I'm thinking I'm coming back next June. And I think this is the training programme I'm going to do. But I don't know whether it was a combination of luck, or blind ignorance on my part, but they take me back. After I left and graduated from Cobra Street, I came back and did a fantastic one year training in all around the hotel, every department that you can think of, and at the end of that, then I joined the duty management team. So it's, and it's something I still joke about with some of my colleagues, you know, from those days, because at 22 years of age, you were handed the biggest bunch of keys, or jangly or pre electronic locks. And you were given at least one pager sometimes to if somebody needed not stops for an hour or so. And then you became the duty manager of that hotel. And again, I think I think it was that whole seeing the opportunity rather than the pitfalls. And I had an amazing 18 months or so there working as a manager, include night management shifts, with a great, great team, you know, fantastic structure.Phil Street 07:02I think that's a key point on attitude. You know, that's, it's a hell of a lot of responsibility for a young person in inverted commas to take on. But you know, you I suppose you do look at these things in in one of two ways you either look at and go, Oh, my God, that's beyond me. Or you look at it and go, Wow, look at the opportunity I've been given. And it seems that you've, you took the latter approach.Daniel Pedreschi 07:29This is all of the duty managers in there. And they were generally six of us working at the time. It was we were all the same. We'd all graduated, we were all the same age, but I suppose that also reflect on the faith that the company had a particularly own Dillon in growing and developing all of us as young managers.Phil Street 07:50Yeah.Daniel Pedreschi 07:51So yeah, I agree, I think but it was, I was able to avail of a fantastic opportunity, a fantastic setup, Fantastic ethos that was there. So you know, no, I battled against the odds. And everything was against me. It wasn't it was it was a very, it was a very smooth road to come down.Phil Street 08:12Yeah. And I guess, equally as important as having a leadership...