Rockwell Lake Lodge re-opens with new management

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Rockwell Lake Lodge (Anders Kiledal/Collegian)
Rockwell Lake Lodge (Anders Kiledal/Collegian)

For more than a year, the college has been working to improve the advertising and management of the Rockwell Lake Lodge, the college-owned, rustic-style retreat facility in northern Michigan. Some college faculty will travel there this weekend, when the lodge re-opens after being closed for three months.
In fall 2013, the Collegian reported that the college was talking with several hotel management companies, hoping to find one that could boost occupancy for both the Dow Leadership Center hotel and the lodge. Occupancy for the Dow Center has increased in the last five years, but still hovers around 54 percent. The lodge gets even fewer visitors, since it lies four hours away in rural Luther, Michigan.
“We run a college. The college teaches students things they want and need to learn,” Mike Harner, chief staff officer for the college, said. “We’re not really in the hotel business. Finding people that understand that business, especially in the competitive arena, was important to us.”
The college eventually landed on WHG Companies, LLC, or Wogernese Hotel Group, a group based in Wisconsin that manages hotel properties throughout the Midwest.
Since July 1, the start of the college’s fiscal year, WHG has been at work streamlining the operation of both locations and increasing advertising.
“[Through WHG] we’ve established an online presence for our marketing efforts,” Harner said. “Previously the only place you could really hear about the Dow Hotel was via the Hillsdale College website. We now have a presence via Expedia, places like that.”
WHG has also improved housekeeping proce-dures and expanded the buying power of the Dow Center by putting the college in touch with larger-scale product providers who can decrease the hotel’s costs.
For the lodge, the college decided a full-time, professionally-trained, on-site manager was necessary. About the time it began its search, the original manager of the lodge, LuAnn Trombly, contacted the college inquiring about job positions that might utilize her skills once more. Trombly and her husband managed the hotel when it first opened in 2007, but moved to Nevada two years later for personal reasons. Trombly earned a degree there from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Las Vegas and worked for Wynn Las Vegas and Encore Resorts, which have had more Forbes Travel Guide four-star award-winning restaurants than any other resort in North America. She then worked at the University of Massachusetts Medical School cafe.
“LuAnn went out and professionalized herself. She did all of the things that you would like to have somebody do before you have them come in and manage,” Harner said. “She’s a highly experienced food and hospitality professional, and so now we can run that.”
One of the benefits of Trombly’s culinary training is that the lodge can now host cooking events, perhaps quarterly or even monthly, in which Trombly can share her knowledge. That’s one of the ways the college hopes to boost occupancy at the lodge — by hosting event-type activities that both echo the mission and purpose of the college and simply provide entertainment.
Trombly and her staff at the lodge are also working on increasing advertising efforts. They plan to reach out to businesses in the community who might like to use the lodge for small conferences.

“One of my employees was an HR manager for a number of years,” Trombly said. “She also was a school board president in the area for 12 years, and so she has a lot of contacts.”
They plan to host an open house at the lodge in April for community members. For now though, this weekend is the main event.
Professor of Speech Kirstin Kiledal is one of the college faculty members who signed up for the retreat. She has visited the lodge so many times, she considers it a home away from home. She and her husband will be taking their 8-year-old son along with them.
“We like it because it really is an extension of the Hillsdale experience. You don’t feel as though you are stuck in your room and isolated with regard to your choices,” Kiledal said. “You have the ability to interact with everything that is outdoors with regard to the nature trails or hiking or running or skiing — in the summer, the lakefront, as well.”
Harner hopes many more people will come to feel as Kiledal does about the Rockwell Lake Lodge.
“There’s no reason that a place with great service and wonderful food can’t be a draw and can’t be a nice thing for us to run,” Harner said.
If things go according to plan, the college may offer internships through the lodge and the Dow Leadership Center to future students interested in hospitality management.