“My father started the business back in 1965 up in Mount Pleasant at the Holiday Inn,” he explained. “I worked up there as a kid [and] through college. I went to Central Michigan University, and when I got out of there, I came down here [because] we decided we needed to expand.”

From there, it gets a little bit confusing. In 1987, they opened a 160-room Comfort Inn in Okemos. In 1996, they put up a 90-room Holiday Inn Express on the property directly east of the Comfort Inn. In 2000, they built the Okemos Conference Center between the two properties. Brehm picks up the story from there.

“In 2007, we flip-flopped the franchises because that’s when the franchises’ renewals came up. The reason I did that was that because the Holiday Inn Express franchise has 25 million priority club members (as of 2007) and the Comfort Inn has only (about) 1 million choice privileges members. We put the one that had the more members on the bigger property.”

Even though Mount Pleasant and the Lansing area are both college towns and cater to college fans to some extent, with state government and many, many state association headquarters in Lansing, the market here is quite a bit different. The recognition of this was one of the reasons for the conference center, which was built to supplement the two 1,500-square-foot meeting rooms in the inns, offers 3,000 square feet on the first floor with seating for up to 200, and five breakout rooms averaging 350 square feet on the second. The first several years is was opened, “We were doing a lot of conferencing—agencies, associations, small groups and social events like weddings,” he says.

But “conferencing has seen a downturn, too. We used to do a lot of state government business that literally got cancelled because of budget cuts. Also, companies cancelled a lot of training meetings. They were sitting on their hands and saying ‘we’re not spending any money on anything.” The good news is that in the past few months, he’s seen a subtle uptick in conference business.

When asked how advertising, Brehm says, “Getting the word out is really hard. That’s why franchises are so important. After you get people in the door, you have to keep them, and the only way you can do that is to give them good service in a good room at a good price, and let word-of-mouth travel from there. You have to rely on your franchises to do your national advertising, and you’re only as strong as your weakest link, and Holiday Inn Express has a lot of strong properties.”

Two to three years ago, Brehm says that there wasn’t much difference in the two properties. “I was buying the same things (bedding, carpets and so on) for both.” But in 2007, “Holiday Inn Express went through a re-launch program to where you had to buy these drapes, they come in three or four different colors; you had to have sheets with this thread count. This is what you have to put this on the breakfast bar—and you have to buy it from these vendors.”

During football season (take note for 2010), Brehm says that location and price is important, but so is the team MSU is playing. “We charge all Michigan fans a lot more than we do Michigan State fans,” he jokes. But seriously, teams like Ohio State and Iowa travel very well. However, “I’ve never seen anybody travel as well as Nebraska,” he adds.

Another good chunk of business comes from long-stay or repeat guests. “Some people who come to work here for a couple of months” will stay with them. He continued, “Or people who are going to be in town every Monday for the next year.” This type of customer doesn’t use the Internet to do research. “They’ll come in and visit each hotel. They want to see what the quality is like, the cleanliness and breakfast. And then they’ll come in personally to you and negotiate a price,” which depends on the length of stay and/or what days of the week they need to stay.

Other marketing tools include reaching out to local business event planners and having salespeople go out and visit businesses. “It’s really a shotgun approach,” he says, and the bottom line is that “we don’t have anything different. That’s why our service has to be so outstanding. Everybody’s got a room with a bed and a bathroom. You’ve got to maintain it. When the guest checks in, they want a clean room and a good breakfast and good service. That’s all we can give them.”

Author: Jack Schaberg
Photography: Terri Shaver